Nigeria: The Sri Lanka Solution

http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/nigeria/articles/20140620.aspx

June 20, 2014

In the north troops have been ordered to be more active in searching for Boko Haram gunmen and dealing with them. This means patrolling roads frequently and carefully to keep these routes free of Boko Haram roadblocks (that mainly prey on passing vehicles and provide supplies of vehicles, fuel and other goods) and ambushes. 

Just across the border Cameroon is now at war with Boko Haram. Cameroonians living along the 2,000 kilometer long border (especially in the northern third of that) are suffering because of it. Boko Haram is now attacking Cameroon villages in an effort to terrorize the locals into silence. Worse, the Islamic terrorists often kidnap teenage boys and try (usually successfully) to turn them into Islamic terrorists. Those that resist are killed. The most active area for this new Boko Haram violence is across the border from Borno state, the part of Nigeria suffering the most Boko Haram violence. Since early 2013 Cameroon has sent more troops to the border and set up an informant network of villagers and nomads living in the far north of the country. The local civilians in this area never did get along with Boko Haram. Initially the Islamic terrorists tried to behave well so as not to annoy the locals. This worked for a while but, as is often the case, friction developed and now Boko Haram is at war with Cameroon as well as Nigeria. 

The Sri Lankan Solution 

Military leaders have been meeting with their counterparts from Sri Lanka (an island nation off the southern coast of India) to discuss how the Sri Lankan security forces defeated the LTTE rebels there. The destruction of the LTTE fighting force in 2009 did not end the war that killed over 90,000 people in three decades of strife but the defeat did end a long period of major combat. There are still a lot of angry, armed and anti-social Tamils in Sri Lanka. There is still the tension between the Tamil minority (about 13 percent of the population) and the Sinhalese (80 percent) majority. There is also a large (seven percent) Moslem minority with some grievances. But nothing like the anger many Tamils and Sinhalese still feel towards each other. It's expected that there will be a lot of low level terrorism between Tamil and Sinhalese extremists for years to come. But peace has returned to northern Sri Lanka after decades of violence. While the war in Nigeria is over religious, not ethnic differences, many Nigerian officers believe there are lessons to be learned from Sri Lanka. 

During the final year of the war in Sri Lanka the government forces faced 30,000 LTTE members. Not all were armed, but all were organized, and the army captured lots of records listing who they are. Most of these LTTE staff survived the final campaign, and the government is still looking for some of them. These are the people who could rebuild the LTTE and that is what is slowly going on. 

The Sri Lankan government used some pretty brutal tactics to defeat LTTE and had to deal with criticism from Western politicians and media over the treatment of the Tamils in the north. Many prominent Europeans demanded that Tamils in refugee camps be released immediately after the LTTE was defeated. There were also calls for the Sri Lankan security forces to be prosecuted for war crimes. This sort of thing enraged the Sinhalese majority in Sri Lanka and resulted in accusations that the foreign critics were a bunch of pro-terrorist, delusional, racists who imply that the Sri Lankans cannot govern themselves. India, the original home of the Tamils (who are a minority there, comprising only about six percent of the Indian population), is much more sympathetic to the Sri Lankan government. Partly, this is to keep the Chinese out (who are offering all manner of attractive commercial deals to Sri Lanka at the moment). But India knows all about fanatical sects and political movements, and was also subject to LTTE terrorism. Europe wasn’t, and didn't understand. Thus the camps were not closed until all the LTTE members inside them were identified. Calls for war crimes prosecutions faded as more details of LTTE atrocities were revealed. 

After Years of Neglect, Ukrainian Army Learning How to Fight Despite Sometimes Poor Leadership and Lack of Equipment

June 22, 2014

Ukrainian army fights rebels and neglect

Carol Morello

Washington Post, June 21, 2014

KIEV, Ukraine — The cellphone photo showed a young Ukrainian soldier lying in a hospital bed, seemingly unconscious, with his head heavily bandaged and a feeding tube sticking from his mouth.

He had been fighting separatists in the country’s east. He went into combat without a helmet.

“If he’d had one, he wouldn’t have been hurt so bad,” said Yuri Biryukov, 39, who relies on his employees to run his chain of travel agencies while he raises money to buy the basics of modern warfare, including the goggles and sniper rifles that he delivers in sometimes harrowing trips to the front line. “I need to get 40,000 euros by tomorrow to buy helmets, and I don’t have it.”

Ultimately, he raised more than double the $54,000 he sought when he posted the young man’s photo on his Facebook page the next day.

Biryukov is part of a sea change in the way Ukrainians view their defense forces. Their newfound support for the troops may complicate things for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, whose declaration of a unilateral cease-fire Friday as part of a broader peace plan is not universally popular. Many Ukrainians, particularly in the western half of the country, far from the battlefields, say that they do not think a truce will bring the peace they desire and that it will give the insurgents time to regroup.
Pro-Russian separatists pledged to defend themselves and denounced the cease-fire ordered by Ukrainian President Poroshenko in eastern Ukraine. (  / Reuters)

Many Ukrainians say their army is finally making advances in its fight against pro-Russian militias and is gaining valuable combat experience as it begins to receive new equipment from a proliferation of volunteer groups.

“I’m optimistic that the army is changing,” said Yuri Kasyanov, a coordinator for the volunteer group SOS Army, which has bought food and communication radios for the army. “It’s becoming better as Ukrainians are helping to directly finance it. It’s becoming a people’s army.”

