Pro-Russian Commander in Eastern Ukraine Gives Revealing Interview About Where His Gunmen Come From

April 27, 2014

Paul Sonne and Philip Shishkin

Wall Street Journal, April 27, 2014


Pro-Russian militants stand guard outside the Ukraine Security Service building on Saturday in Slovyansk, Ukraine.

The elusive commander of the pro-Russia militants who have seized the east Ukrainian city of Slovyansk has revealed himself for the first time since the crisis began, saying in a taped interview that his armed crew arrived in Ukraine’s east from Crimea.

Igor Strelkov, the commander whom officials in Kiev have described as a Russian intelligence officer, gave a picture of the fighters he brought to Slovyansk, whosince early April have transformed the city into the epicenter of eastern Ukraine’s pro-Russia unrest. The new government in Kiev has described Slovyansk as the “most dangerous city in Ukraine.”

"The unit that I came to Slovyansk with was put together in Crimea. I’m not going to hide that," Mr. Strelkov told the Moscow-based Komosomolskaya Pravda tabloid in a video interview released Saturday. "It was formed by volunteers—I would say half or two-thirds of them citizens of Ukraine."

The unit includes people from western and central Ukraine, as well as local fighters from the region itself, according to the commander. “Strictly speaking, it was by their invitation that the unit arrived in Slovyansk,” he said.

Ukraine’s State Security Agency had earlier described Mr. Strelkov as an active-duty officer of Russia’s elite Main Intelligence Department. Mr. Strelkov didn’t directly address the Russian reporter’s question about possible Russian military-intelligence involvement in his mission. The commander also didn’t speak about himself or his background. Moscow has denied its involvement in the unrest in eastern Ukraine.

Most of the men in the command possess war experience, including former service in the Russian or Ukrainian militaries and tours in Chechnya, Central Asia, the former Yugoslavia and Iraq, according to Mr. Strelkov. He said some “even managed to visit” Syria.

The slim, middle-aged commander with a trimmed mustache has risen to become one of the most important figures in the rebellion in Ukraine’s east, emerging as the de facto military leader of a pro-Russia uprising that has threatened to split the country. His tight operation of highly skilled militants offers a serious challenge to the new pro-Europe authorities in Kiev, which toppled Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovych in late February after months of street protests but inherited a Ukrainian military in disarray and millions of eastern Ukrainians who view their government as anathema.


A pro-Russian militant stands guard outside the Ukraine Security Service building on Saturday in Slovyansk. Getty Images

Throughout the interview, Mr. Strelkov spoke in a calm, low voice, avoiding the heated anti-Western rhetoric of the rebel group’s other leaders. He seemed most comfortable describing minute military details and tactics of his team. He couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

“Climate Change War” Is Not a Metaphor

The U.S. military is preparing for conflict, retired Navy Rear Adm. David Titley says in an interview.
By Eric Holthaus

Retired Navy Rear Adm. David Titley sees climate change as a driving force in the 21st century.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just completed a series of landmark reports that chronicle an update to the current state of consensus science on climate change. In a sentence, here’s what they found: On our current path, climate change could pose an irreversible, existential risk to civilization as we know it—butwe can still fix it if we decide to work together.

But in addition to the call for cooperation, the reports also shared an alarming new trend: Climate change is already destabilizing nations and leading to wars.

That finding was highlighted in this week’s premiere of Showtime’s new star-studded climate change docu-drama Years of Living Dangerously. In the series’ first episode,New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman traveled to Syria to investigate how a long-running drought has contributed to that conflict. Climate change has also been discussed as a “threat multiplier” for recent conflicts in Darfur, Tunisia, Egypt, andfuture conflicts, too.

Climate change worsens the divide between haves and have-nots, hitting the poor the hardest. It can also drive up food prices and spawn megadisasters, creating refugees and taxing the resiliency of governments.

When a threat like that comes along, it’s impossible to ignore. Especially if your job is national security.
In a recent interview with the blog Responding to Climate Change, retired Army Brig. Gen. Chris King laid out the military’s thinking on climate change:
“This is like getting embroiled in a war that lasts 100 years. That’s the scariest thing for us,” he told RTCC. “There is no exit strategy that is available for many of the problems. You can see in military history, when they don’t have fixed durations, that’s when you’re most likely to not win.”

In a similar vein, last month, retired Navy Rear Adm. David Titley co-wrote an op-edfor Fox News:

The parallels between the political decisions regarding climate change we have made and the decisions that led Europe to World War One are striking – and sobering. The decisions made in 1914 reflected political policies pursued for short-term gains and benefits, coupled with institutional hubris, and a failure to imagine and understand the risks or to learn from recent history.

More Satellite Imagery Data on Russian Troop Deployments Along Ukrainian Border

April 25, 2014

AAAS Analysis Confirms NATO Findings of Russian Buildup Near Ukraine Border

Earl Lane, aaas.org

April 23, 2014

On 5 February 2014, only Ka-27 antisubmarine helicopters and one Mi-8/14 were present on the apron at Russia’s Kacha airbase. By 10 March (shown here) numerous additional helicopters, including ground-attack Mi-24s (red arrows) were visible. (Enlarged) | Image © 2014, Digital Globe, NextView License; AAAS Analysis

When NATO released commercial satellite images on April 10 showing a buildup of Russian forces at Novocherkassk and other towns along the border with Ukraine, a senior Russian military official said the photos actually showed military drills in the area in August 2013.

NATO said the claim was “categorically false,” and a new analysis by the AAAS Geospatial Technologies and Human Rights Project of satellite images from the same time period and locations reinforces NATO’s case.

