The Demise of the U.N.

MARCH 8, 2014 

The U.N.’s performance in Crimea is only the latest in a series of debacles. 

By Tom Rogan

United Nations special coordinator Robert Serry

Imagine the scene.

Secretary of State Kerry is talking with passers-by on a Ukrainian city street.

Suddenly, he’s accosted by armed men. Taking refuge in a café, he calls for help. Outside, the group of Russian irregulars waits menacingly. “Leave Crimea or else,” they say. Lacking any security detail, Kerry begs a British news crew to wait with him. Hopefully, he reasons, their journalistic credentials will protect him.

But rescue doesn’t come. Reluctantly, Kerry is forced to leave Ukraine, and his mission ends in unequivocal failure.

That’s what just happened last Wednesday — only not to John Kerry. Instead, the victim was his U.N. opposite number, Robert Serry.

Sure, had Kerry been the target, the Diplomatic Security Service would probablyhave ruined the mob’s day. But that’s beside the point. What really matters here is what this incident tells us about the U.N. in the 21st century.

In this one incident, we’ve seen how the world’s greatest global institution can be rendered impotent by a small group of thugs possessing big ambitions. More than that, Serry’s café siege has given a face to the U.N.’s response in Ukraine.

Consider.

First, Putin invades. He does so by flouting the most basic premise of international law — the inviolability of sovereignty absent threat. He does so with arrogant glee. Then, the U.N. reacts.

With condemnation? Nope.

With sanctions? Not a chance.

With an “appeal” for calm? Bingo!

Of course, it’s far from funny. Actually, it’s catastrophic. Because what we’ve witnessed over the last week is a metaphor for what international law has become: something that is revered at dinner parties in the West, roasted at dinner parties in Russia, and referred to subjectively at dinner parties everywhere else. Today, international law isn’t simply ignored by the bad actors around the globe; it’s perverted to their ends.

For another example, take the catastrophe in Syria. Here, supported by unwitting props in the West, Putin has used international law as a KGB-style “active measure” in support of Assad — as a shield against meaningful intervention and a tool for the regime’s consolidation.

Yes, the U.N. has many talented employees and has done extraordinary work supporting Syrian refugees. Yet as an institution, the U.N. is supposed to be far more than a big NGO. It’s supposed to be an organization that has the confidence and the capacity to be a fundamental force for good. Specifically, in the cases of Syria and Ukraine, an organization that can confront Russia’s barrel-bombmalevolence.

But it’s not just Russia. Not by a long shot. Since the end of the Cold War, with very few exceptions (the Gulf War being the most obvious), the U.N.’s failure has been measured in a horrific body count.

Chew over some morsels from this glorious record.

In the early 1990s, the U.N. struggled to deploy peacekeepers in Bosnia and then, when it did, utterly failed to give those forces the authority to protect innocent lives.

During the Rwandan genocide in 1994, while hundreds of thousands were chopped to pieces, the U.N. stuck to the New York City bar scene.

During the Kosovo War of 1998–99, the U.N. was nowhere to be found. Its most profound contribution to that conflict? Ruling on an absurd technicality that Serbian troops had not committed genocide.

Indeed, even in success, the U.N.’s record has been embarrassing. In late 1999, when it finally intervened in East Timor, it did so only thanks to Australian leadership. Again, in Sierra Leone in 2000, the British Army had to come to the U.N.’s rescue — its forces in the field were being overrun by glorified gangs.

And then there was Iraq. Facing Saddam Hussein’s murder of hundreds of thousands, the U.N. applied a corrupt sanctions regime. Served by prostitutes such as former French president Jacques Chirac, Saddam looked forward to the day when the sanctions would be gone.

On February 28, the day after Russia’s invasion, the U.N.’s leader, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, had an important commitment at U.N. headquarters in New York: embracing the new ambassador of the psychotic necrocracy that is North Korea. The video speaks volumes. A round of saluting guards, handshakes, warm smiles, and utter vacuousness. Herein resides the U.N.’s great myth: that global security is somehow preserved by photo opportunities and polite conversation and consorting with despots.

The truth is very different.

In the end, global security is guarded by values that are applied with resolution. By those who seek friendship but won’t excuse aggression. By those who stand watch.

And mean it. And are known to mean it.

Those like SFC Joseph Gantt. SFC Gantt lost his life while serving the United States under the banner of the United Nations in the Korean War.

His remains were finally repatriated last December. At the ceremony, Mrs. Ganttdescribed the man she had married: “He was a good husband. He was a good soldier — that was something he loved. He got out of [World War II] and right into another. That was his life.”

A life well lived, in pursuit of values that are in stark contrast to the willingness to tolerate aggressive dictators that defines today’s U.N.

— Tom Rogan is a blogger based in Washington, D.C., and a contributor to theGuardian.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/372897/demise-un-tom-rogan

Less money, less faith in US 'pivot'

By Khanh Vu Duc and Duvien Tran

The United States' military of the 21st century will be leaner, not by strategic choice but rather fiscal necessity. The new US defense budget aims to reduce army personnel to levels not seen since before World War II. While a heavily indebted US must learn to do more with less, its strategic partners around the globe, including in Asia, must likewise downgrade their expectations and boost their burden-sharing.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a research institute focused on global security issues, 4.4% of US gross domestic produce was spent on defense in 2012, a slight dip from the decade-high 4.8% spent in 2009 and 2010. Even at this reduced level, military spending was still US$689 billion, or about 19% of the total federal budget. Under the new budget proposal, spending will be reduced to $496 billion.

The public is war-weary after the extended and inconclusive campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, and defense is widely seen as a budgetary line item conducive to savings. In a 2012 survey conducted by the Stimson Center think tank, respondents were unanimous in their desire to slash military spending, with proposed cuts amounting to an average of $103.5 billion, or about 18% of the 2012 budget. Those cuts were far higher than those put forward by either Republicans or Democrats in congress.

Unveiled on February 24, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel's new defense budget goes beyond cutting back on wasteful spending. Budget reductions will force lawmakers to consider how best to spend limited resources. Lawmakers came under fire in 2012 by allocating funds to build new M-1 Abrams tanks the army neither requested nor needed. The army said at the time it could save taxpayers $3 billion if the Pentagon held off on repairing, refurbishing or making new tanks for three years.