The Interventionists Who Cried Wolf

Paul J. Saunders

June 21, 2014 

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-interventionists-who-cried-wolf-10712

"Americans’ rejection of war—and, indeed, their reluctance to get involved in many international problems—is in fact a direct consequence of the interventionist case for action."

America’s neoconservatives and liberal interventionists are unhappy. It’s easy to understand why—the American public is tired of overseas adventures and is reinforcing the instincts of a domestically focused liberal president who often seems skeptical of not only military action, but the military itself. As a result, President Barack Obama is withdrawing from Afghanistan faster than many prefer, continues to reject military options or even meaningful military assistance to Syria’s rebels and Ukraine’s government, and appears cautious in responding to renewed fighting in Iraq. The irony is that for all of Mr. Obama’s demonstrable foreign policy failings, interventionists in both parties have no one but themselves to blame.

Many have argued that the American public is “war weary” after years of unsatisfying fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is more to public attitudes than frustration at enduring conflicts with ambiguous goals. Americans’ rejection of war—and, indeed, their reluctance to get involved in many international problems—is in fact a direct consequence of the interventionist case for action.

This has two components. The first is the routine manner in which America’s interventionists have inflated threats, minimized costs, and/or overstated benefits of the use of force. Iraq is the most obvious case—the U.S. war there was supposed to be a “cakewalk” that would oust a Hitler-like Saddam Hussein who was cooperating with al Qaeda and developing weapons of mass destruction. Occupying Iraq and making it a democracy was to transform the entire Middle East for the better, spreading freedom and accelerating the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Why America Must Choose Its Partners Wisely

Jennifer Keister

June 21, 2014 

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-america-must-choose-its-partners-wisely-10713?page=show

"If assistance limits the existential consequences of poor governance, and political inclusiveness or other reforms are not conditions of U.S. aid, partner states will have little incentive to change."

President Obama has called for increased U.S. assistance to the Iraqi government to deal with escalating instability and a violent Sunni insurgency. But Iraq’s resurgent violence and vulnerability to the threat of radical rebels cannot be divorced from the sectarian policies of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The current debate about the extent, form, and limits of U.S. military aid highlights the challenges of even limited foreign internal defense (FID) assistance to help other states tackle their security problems.

Iraq is emblematic of a larger challenge. At several points, President Obama’s West Point address last month emphasized the role of “partner countries” that could leverage U.S. assistance to counter security threats within their own borders and regions. But the president’s speech and subsequent debate about it have largely failed to provide criteria for selecting these partners.

Iraq’s headlines join others over the past year: the Boko Haram kidnappings in Nigeria, Al-Shabaab’s siege of Westgate Mall in Kenya, unrest in northern Mali, continuing instability in Libya, the list goes on. All of these cases have produced calls for U.S. assistance or intervention, or highlighted the role of existing or past American aid and debated increasing such aid. Iraq is somewhat unique in the wealth of information the American public and policy makers have about it, but these other cases share some of the risks identified in Iraq.

“Helping others defend themselves” sounds more attractive than “defending third parties from one another,” particularly while facing a fiscal and domestic political reality that limits the prospect for direct intervention. However, how do we tell the difference between states we can “partner” into effective and self-sufficient stability, versus those that risk pulling the United States into local quagmires or exacerbating security problems?

For partnerships to be effective, they generally require effective partners. To be sure, U.S. engagement may aim to improve these states’ capabilities, but a policy based on partnerships still needs a litmus test to sort out good partners from potential risks. Choosing good partners requires information. While some states refuse U.S. assistance, others pursue American aid and then seek to use it for unrelated purposes.

The current Iraq debate highlights Maliki’s sectarian policies as contributing to ISIS’s success, and questions whether aid might inadvertently facilitate such policies. Assistance to other possible partners requires similar information about the political, social, and economic dynamics that create and sustain violent groups.

Most violent groups that policy makers identify as security threats attract U.S. attention by rebelling or attacking the states in which they live or operate. These groups are generally disgruntled for a reason. Criticism of Maliki’s sectarian policies highlight this issue in Iraq, but questionable governance, corruption and military abuse in Nigeria have spurred Boko Haram, and Mali’s Tuaregs have complained for decades of underrepresentation.

A decade of direct U.S. intervention failed to solve Iraq’s sectarian problems, but less-than-direct forms of intervention face the same difficulties. U.S. assistance can come with pressure to professionalize militaries and make governments less corrupt and more representative. But both direct and indirect intervention may exacerbate tensions. Backing Maliki’s government puts the United States in a position of supporting a sectarian regime. Answering the justifiable outcry against Boko Haram’s kidnappings and other atrocities puts the United States in a position of aiding Nigeria’s brutal military.

In some cases, external support can also forestall political adaptation by protecting regimes from the violent, unpleasant and destabilizing consequences of their own political choices. Historically, many regimes have only opted to share power when convinced (sometimes through violence) that excluding rivals makes them more of a threat than including them. After much violence, Sudan and South Sudan finally parted ways in 2011—though conflict recently returned within South Sudan. Since its 2011 revolution, Tunisian tumult seems to have settled into a power-sharing deal.

Similarly, rampant corruption and dictators’ efforts to “coup-proof” their regimes can enervate military capabilities. However, even paranoid dictators can replace patriarchy with meritocracy in government institutions when threat focuses the need for competence.

However, if assistance limits the existential consequences of poor governance, and political inclusiveness or other reforms are not conditions of U.S. aid, partner states will have little incentive to change. Small footprint aid may have even more limited leverage—further suggesting that partnerships should be carefully chosen.

