Many of the Weapons in Russia’s Nuclear and Conventional Arsenal Depend on Components Built In the Ukraine

Procurement: Ukraine Has A Secret Weapon

strategypage.com, September 17, 2014

One of the generally unmentioned side effects of the ongoing crisis in Ukraine is the damage done to Russian weapons production because of their dependence on Ukraine. Although only 4.4 percent of Russian imports are from Ukraine many of those imports are crucial for the Russian armaments industry and the current modernization program for the Russian armed forces.

These industrial links date back to Soviet times and many remained active after the USRR collapsed in 1991. In many areas Russian arms producers, and users, are highly dependent on Ukrainian industry and most of these items cannot be quickly or cheaply replaced by Russian made substitutes. This is mainly due to insufficient production capacity of Russian industries. The most severe shortages occur in key areas. Prominent examples include IBCMs, air-to-air missiles, aviation and engines for warships.

For example over 50 percent of the Russian nuclear arsenal, including 80 percent of some Russian IBCMs, like the R-36M (SS-16 Satan), were dependent on Ukrainian components. These missiles were produced and serviced in Ukraine. Even some newer designs like the RS-18B (SS-19) and the mobile RS-12M (Topol or SS-25) are manufactured in Russia but their guidance systems come from Ukraine. Another example is the documentation and guidance systems of the SS-18 ICBM, as well as the maintenance of these items. This situation poses a serious threat to both the effectiveness and operational capacity of the Russian nuclear arsenal.

Then there are the Ukrainian made guidance systems used in Russian air-to-air missiles. This includes the infrared (heat seeking) guidance systems for short-range R-73 and medium-range R-27T. These missiles are the main armament for MiG-29, Su-27, Su-30 and Su-35 fighters.

Security Challenges of Independent Scotland

By Dan Mahaffee

September 12, 2014

Once a political improbability, the voices of independence seem to grow stronger and stronger in Scotland. As the Scots prepare to go to the polls Sept. 18, questions about Scottish independence and U.S. national security remain unresolved. While the vote will ultimately be a display of Scottish self-determination, an independent Scotland could present challenges to what has been one of the longest and most productive security partnerships in history.

The special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom — not withstanding a certain White House cake on Twitter a few weeks ago — has been the bedrock of transatlantic security for most of the 20th century through World War II and the Cold War, as well as the shifting sands of the post-Cold War and post-9/11 eras.

Of all the factors now being discussed by leaders in London and Edinburgh, it is the British armed forces and security services that benefit the most from the geographical and financial advantages of the union, as well as the talented personnel from throughout the British Isles. 

The United Kingdom is a steadfast partner in the NATO alliance. Even with significant budgetary pressure, Britain is one of the few countries that still reaches the recommended 2 percent of GDP threshold for military spending, and, with France, it remains one of the few nations able to join the United States in conducting significant expeditionary operations. As members of the “Five Eyes,” the United States and United Kingdom — alongside Australia, Canada, and New Zealand — monitor a chaotic world. American and British law enforcement work hand-in-hand to confront terrorism and crime.

Should Scotland break away from the United Kingdom, could the United States maintain this close of a security relationship with an independent Scotland? What would be the potential vulnerabilities opened by an independent Scotland? And would the remaining United Kingdom be able to serve in such close partnership? As polls shift in Scotland toward independence, these are questions that American security planners need to consider in greater detail.

The political leaders of the Scottish independence movement, the Scottish National Party (SNP), have a checkered history in terms of NATO participation. It wasn’t until 2012 that the SNP finally voted to ditch the anti-NATO element of its platform, and there is still significant opposition to NATO among the SNP grassroots. Should an independent Scotland seek NATO membership, it would have to reconcile its demands for nuclear disarmament with NATO agreements to deploy nuclear weapons.

America Needs Innovation, Not Political Stunts

By BING WEST 

September 14, 2014 

By SEN. MARCO RUBIO 

By HOWARD J. SHATZ 

By RICH LOWRY 

Newspapers in the States were reporting the death struggle gripping Sangin. The 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment was taking more casualties than any other battalion in the ten-year war. 3rd Platoon had left the States with 52 men; of those, 34 remained, plus 16 replacements. One statistic said it all: One million steps. Each marine walked about two and a half miles a day on patrol. That totaled one million steps in his seven-month deployment, never knowing when he would be shot or blown up.

