ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: WAR’S NEW GRAMMAR

Adam Elkus
March 6, 2014
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a hot topic in the defense community. Since the publication of P.W. Singer’s Wired for War, analysts have debated whether or not we are truly moving towards what Manuel Landa dubbed “war in the age of intelligent machines” in his 1992 book of the same name. In particular , the morality and legality of robots has attracted a lot of attention. However, much of this debate engages with a pop culture-influenced vision of what AI could be, not how it is currently used. In doing so, the discussion misses the more subtle—but equally groundbreaking—way that AI is transforming today’s defense landscape. While warfare is being revolutionized by robots, larger ethical and strategic questions loom about artificial intelligence as a whole.

AI research can be broadly divided into two traditions: Strong and Weak. Strong AI searches for ways to replicate human-like cognition in machines, and is epitomized by the symbol-based methods John Haugeland dubbed“Good Old Fashioned AI” during the 1980s. Weak AI, on the other hand, simply aims to make computers do tasks that humans can. As pioneering computer scientist Edgser Dijikstra once said, “[t]he question of whether Machines Can Think… is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim.”

Just as very few Navy officials worry about whether a Los Angeles class submarine can move through the water like a fish, very few AI researchers worry about whether an artificial intelligence algorithm is cognitively realistic. This will surprise fans of pop culture that, from Fritz Lang’s silent film Metropolis to the sci-fi tv series Battlestar Galactica, obsess over the philosophical dilemmas posed by machines with human qualities. Most AI researchers (and the tech companies that pay them) couldn’t care less. If you were hoping that science would gift you with your very own Number Six, then you’re in for disappointment. Why? Consider the problem of spam classification. How do we make computers better at detecting spam? We could spend a lot of time and money trying to figure out how the human brain cognitively detects, classifies, and learns from experience……or we could use a simple machine learning algorithm that we know doesn’t work the same way our brains do.

For sure, computer scientists can’t completely avoid using humans as models. Google has just invested a substantial amount of money on deep learning, which takes inspiration in large part from neuroscience. But the goal in general is to develop algorithms that do needed jobs (and make money), not make replicas of human minds. As Facebook’s Yann LeCunwrites, the goal of mainstream AI research is to allow humans to focus on the things that make us distinctively human and offload the rest to computers. And LeCun isn’t alone in his dream of using the machine toenhance, not replicate, homo sapiens. The dream of machines enhancing human potential has been with us ever since the first automated tools sprung to life.

Russia’s cyberwar against Ukraine is every bit as strategic as its ground offensive

By Leo Mirani 

March 4, 2014 

Source Link

The head of Ukraine’s security service says that the mobile phones of Ukrainian lawmakers are under attack by equipment located in Russian-controlled Crimea. That’s not terribly surprising, but the limited scope of the attack is.

In the past—Estonia in 2007, Georgia in 2008—Russian cyber attacks have taken the form of massive “denial of service” campaigns. This time, Russian forces are doing it the old-fashioned way, commandeering physical infrastructure. According to Ukrtelecom, some “key telecom nodes of the company in the Crimea were repeatedly blocked by unidentified uniformed people” on March 1.

The previous day, Ukrtelecom said, “unknown people seized several telecom nodes in the Crimea” and damaged its fiber backbone cable: “As a result, there are almost no services of fixed telephony, internet access, and mobile communications TriMob [Ukrtelecom mobile arm] provided in the territory of the Crimea.”

According to Telegeography, the network has 1 million mobile subscribers. Still, remote attacks on Ukraine seem to be few and far between, with only sporadic incidents in the past few weeks, according to Google’s Digital Attack Map:

Why the caution? One suggestion is that Russia maybe wary of retaliation from Ukraine, which has equally well-trained and sophisticated cyber-warriors. Moreover, only half of the six fiber links into Ukraine come from Russia, notes Richard Steinnon, a cyber-security expert. Even if Russia were to cut these off, which Steinnon thinks it will, that would achieve only limited disruption compared to the 70% it was able to control in Georgia in 2008. 

But perhaps Russia’s ambitions are more limited. Jason Rivera, a US Army officer currently assigned to the United States Army Cyber Command, points out that the Crimea has its own internet exchange point, which is a hub for routing online traffic. “If this IXP were severely limited or shut down, which may have already happened, the Crimean Peninsula would be completely isolated, allowing Russia to control internet activity in Crimea,” he writes.

Maybe that is all that Russia wants.

Russia Building Israeli Unmanned Drones for Their Military’s Use

Russia Builds Israeli UAV
strategypage.com
March 5, 2014

March 5, 2014: Russia has begun licensed production of the Israeli Searcher 2 UAV. This comes after seven years of negotiations and user trials by Russian troops. The Searcher 2 is a half-ton aircraft with an endurance of 20 hours, max altitude of 7,500 meters (23,000 feet) and can operate up to 300 kilometers from the operator. It can carry a 120 kg (264 pound) payload. In 2012 Searcher 2 was tested in northern Russia during cold weather and performed well despite extremely colder temperatures (especially on the ground, where it got to -30 Centigrade). The Russians knew that the Indians were enthusiastic users of Searcher 2, which India has often operated in the Himalayas during cold weather with no problem. The Russian Air Force now has at least six Russian made Searcher 2s and is expecting to receive a lot more from the Russian factory.