We are asking the right questions about Iraq. We are asking them in part because we have a lot of information about (and plenty of reason to be wary of) involvement in Iraq’s internal dynamics. But we should ask these questions about other potential partners too—applying these lessons may help us avoid repeating past mistakes.

Jennifer Keister is a visiting research fellow with expertise in insurgency, terrorism, and the southern Philippines. Her work investigates rebel groups’ relationship with civilian populations, and how they balance domestic and foreign constituencies.

America's Middle East Mistakes Keep Multiplying

Robert W. Merry

June 20, 2014 

Source Link

“When the United States went to war after the startling 9/11 attacks on the homeland, it did so without even knowing who the enemy actually was.

There’s an old saying that when you go to war it is imperative that you take pains to know your enemy, meaning to understand his motives, capabilities and likely actions. But, when the United States went to war after the startling 9/11 attacks on the homeland, it did so without even knowing who the enemy actually was. It went after the wrong targets—and thus generated the mess we now see in the Middle East.

Was the enemy Iran? No. Iran actually helped the United States when we attacked the Afghan Taliban, a common enemy, in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The opportunity for ongoing cooperation was thwarted by Bush himself, with his remarkable (and remarkably incendiary) “axis of evil” characterization.

Was the enemy Saddam Hussein’s Iraq? Certainly not. Saddam was a largely secular leader who ruled as a thug, based on the thuggish leverage of fear and greed. Thus, he considered cultural passion to be his enemy, a destabilizing element unlikely to respond to his fear-and-greed brand of leadership. Not only was he not the enemy, but he offered a rich opportunity for cooperative action of mutual benefit. He wanted the sanctions against his country lifted and markets for his oil; the United States wanted guaranteed flows of oil and sub rosa help in combating Al Qaeda. Therein lay a potential exchange.

The Rise of Militarized NGOs

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/the-rise-of-militarized-ngos/373074/

Today's conflicts are fought by soldiers masquerading as civilians.
MOISÉS NAÍM JUN 19 2014,

A Mahdi Army fighter loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, in the Iraqi city of Najaf (Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters)

Who invaded Crimea? Civil society. Who has occupied government offices and police headquarters in eastern Ukraine, bringing massive instability to that region? Civil society. Who is fighting the governments of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Nouri al-Malaki in Iraq? Civil society. And who are the colectivosconfronting Venezuelan students who protest against the government? Civil-society activists, of course.

These are the official responses, at any rate, by those who have something to gain from distorting reality. The responses range from blatant lies to subtle untruths, but they are all dishonest. By now, it has been well-documented that Crimea was invaded by a military force that included a large contingent of Russian troops whose uniforms bore no insignias or identifying markings. And Angela Merkel’s warning to Vladimir Putin that these practices constituted a clear violation of the international rules of warfare made little difference. The Kremlin continues to organize, coordinate, and finance the pro-Russian “militants” in eastern Ukraine who remain intent on defying Kiev’s authority.

We’ve seen the same thing in Tehran, Havana, and Caracas, where people who take to the streets to protest their leaders are often confronted by violent groups of civilians posing as common citizens who support the regime. In Iran, they’re called the Basij, or the Organization for the Mobilization of the Oppressed. In Cuba, they’re known as the Rapid Response Brigades, and they routinely dole out severe beatings to critics who dare to publicly express their opposition to the Castros’ dictatorship. This “political technology” has been successfully exported to Venezuela, where the well-trained and armed “civilians” battling opposition groups are called colectivos. Orwell himself couldn’t have imagined names that better obscure the true nature of these associations.They are armed forces who, though wearing the uniform of no country, constitute the frontline of a conflict that has taken more lives than any other this century.

The reality is that these groups, “movements,” and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are appendices of their governments and draw their “activists” from the armed forces, security services, and government militias. They carry out their repressive deeds disguised as “civil society,” in an attempt to mask the behavior of governments that want to avoid being recognized by the international community for what they really are: autocracies that violate global norms, trample human rights, and brutalize their critics. They have even earned their own acronym—GONGOs—for “Government-Organized Non-Governmental Organizations.” Their rise is forcing us to rethink our benign definitions of NGOs and civil society to accommodate armed groups of civilians and even, most provocatively, terrorists.

US could run short on talent to fight cyber-war, study says

By Mark Clayton, Staff writer 

JUNE 19, 2014 

Source Link

The demand for cyber-security experts in the high-paying private sector is creating stiff competition for the best and the brightest and leaving key government positions unfilled. 

Job postings for cyber-security experts are going unfilled in the federal government, a shortfall threatening to undermine US national security by leaving the nation poorly prepared to fight in cyber-space, a new study says.

Demand for cyber-security professionals has leaped across the United States in recent years, spurred by events like the 2007 Russian hacker attack on Estonia, cyber-crime against retailers, and pervasive Chinese cyber-espionage targeting US corporations.

Emergence of such cyber-threats from the shadows has brought fresh fears among CEOs and a race throughout the US economy to snap up the best and the brightest cyber-experts to safeguard America’s critical and corporate networks.

That race – and its soaring salaries for the best qualified – has left the US government, from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to the Pentagon’s new US Cyber Command, scrambling to compete with the private sector for qualified personnel, says the new RAND study “H4CKER5 Wanted: An Examination of the Cybersecurity Labor Market.”

Today the US may have only around 1,000 top-tier cyber-security experts with the specialized security skills needed to function effectively in cyber-space, the study said, citing previous research. Meanwhile, the nation needs maybe 10,000 to 40,000, according to various estimates.