As part of a continuing look at the crisis between Ukraine and Russia, the AAAS team acquired multiple high-resolution images of southwestern Russia and eastern Ukraine collected by DigitalGlobe, the same commercial vendor of satellite images that NATO used.

The images confirm NATO’s findings and show that the Russians have deployed hundreds of military vehicles, tents, supplies and logistics equipment to areas near Belgorod and Novocherkassk that were empty fields in late 2013. In images taken from 22 March to 26 March, the AAAS analysts were able to watch additional reinforcements arrive at the site. “The claim that no build-up is taking place is inconsistent with the observations of this investigation,” the AAAS report states.

Near Kuzminka, an area that appeared as a patchwork of farm fields bordered by rows of trees in October, 2013, there is now a large encampment of tents, trucks and armored vehicles. The fields are crisscrossed by a dense web of heavy vehicle tracks suggesting that the forces have been doing military exercises.

In an image from July 2012, a site near Novocherkassk that now serves as a tank depot is surrounded by trees that are in full leaf. Images obtained by AAAS of the site on March 27— the same date as the image released earlier by NATO-shows the trees to be almost completely bare as expected during very early spring.


Top: By 5 April 2014, fields near Kuzminka had become a military exercise area, as indicated by the heavy vehicle tracks and other features. (top -enlarged); Bottom: In July 2012, the fields outside Novocherkassk showed no activity, but by 30 March (shown here) hundreds of combat vehicles, tents and support facilities were present. (bottom - enlarged) | Image © 2014, Digital Globe, NextView License; AAAS Analysis

The report notes that “biological evidence in the form of seasonal foliage is entirely consistent with the acquisition dates reported by NATO via DigitalGlobe.” The images examined by AAAS and those released by NATO are consistent in their depiction of the landscape and, the report says, and “in light of these observations, the claim that the imagery depicts exercises that took place in summer of 2013 lacks credibility.”

The Global Land Grab

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/feed_the_world/2014/04/land_grab_in_the_developing_world_big_agriculture_will_make_more_people.html

Rich countries are buying up poor countries.
By Karen J. Coates

Chhek Sambo, in yellow, surrounded by other villagers in Skuon Village, near Phnom Kulen, Cambodia.

Chhek Sambo works a little farm on the fertile plains stemming from a sacred Cambodian mountain known as Phnom Kulen. For 17 years this tropical plot has given Sambo and her family rice, cassava, mangoes, bananas, lychees, “everything we can eat.” She and her neighbors raise chickens and ducks (free-range) and cows (grass-fed). The land provides her daily sustenance, and farming is the only job she’s ever known. There is nowhere else Sambo would rather be, nothing else she would rather do, than “live here forever,” working this dirt until the end of her days.

But Sambo has a problem: She might lose this land. Like millions of subsistence farmers worldwide, Sambo and the 117 families in her rural community of Skuon have no formal title to their farm fields. And now, someone else wants her 2.5-acre patch.

It’s a familiar story in Cambodia, where land disputes have disrupted the lives and livelihoods of half a million people. Many of the affected are small-scale farmers who grow their own food. “Without land, they no longer have the means to provide themselves with the basic requirements for a decent life,” according to Naly Pilorge, director of the human rights group LICADHO.

Many land feuds in Cambodia begin on paper but lead to physical fights. The worst end in death. Villagers often protest against forced evictions, but they typically fail when faced with police or soldiers. “The people have knife and fork, but the soldiers have gun,” says Chao Leak Vanna, a LICADHO human rights monitor.

This is a global humanitarian crisis. An unprecedented worldwide scramble for land—predominantly for agriculture—has spurred a new era in the “geopolitics of food scarcity,” according to Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute. That scramble escalated dramatically with the 2008 economic crisis and subsequent rise in food prices. Countries that export food began to limit how much they would sell. Countries that import food “panicked,” Brown writes, and started buying up or leasing other countries’ cheap land on which to produce their own food. Hardest hit were poor countries like Cambodia, where the elite eat abundantly and the poor already struggle to feed themselves.

Israel's Sustainable Success

APRIL 24, 2014 

Roger Cohen

LONDON — Hearing an Indian official talk the other day about Delhi’s booming arms trade and ever-closer relationship with Israel, I had a thought that also struck me while listening to Israeli businessmen in Beijing. The idea may be summed up in three words: It is sustainable.

“Pivot to Asia” is a term that might be applied to Israel. Its trade with China has boomed, reaching more than $8 billion in 2013 from a pittance when diplomatic relations were established in 1992 (the same year as with India). Europe huffs and puffs about the West Bank settlements; Asia does business. India has already bought sea-to-sea missiles, radar for a missile-intercept system and communications equipment from Israel.

Tel Aviv, one of the world’s most attractive cities, has a boom-time purr about it. For all the talk of its isolation — and all the efforts of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (B.D.S.) movement — Israel has an economy as creative as it is successful. Yes, it is sustainable.

Behind its barriers and wall, backed by military might, certain of more or less unswerving American support, technologically innovative and democratically stable, Israel has the power to prolong indefinitely its occupation of the West Bank and its dominion over several million Palestinians. The Jewish state has grown steadily stronger in relation to the Palestinians since 1948. There is no reason to believe this trend will ever be reversed. Holding onto all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, while continuing to prosper, is feasible. This, after all, is what Israel has already done for almost a half-century.

It is time to retire the unsustainability nostrum. Facile and inaccurate, it distracts from the inconvenient truth of Israel’s sustainable success.