Back in 2004 negotiations to set up an Israeli UAV factory in Russia, as a joint venture, were stalled over potential problems with the transfer of UAV technology to Russia. The U.S. and Israel have been most successful in developing efficientUAVs in the last few decades, as a result of firms in both countries developing new technologies and manufacturing techniques that overcame many of the problems that hamper UAVs designed in Russia, China and many other countries. While UAVs are basically low-tech, putting them together so that they are effective and reliable has proved to be quite difficult. So there was some trepidation about transferring those UAV manufacturing techniques technologies to Russia, as the Russians might in turn transfer that tech, or high-grade UAVs, to countries like Iran, China, Syria or North Korea. It took a while to sort all this out.

Russia first approached Israel to purchase UAVs in 2007. That resulted in Russia buying over fifty aircraft, including the Bird-Eye 400, I-View MK150 and Searcher 2. The Bird-Eye 400 is a 4 kg (9 pound) micro-UAV with a maximum endurance of 80 minutes, max ceiling of 320 meters (1,000 feet) and can operate 15 kilometers from the operator. It is mainly for the use of small infantry units. The I-View MK150 is a 250 kg (550 pound) aircraft with a seven hour endurance, max altitude of 5,500 meters (17,000 feet) and can operate up to 150 kilometers from the operator. It can carry a 20 kg (44 pound) payload, which enables day and night vidcams. It can take off using an airfield, or from a truck mounted launcher. It can land on an airfield or via parachute. It is usually employed to support brigades.

AIN’T NO PARTY LIKE A CLAUSEWITZ PARTY: PART 1

Christopher Mewett

March 5, 2014 

Editor’s note: This is the first in a three-part series.

Ain’t No Party Like a Clausewitz Party Cuz a Clausewitz Party Don’t Stop

Part I: Defining War for Law and Theory

Ten years ago, an article in the University of Pennsylvania Law Reviewargued that traditional legal distinctions “between war and peace, emergencies and normality, the foreign and the domestic, the external in the internal” had broken down in the context of the War on Terror; as a result, both international and domestic law were operating in “an outmoded legal paradigm.” This thoughtful and prescient article prefigured many later debates about Guantanamo Bay, torture, targeted killings, domestic surveillance, the scope of the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, and U.S. counterterrorism policy writ large. That the author of this piece was a law professor named Rosa Brooks goes some way to explaining the disconnect we see today between Brooks’ conception of war and that of “the classically-trained Clausewitzian.”

I was pleased, of course, to be held up in Brooks’ recent essay as a defender of Clausewitzian orthodoxy—though I must assure Tom Ricks that I didn’t attend a war college. Brooks is right: I do hew to a traditionalist stance on war’s enduring nature and changing character, and I am “far from alone in [my] insistence on the importance of these Clausewitzian distinctions.” But, I fear this purported clash of philosophies amounts to much less than meets the eye. Few would argue with the contention thatwarfare is continually changing, or that technological advances will influence the way wars are fought—Clausewitz and his most careful interpreters certainly would not—and this seems to be the basic thesis around which the Future of War team has organized.

So, what is this debate really about?

What difference does it make how we define war? Why bother theorizing about its nature? What does it even mean to differentiate between war’s nature and its character? What are we trying to accomplish by differentiating war from non-war? What are the consequences of doing so ineffectively? We’ll work through all of these issues in the course of this three-part essay, but in this first installment, let’s start at the beginning: why define war at all?

Genesis of Army coup syndrome

Lieut-Gen (retd) Baljit Singh

AS a military leader, Major-Gen KS Thimayya, DSO, had emerged shoulders above his contemporaries, post the 1947-48 Indo-Pak war in the J&K theatre. This measure of Timmy was further bolstered when the international community unequivocally applauded his deft handling of the acrimonious POW repatriation on the Korean peninsula. Prime Minister Nehru was so impressed by the calibre of the General that in personal interaction the PM addressed him as Timmy, always.

Gen KS Thimayya

So the day he was elevated to the post of Chief of the Army Staff, Mr Nehru broke with convention and unannounced walked into the COAS office to congratulate his friend. So taken aback was the Army Chief that he remained transfixed to his chair even as the Prime Minister walked right up to him. Without ado, Mr Nehru shook hands and taking the visitor's chair launched into a convivial conversation with the utterance "won't you offer me a cigarette, Timmy?"

We learnt of this episode some twenty years later at a mutual friend's home from Ammie, including a few indiscreet words uttered in innocent banter by Timmy. Now Ammie was the lively, petite and charming younger sister of the Chief. She had been married to a bureaucrat from the Indian Civil Service and was widowed during a cloudburst when holidaying with their two children, up in the Kullu valley in the 1950s. Mr Nehru was quick to redress the tragedy and asked Timmy whether Ammie would accept the role of a personal assistant in the PM’s household. In the event, she was assigned responsibility of the PM's wardrobe, provided suitable quarters on the premises and would become a permanent fixture on the PM's staff during foreign visits, also. Ammie was in a sense “adopted” by the Nehru-Gandhis, ultimately becoming a mentor and companion of Priyanka and Rahul during their days of cloistered childhood. Mrs Indira Gandhi would often seek out Ammie for a relaxed drink in the evening and even decades later, a car would pick her on most Sundays to lunch with the children.

CHINA’S NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES

The attack in Kunming railway station shows that terrorism has spread out of the turbulent Xinjiang province in China, writes Subir Bhaumik

The late-evening mayhem by knife-wielding ‘terrorists’ at the Kunming railway station in Yunnan on March 1 has already been described as ‘China’s 9/11’ by the State media. By all accounts, the unprecedented attack seems to have caught the country’s formidable security apparatus by surprise. At 9.20 pm local time , 10 to 12 men and women in black uniforms stormed the Kunming railway station and stabbed anyone in sight with long knives. Twenty nine people — passengers, passers-by and railway employees — bled to death inside the railway station. More than 140 people were injured, many of them critically.