The army, which will bear the brunt of the announced cuts, will be reduced from 522,000 soldiers to 440-450,000 by 2019, slightly lower than the standing levels before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The Air Force will also be required to retire some of its aircraft, including the U-2 spy plane of Cold War fame and A-10 Thunderbolt II ground-attack aircraft. Other outmoded equipment will also likely be retired under the cuts.

World War III? Cyber, Economic Battles Take Over

MAR 7, 2014 

BY ERIC NIILER

 Tens of millions of people died in World War I and World War II as nations fought over resources, territory and ideology. But in the 21st century, economic and cyber-warfare between warring countries have largely replaced tanks, bombers and troops.

As tensions continue to ratchet up between Russia and Ukraine over the province of Crimea, could this sort of bloodless conflict be one possible outcome? Experts say it's possible.

"Nowadays it's hard to separate warfare from cyberwarfare, or even economic warfare," said Jacques Gansler, a former Pentagon undersecretary for technology and security, now professor of public policy and private enterprise at the University of Maryland. "The three are interrelated."

Gansler says that Ukraine is important to Russia for economic, rather than security reasons. It represents an important economic buffer between Russia's zone of influence and Europe. While observers say that Russia has already dispatched unmarked troops into Crimea, it's not clear whether a shooting war will break out.

Moscow has already engaged in cyber-warfare, launching denial of service attacks against Estonian government websites in 2007, and Georgia in 2008 before attacking that nation. Both nations were satellites of the former Soviet Union, along with Ukraine.

Cyber-attacks are "bound to be part of any future engagements," Gansler said. "We also have economic concerns about cyber having impact on industry or messing up power grids or communications systems. These are the things we are worrying about for the 21st century."

The opening salvos of a cyber-war between Russia and Ukraine may have already begun. Ukrainian parliament members said this week that their cell phone and Internet services are being blocked by Russian agents in the Crimea.

Crimea has only one Internet exchange point that controls access to all traffic within the disputed territory. Russia also controls three of the six Internet junctions into the entire nation of Ukraine.

Crippling a nation’s digital infrastructure could be as important as seizing telegraph lines, railroads and radio stations was for enemy armies during World War II. Today, water, power and energy supplies are digitally linked and could be vulnerable to hacker attacks or viruses, such as the Stuxnet worm that damaged one of Iran's nuclear facilities and was reportedly devised by Israeli and American programmers.

Ukraine Is Not About Us and It's Not Ours to Lose

Robert Golan-Vilella |
March 7, 2014

An article in Thursday’s New York Times by Peter Baker comes close to encapsulating everything that is wrong with American foreign-policy discourse today. In the words of his title, Baker’s piece summarizes the “Debate Over Who, in U.S., Is to Blame for Ukraine” following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Crimea. According to Baker, many prominent politicians on the right contend that “Moscow’s land grab is President Obama’s fault for pursuing a foreign policy of weakness,” with Senator John McCain calling it “the ultimate result of a feckless foreign policy.” Meanwhile, on the left, Rachel Maddow argued that the fact that the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 “on a trumped-up false pretext” made it more difficult for Washington to respond to Putin doing the same in Ukraine, a sentiment echoed by her fellow MSNBC host Chris Matthews.

Underlying all of this is one of the most common errors in U.S. commentary on international relations: the casual assumption that everything that happens anywhere in the world is ultimately about America, and that when anything bad happens anywhere, someone in Washington must ultimately be to blame. The story that Baker describes on the right—in which America’s failure to use military force in Syria and elsewhere spurred Putin to invade Crimea—has the benefit of being an easy-to-understand and politically convenient one for those who are opposed to the president. But there is simply no reason to think that it is true.

For one thing, Russia under Putin has often been predisposed to act aggressively to protect its perceived interests in its near abroad. Consider the 2008 Russia-Georgia war. At that time, there was a more muscular, interventionist American president in office. Yet, as Representative Adam Schiff puts it, Putin still “felt no limitation whatsoever on going into Georgia and essentially taking over two separate provinces.” Did that happen because Putin judged that George W. Bush was a weak leader?

Why Russia Can’t Afford Another Cold War

MARCH 7, 2014

Russian troops pour over a border. An autocratic Russian leader blames the United States and unspecified “radicals and nationalists” for meddling. A puppet leader pledges fealty to Moscow.

It’s no wonder the crisis in Ukraine this week drew comparisons to Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 or that a chorus of pundits proclaimed the re-emergence of the Cold War.

But there’s at least one major difference between then and now: Moscow has a stock market.

PhotoUnder the autocratic grip of President Vladimir Putin, Russia may be a democracy in name only, but the gyrations of the Moscow stock exchange provided a minute-by-minute referendum on his military and diplomatic actions. On Monday, the Russian stock market index, the RTSI, fell more than 12 percent, in what a Russian official called panic selling. The plunge wiped out nearly $60 billion in asset value — more than the exorbitant cost of the Sochi Olympics. The ruble plunged on currency markets, forcing the Russian central bank to raise interest rates by one and a half percentage points to defend the currency.

Mr. Putin “seems to have stopped a potential invasion of Eastern Ukraine because the RTS index slumped by 12 percent” on Monday, said Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

On Tuesday, as soon as Mr. Putin said he saw no need for further Russian military intervention, the Russian market rebounded by 6 percent. With tensions on the rise once more on Friday, the Russian market may again gyrate when it opens on Monday.

Mr. Putin seems to be “following the old Soviet playbook,” in Ukraine, Strobe Talbott, an expert on the history of the Cold War, told me this week. “But back then, there was no concern about what would happen to the Soviet stock market. If, in fact, Putin is cooling his jets and might even blink, it’s probably because of rising concern about the price Russia would have to pay.” Mr. Talbott is the president of the Brookings Institution, a former ambassador at large who oversaw the breakup of the former Soviet Union during the Clinton administration and the author of “The Russia Hand.”

Russia is far more exposed to market fluctuations than many countries, since it owns a majority stake in a number of the country’s largest companies.Gazprom, the energy concern that is Russia’s largest company by market capitalization, is majority-owned by the Russian Federation. At the same time, Gazprom’s shares are listed on the London stock exchange and are traded over the counter as American depositary receipts in the United States as well as on the Berlin and Paris exchanges. Over half of its shareholders are American, according to J. P. Morgan Securities. And the custodian bank for its depository receipts is the Bank of New York Mellon.