Throughout this year the Obama administration has pushed the unsustainability argument to make its case for peace. “Today’s status quo, absolutely to a certainty, I promise you 100 percent, cannot be maintained,” Secretary of State John Kerry said in February. “It is not sustainable. It is illusionary. There’s a momentary prosperity, there’s a momentary peace.”

More recently, President Obama told Jeffrey Goldberg of Bloomberg View that his question to Benjamin Netanyahu was: “If not now, when? And if not you, Mr. Prime Minister, then who?”

The new global order unfolding has the look of disorder

The new global order unfolding has the look of disorder

By J.D. Gordon, Thursday, April 24, 2014

When I was growing up during the Cold War, the geopolitical narrative seemed clear-cut and favored Americans.

The United States and the Soviet Union faced off for supremacy in every corner of the globe, fighting proxy wars in Korea, Vietnam, Central America and beyond. Most American presidents developed reputations as strong leaders, staking their presidencies on promoting democracy, liberty, free-market economies and Judeo-Christian values. Soviet premiers were similarly strong, and equally committed to spreading collectivism, repression and atheistic totalitarianism.

Most Americans knew that Uncle Sam was on the right side of history. The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and resulting freedom for hundreds of millions behind the Iron Curtain proved it.

Yet today, it seems Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin have collectively thrown away those playbooks and in essence created a new “Bizarro World” order. Baby boomers will recall “Bizarro World” from ‘60s-era Superman comics as a planet resembling Earth, except instead of spherical, it is strangely cube-shaped, and all things held dear on Earth are despised there. It is, in effect, a counter-Earth. So, it seems, is our world in the Age of Obama.

Perhaps it started when Mr. Obama campaigned in 2008 as a “global citizen” who advocated a world free of nuclear weapons. In 2009, his first priority in office was attempting to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and grant constitutional rights to al Qaeda and Taliban terrorism suspects, even though they had killed nearly 3,000 people in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and countless thousands more around the globe. Later that year, he unilaterally scrapped a planned missile-defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic meant to defend against an eventual Iranian intercontinental ballistic-missile capability.

Matt Gurney: If Putin wants Ukraine, NATO won’t stop him

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/04/25/matt-gurney-if-putin-wants-ukraine-nato-wont-stop-him/
Matt Gurney | April 25, 2014 |

AP Photo/Efrem LukatskyA self-defense activist performs military exercises at a military training ground outside Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, March 31, 2014.

There was a frightening moment in Ukraine earlier this week. A mixture of Ukrainian Interior Ministry paramilitary personnel and army infantry were conducting “anti-terror” operations against pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine. Barricades were smashed, and shots exchanged. Casualties were reported — perhaps as many as five pro-Russians killed (there’s some confusion on this point, but at the very least, some confirmed deaths). But the Ukrainian forces suddenly broke off their attacks and pulled back, apparently because the central government in Kyiv had concluded that a Russian invasion was imminent. In the panic, they pulled the plug on their operations and regrouped their forces.

There was no invasion. The Russian military forces just over the border — an estimated 40,000 troops, with air support — were not crossing the frontier, they were staging exercises. But Ukraine was not wrong to fear such an attack. Russia’s military isn’t exactly a First World fighting force — it is large, but relies heavily on Cold War vintage equipment and one-year conscripts for its manpower. Yet it could still take on Ukraine’s forces, which are smaller and also underfunded and largely obsolete, as well as beset by worrying questions about the loyalty of many of its troops, some of whom may have ethnic or family ties to Russia.

There’s a lot of unknowns here, and that applies equally for all the concerned parties. Western defence experts seem to be approaching a consensus that Russia can’t invade and occupy all of Ukraine, but if it makes a limited grab for chunks of it, it can probably take and hold it. If that’s the plan, though, Russia had better act fast. It is time for it to discharge its conscripts and begin training the next batch. Better to go to war with trained troops than new enlistees, and training takes six months. If Russia is going to act, it will have to go soon.

Will it? Who knows? Putin has played a smart game so far, pushing aggressively against his neighbours and banking (correctly) that the West wouldn’t do much about it. Actually invading large swathes of a foreign country, however, is a major step (Crimea’s history and geographic made that a special case, but those factors don’t apply throughout the rest of Ukraine).

Russia’s Latest Land Grab: How Putin Won Crimea and Lost Ukraine

http://csis.org/publication/russias-latest-land-grab-how-putin-won-crimea-and-lost-ukraine

By Jeffrey Mankoff

APR 25, 2014 

Russia’s occupation and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in February and March have plunged Europe into one of its gravest crises since the end of the Cold War. Despite analogies to Munich in 1938, however, Russia’s invasion of this Ukrainian region is at once a replay and an escalation of tactics that the Kremlin has used for the past two decades to maintain its influence across the domains of the former Soviet Union. Since the early 1990s, Russia has either directly supported or contributed to the emergence of four breakaway ethnic regions in Eurasia: Transnistria, a self-declared state in Moldova on a strip of land between the Dniester River and Ukraine; Abkhazia, on Georgia’s Black Sea coast; South Ossetia, in northern Georgia; and, to a lesser degree, Nagorno-Karabakh, a landlocked mountainous region in southwestern Azerbaijan that declared its independence under Armenian protection following a brutal civil war. Moscow’s meddling has created so-called frozen conflicts in these states, in which the splinter territories remain beyond the control of the central governments and the local de facto authorities enjoy Russian protection and influence.