The Chinese police and the public security bureau insist that the number of attackers was “not more than 10 to 12”. The assault group must have then been trained to kill the most in minimum time and with only basic weapons before the inevitable Chinese security response which would be heavy. There is no evidence yet of the use of firearms in the attack. The number of casualties caused by knives alone reveals the murderous intent of the attackers.

The panic that the Kunming rail station attack has generated seems all-pervasive in the province. Residents are in a state of shock, and hundreds of foreign students — many of them are from India and Bangladesh — who study in Yunnan’s ever-growing number of excellent universities and professional colleges are in a state of panic. This is evident from the chat rooms they have organized to communicate with one another. Tourists who flock to Yunnan in large numbers at this time of the year appear to be shaken as well. Again, their posts suggest that they are having second thoughts over visiting Kunming to catch a glimpse of great sites like the Stone Forest.

Unlike Xinjiang, China’s western province that has witnessed periodic outbursts of violence ranging from ‘terror attacks’ to rioting between indigenous Muslim Uighurs and Han settlers, or Tibet with its growing spate of self-immolations, Yunnan has been largely peaceful since the convulsions in 1975 involving local Muslims opposed to the excesses committed during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. In July 2008, Kunming was hit by a twin bombing that ripped through two public buses, injuring 14 passengers. China’s police and the public security bureau kept the investigation under wraps and did not reveal who were behind the attacks.

STRATEGIC MISCALCULATIONS - The US is again not managing its relations with India wel

Kanwal Sibal 

The United States of America is, once again, not managing its relations with India well. Gains made during George W. Bush’s presidency in building strategic trust between the two countries are being steadily frittered away by wrong steps taken by the Obama administration, which seems to have taken its eyes off the India ball. Blame for this is being laid at India’s door, with the argument that India has not lived up to American expectations, that we have been sitting on the fence, unwilling to grasp firmly the hand extended by the US because of our non-aligned obsessions resurfacing as “strategic autonomy”.

Such talk assumes that India has to meet certain benchmarks set by the US in order to be a valuable partner — that is, to earn favour by behaving according to the US script. In this equation, the US is not required to live up to India’s expectations. In reality, if the two countries have to build a meaningful strategic partnership, it cannot be a one-sided affair, with one side under pressure to give and the other expecting to take.

Indian and American critics of India’s lack of strategic initiative believe that the US’s role in lifting nuclear sanctions on India obliges us to continually offer rewards to the Americans in our defence and nuclear sectors, carry out economic reforms in accordance with US wishes and priorities, and make our foreign and security policies increasingly congruent with those of the US. Such thinking misses the important point that, apart from extracting major Indian concessions with regard to India’s nuclear autonomy, the larger US objective was to win India to its side in the face of the new strategic challenges facing US power in Asia with the rise of China, the need for burden-sharing in upholding the post-1945 international system because of the depletion of its military and economic strength caused by wars and financial mismanagement.

Can India, China cooperate on Afghanistan?

Afghanistan matters not because it is an arena for inter-state competition or competing national interests. It is important because a weak state can make it vulnerable again to radical forces and ideologies eager to fill any vacuum.

Zorawar Daulet Singh


The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is so far the only regional institution in place but its area of interest is Central Asia and not Afghanistan. This file photo shows the SCO members and observers at a meeting in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, last year. AFP (Left) and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi with his Afghan counterpart Zarar Ahmad Usmani in Kabul recently. According to China, Afghanistan’s stability impacts its western province Xinjiang. AFP

INDIAN, Chinese and Afghan delegations, comprising former practitioners and scholars, engaged in a trilateral workshop organised by an international think tank in the last week of February. The rationale for the workshop was to examine and identify the prospects for India-China cooperation over conflict management in Afghanistan.

As one Chinese scholar remarked if such a theme for trilateral cooperation had been suggested a few years ago, it would have been dismissed as simply fantastic. In fact, at the track-1 level, Indian and Chinese diplomats engaged in their first structured conversation on Afghanistan in April, 2013.

The recent workshop revealed interesting insights into how these two regional powers perceive their interests in Afghanistan, and how the Afghan elite perceive their own state-building challenges ahead.

Persistent bilateralism

A common pattern of Indian and Chinese remarks is the persistence of the norm of bilateralism in Delhi and Beijing’s foreign policies. For both India and China, this can be traced to a cultural preference in their foreign relations for bilateral engagement and partnerships emanating from their post-colonial identities that constrain both states from sharing sovereignty in a multilateral or cooperative security framework.

China for shared approach

For China, bilateralism also has a particular virtue in this case as it enables Beijing to avoid disturbing its other regional priorities — primarily the China-Pakistan relationship. A Chinese participant made clear that Beijing is not interested in a solution that seeks to “AfPak” the process to pressurise Pakistan. China is not interested in involving itself in regional disputes (i.e. India-Pakistan, Afghanistan-Pakistan). In China’s world, the participant argued, Afghanistan and Pakistan are viewed as separate issues with a clear priority: Afghanistan’s security is a regional and global problem but Pakistan’s security is China’s problem.

***** Stratfor: Ukraine and the ‘Little Cold War’

Posted on 4 March 2014
By George Friedman, Founder and Chairman, Stratfor



We must consider the future of Eurasia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Since 1991, the region has fragmented and decayed. The successor state to the Soviet Union, Russia, is emerging from this period with renewed self-confidence. Yet Russia is also in an untenable geopolitical position. Unless Russia exerts itself to create a sphere of influence, the Russian Federation could itself fragment.