Garcia kept his distance as the marines fell into a loose line. I noticed the tattered photomap attached to his left hand like a wedding band—the lifeline for calling in fires. At night, he probably used it as a pillow. On patrol, you’d have to cut off his fingers to pry it loose.

The patrol was heading north to sector P8Q, 40 acres of open fields and thick tree lines dotted by a walled compounds and a mosque that sheltered the fighters coming in from Pakistan. The patrol’s mission was to walk for a couple of miles, avoiding mines while waiting to be shot at, hoping in return to light up the shooter. The generals talked about benevolent counterinsurgency, drinking tea with elders and persuading the Pashtun tribes, hurtling headlong into the 9th Century, to support the government. The grunts in 3rd Platoon knew nothing about that. They lost men and killed men. 

The Name of the Fight

AMY DAVIDSON

“Mr. President, everybody is asking in this country, are we or are we not at war?” a reporter asked Harry Truman at a White House press conference on June 29, 1950. It was a reasonable question: two days earlier, in response to a swift, unexpected advance of North Korean troops, Truman had ordered American forces to South Korea. In keeping with the rules of the time, the reporters asked the President for permission to print his answer verbatim. “The Chief Executive responded that he would allow the news men to use in quotes: ‘We are not at war,’ ” the Times noted. One of the reporters then asked if “police action under the United Nations” would be a more appropriate phrase. Truman said that that sounded right. The “police action” lasted three years (or longer, by some measures; there are still American troops in South Korea), and the term was eventually retired as a label for what Presidents don’t want to call wars.

Last Wednesday night, in a televised address from the White House, President Barack Obama presented his strategy for how to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS. “We will not get dragged into another ground war,” he declared. His plan calls for air strikes in two countries, a multinational coalition, and the deployment of four hundred and seventy-five more service members to Iraq, but, he said, those troops “will not have a combat mission.” They will execute a “counterterrorism campaign.”

That campaign seemed to both swell and contract as the President described it. He called ISIS a “small group of killers.” They are certainly killers: they have murdered their way across northern Iraq and Syria and beheaded two American journalists. But “small” is, perhaps, a less apt term for a force estimated to number close to twenty thousand fighters, unless it was meant as an expression of dismay at the group’s seizure of an outsized share of the world’s attention. The President had decided to reëngage the American military in Iraq now, he said, because of the “unique” threat that ISIS posed. At the same time, he emphasized that the new strategy wasn’t really so novel; such operations were already part of our routine, a regular exercise that “we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years.”

3 QUESTIONS ABOUT THE FUTURE OF CYBER WARFARE

BY SANDRA

“We’re not creative enough when we imagine cyber warfare,” F-Secure Security Advisor Sean Sullivan recently told me. “It’s not kinetic explosions. It could be a guy whose crimeware business has dried up and is looking for new business.”

Over the last week, F-Secure Labs has taken a look at attacks from the “Energetic Bear” hacking group, Havex, which targets the energy sector, and now CosmicDuke, which is aimed at targets in Ukraine, Poland, Turkey, and Russia.

The goal of these attacks seems to be espionage or gathering information up for a buyer, which could be a government. But the methods don’t match the precision and massive investment of manhours that went into an attack like Stuxnet, which was designed to take down Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

“They rely on plausible deniability and using resources that don’t seem to be created specifically for the task,” Sean said. “It matches the modular methodology of what we conventionally think of as crimeware.”

“You look at one element and it looks like crimeware,” said F-Secure Senior Researcher Timo Hirvonen, who wrote the CosmicDuke analysis. “You look at it from a different angle and you say, ‘I’ve never seen it aimed like that before.'”

“The conventional wisdom is that anything related to cyber warfare will be shiny and new,” Sean said. These attacks instead suggest “semi-professionalism”.

Here are three questions Sean is pondering in the wake these attacks:

What do we mean when we say state-sponsored?