More Sanctioning Madness

PAUL PILLAR
March 6, 2014

Seventeen years ago Richard Haass, now president of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote an article titled “Sanctioning Madness”. The crux of his argument was:

With a few exceptions, the growing use of economic sanctions to promote foreign policy objectives is deplorable. This is not simply because sanctions are expensive, although they are. Nor is it strictly a matter of whether sanctions "work"; the answer to that question invariably depends on how demanding a task is set for a particular sanction. Rather, the problem with economic sanctions is that they frequently contribute little to American foreign policy goals while being costly and even counterproductive.

Haass was not saying to give up sanctions entirely. But they should not be the go-to tool, reached for habitually and unthinkingly, to address any foreign policy problem under the sun.

The American sanctions habit has not lessened at all during the intervening years, especially on Capitol Hill. Now Congress is getting out its sanctions pen yet again to see what it can do to Russia in response to the Crimean crisis. This may be an even clearer indication of the sanctions addiction than the recent unsuccessful effort to impose more sanctions on Iran, given that the latter move was more of a calculated attempt to sabotage an ongoing negotiation.

The multiple drawbacks and limitations of economic sanctions are too infrequently considered before sanctions are enacted. These include issues of who exactly in the target country will be hurt, and who might actually benefit. They also include consideration of counterproductive political reactions, including resistance to be seen buckling under pressure.

Evgeny Lebedev: To tackle Russia we have first to understand it

The West is far too ready to judge President Putin by old Cold War stereotypes. The true picture is more complex

Stand-off: a child plays near Russian soldiers guarding a Ukrainian army base in Crimea (Picture: AP)

EVGENY LEBEDEV 

Published: 07 March 2014

There is nothing so embarrassing for a newspaper (and its proprietor) as being duped. It’s a mercy I wasn’t around for the fake Hitler Diaries of 1983, or the grainy footage of Princess Diana and Captain James Hewitt in an overly amorous state but who turned out to be lookalikes. I’ve no doubt both would have fooled me too, but there’s only one fake that’s changed the course of history, and that one I’d have been wise to.

It was two days before the second general election of 1924 that the Daily Mail printed a letter from Grigori Zinoviev, a leading figure in the Russian Communist Party, calling on British Communists to spread the international revolution. Labour lost, and with it their electoral confidence for a decade or more.

Of course, it’s been proved beyond all reasonable doubt to have been the work of MI5. Back then, when peculiar things were occurring in Moscow, and before the Cold War had even begun, there was much to be gained from a wilful misunderstanding of Mother Russia. It’s a state of affairs one would have hoped might have come to a gradual end in the 25 years since the Iron Curtain fell. Yet, if anything, it is a country currently more misunderstood by the West than at any time in recent history.

The situation currently unfolding in Crimea is as complex as the region’s history, but much of the reaction I have seen from our politicians shows how little they understand.

“The thing you’ve got to understand about Putin,” said Menzies Campbell on Sky News, “is that he’s a KGB man.” Indeed he was. But he was part of a Soviet state controlled by one party, one machinery, with no elections. For an ambitious young man, there was very little alternative.

It seems almost comical now, how briefly serious an issue was the unreadiness of journalists’ hotel rooms at Sochi. Russia’s tourist industry leaves a lot to be desired, but it has only been in the past 20 years or so that most of its population have been able to go on holiday at all.

Now ordinary Russians experience a degree of freedom that a generation ago was unimaginable. And they thank President Putin for a newly regained sense of national pride..

US Strategy in the Second Nuclear Age

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

America’s nuclear triad shouldn’t be held sacrosanct just to please advocates in the U.S. Navy and Air Force.

By James R. Holmes

March 06, 2014

As submarines, bombers, and ballistic missiles age, and as the U.S. armed forces flourish the long knives over budgetary matters, the future of the nuclear triad has come under scrutiny. The Obama administration released a new Nuclear Posture Review in 2010 and revised its Nuclear Employment Strategy last June. Think-tank analyses abound. While vowing to seek additional cutbacks to the U.S. and Russian arsenals and reduce the part nuclear weapons play in U.S. national security strategy, the administration also affirms that it will retain the triad of nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarines (SSBNs), manned bombers, and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

Fixing its strategic gaze on Russia, however, risks anchoring Washington in the Cold War past. The triad aimed at deterring the Soviet Union, a peer opponent boasting a massive atomic arsenal. But the world has entered a second nuclear age typified less by deterrence between nuclear-armed alliances than by competition among states at very different places in their nuclear lives. Multiple nuclear trajectories translates into a more complex strategic setting. Concentrating exclusively on Russia distracts from a comprehensive survey of that setting, and potentially leaves U.S. nuclear strategy out of phase with changing times.

Making strategy, then, promises to be a more intricate enterprise in the second nuclear age than the first. Think about it. The United States and Russia remain the biggest nuclear-weapon states by a sizable margin, but their inventories are on the downslope owing to arms-control accords bearing names like START and New START. Washington intends to seek further reductions, further narrowing the Russian and American margins of supremacy over lesser nuclear powers. Great Britain and France, meanwhile, are struggling to remain nuclear-weapon states. Replacing the Royal Navy’s Trident SSBN force has proved such a pricey undertaking that the rest of the navy is shrinking to boutique proportions to pay for it.

So much for the nuclear old timers. China has embarked on a sweeping overhaul to its nuclear deterrent, for instance by putting to sea its first viable SSBN fleet — that is, its first invulnerable second-strike force. That makes Beijing a de facto newcomer to the nuclear-weapons club. India and Pakistan fielded modest arsenals after the 1998 nuclear tests. North Korea staged a small-scale nuclear breakout, while Iran entertains atomic aspirations — as yet unfulfilled — of its own. And so on. Variety rules.

It’s imperative, consequently, to think ahead about how nuclear old timers on the decline will make and execute strategy. Equally critical is to envision the strategies new entrants to the nuclear club — entrants with smaller, more vulnerable forces than those maintained by established powers — will deploy to safeguard their interests in a bareknuckles world. Coping with asymmetry and the new, shifting geometry of deterrence is the challenge before the U.S. military.