Editor’s Note: In place of George Friedman’s regular Geopolitical Weekly, this column is derived from two chapters of Friedman’s 2009 book, The Next 100 Years. We are running this abstract of the chapters that focused on Eastern Europe and Russia because the forecast — written in 2008 — is prescient in its anticipation of events unfoldingFor most of the second half of the 20th century, the Soviet Union controlled Eurasia — from central Germany to the Pacific, as far south as the Caucasus and the Hindu Kush. When the Soviet Union collapsed, its western frontier moved east nearly 1,000 miles, from the West German border to the Russian border with Belarus. Russian power has now retreated farther east than it has been in centuries. During the Cold War it had moved farther west than ever before. In the coming decades, Russian power will settle somewhere between those two lines.

After the Soviet Union dissolved at the end of the 20th century, foreign powers moved in to take advantage of Russia’s economy, creating an era of chaos and poverty. Most significantly, Ukraine moved into an alignment with the United States and away from Russia — this was a breaking point in Russian history.

The Orange Revolution in Ukraine, from December 2004 to January 2005, was the moment when the post-Cold War world genuinely ended for Russia. The Russians saw the events in Ukraine as an attempt by the United States to draw Ukraine into NATO and thereby set the stage for Russian disintegration. Quite frankly, there was some truth to the Russian perception.

If the West had succeeded in dominating Ukraine, Russia would have become indefensible. The southern border with Belarus, as well as the southwestern frontier of Russia, would have been wide open.
Russia’s Resurgence

After what Russia regarded as an American attempt to further damage it, Moscow reverted to a strategy of reasserting its sphere of influence in the areas of the former Soviet Union. The great retreat of Russian power ended in Ukraine. For the next generation, until roughly 2020, Russia’s primary concern will be reconstructing the Russian state and reasserting Russian power in the region.

Interestingly, the geopolitical shift is aligning with an economic shift. Vladimir Putin sees Russia less as an industrial power than as an exporter of raw materials, the most important of which is energy (particularly natural gas). He is transforming Russia from an impoverished disaster into a poor but more productive country. Putin also is giving Russia the tool with which to intimidate Europe: the valve on a natural gas pipeline.

But the real flash point, in all likelihood, will be on Russia’s western frontier. Belarus will align itself with Russia. Of all the countries in the former Soviet Union, Belarus has had the fewest economic and political reforms and has been the most interested in recreating some successor to the Soviet Union. Linked in some way to Russia, Belarus will bring Russian power back to the borders of the former Soviet Union.

Keyhole diplomacy doesn't suit India

By M K Bhadrakumar 

Feb 19, 2014

Source Link

In an era of globalization, it is simply not possible for any country to consciously stay out and keep looking in through a keyhole and plunge into selective engagement with the inmates inside the room. 

For a variety of reasons one needn't get into right here, Singapore has come to be a "moderator" of India's foreign policy discourses in the recent decades. India's haphazard "adjustment" with the post-Cold War era brought it close to the Singaporean world-view, especially its "Look East" policies. 

The nimble-footed, street-smart Singaporeans feel frustrated at the ponderous way in which the Indian elephant moves around, but would have little to complain about Indian foreign policy in the neo-liberal era. 

At any rate, therefore, the K Subrahmanyam Memorial lecture recently in Delhi, titled "Can India be Cunning?", by the Dean of the Lew Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University in Singapore, Professor Kishore Mahubani, becomes an event of interest. More ... 

(Copyright 2014 M K Bhadrakumar)

Pakistan’s terror conundrum

March 5, 2014 

SHARAT SABHARWAL

Pakistan’s response to terrorism continues to be characterised by confusion, lack of national consensus on a way forward, lack of will and capacity to fight the menace and the consequent creeping surrender of the state to extremists and terrorists

Despite being a country subject to and used to frequent terror attacks, the alarming upsurge in terror-related violence in January in Pakistan made people sit up. Nearly 40 personnel of the army and other security forces were killed in terror attacks between January 19 and 22, including one near the GHQ in Rawalpindi; 24 Shias were killed near Quetta by Sunni extremists on January 21. Daily killings in Karachi and attacks against polio vaccinators continue. These incidents are a reminder, if one was needed, of the enormity of Pakistan’s terror conundrum. Yet, a large section of Pakistan’s political class believes that the terror challenge can be met through dialogue.

Slow track to dialogue

A conditional offer of talks by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the last quarter of 2012 was grabbed by political parties with significant electoral stakes in the Pashtun belt. However, there were no developments of note because of the impending elections. The TTP threatened the election rallies of all liberal parties, giving an edge to the conservative political segment. The approach of dialogue gained momentum after the May 2013 election, backed by the ruling PML-(N), Imran Khan’s PTI, the JUI (F) and the Jamaat-e-Islami. An all parties conference convened by the Nawaz Sharif government on September 9, 2013 adopted a resolution calling for an initiation of dialogue “with all stakeholders forthwith” and describing “respect for local customs and traditions, values and religious beliefs” as its guiding principle. The resolution was criticised in the liberal media for its cravenness, particularly in legitimising the TTP as a “stakeholder.” Heightened terror activity, including the killing of a major general followed, but was dismissed as being the handiwork of “foreign forces” by the votaries of dialogue.

Even as the government was trying to bring the TTP to the dialogue table, its head, Hakimullah Mehsud, was killed in an American drone strike on November 1, 2013. Forgetting that he had the blood of several innocent Pakistanis on his hands, the religious parties described him as a “martyr.” Though a setback, his killing did not end government efforts to engage with the TTP. Mounting expectations of military action following the spurt in violence in January were dashed when Mr. Nawaz Sharif announced on January 29 his intention to give peace “another chance” and the formation of a four-member committee to talk to the TTP.