In response, the federal government has tried to prime the pump with a series of “hackathon” style contests to try to interest high school students in getting into the cyber-security field. Events include: US Cyber Challenge, the Cyber Security Treasure Hunt, CyberPatriot, NetWars, and the DC3 (Defense Cyber Crime Center) Digital Forensics Challenge.

Some key agencies like the FBI, National Security Agency (NSA) and Department of Defense also have their own robust in-house cyber workforce programs.

Warplanes: Israeli Air Force Need For Speed

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htairfo/articles/20140620.aspx

June 20, 2014

In an effort to dissuade Hezbollah from again attacking Israel with rockets like it did in 2006, the commander of the Israeli Air Force recently pointed out that because of new technology and weapons the air force can now hit more Hezbollah targets in 24 hours than it did in 33 days (during the 34 day war with Hezbollah in 2006). For Hamas down in Gaza it was pointed out that Israel can now hit in less than 12 hours the number of targets it took seven days to find and attack during the week-long 2008 war with Hamas. This is all part of a technological revolution the air force has been undergoing since the 1990s. Since 2006 those changed have been accelerating. 

Israel already had some formidable intelligence collection capabilities even before 2006. Israel satellites, UAVs and manned recon aircraft to collect data that leads to the identification of enemy bases and weapons storage sites. This, for example, enabled the Israeli Air Force to quickly destroy most of the Hezbollah long range rockets in 2006 and in Gaza in 2008. The few long-range rockets that survived the 2006 strike were used, but this initial attack prevented over a hundred large rockets from hitting targets all over Israel. The Israeli air force publicists gave particular credit to Squadron 100, which flew militarized twin-engine Beechcraft King Air planes, nicknamed Tzufit, crammed with sensors, electronics and five equipment operators. These aircraft are operated by the oldest squadron in the air force. 

The Israeli Air Force demonstrated a lot of changes less than two years after the 2006 war when, in Gaza, dozens of targets taken out within three minutes by Israeli warplanes. That was an impressive example of precision bombing. But when the Israeli ground troops entered Gaza ten days later, other air force innovations were largely invisible to the public. 

Tracking crises across Australia

http://www.research.ibm.com/articles/crisis-tracker.shtml

Using social media to inform and help citizens during disasters

Social media outlets are beating traditional media outlets to the “in-the-moment” information punch. In the US, Hurricane Sandy news traveled faster over Twitter than on television. Live updates from the Arab Spring were on Facebook before traditional news outlets. To systemize these bursts of citizen journalism – and make them available and useful to disaster-affected communities during times of crisis – a team of scientists at IBM Research’s lab in Melbourne is using machine learning and text analytics to automate the collection and presentation of potentially critical information resource.

“Social media is a critical information source in emergency situations, creating the potential for every person on the ground to become a frontline journalist.”

– Jennifer Lai, IBM Research Manager for Intelligent Information Interaction

The Australia team had seen first-hand the limitations of relying solely on websites. The Victoria fires in 2009 were so severe – claiming 173 lives and injuring more than 5,000 people – that queries for updates and news brought down government websites dedicated to covering the disaster. Swinburne University of Technology reported in 2010 that 1,684 tweets about those fires “were laden with actionable factual information which contrasts with earlier claims that tweets are of no value made of mere random personal notes.”

In 2011, working with several universities, they launched the “OzCrisis Tracker” for mining social data including Twitter activity about bushfires, floods and other significant natural events across the continent.

But OzCrisis had limitations exacerbated by the growth in social media. Volunteers were curating tweets by categorizing them into logical events and placing those events on a map. That was no longer viable in a world where 20 million tweets were shared during Hurricane Sandy.

“We needed to eliminate the high dependency on this volunteer interaction and instead, augment the automation of the tool,” said Chris Butler, IBM Research scientist and project team lead.

Separating – and learning from – the noise of disasters

Fast forward to 2013 and an automated version of OzCrisis called Australia Crisis Tracker (ACT).

How Social Media is Impacting the Indian Caste System

Posted by Niladri Bose

June 18 2014

http://www.idgconnect.com/abstract/8415/how-social-media-impacting-indian-caste-system

 

Go to most parts of the country and you will see, even today, people referring to themselves by their castes. In fact, in some ways, the caste system has actually strengthened in the last couple of decades with the introduction of the “Mandal Commission” recommendations, wherein there are now reservations in education institutions and government jobs for people from certain castes and tribes. The government’s justification is that, people from the backward castes are usually economically poorer as well. It’s a politically contentious issue, which nobody is ready to fight.

There has been opposition to this, but still, the Mandal Commission has changed India’s political and social structure. On the positive side, people from some castes and tribes at least have been empowered and have benefited financially as well, albeit at the cost of others.

India’s Caste System Today and the Rural-Urban Divide

One unique aspect about India’s caste system now is the rural-urban divide. With education, modernization and westernization, India’s caste system has generally weakened in recent times. But it’s still there, particularly in the rural and semi-urban areas. It is there in the cities as well, but still, people, particularly the youth, are often seen intermixing. Students are going to the same classes together. Many of them are not all that worried about the caste or tribe of their friends, unless of course it hurts them where it matters the most – admission to premium colleges, or universities, or employment. There are inter-caste marriages, though there is opposition too. However, most people in the country would still marry within their caste.

Five Revolutionary American Weapons of War That Never Happened

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/five-revolutionary-american-weapons-war-never-happened-10716?page=show


These weapons could have altered how American military organizations approached warfighting and procurement. Not all the changes would have been for the best.
Robert Farley

June 22, 2014

Editor’s Note: Please also see previous works by Robert Farley including Will the F-35 Dominate the Skies?, Five Best Bombers of All Time, Top Five Fighter Aircraft of All Time, Five Worst Fighter Aircraft of All Time and the Five Best Submarines of All Time.