That imperative should shape the nation’s nuclear forces. Does America need all three legs of the triad to protect itself in the second nuclear age? Covert SSBNs remain the mainstay of deterrence vis-á-vis peer competitors. Is an undersea monad enough? Partisans of air power maintain that manned bombers can signal resolve in a crisis in a way SSBNs, which cruise the depths unseen, never can. This makes sense. Does the aerial component supply enough value in the second nuclear age to repay the investment? And what about ICBMs? The missile force looks like the most expendable leg of the triad. ICBMs duplicate the SSBN fleet’s second-strike capacity, except they’re more vulnerable to enemy counterstrikes. Nor are they particularly useful for telegraphing steadfastness.

Such matters are worth mulling over. The triad — which after all is nothing more than a set of policy implements — shouldn’t be held sacrosanct just to please advocates in the U.S. Navy and Air Force. If all three legs are critical in the second nuclear age, let’s keep them. If not, let’s dispose of excess capacity. Assembling the right toolkit is the trick to executing strategy in all ages. So is discarding worn-out tools.

Nuclear Zero Is Dead

James Jay Carafano |
March 9, 2014

It didn’t capture the public’s imagination like “An Inconvenient Truth.” But the 2010 documentary “Countdown to Zero” was just as passionate in its cause as Al Gore’s global warming opus had been.

“Countdown’s” mission was clear: rally the people to banish nuclear weapons from the face of the earth. And it was all to start with a voluntary reduction in the arsenals of the major nuclear powers.

Doubtless, there were some personal goals as well. The producers of the film acknowledged they were inspired by the buzz for Gore’s project, which ultimately propelled him all the way to the Nobel Prize. Alas, it was not to be.

Peaceniks predictably applauded “Countdown to Zero,” but the mainstream audience stayed away in droves. Still, the campaign for Global Zero did have one very important fan: the president of the United States.

Well before the release of “Countdown,” Mr. Obama had declared his intent to help rid the world of nuclear weapons. In 2009, he announced Global Zero as the centerpiece of his atomic strategy.

“In endorsing zero, Obama wasn't just paying lip service to some pie-in-the-sky dream of his liberal base,” Zachary Roth wrote in The Atlantic. Mr. Obama had a plan. It started with negotiating reductions in the U.S. stockpile of strategic nuclear weapons. Hence, we got the New START deal with Moscow, which came into force in February 2011. That was to be followed by another treaty with Russia that would reduce tactical nukes—an area where Moscow enjoys a huge advantage.

Hopes were high, and Obama was serious. He picked former Senator Chuck Hagel, co-author of an influential report arguing that the road to zero made sense, as his new Secretary of Defense.

Information Warfare: The Iridium Hotspot

March 7, 2014: 

The U.S. Department of Defense has arranged for satellite telephone service provider Iridium to supply small (300 gr/10.3 ounce and the size of a small paperback) battery powered Iridium GO! devices that can connect to the Iridium satphone network and provide a local wifi hotspot. Up to five users with a wifi devices within about 30 meters (a hundred feet) of the Iridium GO! can have Internet access. That means smartphones or tablets can use texting, Skype to make phone calls or a browser for web search and limited downloading. All of this uses military encryption. The Iridium Go! devices will cost the Department of Defense $800 each and the Iridium service is taken care of by the contracts the Department of Defense has had with Iridium for over a decade. Currently the Department of Defense (which also provides other government agencies with satphone service) is Iridiums largest customer accounting for about 20 percent of revenues. 

This tight relationship between Iridium began back in 2000. The Iridium satellite system was put up in the 1990s at a cost of $5.5 billion. Alas, not enough customers could be obtained for the expensive satellite telephone service, and in 2000 the company was not only broke but no one wanted to take over its network of 79 satellites. The situation was so dire that the birds were going to be de-orbited (brought lower so they would burn up in the atmosphere.) Then the Department of Defense stepped in with an offer. For $3 million a month the Department of Defense would get unlimited use of up to 20,000 devices (mostly phones, but also pagers and such.) That was enough for someone to come in and take over the satellite system (which cost more than $3 million a month to operate) and make a go of it. The new owners didn’t have the $5.5 billion in debt to worry about and were able to lower prices enough that they were able to sign up 80,000 other customers (civilian and military.) 

The Department of Defense paid about $150-$200 a month per satellite phone account under the 2000 contract. Civilian customers paid more and the company thrived. Now Iridium is about to launch a new generation of satellites that will provide faster and cheaper service. 

Iridium survived in large part because of the Pentagon business that grew larger after September 11, 2001. In 2013 the Department of Defense signed a five year, $400 million contract with Iridium. There are currently over 51,000 Department of Defense and other U.S. government Iridium users. 

Back in 2000 the plan was that each combat brigade would have over 500 satellite phone accounts. That was never needed, in part because the air force and navy wanted lots of satphones as well and the army began using portable satellite dishes to obtain high-speed service from military and commercial communication satellites. 

The Iridium and other satellite communications capability was the key to making the battlefield Internet work, although the army has found that it’s more efficient (and cheaper) to use military radios and other wireless devices to network with each other and get Internet access via satellite dishes connected with the military satellite communications system. But for many small units out in the bush Iridium is still the way to go.

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20140307.aspx

Winning: The Simulator Edge

March 6, 2014: 

The U.S. military has been using a growing number of simulators for training. For many decades the only simulator was the flight simulator, although the army, marines and navy constructed crude, by current standards, mechanical or electro-mechanical simulators of some equipment (parts of weapons or ships). The value of these simulators was monitored by looking at the result of training tests everyone is constantly subjected to. If those who spent time on the simulators performed better, on average, than those who did not than the simulator was a success and more were used. This method was not unique to the military because they adopted much of this simulation technology from commercial firms that have to train people for complex tasks. Rather than have people practice on the actual equipment, and risk making mistakes that can ruin expensive machinery, some form of simulator was increasingly used. 

Flight simulators have always led the way in simulator technology because aircraft have always been the most expensive equipment you have to train operators for. The development of flight simulators began in the 1930s. Back then, the simulators were much more primitive, and were used to teach pilots how to fly, and navigate, at night. It was much cheaper, and safer, to do this kind of training on the ground, via a simulator. Even today, the main emphasis with simulators is handling in-flight emergencies. Most actual missions tend to be rather uneventful most of the time. But many emergencies can crop up, if only rarely, so the pilots have a safe way to practice handling common, and not so common, emergencies via simulators. 