Until Russia annexed Crimea, the situation on the peninsula had played out according to a familiar script: Moscow opportunistically fans ethnic tensions and applies limited force at a moment of political uncertainty, before endorsing territorial revisions that allow it to retain a foothold in the contested region. With annexation, however, Russia departed from these old tactics and significantly raised the stakes. Russia’s willingness to go further in Crimea than in the earlier cases appears driven both by Ukraine’s strategic importance to Russia and by President Vladimir Putin’s newfound willingness to ratchet up his confrontation with a West that Russian elites increasingly see as hypocritical and antagonistic to their interests.

Given Russia’s repeated interventions in breakaway regions of former Soviet states, it would be natural to assume that the strategy has worked well in the past. In fact, each time Russia has undermined the territorial integrity of a neighboring state in an attempt to maintain its influence there, the result has been the opposite. Moscow’s support for separatist movements within their borders has driven Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Moldova to all wean themselves off their dependence on Russia and pursue new partnerships with the West. Ukraine will likely follow a similar trajectory. By annexing Crimea and threatening deeper military intervention in eastern Ukraine, Russia will only bolster Ukrainian nationalism and push Kiev closer to Europe, while causing other post-Soviet states to question the wisdom of a close alignment with Moscow.

TOWARDS A COMMON INTERCULTURAL CIVILIZATION – ANALYSIS

APRIL 27, 2014

Source Link

By IDN

By Hugo Novotny

The US, Japan and the European Union nations are gradually losing their dominant positions in the world. At the same time, powerful countries like Brazil, India and China do not try to impose their political and cultural values on less developed countries, but rather they intend to base their relations on a mutually beneficial cooperation.

Thus, the new system of international relations taking shape due to the growth of Asian, Latin American and African nations is erasing the fragile dependency and colonial servility inherited from the history of the last few centuries by means of the power of common agreements and convergence of interests. There is hope that this will turn the current global crisis into a true opportunity for positive global change.

For international affairs, the new paradigm that is been configured could be defined as the power of agreement, reciprocity and convergence in diversity as opposed to the failure of hegemonies and homogenization. The success of this model depends on whether the participants in the game seek to impose their will – economically or culturally – on others.

But the global crisis we are going through requires a deep change in the model of growth. Asia, Africa and Latin America could not follow the path trod by the US and the EU, with its promotion of false freedoms at the cost of social fractures, consumption for all, indebtedness for the majority but accumulation by only a few.

A radically different vision must be defined. In other words, the global change crisis must generate an entire new social paradigm in which the idea of development does not only mean economic growth as it is the case nowadays from the standpoint of central powers, but also includes the integral growth of all human beings grounded on the essential understanding that “progress for a few ends up being progress for nobody” (Silo, 2004).

On the Latin American continent, the rise to power of Evo Morales as Bolivia´s first president of native origins marked a watershed in the history of the Americas, a sure signal of new times beginning for the whole continent. The creation of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean Countries (CELAC) demonstrates a resolution to move towards a real integration of the continent, and points to the decisive departure of Latin America from the orbit of the political, economic and military influence of the USA.

In our opinion, this phenomenon is closely related to the spiritual renewal of native cultures all through Latin America, reaching particular strength in Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Mexico; although in the latter country, this process is developing in open confrontation with the government and US interests in the region. In the case of Brazil, we can appreciate also the renewal of a highly diverse native spirituality with Afro-American roots, yet suffering persecution by the Christian churches, which are deeply engaged with the important economic and media powers of the country.

Bureaucratic Red Tape and Rules About Tatoos Preventing Dep’t of Homeland Security From Hiring Cyber Security Experts

April 27, 2014

Red tape, ‘tattoo-aversion’ snarls government hiring of cybersecurity experts

Reuters,  April 26, 2014

In the race to attract cybersecurity experts to protect the government’s computer networks, the Department of Homeland Security has a handicap money can’t fix.

Navigating the federal hiring system takes many months, which is too long in the fast-paced tech world.

“Even when somebody is patriotic and wants to do their duty for the nation, if they’re really good they’re not going to wait six months to get hired,” said Mark Weatherford, the former cyber chief at DHS.

After a spate of national security leaks and with cybercrime on the rise, the department is vying with the private sector and other three-letter federal agencies to hire and retain talent to secure federal networks and contain threats to American businesses and utilities.

Phyllis Schneck, the former chief technology officer at security software company McAfee Inc who succeeded Weatherford in August, asked a U.S. Senate committee for help.

“The hiring process is very, very difficult,” she said.

Cyber experts can command higher salaries - in some cases up to six figures more - at private companies, Schneck said, but national security offers a “higher calling” and valuable experience.

“People say the good talent doesn’t come because we can’t pay them,” she said. “We could actually use our mission to outdo some of those salaries they’re offered. But we have to have the flexibility and some additional competitiveness to bring them inside.”

TATTOOED TALENT NEED NOT APPLY

The Homeland Security Department, created after the September 11, 2001, attacks, is playing catchup with the Pentagon’s larger and more established cybersecurity operations at Cyber Command and the National Security Agency.

Not only does DHS lack the enhanced hiring powers of its military counterpart and the agility private companies offer, but the rigid bureaucracy of the 240,000-employee agency can foster an inside-the-box culture.

“There’s a lot of really smart, scary cybersecurity professionals out there who also happen to have pink hair and tattoos,” said Weatherford.

Vladimir Putin Wants His Own Internet

 JOSHUA KEATINGhttp://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/04http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/04/russia_internet_sovereignty_vladimir_putin_is_tightening_his_grip_on_the.html
What’s behind the push for Internet sovereignty.
By Joshua Keating
Vladimir Putin may yet drape his country's cyberspace in an iron curtain.