“Cyber warfare models real life,” Sean said. “Some countries have a massive cyber intelligence infrastructure that works from the top down. Others seem to have a more grassroots origin, co-opting existing technologies that seem to be built on existing crimeware.”

He wonders if state-focused campaigns are using malware that isn’t necessarily state-sponsored. “Countries who use troops with black masks and no insignias standing on a peninsula may have the same kind of thing going online.”

Opportunistic and pragmatic governments may be paying people to co-opting technology that exist for international espionage purposes.

He suggests the goals of such attacks may fit into Sun Tzu’s advice from The Art of War: know your enemy.

A vote to watch in Scotland

PARVATHI MENON

16 Sep, 2014 

Source Link

ReutersThe 'Yes' campaign's salient feature is its tranformation from being a movement solely of Scottish nationalism to one that is characterised by a demand for genuine and radical social democracy. Picture shows 'Yes' campaigners outside the BBC Scotland Headquarters in Glasgow.

The positive momentum generated by the ‘Yes’ campaign demanding Scottish independence is winning hearts and minds, and perhaps even the race

“But if you unscotch us you will find us damned mischievous Englishmen” — Sir Walter Scott in a letter to the British parliamentarian J.W. Croker in 1826.

More than 300 years after the Act of Union bound Scotland and Wales to Britain in 1707, the Scottish people are going to decide if they want out of the United Kingdom, or remain within it but under expanded powers of self-rule. The September 18 referendum — in which nearly 4.3 million Scottish residents will answer the question “Should Scotland be an independent country?” — will mark a historic turning point regardless of whether the vote is “yes” or “no.”

From just a 25 per cent approval rating in a poll taken soon after the closing ceremony of the London Olympic Games in 2012, the “Yes” campaign has built its constituency steadily, reaching 39 per cent in August this year. By September, “Yes” support jumped to 49 per cent, and is at present neck-to-neck with “No.” An ICM/Guardian poll says 42 per cent will vote no to 40 per cent for yes, with 17 per cent undecided yet. The undecided will clinch the outcome of the referendum. Survey data suggest that the 65-plus and 16-24 age groups are polling for the Union, and the poor for independence, as they have nothing to lose.

Consequences of Yes and No

The “Yes” campaign comprises the Scottish National Party (SNP), Labour for Independence, the Green Party, the Scottish Left’s Radical Independence Campaign, and many independent campaign organisations such as Common Weal, the National Collective, Women for Independence and Lawyers for Independence. Its supporters include celebrities like Sir Sean Connery and fellow Hollywood actor Alan Cumming, film director Ken Loach, Scotland’s national poet Liz Lochhead, and comedian Frankie Boyle.

The “No” campaign includes the official Conservative/Lib-Dem/Labour “Better Together” coalition, along with Unionist groups, and the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). It has a large celebrity backing including author J. K. Rowling, and a majority of newspapers and media.

In the event of a “Yes” vote, a new country will emerge from a democratic process that has few parallels in recent times. While the contours of the alternative political paradigm envisaged by the campaign and its workability in an independent Scotland are still hazy, the campaign has won popular support for a sharp critique of Westminster policy and governance. A “Yes” vote will have profound implications for movements for autonomy and independence throughout Europe — and beyond.

The consequences of a “No” vote will be transformative too. The major political parties backing the Better Together campaign have promised substantial devolution with the Labour Party, which has lost a big section of its support in Scotland to the pro-Independence side, offering to devolve income tax, social security and the work programme, not just for Scotland but for Wales as well.

Der Spiegel Article on NSA and GCHQ Accessing the Data Networks of Deutsche Telekom

Der Spiegel

September 14, 2014

According to top-secret documents from the NSA and the British agency GCHQ, the intelligence agencies are seeking to map the entire Internet, including end-user devices. In pursuing that goal, they have broken into networks belonging to Deutsche Telekom.

When it comes to choosing code names for their secret operations, American and British agents demonstrate a flare for creativity. Sometimes they borrow from Mother Nature, with monikers such as “Evil Olive” and “Egoistic Giraffe.” Other times, they would seem to take their guidance from Hollywood. A program called Treasure Map even has its own logo, a skull superimposed onto a compass, the eye holes glowing in demonic red, reminiscent of a movie poster for the popular “Pirates of the Caribbean” series, starring Johnny Depp.