New technology has made flight simulators a lot more effective and cheaper. Until a decade ago, a realistic combat flight simulator cost about as much as the aircraft it was simulating. While that did reduce the cost (per "flying" hour) of pilots practicing, it was not enough of a savings to make it practical for less wealthy countries to get these simulators and use them heavily. Thus we had a continuation of the situation where countries could scrape together enough money to buy high performance aircraft, but not enough to pay for all that flight time needed to make their pilots good enough to face aerial opponents (especially the Americans). 

The new generation of simulators cost up to a tenth of the price of the aircraft they simulate. Suddenly, countries like China can buy dozens of simulators, and give their pilots enough realistic training to make them a threat in the air (at least to Western pilots). Each of these simulators can be run about 6,000 hours a year. While a hundred hours a year in a simulator isn't a complete replacement for a hundred hours of actual air time, it's close enough if the training scenarios are well thought out. And another 40-50 hours of actual air time a year gives you a competent pilot. Add another few hundred hours using commercial (game store bought) flight simulators (especially when played in groups via a LAN), and you have some deadly pilots. The Chinese have, since the 1990s, stressed the use of PCs as a foundation for cheaper and more powerful simulators. Now they have an opportunity to really cash in on this insight.

Counter-Terrorism: The Impossible Dream

March 6, 2014: 

Algeria has taken a lead role in the international effort to make it illegal to pay ransoms to Islamic terrorists. Having suffered from Islamic terrorists for two decades, Algeria has ample evidence that ransoms paid to Islamic terrorists simply leads to more kidnappings and murders. In short, paying ransom in general is counter-productive although each kidnapping is very much a tragedy. Algeria has made a lot of progress in getting African nations to outlaw the payment of ransoms. In making its case Algeria points out that a third of the kidnappings by Islamic terrorists takes place in Africa. It’s no secret that the Islamic terrorists consider large ransoms a major source of income needed to finance more terrorism. While the logic is impeccable, in practice it’s difficult to stop the ransoms from being paid. 

For example in April 2013 someone did pay a $3.15 million ransom to Nigerian Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram to gain the release of a French family (parents, an uncle, and four children aged 5-12) that had been kidnapped in northern Cameroon two months earlier and released when the ransom was delivered. The French and Nigerian government would only say that they paid no ransom to get the family released and that there was no raid involved. Nothing was said about a third-party paying a ransom. Boko Haram has not said why they decided to free their hostages but Boko Haram members are already talking about the large ransom payment. Such ransoms are officially discouraged because they encourage the terrorists and enable groups like Boko Haram to make more attacks and kill more people. Thus these ransoms are “blood money” in the worst sense of the word. 

Earlier in 2013 Japanese officials were shown to be offering to pay ransom even though their official policy was not to do so. The January 2013 al Qaeda raid on an Algerian natural gas facility in Algeria left ten Japanese civilians dead and an Algerian officials subsequently mentioned in an interview that Japanese diplomats told him, right after the Islamic terrorists seized the complex (and before they began killing the captured foreigners) that the Japanese government would pay whatever it cost to save the ten Japanese being held by the terrorists. The Algerians policy of not negotiating with terrorists meant that Algerian troops promptly attacked the natural gas complex. Most (29 of 32) of the terrorists were killed, plus one Algerian employee of the facility and 37 foreign workers. The official Japanese response to the Algerian comment was that Japan does not negotiate with terrorists. Most nations now have an official policy of not negotiating with terrorists and not paying ransoms. The terrorists, however, believe that deals can still be made and they are often correct. The important thing is to do it quietly

The U.S. Army Shrinks To Survive

March 6, 2014: 

The U.S. Army is planning on reducing its personnel strength to 420,000 by the end of the decade. This would be its lowest strength since just before the U.S. entered World War II in 1941. There was a similar experience during World War I when the army expanded from 200,000 in early 1917 to 3.6 million in December 1918. It had shrunk to 225,000 during the 1930s. In mid-1940 it was at 260,000 and expanded to 8.2 million by late 1945. But 28 percent of that was the Army Air Force which a few years later became a separate service. So actual army strength went from 160,000 in 1940 to 5.9 million in late 1945 and dropped to 591,000 by 1950. The army had another spurt of growth (to over a million) during the Korean War, shrank again in the late 1950s then expanded to over a million again for the Vietnam War in the 1960s. For the rest of the Cold War it stayed at about 730,000 then fell to 499,000 in the late 1990s because of the post-Cold War demobilization. That only increased to 560,000 for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, mainly because there was no conscription as there had been in the World Wars and until 1972. What the army had done after World War II was expand the reserves to over 500,000 troops. These were trained and most were capable of being sent into combat. Before World War II the reserves (almost all the National Guard, which are controlled by the states in peacetime) numbered 300,000. Back in 1940 the National Guard was not as well trained and equipped as it is today but it was organized and was easier to get ready for combat than new conscripts. 

Until the 20th century the U.S. Army was small in peacetime. That changed when conscription was revived in 1917. It was briefly used by the Union during the Civil War. Conscription was never popular anywhere during its brief history (about two centuries), and never worked very well either. It won’t return to use in the United States for the same reason it disappeared in Britain in the late 1950s, and would have gone the same way in the U.S. during the 1960s had there been no Vietnam war. The main reason that conscription doesn’t work is that in most countries, there are far more young men becoming eligible for military service each year than the military needs. So someone has to decide who will serve and who won’t. This leads to widespread discontent over how unfair it is that some go, and others do not. 

In the European nations that first instituted conscription in the 19th century, everyone who was physically able was taken for two or more years, and then assigned to a reserve unit when they left active service. The idea was that the active army was basically a training organization for the wartime army of reservists. This meant that huge armies could be maintained at a fraction of the cost of a standing (full of active duty troops) army. The “reserve system” was used in a number of wars in the late 19th century, and then in the two World Wars. After World War II, the availability of nuclear weapons, and lots of other high tech weapons and equipment, made large armies less useful. By the end of the 20th century it was obvious to all that an army of professional soldiers was far more effective than one that contained a lot of conscripts.