Weapons die for all kinds of different reasons. Sometimes they happen at the wrong time, either in the midst of defense austerity, or with the wrong constellation of personnel. Sometimes they fall victim to the byzantine bureaucracy of the Pentagon, or to turf fights between the services. And sometimes they die because they were a bad idea in the first place. For the same reasons, bad defense systems can often survive the most inept management if they fill a particular niche well enough.

This article concentrates on five systems that died, but that might have had transformative effects if they had survived. These transformations would only rarely have changed the course of wars (countries win and lose wars for many reasons besides technology), but rather would have had ripple effects across the entire defense industrial base, altering how our military organizations approached warfighting and procurement. Not all the changes would have been for the best; sometimes programs are canceled for sound reasons.

AH-56 Cheyenne

In the early 1960s, the Army was just beginning to appreciate the value of helicopter aviation. The Army had used helicopters at the end of World War II, and used them extensively in Korea for reconnaissance and evacuation purposes. As the sophistication of the machines grew, however, the Army began to see the prospect for much more advanced helicopters that could conduct a wide variety of missions.

The star of the show was supposed to be the AH-56 Cheyenne, a radical design that combined high speed with punching power. The Cheyenne could escort other helicopters in transport mission, or conduct ground support and attack ops independently. In particular, it contained a magnificent propulsion system that could offer speeds of up to 275 miles per hour.

But the Cheyenne fell victim to its own promise. The technologies that made the Cheyenne possible weren’t yet mature, and the early prototypes suffered from teething problems, leading to a fatal crash. The Air Force hated the whole idea of the Cheyenne, believing that the Army was trying to steal close air support and interdiction missions for itself. The Air Force went so far as to propose a fixed-wing attack aircraft (which would eventually become the A-10) in its effort to kill the program. Finally, the Vietnam War put enormous pressure on the defense budget, both in terms of making it harder to sell particular programs, and in diverting funds to directly support the war effort.

And so the Cheyenne never happened. Although, a few years later, the Army would push forward with the AH-64 Apache. In this sense, the cancelation of the Cheyenne merely delayed an advanced attack helicopter capability. But the Apache was also a much safer machine than the Cheyenne, and going with the more conventional system has undoubtedly limited the horizons of Army aviation.

World War I: The War That Changed Everything

World War I began 100 years ago this month, and in many ways, writes historian Margaret MacMillan, it remains the defining conflict of the modern era.

By
MARGARET MACMILLAN
Updated June 20, 2014


A raiding party from the Scottish Rifles waits for the order to attack, near Arras, France, March 24, 1917. One captain said, "The waiting was always the hardest part of all." National Library of Scotland

A hundred years ago next week, in the small Balkan city of Sarajevo, Serbian nationalists murdered the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary and his wife. People were shocked but not particularly worried. Sadly, there had been many political assassinations in previous years—the king of Italy, two Spanish prime ministers, the Russian czar, President William McKinley. None had led to a major crisis. Yet just as a pebble can start a landslide, this killing set off a series of events that, in five weeks, led Europe into a general war.


The U.S. under President Woodrow Wilson intended to stay out of the conflict, which, in the eyes of many Americans, had nothing to do with them. But in 1917, German submarine attacks on U.S. shipping and attempts by the German government to encourage Mexico to invade the U.S. enraged public opinion, and Wilson sorrowfully asked Congress to declare war. American resources and manpower tipped the balance against the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary, and on Nov. 11, 1918, what everyone then called the Great War finally came to an end.

The cold numbers capture much of the war's horror: more than 9 million men dead and twice as many again wounded—a loss of sons, husbands and fathers but also of skills and talents. Graves in the north of France and Belgium and war memorials across the U.S. bear witness to the 53,000 American soldiers who died. Thousands of civilians died, too, during the war itself, whether of hunger, disease or violence. And then, as the guns were falling silent, a new pestilence struck humanity in the shape of a virulent influenza. As troops returned home, they unwittingly helped carry the disease around the world. It has been estimated that 50 million died.

Through a Soldier's Lens


In World War I, for the first time, some officers and soldiers brought small, hand-held cameras to the battlefields. Images taken by the troops themselves provide insights into their daily lives, generally outside of the battle zones. Lucien Charpeine/europeana1914-18