Initial exchanges, surrounded by much uncertainty about the scope and content of dialogue, have ended abruptly because of the renewed terror activity, that resulted in the killing of over 30 security personnel. The army has carried out some air raids against militant hideouts. In a press conference on February 20, the Interior Minister was very hopeful of the dialogue process getting back on track!

*A TRICKY BATTLE

Rana Banerji 

March 5 , 2014 

Source link

Almost 10 years after the Pakistan army entered the federally administered tribal areas and 13 abortive peace accords with the Tehrik-e-Taliban militants later, Nawaz Sharif told the National Assembly recently that one more attempt would be made to resume talks. A four-member committee of interlocutors has been named, all of whom are known to have opposed the military option.

The army’s initial attempts to tackle TTP militants had mixed results. After suffering initial reverses, the morale of the forces dipped. Senior Pashtun officers began to question the wisdom of the tactics in counter-insurgency operations. In 2009, military action in Swat witnessed the implementation of a more classical military response. Larger formations hitherto reserved for facing the Indian threat were deployed and counter-terrorism capabilities were geared up through ‘clear, hold and build’ operations.The tribal militias retreated to the hills or across the border in Afghanistan when confronted by superior forces. Uneasy peace prevailed in Waziristan, but trouble erupted in Bajaur, Mohmand and Orakzai. Swat was cleared, but Maulana Fazlullah escaped to Afghanistan. In 2009-2010, the TTP started targeting military and police establishments in Rawalpindi and Lahore. Since it began to fight the Taliban, the army has suffered 12,829 casualties, including an unusually high number of officers. This has created a peculiar dilemma for the military. The army leadership is conscious of the need to maintain its image as the ‘defender of Islam’. But it also has to hit back when confronted in combat.

United stand

The civilian government appears keen to pursue peace talks with the TTP. Imran Khan of the Tehreek-e-Insaf talked of extending an olive branch to militants. Both Sharif and Khan had explored the option of roping in the Jamiat Maulanas, Fazlur Rehman and Samiul Haq, as well as the Jamaat-e-Islami leadership for mediation with the TTP. Neither Khan nor the Pakistan People’s Party seems particularly interested in bailing out the Nawaz Sharif government when it comes to speaking with one voice on terrorism. An all party meeting was held in September to bring peace to the region. However, the killing of Sanaullah Khan Niazi by the TTP and the elimination of some TPP leaders in drone attacks put paid to the hopes of the peace talks succeeding.

India-Pakistan: Taliban Plead For Mercy

March 4, 2014

Source Link

The Pakistani Taliban have called for a ceasefire to halt daily air strikes that have (since February 19 th ) caused them several hundred casualties and the loss of many buildings and lots of vehicles, equipment and weapons. Over a hundred Taliban have been killed by the F-16s and helicopter gunships employed. The army recently revealed that over a hundred soldiers had been killed in the tribal territories since September 2013. The government is going through the motions of recognizing this Taliban ceasefire but are not allowed (by the media and the military) to ignore the fact that the Taliban have always broken ceasefires and peace agreements. In the seven years of Taliban insurrection the Islamic terrorists have only agreed to ceasefires or peace deals when faced with major military operations. There are currently nearly 200,000 troops in the Pakistani tribal territories, and over 40,000 surrounding North Waziristan. This is an area of 4,700 square kilometers, with 365,000 people that is the only sanctuary Islamic terrorist groups like the Taliban and Haqqani Network have in the tribal territories. North Waziristan has been surrounded since late 2009, but until recently Pakistani generals refused to go in and shut down this terrorist refuge. Politicians have been under growing pressure from the West, especially the United States to do something about the continued terror attacks by what the Pakistanis call "bad Taliban". These are mostly Pakistani Taliban who wants to establish a religious dictatorship in Pakistan and some of them have been increasingly active attacking other Pakistanis. This has caused a shift in public opinion against the Taliban, although there is still a lot of support for Islamic terrorists who only attack India, Afghanistan or Western nations. 

The Afghan Taliban, who wants to establish a similar government in Afghanistan are considered "good Taliban" along with the minority of Pakistani Taliban who don't want to overthrow the government. In the last four years, the Pakistani Taliban have also caused over a thousand of casualties among pro-government tribesmen throughout the tribal territories. It's no secret that the army hires tribesmen and puts them in dangerous situations to minimize army casualties. The army cannot afford to lose the support of the loyal tribes up there. All this has put pressure on the army to eliminate the refuge the killers can flee to in North Waziristan. Several times, because of the demands of Pakistani and American politicians, the Pakistani generals have said they will consider advancing into North Waziristan. But it hasn't happened yet. Despite that, in the last week the generals have openly talked about actually going in on the ground and eliminating the North Waziristan Islamic terrorist sanctuary. The Pakistani military has explicitly declared that it would not attack its longtime and loyal terrorist allies (especially Haqqani Network) in North Waziristan or anywhere else in the tribal territories or any other terrorists who do not attack targets inside Pakistan. The air force has only been bombing Taliban targets and those of other Islamic terrorist groups openly making terrorist attacks inside Pakistan. 