*** Will America heed the wake-up call of Ukraine?

By Condoleezza Rice, Saturday, March 8,

Condoleezza Rice was secretary of state from 2005 to 2009.

“Meet Viktor Yanu­kovych, who is running for the presidency of Ukraine.” Vladimir Putin and I were standing in his office at the presidential dacha in late 2004 when Yanu­kovych suddenly appeared from a back room. Putin wanted me to get the point. He’s my man, Ukraine is ours — and don’t forget it.

The “Ukrainian problem” has been brewing for some time between the West and Russia. Since Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, the United States and Europe have tried to convince Russia that the vast territory should not be a pawn in a great-power conflict but rather an independent nation that could chart its own course. Putin has never seen it that way. For him, Kiev’s movement toward the West is an affront to Russia in a zero-sum game for the loyalty of former territories of the empire. The invasion and possible annexation of Crimeaon trumped-up concerns for its Russian-speaking population is his answer to us.

The immediate concern must be to show Russia that further moves will not be tolerated and that Ukraine’s territorial integrity is sacrosanct. Diplomatic isolation, asset freezes and travel bans against oligarchs are appropriate. The announcement of air defense exercises with the Baltic states and the movement of a U.S. destroyer to the Black Sea bolster our allies, as does economic help for Ukraine’s embattled leaders, who must put aside their internal divisions and govern their country.

The longer-term task is to answer Putin’s statement about Europe’s post-Cold War future. He is saying that Ukraine will never be free to make its own choices — a message meant to reverberate in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states — and that Russia has special interests it will pursue at all costs. For Putin, the Cold War ended “tragically.” He will turn the clock back as far as intimidation through military power, economic leverage and Western inaction will allow.

After Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, the United States sent ships into the Black Sea, airlifted Georgian military forces from Iraq back to their home bases and sent humanitarian aid. Russia was denied its ultimate goal of overthrowing the democratically elected government, an admission made to me by the Russian foreign minister. The United States and Europe could agree on only a few actions to isolate Russia politically.

But even those modest steps did not hold. Despite Russia’s continued occupation ofAbkhazia and South Ossetia, the diplomatic isolation waned and then the Obama administration’s “reset” led to an abrupt revision of plans to deploy missile defense components in the Czech Republic and Poland. Talk of Ukraine and Georgia’s future in NATO ceased. Moscow cheered.

False Warnings President Obama has bungled his negotiations with Vladimir Putin.

By Fred Kaplan

President Obama has had two long phone calls with President Putin in recent days, but as long as he insists on preconditions for renewed diplomacy, Putin has no reason to comply.

The most startling thing about the crisis in Ukraine is how horribly all the actors have played their hands.

First, the Ukrainian parliament, after stepping up to power, drastically overstepped its bounds, dissolving the courts and ousting President Viktor Yanukovich by fiat rather than through legal processes of impeachment—thus giving Russian President Vladimir Putin the sliver of an excuse to declare the new leaders “illegitimate” and to intervene under the pretense of restoring “order.”

Then, Putin went overboard, not merely bolstering the security of Russia’s naval base on the coast of Crimea (an autonomous republic of Ukraine that once belonged to Russia) but mobilizing 30,000 troops to occupy the entire enclave. This was unnecessary, since Putin already, in effect, controlled Crimea. It may also prove stupid, as the move’s violence has further alienated Ukrainians, raised suspicions among Russia’s other ex-Soviet neighbors, and roused resistance from otherwise indifferent Western nations.

FRED KAPLAN

Fred Kaplan is the author ofThe Insurgents and the Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Which leads to President Obama, who has responded to the aggression by imposing sanctions—a cliché of foreign policy that usually has no effect, but in this case will almost certainly make things worse.

Sanctions only work (and, even then, rarely) when they are universal, when they truly hurt the regime being targeted, and when they coincide with—or prompt—political change. Russia fits none of these categories. Too many European nations are too dependent on Russian gas supplies or bank deposits to make sanctions bite or endure. None of the sanctions under discussion are knockout blows; no conceivable sanctions would compel Putin (or any Russian leader) to surrender Ukraine. And regime change in Moscow is hardly on the horizon.

Looking Back in Anger

Fareed Zakaria 

March 6, 2014

From left: Russia's defence minister Sergei Shoigu, president Vladimir Putin, and commander of the Russian Western Military District Troops Anatoly Sidorov arrive at the Kirillovsky training ground to watch military exercises on Mar.3, 2014.Klimentyev Mikhail—ITAR-TASS/Landov

Vladimir Putin may control Crimea, but his 19th century tactics do not bode well for Russia

The crisis in Crimea reminds us there are two kinds of rulers around the world: those who think about the past and those who think about the future. If it were not abundantly clear before, it is now–Vladimir Putin is a man who thinks about the past. His country will be the poorer for it.

If you read and listen to commentary, you will hear many stories about Russia’s long association with Crimea, a relationship that dates back to the 18th century. Crimea was the first great prize wrested from the Ottoman Empire, a mark of Russia’s rise to great-power status. It also gave Russia something it had never had: a warm-water port with direct access to the Mediterranean and thus the wider world.

Sevastopol, the Crimean port city where the Russian Black Sea fleet docks, is an excellent natural harbor and is steeped in history. It was the site of the great siege of the Crimean War in 1854. (When Mark Twain visited the city just over a decade later, he remarked that “ruined Pompeii is in good condition compared to Sebastopol.”) Russia held on to the city even though it lost the Crimean War. Almost a century later, it maintained its grip on Sevastopol after reclaiming Crimea from the Nazis in early 1944.

Then came the strange and fateful twist in 1954 when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev gifted Crimea to Ukraine–an internal transfer within the Soviet Union. Why Khrushchev did this remains somewhat unclear. He had made his mark as a young communist leader in Ukraine, and the occasion of the transfer was the 300-year anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Ukraine. But almost certainly the larger reason was that the original inhabitants of Crimea, the Tatars, had been forced out of the region by Stalin, and Ukrainians were being sent into the area to repopulate it. Making it part of Ukraine would accelerate the movement of people. Whatever the cause, the consequence has been lasting and dramatic. Crimea exists outside Russia legally and politically, but it has a Russian majority, and Moscow thinks of it as part of the motherland.