WILL MODI LOOK AT RUSSIA WITH NEW EYES? – ANALYSIS

Tweets these days often indicate which way the wind is blowing long before it becomes an official policy. The warm manner in which India’s prime minister-designate Narendra Modi responded to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s congratulatory message can well be a harbinger of a new direction in India’s foreign policy.
Tweets these days often indicate which way the wind is blowing long before it becomes an official policy. The warm manner in which India’s prime minister-designate Narendra Modi responded to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s congratulatory message can well be a harbinger of a new direction in India’s foreign policy. In itself it might be a classic case of over-analysis of what is after all just 140 characters. But a few observers who have an uncommon insight into Team Modi insist that the tweet has a complex back story. On April 12, 2014, a seemingly minor incident in the Black Sea caught the attention of policy mandarins in several world capitals. It also caught the attention of Team Modi’s research unit, which duly marked it for the attention of the top boss. The Americans keen to show their support to a beleaguered Ukraine, as also eager not to miss an opportunity to project their power to their East European allies in the immediate Russian neighbourhood, deployed Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Donald Cook (DDG-75) in the Black Sea. The United States Navy (USN) considers the destroyer special, having equipped it with Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System in 2012. The system is considered peerless in protecting ships against approaching enemy missiles and aircraft. On April 12, when the destroyer was in the international waters of the Black Sea it spotted a lone Sukhoi-24 approaching it. The Su-24 is a legacy aircraft practically on the last legs of its life-cycle. But this one was an upgraded version (Su-24M2), and was surprisingly unarmed. In the normal course, there should have been a missile lock on the aircraft by the destroyer. But much to the consternation of the ship’s commanders and crew the Aegis system just couldn’t get a missile lock. Over 90 minutes the lone Su-24M2 made twelve mock bombing passes over the destroyer. The fighter-bomber, it was later revealed, was equipped with the latest Russian counter-electronic warfare suite known in military circles as Khibiny complex (named after a mountain range in Russia’s Kola Peninsula). The audacious provocation elicited a terse response from Pentagon about the “unprofessional conduct [of Russians] in violation of international norms”. Curiously USS Donald Cook was immediately pulled out and berthed at Romania where an interesting statement about the destroyer’s ability to “more than defend itself against any threat” was issued. The geopolitical shifts of power have been quite consistent and visible in the last decade or so. There has been a significant deal of attention on the Chinese economic and military rise and the emergence of Brazil, India and several countries of Southeast Asia and Latin America. What has been marginalised, and often ignored, in all this attention on Asia and Latin America has been the steady rise of the Russian military and technological prowess under the tenure of Putin, and the increasing troubles of the American military establishment with a few fundamental cornerstones of its efforts to retain strategic dominance.

The World's Three Largest Arms Importers All Border One Another

By Jeremy Bender | Business Insider – Fri 20 Jun, 2014

The world's three largest arms importers — India, China, and Pakistan — all share borders with one another, some of which are in dispute. These disagreements have occasionally led to armed conflict, like the ongoing dispute over the status of Kashmir, and the 1962 Sino-Indian war.

These disputes, and a host of other regional factors, are fueling the world's biggest conventional arms race.

The crosshatched sections on the map denote border disputes.

India is currently the world's largest arms importer. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, its weapons imports rose by 111% between the 2004-2008 and the 2009-2013 periods.

From 2009 to 2013, India accounted for 14% of all international arms imports.

India's weapons imports are almost three times larger than that of its neighbors and rivals, Pakistan and China. China and Pakistan each account for an additional 5% of global arms imports. Notably, Pakistan receives 54% of its arms from China.


Screenshot/books.sipri.org

India likely feels the need to arm itself in light of some of the long-simmering tensions it shares with its neighbors. India and Pakistan have taken steps to increase dialogue in recent years. But they have been at each other's throats for almost their entire history as independent nations over the undecided status of Kashmir. The unsettled border has played a large part in the three wars India and Pakistan have so far fought. Subsets of the Pakistani government also support militants who have launched terrorist attacks inside of India, like the deadly 2008 assault on Mumbai.

India's relationship with China is also rocky. The two fought a brief border war in 1962 that China decisively won. Despite the outcome, the two countries continue to lay competing claims over the Indian Himalayan province of Arunachal Pradesh, which China calls South Tibet.

India and China are perhaps natural rivals — emerging superpowers that are right on each other's doorsteps. But India feels specifically threatened by a growing Chinese military presence throughout the Indian Ocean region. China has invested in military installations in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar. Indian General Deepak Kapoor, a former Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, has referred to these installations as China's "string of pearls" surrounding India.

India receives 75% of its arms imports from Russia. These imports in the 2009 to 2013 period have included a nuclear-powered submarine, 90 Su-30 MKI combat aircraft, an aircraft carrier, and 27 MiG-29K jets for use on that aircraft carrier. India is also a partner in Russia's development of a fifth-generation aircraft, the T-50.

Operational Reservations: Considerations for a Total Army Force

Authored by COL John D. Ellis, COL (Ret.) Laura McKnight Mackenzie.

June 19, 2014 

As the Army Reserve Components—the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard—assume an “operational” mission as the force drawdowns in overseas contingency operations occur, the Army senior military and civilian leadership should consider the ramifications and realities of such a mission in what is expected to be a relatively peaceful time. This monograph explores some of these considerations regarding the implementation of the Army Total Force Policy, identifies potential obstacles, and makes recommendations to better engage the “three Armies” in a successful and meaningful reform effort. Throughout, the authors call for significant cultural shifts in thinking about how the Reserve Components are used and integrated into a Total Force.

Infantry: Even Officers Can Play

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htinf/articles/20140620.aspx

June 20, 2014

The U.S. Marine Corps has added instruction on how to operate a RQ-11 Raven UAV to what is taught in the 26 week long Basic School officer course. During these six months all new officers are taught the basics of being a marine officers. It includes a lot of training on infantry combat because all marines are taught that no matter what their regular job they are all basically riflemen (infantry). 

It only takes a few hours to train someone to use the Raven. The controls are based on those found in most video games, meaning most American troops already know a lot about operating Raven before they hit basic training. Adding Raven training to Basic School recognizes the fact that Raven changed the way troops fight and how combat leaders operate. With the bird's eye view of the battlefield, commanders can move their troops more quickly, confident that they won't be ambushed, and often with certain knowledge of where the unseen enemy is. 

The big advantage with Raven is that it’s simple, reliable, and it works. A complete system (controller, spare parts and three UAVs) costs $250,000. The UAV can be quickly taken apart and put into a backpack. It takes off by having the operator start the motor and then throwing it into the air. This can be done from a moving vehicle and the Raven is a popular recon tool for convoys. It lands by coming in low and then turning the motor off. Special Forces troops like to use it at night because the enemy can’t see it and often can’t hear it either. 