The basic problem here is that the Taliban is a coalition where the factions cooperate when each feels like it and the more extreme groups oppose any talks or peace deals with the government. In short, the head of the Pakistani Taliban does not control an entire organization in the same way the commander of an army does. The government and Taliban began the current peace negotiations on February 6th. Although both sides agreed that the talks would not be about changing the constitution, one of the Taliban negotiators announced on the 7ththat there could be no peace unless the nation accepted a religious dictatorship and the imposition of strict Islamic law. This was the extremist faction problem once more. For the rest of February there were more Taliban terrorist attacks by the extremist factions. The Taliban refused to try and discipline these factions and the government refused to recognize these divisions and just hold the violent factions responsible. In part this was because the more extreme factions do not seek a lot of publicity and know that their best defense is to remain within the larger Taliban organization. The government is thus forced to go after Taliban factions only suspected of anti-government activity as well as those who openly declared their intentions. The Taliban refuse to discipline their uncontrollable factions. That is largely the result of tribal and local politics. If the Taliban factions fight each other they risk starting blood feuds and upsetting many tribal alliances. All politics is local, especially in the tribal territories. 

Militant Groups in South Asia

Surinder Kumar Sharma and Anshuman Behera

Author

2014

Publisher: Pantagon Press

ISBN 978-81-8274-754-8

Price: Rs.995/- [Download Now]

About the Book

This book is an attempt to profile important militant groups presently active in South Asian countries. It leaves out many militant groups that either have merged into some larger groups or have been in active for some years. Nevertheless, the book covers some inactive groups given their potential to regroup and get into action. The information related to these militant groups have been culled from open sources and due care has been taken to check the facts for consistency and reliability. The threat perception from each group has been covered in this book in details. The book will be useful for further research on militancy, terrorism, radicalisation and security related issues.

China’s Got an Aircraft Carrier—What About the Air Wing?

‘Liaoning’ fast getting new naval fighters and copters

Thomas Newdick in War is Boring

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In late January, Chinese Internet forums highlighted what appeared to be the latest addition to China’s burgeoning carrier air wing. Although conspicuously watermarked, the photo clearly showed a sub-hunting version of the Changhe Z-8 helicopter.

It’s not as glamorous as missile-toting Shenyang J-15 carrier fighters or as potentially important for future operations as a carrier-based airborne early warning platform. On the other hand, the continued expansion of the Liaoning’s air wing reveals just how serious China is about deploying genuine naval air power.

Beijing bought and totally overhauled the former Soviet navy carrier Varyagstarting in the late 1990s and, in late 2012, re-commissioned her into People’s Liberation Army Navy service as Liaoning. The 60,000-ton-displacement flattop could carry 30 or more aircraft.

Official Chinese agencies reported the first take-offs and landings by J-15 prototypes on the flattop in November 2012. Since then, the Shenyang fighters have been busy conducting increasingly ambitious trials, most notably during Liaoning’s foray into the South China Sea in November 2013.

That provocative voyage came in the wake of Beijing’s declaration of an Air Defense Identification Zone over an area of the East China Sea. China is locked in heated territorial disputes with its neighbors in both seas.A production-model J-15. Via Chinese Internet

Fighter factor

The J-15 Flying Shark has begun to flex its muscles in trials, offering hints about its role and capabilities. During a three-week voyage last September, J-15s took off and landed on the carrier with various heavy payloads.

Stores included PL-8 and PL-12 air-to-air missiles for the air superiority role, 500-kilogram dumb bombs for the strike role and the heavy YJ-83K anti-ship missile. In contrast, the Russian Sukhoi Su-33—from which the J-15 derives and which currently populates the Russian navy’s carrier air wing—is only capable of air-defense missions.

Kunming: A New Phase of Terrorism in China

The deadly weekend attack, which killed 29 civilians, could mark a new era for security in China.

By Nicholas Dynon

March 05, 2014

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The horrific knife attack that killed 29 and injured 143 at a railway station in Kunming, a city in southwestern China, on Saturday is allegedly the latest act of public violence by Uyghur separatists. Uyghurs have been blamed for dozens of attacks both within and outside of their Xinjiang autonomous region homeland for decades, including the recent Beijing Tiananmen Gate SUV incident in which five people – including the three alleged perpetrators – were killed. But this latest attack presents a paradigm shift.

Assuming the latest allegation of Uyghur involvement bears out, the Kunming massacre suggests a new phase in separatist violence. Attacks outside Xinjiang have either been blamed on or claimed by Uyghur separatists in the past, but this latest incident stands apart. Its random, indiscriminate gruesomeness, as evidenced by the bloodily graphic images circulating on Chinese social media, make it China’s most chilling textbook act of terror yet.

Unleashing their violence on an unsuspecting public at the busy Kunming Railway Station, the terrorists chose a venue with prime terror multiplier value. Far removed from the remote restive areas of Xinjiang, the Kunming attack could have happened at any train or bus station in the country. This was no target of distant, symbolic importance, but one designed to spread disproportionate fear among a national audience. Rail is the archetypal mode of transport for China’s commuting public, and like any provincial rail hub, Kunming station is ordinarily a throng of commuters, tourists and migrant workers and the stall operators and hawkers that service them. The fear message behind the choice of venue is clear: this could happen anywhere and to anyone.

That the attackers avoided detection by standard station security procedures will, no doubt, send shockwaves through China’s domestic transport systems, resulting in fierce scrutiny and tightening of measures.

Knife attacks are not uncommon in China. The illegality of handguns and lack of access to lethal weaponry means that knives, improvised explosives and fire are the weapons of choice in China for perpetrators of public violence. But despite the apparent crudeness of the weaponry used in this attack, it was coordinated and sophisticated, involving at least eight perpetrators. The bloody scenes occasioned by the ensuing mass knifing provided for maximum news media effect.

China’s Growth Puzzle

The country’s growth is slowing, but in contrast to other emerging economies this is a welcome trend.