That is the history. But history is bunk, as Henry Ford said. By that he did not mean that it was unimportant but rather that people should not be trapped by it, that they should think not backward but forward. His exact words were “History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history that we make today.”

The history that leaders make today has much less to do with geography or constraints from the past. When Singapore was expelled from Malaysia in 1965, the experts said the small, swampy town in the middle of nowhere could not survive as an independent country. It is now one of the world’s great trading hubs, with a per capita income higher than that of its erstwhile colonizer, Britain. That’s because its founder, Lee Kuan Yew, thought less about the disadvantages of history and more about the advantages of the future.

When the nationalist Chinese were abandoned by the world on a tiny island after the communist revolution in mainland China, most assumed the place would not survive. Yet in the most precarious position, with zero natural resources, Taiwan became one of the world’s fastest-growing economies for four decades. That’s because it didn’t worry about geography; it obsessed about competitiveness.

When Paul Kagame took over Rwanda, the country was more deeply ravaged by history than almost any other nation, scarred by a genocide of a speed never seen before in history. Rwanda is also landlocked, with no geographic advantages at all and a bloody war in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo. But Kagame looked to the future, not the past. The result is a small African miracle, a country that is healing its wounds.

There are those who are still trapped by history and geography. Think of Pakistan’s generals, still trying to establish “strategic depth” in their backyard while their country collapses. Or think of Putin, who is, as Secretary of State John Kerry said, playing a 19th century game in the 21st century. He may get Crimea. But what has he achieved? Ukraine has slipped out of Russia’s grasp, its people deeply suspicious of Moscow. Even in Crimea, the 40% who are non-Russian are probably restive and resentful. Moscow’s neighbors are alarmed, and once-warming relations with Poland will be set back. Trade and investment with Europe and the U.S. will surely suffer, whether there are sanctions or not.

Meanwhile, Russia continues along its path as an oil-dependent state with an increasingly authoritarian regime that has failed to develop its economy or civil society or to foster political pluralism. But no matter–Moscow controls Crimea. In today’s world, is that really a victory?

http://time.com/13805/looking-back-in-anger/

* India extends hand of friendship to Russia

By M K Bhadrakumar – March 7, 2014

The National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon’s remark to the effect that Russia has “legitimate interests” in the Ukraine developments, as much as other interests are involved, is a statement of fact at its most obvious level.
Russia’s interests in a stable, friendly Ukraine are no less than what India would have with regard to, say, Nepal or Bhutan. Delhi simply cannot afford to have an unfriendly government in Kathmandu or Thimpu, and it is hard to overlook the gravity of Russian concerns that ultra-nationalists staged a violent coup in Kiev.

But Menon’s statement inevitably becomes a big statement, not only because he is a profoundly experienced and thoughtful scholar-diplomat but also given the high position he holds and his key role as an architect of India’s foreign policy in the recent years. Simply put, he is India’s voice on the world stage.
To be sure, what Menon said will reverberate far and wide and would have been the content of many coded cables relayed by the antennae atop the chancelleries in Chanakyapuri to the world capitals yesterday.

The point is, what Menon said is one of the most significant statements made by Delhi in a long while regarding the contemporary international situation. No doubt, the Ukraine is a defining moment in the post-cold era world politics and by reflecting on its templates, Menon voiced India’s concern over the dangerous drift in world politics.

Menon’s remark draws comparison with the stance taken by China over the Ukraine crisis. With its trademark pragmatism — despite its much-vaunted ’strategic partnership of coordination’ with Russia — China underscores that the Ukraine is a complex issue where Beijing needs to coolly prioritize its self-interests. (See my earlier blog “China steers pragmatic course on Ukraine“)

India North Antony judges himself: MoD releases 11,000-word press release in praise of Defence Minister

Manoj Joshi 

March 6, 2014 

Source Link

The first thing to do on reading the ministry of defence's (MoD) 11,000-word press release on Wednesday, hailing the signal contribution of A.K. Antony's tenure as defence minister, is to see it as one big election-related advertisement. The second is to laugh at it as a sick joke, and the third thing to do is to sit down and cry.

At a time when people are wondering whether the sainted Antony is the second or third-worst defence minister of the country, you can only wonder whether the release induces verbal diarrhoea or prolix flatulence.

Reading from the bottom upward we are treated to the minister appropriating the glory of the Indian armed forces sportsmen and women, from Vijay Kumar who won the silver medal at the London Olympics, to Indian women Air Force officers who climbed Mt. Everest. Elections are on hand, so Antony has basked in the sun of humanitarian relief carried out by the forces, even while claiming credit for just about all of DRDO's reported achievements.

The high spin is brought out by a table on capital expenditure on modernisation. It purports to show that the utilisation of the Budget ranged from 98.17 per cent in 2005-2006 to an astonishing 101.32 in 2012-13. But look carefully at the figures and what do you see?In 2012-13, a sum of Rs.79,578.63 crore was budgeted for capital expenditure on modernisation. But Rs.10,000 crore was lopped off it for the sake of economy and the revised estimate was Rs.69,578.63 crore. The actual expenditure was Rs.70,499.12 crore which naturally yielded a utilisation rate of 101.32 per cent. Instead of saying that the services got Rs.10,000 crore less and the Indian Air Force was unable to go in for the Rafale deal, the minister has declared victory.

The issue is not the numbers which the MoD weaves before us, showing how well the forces were funded in Saint Antony's tenure. What matters are the persisting and dangerous gaps that remained unfilled because of the delay and incompetence of the ministry headed by him.

In March of 2012, the then Army chief V.K. Singh had written a letter to him complaining of critical shortages of tank ammunition, the obsolescence of most of India's air defence artillery and lack of equipment for the Special Forces. This was over four years after Antony had been the defence minister of the country.

India, Pakistan Discuss Kashmir Border Confidence Building Measures

A working group on confidence building measures along the Line of Control met for the first time in 18 months. 

By Ankit Panda

March 06, 2014

The Joint Working Group (JWG) on Cross-Line of Control (LoC) Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) between India and Pakistan met in New Delhi on Tuesday after 18 months. The JWG was to work towards normalizing the situation between the two countries on their disputed border in Kashmir.