U.S. Army troops have been the most frequent users of the Raven and took the lead in developing new tactics for Raven. While the Raven can only stay airborne about an hour per sortie, troops have found that this is enough time to do all sorts of useful work, even when there's no fighting going on. This is most of the time. 

Much of the work on developing Raven tactics took place in Iraq and Afghanistan. In both places the enemy quickly learned to avoid confronting U.S. troops directly (this tends to get you killed). So there was an unceasing effort to set up ambushes, plant mines and roadside bombs and fire rockets or mortars at American bases. All of these activities can be messed with by using Raven. U.S. troops know to think like the enemy and quickly figured out the best ambush positions or places to plant mines or fire rockets. By sending Ravens over these spots periodically the enemy is always in danger of being spotted. The enemy knows that getting spotted by a Raven means an attack from American mortars or helicopter gunships may happen real soon. These mind games, of sneaking around trying to get a shot off at the Americans, is more stressful, and dangerous, if the U.S. troops have Ravens. And most of them do. The army and marines have thousands of Ravens deployed and most combat platoons or convoys have some. 

Reflections on the Long War Part One

In this writing this, I struggled to strike a balance between my own personal reflections and objective reasoning. I desire for these reflections to be of use to practitioners, academics, and laymen alike. And since I am writing about my personal experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, this is a firsthand account. First and third person grammar will be used throughout.

Carl von Clausewitz wrote that “although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.” In my struggle to understand my experiences in the Long War, uncertainty certainly stands out as not only fascinating but also terrifying at times. This, among other reasons, is the primary reason that we as soldiers prepare for war — to limit its precarious nature to insure mission success as well as protect lives.

History has shown that it is natural for those who have participated in war to reflect on what they accomplished, what was happened to others, and what was done to themselves. To consider these things is cathartic for the individual as well as for others who share like feelings or thoughts. War and conflict has always been the subject of much debate and theoretical study. Yet, there are some aspects that only experience can convey about the nature of war. Often, as soldiers we think we know what we are getting into only to be surprised. As this is the beginning of my reflections on the Long War, ambiguity and preparation stood out to me as significant. Since they are bedfellows in the lives of soldiers, I will examine each of these in the context of my experiences in war.
Ambiguity

As with any other conflict, war is ambiguous at least until someone starts shooting at me. I could never really be sure who was bad or good just by looking. I could not even tell by talking with people. They would smile and nod or waggle their head when asked for confirmation or commitment but they were impossible to read. Not until I started to get comfortable around them and vice versa did our units begin to make progress on the ground. Whether they were Iraqis or Afghans, everything was difficult to figure out until I had more time on the ground to sort through who were my friends and who were my enemies, or both at the same time.

I must have met with tribal elders, foreign politicians, contractors, ordinary citizens, security officials, and suspected terrorists. Unfortunately, many of these meetings were unproductive in terms of Western standards. My colleagues and I often left with a sense that nothing was accomplished and often asked “what just happened?” Working through translators contributed to this phenomenon. But by undertaking a persistent presence as well as taking action to bring security to a population that was under threat, the level of violence was gradually reduced. To reduce this ambiguity that all participants face in war, we prepare as best we can.
Preparation

Often as military leaders, we try to do everything we can to insure that our units are prepared for anything they may face when deployed. Where ambiguity and preparation meet the commander must accept risk. Generally, in preparing for deployment training focused on some form of kinetic action — which is where the military’s core strengths lie. Yet, when we arrived on the ground, we found kinetic means was not and could not be the only solution.

I was not ill-prepared to do my job, yet we were fighting a war that was certainly unique to our time. For example, other than their safety, people brought us their problems with inadequate electricity, waste disposal, schooling their children, and building the local economy. In trying to address these niche issues, we were expected and required to learn and implement systems to which we were not necessarily accustomed. For me, results could have come quicker if we had learned from past conflicts.

Looking back, I wish that I had had a better understanding of the Middle Eastern and Central Asian cultures. When broken down to its most fundamental level, it is understanding. It is often said in the military that the war-fighter must learn to think like the enemy. Yet, I posit that it is equally important for the soldier and leader to learn to think like those whom he is trying protect.

We must be able to place ourselves in the shoes of those we are trying to help. This is especially hard for a Westerner to do since ours is a culture and society focused on the self — the individual. It can only be accomplished first through a willingness to understand and secondly through study — either personal or institutional. The US Army’s move to Regionally Aligned Forces (RAF) is a step in the right direction. It will be difficult and it will take time, but based on my experiences I think that it will pay off in the end.

My experiences in the Long War left me with a unique understanding of uncertainty. While fascinating, the military desires to reduce it through preparation and training, but when we miss cultural awareness, we limit ourselves. There is so much I could address about these topics, and I suppose I am not saying anything new. I have found, however, that the nature of war is complex and unforgiving. It should not be entered into lightly.

This writing and any future offerings do not represent an official DoD or USG position. All opinions are my own.

https://medium.com/the-bridge/reflections-on-the-long-war-5f7726ceac17

The scapegoating of General Shinseki

Hugh Gusterson

An anthropologist, Gusterson is a professor of anthropology and sociology at George Mason University. His expertise is in nuclear culture, international security, and the anthropology of science....