By Stephen S. Roach

March 04, 2014

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NEW HAVEN – Once again, all eyes are on emerging markets. Long the darlings of the global growth sweepstakes, they are being battered in early 2014. Perceptions of resilience have given way to fears of vulnerability.

The U.S. Federal Reserve’s tapering of its unprecedented liquidity injections has been an obvious and important trigger. Emerging economies that are overly dependent on global capital flows – particularly India, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa, and Turkey – are finding it tougher to finance economic growth. But handwringing over China looms equally large. Long-standing concerns about the Chinese economy’s dreaded “hard landing” have intensified.

In the throes of crisis, generalization is the norm; in the end, however, it pays to differentiate. Unlike the deficit-prone emerging economies that are now in trouble – whose imbalances are strikingly reminiscent of those in the Asian economies that were hit by the late-1990’s financial crisis – China runs a current-account surplus. As a result, there is no risk of portfolio outflows resulting from the Fed’s tapering of its monthly asset purchases. And, of course, China’s outsize backstop of $3.8 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves provides ample insurance in the event of intensified financial contagion.

Yes, China’s economy is now slowing; but the significance of this is not well understood. The downturn has nothing to do with problems in other emerging economies; in fact, it is a welcome development. It is neither desirable nor feasible for China to return to the trajectory of 10 percent annual growth that it achieved in the three decades after 1980.

Yet a superficial fixation on China’s headline GDP growth persists, so that a 25 percent deceleration, to a 7-8 percent annual rate, is perceived as somehow heralding the end of the modern world’s greatest development story. This knee-jerk reaction presumes that China’s current slowdown is but a prelude to more growth disappointments to come – a presumption that reflects widespread and longstanding fears of a broad array of disaster scenarios, ranging from social unrest and environmental catastrophes to housing bubbles and shadow-banking blow-ups.

While these concerns should not be dismissed out of hand, none of them is the source of the current slowdown. Instead, lower growth rates are the natural result of the long-awaited rebalancing of the Chinese economy.

China and Russia: An Axis of Weak States

Gordon G. Chang

When Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping met for the fifth time last year—at the October APEC summit in Bali, Indonesia—the Chinese leader spoke about “the uniqueness of China-Russia relations.” Indeed, the ties between the two countries, as both Beijing and Moscow now perceive them, are truly one-of-a-kind. They view themselves in the same terms and see their interests as converging. Closer than they have been at any time since the early 1950s, China and Russia have embarked on a grand project—challenging the American-led international system.

As many have feared, these two large states, one bent on changing the world and the other perhaps simply obstructionist, are a formidable pair and can alter the international system, if not exactly as they please, then at least in ways that can shake its foundations. Yet despite appearances, China and Russia are weak states, and today’s narrative of resurgence could soon be replaced by the story line of decline. It is in decline, in fact, that they may find the alliance that has long eluded them.

A decade ago, when Beijing and Moscow started flexing their muscles, the “strategic partnership” both nations often talked about was mostly a mirage. True, they had signed a comprehensive “friendship and cooperation” treaty in 2001, yet their bond was weak. Then, both China and Russia saw their relations with the West—principally the United States—as more important than their ties with each other. In both capitals, there were thinkers who perceived the other to be the “ultimate strategic threat in the long-term,” as a report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute termed it.

New members on the Artic Council like China, India, and other Asian countries underscore the rush to secure energy and mineral resources and shorter trade routes.

Moscow had settled its border with China not so much to improve relations with Beijing as to allow it to concentrate on historic foreign policy objectives along its western and southern frontiers. And its first moves in this regard were largely successful. The “energy superpower,” as it now identified itself, was able to use abundant oil and gas reserves to reassert dominion over the “near abroad” and regain influence in Western Europe.

On his way to establishing the Russian Federation as a major power, Putin made it clear there was little room for the Chinese at the heart of the global order as he conceived it. As late as 2011, he proposed the “Eurasian Union,” a grouping of nations once comprising the Soviet Union. He may have spoken of it as only “one of the poles of the modern world,” but in reality he saw it as closer to the center of the international system, “serving as an efficient link between Europe and the dynamic Asia-Pacific region.” As Putin imagined it, China would in effect merely be one of the parts of this system at one end of the world.

China-Japan-South Korea Hold FTA Talks Despite Political Tension

The economic incentives of completing a FTA outweigh the political rifts between Tokyo, Beijing, and Seoul

By Shannon Tiezzi

March 05, 2014

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China, Japan, and South Korea began the fourth round of negotiations over a trilateral free trade agreement (FTA) today. The talks, which are taking place in Seoul, will conclude on Friday. According to Xinhua, this round of talks will focus on “modalities of tariff reduction, the way of opening service trade, investment and certain range and fields of the agreement.”

Officials aren’t expecting major breakthroughs in this week’s negotiations. Yonhap News quoted South Korean Trade Minister Yoon Sang-jick as saying that sometimes such negotiations involve “a tug of war” between the participating countries. However, he cautioned against being too pessmisitic. “It does not mean negotiations are not moving forward just because there is no [obvious] progress,” Yoon said.

The fact that the talks are taking place at all could be considered progress. It’s no secret that the trilateral relationship between China, Japan, and South Korea is currently at a low point. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine last December sparked outrage in both China and South Korea, whose leaders saw the move as blatant disregard for those who suffered under Japanese imperialism. Things have not improved since then, as Abe has stepped up his efforts to revitalize Japan’s defense and security posture.

In addition, comments by NHK officials denying wartime atrocities such as the Nanjing massacre anddownplaying the abuse of comfort women have only increased China and South Korea’s ire. The two countries recently banded together to express their displeasure at Tokyo, with China’s government collaborating with South Korea to open a memorial for Korean independence activist and assassin Ahn Jung-geun in Harbin.