Asked at a media forum in St. Petersburg about Russia’s largest search engine, Yandex, storing its data on servers outside the country, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the Internet was originally a "CIA project" and "is still developing as such."

Joshua Keating is a staff writer at Slate focusing on international affairs and writes the World blog.

The former KGB agent is not totally wrong. The Internet does trace its origins back to data-sharing systems developed by U.S. intelligence in the 1980s. (Perhaps Putin has been catching up on the latest season of The Americans, which has to a large extent revolved around Russian spies trying to gain access to theARPANET, an early version of the Internet developed by the U.S. Department of Defense. Between the series and Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard’sbrief return to the news cycle, ARPANET is enjoying something of a cultural moment right now.)
Putin’s comments do seem a bit portentous coming just days after Pavel Durov, founder of VKontake, Russia’s largest social networking site, fled the country saying he had been forced to resign as the company’s CEO after he refused to share users’ personal data with the authorities. Durov is facing accusations of embezzlement, a charge the Kremlin has also used against other prominent Kremlin critics.

As Yekaterina Kravtsova of the Moscow Times put it, “The move to oust Durov is widely seen as part of a wider campaign by the Kremlin to tighten its grip on the Internet, and observers said the authorities aimed to ‘cleanse’ the management of Russian Internet companies in the hopes of gaining control of their content.”

Inside the secret digital arms race: Facing the threat of a global cyberwar

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/inside-the-secret-digital-arms-race/#.

By Steve Ranger

The team was badly spooked, that much was clear. The bank was already reeling from two attacks on its systems, strikes that had brought it to a standstill and forced the cancellation of a high profile IPO.

The board had called in the team of security experts to brief them on the developing crisis. After listening to some of the mass of technical detail, the bank's CEO cut to the chase.

"What should I tell the Prime Minister when I get to Cobra?" he demanded, a reference to the emergency committee the government had set up as it scrambled to respond to what was looking increasingly like a coordinated cyberattack.

The security analysts hesitated, shifting in their seats, fearing this was the beginning, not the end, of the offensive.

"We think this could just be a smokescreen," one said, finally. And it was. Before the end of next day, the attack had spread from banks to transport and utilities, culminating in an attack on a nuclear power station.

The mounting horror of the analysts, the outrage and lack of understanding from the execs was all disturbingly authentic, but fortunately, none of it was real. The scene formed part of a wargame, albeit one designed by the UK's GCHQ surveillance agency among others to attract new recruits into the field of cybersecurity.

As I watched the scenario progress (hosted in a World War II bunker under London for added drama) it was hard not to get just as caught up in the unfolding events as the competition finalists played the security analysts tasked with fighting the attack, and real industry executives took the role of the bank's management, if only because these sorts of scenarios are now increasingly plausible.

And it's not just mad criminal geniuses planning these sorts of digital doomsday attacks either. After years on the defensive, governments are building their own offensive capabilities to deliver attacks just like this against their enemies. It's all part of a secret, hidden arms race, where countries spend billions of dollars to create new armies and stockpiles of digital weapons.

This new type of warfare is incredibly complex and its consequences are little understood. Could this secret digital arms race make real-world confrontations more likely, not less? Have we replaced the cold war with the coders' war?

Even the experts are surprised by how fast the online threats have developed. As Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at security company F-Secure, said a conference recently, "If someone would have told me ten years ago that by 2014 it would be commonplace for democratic western governments to develop and deploy malware against other democratic western governments, that would have sounded like science fiction. It would have sounded like a movie plot, but that's where we are today."
The first casualty of cyberwar is the web

It's taken less than a decade for digital warfare to go from theoretical to the worryingly possible. The web has been an unofficial battleground for many modern conflicts. At the most basic level, groups of hackers trying to publicise their cause have been hijacking or defacing websites for years. Some of these groups have acted alone, some have at least the tacit approval of their governments.
A wargame aimed at finding hidden cybersecurity talent took place in Winston Churchill's wartime bunker.
Most of these attacks -- taking over a few Twitter accounts, for example -- are little more than a nuisance, high profile but relatively trivial.

However, one attack has already risen to the level of international incident. In 2007,attacks on Estonia swamped banks, newspaper and government websites. They began after Estonia decided to move a Soviet war memorial, and lasted for three weeks (Russia denied any involvement).

The Cold War Could Be Deadly for British Subs New book reveals dangerous undersea duties

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/3e1d3b5060da

David Axe in War is Boring

Iain Ballantyne’s new book Hunter Killers is a true story of men, submarines, great nations and unforgiving seas. The impeccably-researched, swiftly-paced yarn follows a small band of Royal Navy submarine officers serving aboard a succession of increasingly sophisticated undersea vessels on the chilly front lines of the Cold War.

At its core, Hunter Killers is mostly about just three men—attack submarine captains Rob Forsyth, Doug Littlejohns and Tim Hale—and a handful of boats including HMS Dreadnought, the Royal Navy’s first nuclear-powered sub, and HMS Swiftsure, lead vessel of what is arguably Britain’s most important class of Cold War warship.

With Forsyth, Littlejohns, Hale and their submarines, Ballantyne explores the dangerous four decades following World War II, during which NATO and Soviet submarines, surface warships, patrol planes and frogmen pursued, harassed and spied on each other—frequently colliding or forcing each other into mishaps occasionally resulting in death or injury. In general, blurring the line between peacetime and war.