Since Eric Shinseki’s resignation as secretary of veterans affairs, I’ve found myself reflecting on who resigns and who does not in Washington. James Clapper lied to a Senate committee about whether the National Security Administration collects data on the phone calls of ordinary Americans, but he is still director of national intelligence. George W. Bush’s defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, misjudged the occupation of Iraq, overruling senior generals (including Eric Shinseki) who told him he had too few troops, but he did not resign until November 2006, three years into the Iraqi insurgency he failed to foresee. Meanwhile, in the wake of a scandal about excessive spending for a General Services Administration conference in Las Vegas, the senior GSA official who signed off on the spending kept his job while Martha Johnson, the agency director who discovered what had happened and sought to investigate, was forced to take the fall for her subordinate. And who can forget Jocelyn Elders, the Surgeon-General who told an AIDS conference that masturbation might be a safe alternative to risky sex and was forced to resign in the name of sexual decency by a president who we now know was accepting oral sex from a young intern?

There is a rich anthropological literature on scapegoats. Scapegoats are people (or sometimes animals) who are held responsible for calamities they did not cause, and are sacrificed. In the Old Testament the Israelites piled their sins on the head of a goat, which was then driven out into the wilderness. The ancient Greeks did the same, but substituted a beggar or cripple for the goat. Anthropologists of Africa report the hunting and killing of “witches” who were held responsible for plagues and famines. In the words of the great anthropological philosopher Rene Girard, “The real source of victim substitutions is the appetite for violence that awakens in people when anger seizes them and when the true object of their anger is untouchable.”

Eric Shinseki is a modern American scapegoat. He was forced to resign as secretary of veterans affairs after it came to light that VA administrators around the country often gave the appearance of meeting the agency goal of giving veterans medical appointments within two weeks by keeping shadow waiting lists. The controversy centered on a VA hospital in Phoenix where 1,700 veterans awaiting medical care were kept off the books and real waiting times were 115 days, not the 24 days administrators reported. At least 40 veterans died while waiting to be seen by doctors. 

The VA is a massive bureaucracy with 280,000 employees serving eight million veterans. Shinseki reportedly worked grueling hours, meeting regularly with the directors of every hospital in his far-flung bureaucratic empire. He was much beloved by his staff. Like Pentagon generals persuaded by body count numbers inflated by their subordinates that they were winning in Vietnam, Shinseki believed the numberscoming to him from his bureaucracy and thought his agency was improving its care for the veterans in his charge. 

When the scandal broke, many in Congress called Shinseki out for weak leadership or criticized a systemic lack of integrity among VA bureaucrats. But VA administrators were just doing what those at the bottom of a bureaucracy always do when confronted with unfair metrics of accountability: Unable to change the system, they fake the numbers. Just as inner city teachers and principals fake their students’ test scores so they won’t lose their jobs under the No Child Left Behind regime, just as mortgage processors who wanted to keep their jobs faked foreclosure documentation in order to hit their quotas, just as junior officers inflated body counts in Vietnam so they wouldn’t be punished, so low-level VA officials responded to impossible demands for efficiency with fantasy book-keeping.

If Congress wanted to find the true causes of the scandal, it had only to look in the mirror. Congress put the VA in an impossible situation by not providing the resources the agency needed to handle the massive influx of veterans wounded in the wars Congress had voted to authorize. Between 2011 and 2014 demand for VA medical appointments increased 50 percent, while it was only given resources for a 9 percent increase in hiring of doctors. Each doctor was supposed to care for no more than 1,200 patients, but the average VA doctor had 2,000. 

Meanwhile, at the same time that the VA struggled to deal with an onslaught of 650,000 soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan, its facilities were already staggering under the escalating demands of Vietnam veterans. As the Harvard health economist Linda Bilmes points out, veterans’ health care needs typically peak 30 to 40 years after a war ends; the demands of Vietnam veterans were just reaching their peak as an influx of new veterans with amputations, traumatic brain injuries and PTSD stretched resources to the breaking point. 

The problem was not one of leadership or integrity, then, but of simple arithmetic. In the words of the Washington Post’s David Farenthold, “There were too many of the veterans. There were too few of the doctors.” Even a General Eisenhower or a General MacArthur would not have prevailed against those odds.

Two contending bills are working their way through Congress to remedy the situation.

The Senate bill, co-sponsored by the improbable duo of Bernie Sanders, Democrat of Vermont, and Arizona Republican John McCain, would increase the VA budget by $500 million, make it easier to fire VA administrators, and allow veterans to get private medical care if the VA cannot treat them in a timely manner. The House bill, sponsored by Jeff Miller, a Florida Republican, does not provide the extra funding, but does make it easier to fire administrators without appeal and move patients to private care. If the House language prevails, we will have learned nothing.

The social psychologist Lee Ross has written compellingly about what he calls “the fundamental attribution error.” When explaining an outcome, people give too much weight to individuals’ personal qualities and too little to the force of situations. Even if car crashes occur repeatedly in the same spot, bad drivers are blamed; although heroin epidemics go hand in hand with economic downturns, we just blame heroin addicts for their moral failings, and so on. The fundamental cause of the VA scandal is the situation, not the person: We gave an agency too few resources for its mission. Changing the leader will not change the situation. Nor will firing lower-level bureaucrats. That is just minor-league scapegoating. When two thirds of VA facilities are doctoring their numbers, the problem is not individual administrators’ lack of integrity. 

The only solution is to appropriate more money. Given that the health-care costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will not peak until between 2040 and 2050, we will have to appropriate a lot more money for a very long time if we want to stay true to our word as a society that no soldier gets left behind. Or we can look away from what we have done and pretend that it can be fixed for free.

http://thebulletin.org/scapegoating-general-shinseki7244