Why Washington Can’t Restrain Tokyo

The current U.S. security posture in East Asia leaves it with few options should a crisis escalate.

By Jake A. Douglas

March 04, 2014

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China and Japan are increasingly at each other’s throats. America wants to stand between them, but because of its military presence on Japanese soil, it can only actually stand behind Tokyo. As Japan develops independent, offensive military capabilities, an untenable situation is taking shape: In the future, the United States may have little control over the outbreak of war but a virtually automatic commitment to involvement in it. Instead, a more elastic commitment would give the U.S. greater leverage to restrain Japan and contribute in a balanced way to regional stability.

Faced with greater diplomatic pressure from Beijing and belt-tightening in Washington, U.S. allies like Japan have started to rearm in earnest. Asia is quickly becoming “the most militarized region in the world.” U.S. partners and allies in the region plan to spend 53 percent more between 2013 and 2018 than they did in the previous five-year period. Japan’s security posture in particular is undergoing sweeping changes. Last year, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reversed a decade of cuts, seeking the largest increases in defense spending since the end of the Cold War.

This still unfolding story represents a substantial shift in burdensharing from the U.S. to its allies. After two major wars and the Great Recession, both major parties in the U.S. are happy to see others carry more of America’s global responsibilities. But in a world dominated by America for so long, there is something of an intellectual vacuum on how to approach multipolarity.

Several Washington think tanks have stepped into this void. The Federated Defense Project at CSIS, the Power Web at CNAS, and the Front Office/Back Office Concept at the Carnegie Endowment are examples. Each offers a new alliance concept that outlines how the United States can do more with less. They applaud the easing of the “free rider problem” and greater allied participation in shared challenges, while stressing that continued U.S. engagement and reassurance is essential. In other words, nothing fundamental will change in the switch away from the old hub-and-spoke model.

What no one sufficiently tackles, however, are the strategic problems of leading from behind in this way. Their Achilles’s heel is something most strategists by now take for granted: the deployment of U.S. troops on allied territory as a “tripwire” against aggression.

INTERVENTION IN SYRIA AND THE MYTH OF THE “EXIT STRATEGY”

Thomas M. Nichols

March 4, 2014 

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In a recent article for War on the Rocks, Peter Munson expanded on a debate I’d had with him on Twitter over intervention in Syria. WOTR generously offered me space to respond.

Munson lays out our debate well, insofar as anyone can get anywhere 140 characters at a time. Here’s the crux of the disagreement, as he reports it:

Nichols was focused on the moral imperative to do something, anything to lessen the suffering and to reassert America’s role of strategic leadership. While I am no less caring for the Syrian people and no less interested in America’s strategic position in the region and the world, my focus was on the likely outcome of any action.

That’s accurate to a point. I’m not actually in favor of doing anything, and in fact, once I realized that any U.S. intervention would be conducted in a half-hearted, desultory way—something “incredibly small,” as Secretary Kerry dejectedly promised—I wrote a piece in early September 2013 saying that I had, in fact, given up on intervention.

But something definitely stuck in my teeth about my debate with Munson, as he notes here:

Nichols peppered me with questions meant to pin down my position with reference to precedents such as Kosovo and Somalia, the intersection of values and interests, and the moral imperative of alleviating the suffering of the Syrian people.

Munson is quite right that I wouldn’t let go of questions about Kosovo and Somalia—because, as he finally noted in our discussion on Twitter, he supported action in both of those messes, as did I, which raises the obvious question: Kosovo and Somalia were okay, but Syria is dangerous and failure-fraught? Seriously?

Perhaps Munson checked the syllabus I teach from at Harvard Summer School, because he lays out a case against intervention based on traditional just war criteria, which I teach as part of my courses there, claiming that intervention in Syria violates just war theory’s requirement that any military action must have “a reasonable chance of success.” Not only does Munson’s claim misunderstand the just war concept of “the prospect of success,” it prejudices the notion of success so strongly toward regime change that it shuts down further debate. But I’ll get to that.

The overall issue is that I now wonder exactly what Munson and others really mean when they ask about “outcomes” or even the dreaded “exit strategies,” in which every proposal for intervention is met with the phrase:Tell me how this ends.

To understand Crimea, take a look back at its complicated history

BY ADAM TAYLOR

February 27 

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Crimean and Russian flags fly above the Crimean parliament in Simferopol on Thursday. 

When President Viktor Yanukovych fled Kiev this week, it was tempting to assume that Ukraine's crisis was over: Euromaidan had won, and the forces of Western-style democracy had prevailed over Yanukovych's Kremlin-led repression.

If only it were that simple. For the past few days all eyes have been on southern Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, and things don't look so rosy. Crimea, which is not only populated by 60 percent Russian speakers but is the base of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, has seen some worrying developments in the past few days: On Thursday gunmenreportedly seized government buildings in the capital, Simferopol, barricading themselves in and raising Russian flags.

Crimea's situation is, as with many things in Ukraine's political crisis, compounded by a complicated history. For most in America and Western Europe, however, that history is likely obscure -- wasn't there a war or something there? Let's take a look back.

What even is 'the' Crimea?

It's revealing that Crimea is, much like Ukraine, often prefaced with a "the" when referred to in English. As I wrote late last year, the once-widespread use of "the Ukraine" has often angered Ukrainians, many of whom believe that the implication is that Ukraine is a region, not a country, that could be conquered by greater powers. The same logic could be applied to Crimea: For centuries the Crimean Peninsula, which occupies a strategically important location on the Black Sea and has arable land, has been fought over by various outside forces.