The Pakistani delegation was led by Riffat Masood, a high-level diplomat, and the Indian side was led by senior diplomat Rudrendra Tandon. The decision to resume the JWG was taken during a meeting between India’s Ambassador to Pakistan and Pakistani Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry in late January.

The meeting represents the culmination of a series of positive developments between India and Pakistan that began in late December when the Director Generals of Military Operations (DGMOs) of both countries met on the border for military-to-military consultations on border patrols and other matters related to the security of the Line of Control.

Since that meeting, India and Pakistan made progress on cross-border trade across the LoC. The trade talks between Pakistan’s commerce minister and his Indian counterpart were positive. After India caught an inbound truck from Pakistan carrying 110 kg of heroin, Pakistan temporarily ceased all LoC cross-border trade and movement. In late January, Pakistani troops also violated the LoC ceasefire after a period of relative tranquility. Overall, however, relations across the LoC have been remarkably improved compared to 2013, which saw the most ceasefire violations across the border in several years.

Given the general uptick in relations, it seems as opportune time for the resumption of the JWG on LoC CBMs. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is also slated to visit Pakistan later this month to resume the long-stalled Composite Dialogue Process between India and Pakistan which addresses the entire spectrum of disputes between the two neighbors (although some observers argue that this is looking increasingly unlikely). The Composite Dialogue Process was suspended in January 2013 after an Indian soldier was beheaded by Pakistan troops on the LoC.

The U.S. End Game in Afghanistan

BY Derek Harvey, David Jacobson

MARCH 3, 2014

Despite a steady stream of negative press reports coming out of Afghanistan these days, a strong indicator of success was revealed on Monday when ATR Consulting, an independent survey company, released the results of a major survey it conducted with over 4,000 Afghans between September and October 2013. ATR traveled to all corners of the country, interviewing 3,038 men and 1,180 women in 18 districts and nine cities. Representing Afghans of various socio-economic, tribal/ethnic, age, and geographical backgrounds, the survey's results indicate that there are larger positive trends emerging in Afghanistan that bode well for Western interests. 

Though Afghan President Hamid Karzai has continued to distract the world with his vocal opposition to a bilateral security agreement with the United States, there is fundamental progress in the country that has not been fully recognized: 

Some three-quarters of Afghans trust the Afghan National Army (ANA) and, to somewhat lesser extent, the police (ANP); findings consistent with a recent Asia Foundation survey and extensive internal reporting by NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). 

80 percent of Afghans reported that the government is in control of their areas of the country. 

The Taliban generate little support, with only 7 percent of respondents wanting to see them back in power; as to be expected, they are more popular in the southern part of Afghanistan. Indeed, people seem to actively mistrust the Taliban and a plurality, 45 percent, see them as acting at the behest of foreign interests, such as Pakistan. 

The notion that the Taliban represent the Pashtuns is false, but about a third of southern respondents would like to see the Taliban involved in some level of governance. The survey shows the Taliban are not a national movement, but Pashtuns are "war weary," though this should not be confused with acceptance -- it is merely acquiescence. 

Afghans have seen their standard of living improve over the last 10 years, particularly in areas of education, healthcare, infrastructure, and access to goods. 

Women, at greater levels than men, see the changes of the last 10 years as positive, and reject the Taliban; less than two percent want a Taliban government. 

U.S. Objectives in Afghanistan 

The United States' core military objectives in Afghanistan were simple: provide basic security and stability for Afghans and prevent the country from once again becoming a sanctuary for global extremists. More ambitiously, U.S. and international state-building efforts have sought to develop a democratic civil society, build institutional capacity, and provide economic development, with an emphasis on women's rights. 

That significant progress has been made against the core objectives is evident in both the effectiveness of the Afghanistan National Security Forces (ANSF) and the positivity the Afghan populace. The ANSF is the cornerstone of ISAF's efforts to build a stable security environment that constrains the effectiveness of the Taliban and other extremist elements to launch attacks. Even the more ambitious goals for women's rights have been successful, though that progress is tenuous. Today, the Taliban's severe restrictions on women and segregationist policies have been largely rolled back, with the government workforce now comprising 20 percent women, three million girls are attending school, and more than 40,000 women obtaining some form of higher education.

The Forgotten War

How Obama can salvage the fight he's losing in Afghanistan. 

BY Kori Schake 

Kori Schake is a fellow at the Hoover Institution and contributor to Foreign Policy's Shadow Government blog. 

MARCH 5, 2014 

With the White House scrambling to respond to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it will be easy to overlook the crumbling of the war effort in Afghanistan. But it should not be. 

On Feb. 25, the White House announced with much fanfare that President Barack Obama had spoken by telephone with Afghan President Hamid Karzai -- for the first time in eight months. It is a pathetic reflection of the U.S. president's pale commitment to winning this war that he is not in regular contact with the leader of the country that the United States is fighting in. And the White House used the pretext of the call to begin floating trial balloons about the zero option. This is a terrible idea. Instead, the administration should be emphasizing both its commitment to continued involvement and the strength of Afghan support for that. 

The United States overinvested in Karzai from the start. George W. Bush's administration sought to unify Afghanistan and took a top-down approach to the provision of aid and the development of political practices ("institutions" feels too strong a word for a country that ranked 181 on the U.N. Human Development Index in 2007). A strategy that distributed power and built up from local authority was better suited to Afghanistan's political culture and level of economic development -- and, incidentally, much less vulnerable to corruption. But at least Bush called, visited, and tried to see it through by empowering Karzai. The Obama administration built a strategy dependent on Karzai's active support of its war aims and then alienated him without shifting to a strategy in which his support was not essential. 

Add to that a staggering mismatch of political objectives and the means to achieve them, as well as the sorry spectacle of the Obama administration setting and then relaxing deadlines for the signing of the bilateral security treaty (first set to be signed by December 2013, then April 2014, and now Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speculates we will need an answer by the summer), and the stage is set for the United States to lose the war. Or, more accurately, to just quit. 

Obama warned Karzai that he was instructing the Pentagon to start seriously planning for the zero option -- that is, removing all troops from Afghanistan. The Afghan government predictably followed up on the White House account by emphasizing that "President Karzai rebuffed another request to sign a bilateral security agreement," as the Hill put it. 

Either the Obama White House lacks the discipline not to be repeatedly drawn into this counterproductive patter or the White House anticipated and sought it.