Early in Hunter Killers, Ballantyne recounts the grisly fate of Lionel Crabb, a “well-known veteran of daring underwater exploits during the Second World War.” In 1956, British intelligence dispatched Crabb to Portsmouth in southern England—a Royal Navy submarine base—to secretly inspect the underside of the visiting Soviet cruiserOrdzhonikidze. Crabb never returned.

The Continuing Irrelevance of William Lind

by Jim Lacey
Journal Article | April 24, 2014

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/the-continuing-irrelevance-of-william-lind
The Continuing Irrelevance of William Lind

William Lind in a recent article in “The American Conservative” laid out the proposition that after four defeats - Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan - America’s military officer corps is intellectually stagnant. (http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/an-officer-corps-that-cant-score/)

This is utter nonsense.

Still coming from William Lind, the “self-professed” inventor, or re-inventor, of the concept of maneuver warfare it cannot be lightly disregarded.

It is first worth taken note of some of the historical pointers Lind employs as examples of when armies “crapped in their own mess kits” and then went on to get it right. His first example deals with how Scharnhorst reinvented the German Army, after its embarrassment at the hands of Napoleon in 1806. Not a bad example, as far as it goes. For the Germans did create an incredibly proficient army at the tactical and operational levels of wars. In the hands of a strategic genius - Bismarck – it was potent force, in support of German (Prussian) policy objectives. In the hands of a strategic idiot though, that army started and was crushed in history’s two most destructive wars.

His next example is the French after 1870. This is an odd choice indeed. For the French answer to their 1870 defeat was adoption of the “Spirit of the Offense,” which led to horrendous losses in the first weeks of World War I, and almost cost France the war. Remarkably the French persisted with these asinine methods until the rank and file mutinied in 1917. The final example is Japan after 1945. As remaking our entire society and forgoing warfare for all time is not currently a viable option, I believe it safe to discount this example. In fact, all of his examples are pretty horrendous given the point he is trying to make. That is the problem with historical analogies, in most cases; one only has to probe an inch below the surface to demonstrate their utter worthlessness. Much can, of course, be learned, from history, but not when it is sloppily applied, as it is here.

But let’s examine why Lind believes the officer corps is intellectually sterile. His first reason is that “officers live in a bubble” where they are constantly fed “swill” about how great they are, and get angry if they hear anything else. If that is truly the impression Lind has of today’s officer corps then, one may argue, that he is the one in a bubble. One wonders if he has ever visited Small Wars Journal, or any of the other sites where military officers are continuously arguing about the points Lind states are being ignored. Moreover, the truth is that most military officers are developed in an environment of almost constant competition, where through a variety of means they are critiqued, often brutally, on everything they do. One has only to witness an after action review at one of our training centers to see how leadership and unit foibles are exposed to all the world before those involved are sent off to fix them.

But, my guess is that Lind’s real problem is with our military repeatedly telling itself that it is unmatched fighting force. For, as Lind is the first to state, our military is clearly is not as good as it thinks it is. His argument is ridiculous on two levels. Even if our military was not an unmatchable force it believes itself to be, of what benefit is it to ever admit such a thing. Can anyone picture a football coach telling his team the day before the big game, that their chances would be much better if only they were as good as their opponent? Similarly, what would the troops think of a military commander who constantly reminded them that they were not as good as their foes? That would do wonders for morale.

The second is even more telling, once it is fully considered. Arguably, the US military has not lost a tactical fight in over 70 years (Task Force Smith in Korea), and has not lost an operational level fight in 150 years (and that depends on what side you were on during the Civil War). For decades, the US military has been absolutely unbeatable on the battlefield. Even in those fights where we were most hard-pressed (Ia Drang, Somalia, Wanat) our Soldiers and Marines delivered at least an order of magnitude more casualties than they took. The simple truth is that by every empirical measure known the US military is the best in the world and remains capable of overmatching any foe on the near-time horizon.

Enduring Power The Army Needs to Focus on What it Does Best

https://medium.com/the-bridge/78b3eacd5eaa

This post was provided by contributor Chad Pillai, an Army strategist. The views expressed belong to the author alone and do not represent the US Army or the Department of Defense.

Once again, the Army is attempting to transform itself. The question the Army can’t seem to answer is, “why?” Yes, the world is becoming more complex and competitive: China’s rise, a resurgent Russia, an unstable Middle East, and the continued threat of the metastasizing cancer of Al Qaeda spanning from North Africa to Central Asia are all challenging America’s global leadership position. However, no single threat has emerged as existential to the U.S. or its vital national interests.
The real challenge lies at home. Domestically, the U.S. has become war fatigued as a result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and faces economic challenges stemming from the 2008 Financial Crisis and political gridlock resulting in sequestration. As a result, DoD, and in particular the Army, faces severe budgetary cuts. While all the Services face cuts of various magnitudes, the Army faces the steepest cuts to its manpower and acquisition programs. This has left Army leaders scrambling to combat critics of the Army’s utility in future conflicts (i.e. U.S. will not engage in land combat in the foreseeable future) while seeking to fundamentally change the Army to meet emerging threats.

The Army needs a convincing narrative of its purpose, but it has only muddied the waters with new joint and institutional concepts which fail to explain what problem the Army is attempting to solve and why it needs to change. Maybe the answer is not that the Army needs to change, but instead that it should return its focus to the core competencies that provide political and military leaders a range of options to deal with emerging threats.

While the nature of the threats may change, the mission of the Army remains enduring and is clearly enumerated in U.S.C. Title 10, which articulates the Army’s responsibility, as an institution, to national defense is to be “organized, trained, and equipped primarily for prompt and sustained combat incident to operations on land.” It needs to provide forces to accomplish tasks assigned across the range of military operations ranging from humanitarian assistance to state-on-state conventional war. More importantly, as a result of the past 14 years, the Army should not debate whether it will conduct small or big wars in the future, but should instead recognize, after reviewing its own historical records, that it needs to be prepared for both.
the Army should focus on what it does best — being the enduring and decisive instrument of national power.

How the U.S. Could Stumble into War in Ukraine

http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2014/04/26/how_the_us_could_stumble_into_war_in_ukraine_110461.html

April 26, 2014
By Jean Mackenzie


The skeptics were right.

Just one week ago, as top diplomats in Geneva heralded an agreement on Ukraine that was supposed to defuse the crisis, many warned that tensions were too high to be easily resolved.

Now the situation has deteriorated even further, with clashes in eastern Ukraine that have left at least five people dead.

Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin mutter darkly, if vaguely, of "consequences" if their opponents do not back down, while Ukraine's acting prime minister warns that Europe may be on the brink of World War III.

A worldwide conflagration is still not very likely, the experts say, but as the war of words deepens there is increased danger that Washington and its allies could stumble into a situation that no one intended.

"I don't want to make too much of the centennial of World War I," said Thomas Graham, a senior fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University, and a managing director at Kissinger Associates. "But, just as in 1914, the parties could be trapped by politics and rhetoric, and by their misreading of the other side. It is not highly likely, but I don't rule it out."

Graham, who served as President George W. Bush's special assistant and National Security Council's senior director for Russia from 2004 to 2007, is concerned by what he sees as the US failure to get Russia right.

"It is our problem as a policymaking establishment that we cannot understand how the other side looks at the world," Graham said. "We think, ‘how can Russia be opposed to prosperous, democratic societies on its borders?' We do not understand why they consider such moves to be against them."

The US miscalculated the degree of extreme anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine's Maidan demonstrations, Graham says, and therefore did not understand or prepare for the Russian response. But Moscow's anger at Ukraine's rapprochement with the West was less about expansionism and more about security.

"Putin does not want responsibility for the socio-economic development [of Ukraine]," Graham said. "He just wants some assurances that it will not become part of an organization that is overtly hostile to Russia."

Guaranteeing that Ukraine will not be absorbed into NATO should be a no-brainer, according to Anatol Lieven, a war studies professor at King's College London and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.

Obama quietly reverses Hillary’s ‘get Modi’ policy

MADHAV NALAPAT 

9th Apr 2014

Source Link

Hillary Clinton

S President Barack Obama has quietly reversed a policy initiated by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to "get Narendra Modi" — ostensibly for the 2002 Gujarat riots, but in actuality "for taking stands that may be different from that favoured by the US administration" — in the words of a senior analyst in New York.

"Hillary Clinton likes to operate through NGOs, which are given funding through indirect channels, and which target individuals and countries seen as less than respectful to her views on foreign and domestic policy in the target countries," a retired US official now based in Atlanta said. He claimed that "rather than US NGOs, (the former) Secretary of State Clinton favoured operating through organisations based in the Netherlands, Denmark and the Scandinavian countries, especially Norway" as these were outside the radar of big power politics. These NGOs were active in the agitation against the Russian nuclear power plant at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu, with "funding coming mainly from a religious organisation based in Europe that has close links with France".

Incidentally, French companies are in direct competition with Russian rivals in seeking to expand the market for nuclear reactors in India. The senior official, now on a visit to India, claimed that "your (i.e. the Manmohan Singh) government has full details of the religious organisation involved in funding the Kudankulam protests, but is keeping this secret as the organisation has high-level backers" in the UPA.

These present and retired officials claimed that "during the tenure in office of Secretary Clinton, several expert teams in the guise of NGOs were sent to Gujarat to try and find mass graves". The purpose was to then take the matter to the Office of the UN Commissioner of Human Rights in Geneva as an example of genocide. "In 2011, some bones were discovered in a Gujarat field by one of the search teams and there was much excitement, but these were later found to be buffalo bones", an official said. The official added that "no evidence whatsoever of mass graves was uncovered in Gujarat despite six years of clandestine searching for them" by undercover experts posing as representatives of NGOs. He added that "five politicians, three from the state and two in Delhi, assisted the search teams, but the information given by them proved unproductive".

Finally, "now that Secretary Clinton had stepped down from office, by end-2012 orders were given to stop wasting time on the search for mass graves in Gujarat, much to the dismay of those NGOs who were getting significant funding as a consequence of the search operations". Interestingly, the senior official claimed that because of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's inability to water down the Nuclear Liability Act and Defence Minister A.K. Antony's decision to prefer the French Rafale fighter to its US rival, "orders were given to activate the Khalistan file so as to create embarrassment for Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh".

Pakistan’s Water Woes and India Bashing

25-Apr-2014

Dr. S. Chandrasekharan

Source Link

A month ago, one of the water experts in Pakistan warned that the "most dreaded water scarcity ever" has at last hit the country. The warning came not too soon and the surprise if any is that the warning has come too late.

Unlike India, Pakistan is solely dependent on the Indus Water system and instead of meeting the water shortage, all that the Pakistan leaders at all scientific and political levels were doing was to do "India Bashing" as if India is responsible for the acute water shortage.

Increasing urbanisation, climate change, population exploration, indiscriminate usage of ground water particularly in Punjab and wastage of water in agricultural operations have all contributed to the shortage of water. Instead, India is being blamed day in and out for all the ills relating to water scarcity in Pakistan.

Even one simple fact that Pakistan which can store up to 40 percent of its water for leaner days has built in capacity of storing only 7 percent of water so far, that shows its lackadaisical approach towards water problems has been ignored and yet India is being described as the villain in stealing the waters of the three western rivers of the Indus under the Indus Water Treaty of 1960!

The Federal Planning Development and Reforms Minister Ahsan Iqbal said on 20th March this year that Pakistan was not getting 10 million acres feet of water, its due share due to water shortage by India.

Surely the Minister must have been aware of the division of waters of the Indus River System under the Indus Water Treaty f 1960, envisages the division of the system with the three western rivers, Indus, Jhelum and Chenab going fully to Pakistan with the three eastern rivers- the Sutlej, Ravi and Beas going over to India for full utilization. For the western rivers India is allowed to construct run of the river projects for power generation and a limited quantity for agricultural and other purposes. No where in the Pakistan press is there any mention that India is not fully utilizing the western waters allowed to be used for agricultural purposes and used downstream by the agriculturists of Pakistan and instead there is an unanimous uproar that India is "stealing the waters."

The Indus water treaty which has withstood the tests of times, in times of war and near war never envisaged any division of scarcity or any generous "give and take" of waters at times of crisis between the two countries. It is not therefore clear how the Pakistan Minister could come to the conclusion that Pakistan is entitled to 10 million acres of water from India. It is not like the water pacts in other river systems where the waters are equitably shared between the riparian countries both during the surplus and lean seasons. The Indus water treaty is unique and given the relationship between the two countries then and even now there could have been no better division of the river waters between the two countries India and Pakistan. Hence any call to revise the treaty as is heard sometimes now would only create more complications and difficulties in managing and utilising the waters of the system between the two countries.　

Talks with the Taliban: End Game for the Military, Political Parties and the TTP in Pakistan

IPCS Special Focus

SR160-SpecialFocus-TalibanTalks.pdf

Talks with the Taliban: Endgame for the

Political Parties

Sushant Sareen

Talks with the Taliban: Endgame for the

Military

Rana Banerji

Talks with the Taliban: Endgame for the

TTP

D Suba Chandran

Pakistan and TTP: Dialogue or Military

action

Salma Malik

Talks with the Taliban: How far will the

state go?

D Suba Chandran

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Edited By

Ayesha Khanyari

Solution to the Pakistani terrorist quagmire

ByVijaykumar S Kasi

IssueVol 24.1Jan-Mar 2009 | Date : 26 Apr , 2014

It is difficult to comprehend why some people resort to terrorism. One of the main reasons put forward — economic failure — is no excuse to pursue the path of terror. There are many extremely poor nations and societies that struggle for a better future in a peaceful and non-violent way. For decades, a significant section of Pakistanis have chosen the wrong path.

Terrorism has become an institution in Pakistan and has widespread support. Its army and intelligence services consider it a strategic weapon.

Terrorism has become an institution in Pakistan and has widespread support. Its army and intelligence services consider it a strategic weapon. After each terrorist strike, the Pakistani government cleverly dodges international pressure by temporarily clamping down on terrorism until the focus shifts away. It never completely eliminates this menace. As a consequence, this small region has now become the most dangerous place on the planet.

Afghanistan Post-NATO Drawdown

Wikistrat recently concluded a two-week simulation called “Afghanistan Post-NATO Drawdown” in which our strategic community was asked to map out what the country will look like in 2017, three years after American and NATO forces have pulled out. One scenario challenged the conventional wisdom of Pakistan sabotaging peace efforts and suggested it could actually play a stabilizing role. A summary is provided here.

Despite leaving a residual force for training, logistics support and special operations, the drawdown in NATO military personnel in Afghanistan leaves the central government weakened. While other interested powers, like Iran and Russia, are reluctant to get involved, Pakistan steps in. It reinforces its support for the Taliban as well as the presidential faction within the government. Recognizing that they would need Pakistan’s support to overthrow the government in Kabul, many Taliban decide that they can best advanced their goals by working with the government.

Pakistan sponsors talks between the government and moderate Taliban figures to produce a coalition government. While Afghanistan’s erstwhile Western sponsors are appalled, they have no incentive to reengage, especially as the Pakistan-brokered coalition delivers peace in the previously wartorn southern provinces. Instead, they focus on lobbying Pakistan and the new Kabul government to reduce opium production and prevent a return of Al Qaeda.

China is glad to see its ally stabilizing Afghanistan and thus avoiding it offering safe haven to Uighur separatists intent on destabilizing Xinjiang. China also increasingly sees opportunities for economic investment in Afghanistan, which Pakistan’s alliance with the Kabul government can guarantee.

Saudi Arabia sees Pakistan’s actions as another welcome blow in the Middle East’s Sunni-Shia conflict. It, too, is happy to provide economic and military aid to enhance Pakistan’s meager resources. Pakistan itself gains as the stabilization of southern Afghanistan impacts positively on the other side of the border.

The presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan

By 2017, a coalition between Taliban and non-Taliban Pashtun governs in Kabul, in close alliance with Pakistan. Southern Pakistan is largely stable, with some more extreme Taliban groups active but lacking popular support. Tajik opposition to the majority Pashtun government remains, but it is constricted to the river valleys of the north of the country. As Afghanistan recovers economically, Pakistan is able to trade its influence with the Kabul government over drugs and terrorism suppression for respectability in the West.