Treasure Map is anything but harmless entertainment. Rather, it is the mandate for a massive raid on the digital world. It aims to map the Internet, and not just the large traffic channels, such as telecommunications cables. It also seeks to identify the devices across which our data flows, so-called routers.

Furthermore, every single end device that is connected to the Internet somewhere in the world — every smartphone, tablet and computer — is to be made visible. Such a map doesn’t just reveal one treasure. There are millions of them.

The breathtaking mission is described in a Treasure Map presentation from the documents of the former intelligence service employee Edward Snowden which SPIEGEL has seen. It instructs analysts to “map the entire Internet — Any device, anywhere, all the time.”

Treasure Map allows for the creation of an “interactive map of the global Internet” in “near real-time,” the document notes. Employees of the so-called “FiveEyes” intelligence agencies from Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which cooperate closely with the American agency NSA, can install and use the program on their own computers. One can imagine it as a kind of Google Earth for global data traffic, a bird’s eye view of the planet’s digital arteries.

Battlefield Map

In addition to monitoring one’s own networks as well as those belonging to “adversaries,” Treasure Map can also help with “Computer Attack/Exploit Planning.” As such, the program offers a kind of battlefield map for cyber warfare.

The New York Times reported on the existence of Treasure Map last November.What it means for Germany can be seen in additional material in the Snowden archive that SPIEGEL has examined.

Treasure Map graphics don’t just provide detailed views of German cable and satellite networks. Red markings also reveal to agents which carriers and internal company networks FiveEyes agencies claim to have already accessed. Of particular interest from the German perspective are two “Autonomous Systems” (AS) — networks — marked in red. They are labeled Deutsche Telekom AG and Netcologne, a Cologne-based provider.

The legend for the graphics in question explains the meaning behind the red markings: “Red Core Nodes: SIGINT Collection access points within AS.” SIGINT refers to signals intelligence. In other words, networks marked with a red dot are under observation.

Regional provider Netcologne operates its own fiber-optic network and provides telephone and Internet services to over 400,000 customers. The formerly state-owned company Telekom, of which the German government still owns a 31.7 percent stake, is one of the dozen or so international telecommunications companies that operate global networks, so-called Tier 1 providers. In Germany alone, Telekom provides mobile phone services, Internet and land lines to 60 million customers.

According to the logic of the undated Treasure Map documents, that would mean that the NSA and its partner agencies are perhaps not only able to monitor the networks of these companies and the data that travels through them, but also the end devices of their customers. Where exactly the NSA gained access to the companies’ networks is not made clear in the graphics. The red-marked AS of Deutsche Telekom by itself includes several thousand routers worldwide.

'Completely Unacceptable'

Tactical Cyber: How to Move Forward

by Andrew Metcalf and Christopher Barber

September 14, 2014

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/tactical-cyber-how-to-move-forward

Cyberspace operations, both defensive and offensive, captured the attention of many pundits, military professionals, and interested observers. Their attention has increased focus on the viability of military operations in cyberspace, specifically at the tactical and operational levels. Some argue cyberspace will cause transformational change to warfare, while others argue cyber operations are more likely to evolve into the canon of older, traditional military means. This paper argues from the latter viewpoint, but focuses on the obstacles and opportunities inherent in providing timely cyberspace effects to tactical level commanders. There is currently a lack of literature and thinking on tactical cyberspace employment relative to strategic, and this paper argues for more focus on solving the issues presented by it in order to prepare for potential adversaries who are certainly experimenting with tactical cyber operations now.

In September, 2013 issue of Marine Corps Gazette, Maj Paul Stokes presented an argument for a Marine Expeditionary Brigade cyber warfare cell.[i] Maj Stokes added to a growing number of voices calling for tactical employment of cyber capabilities. He envisioned a cyber unit capable of supporting MAGTF commanders with timely and relevant cyber operations. The cyber warfare cell was an excellent idea but the article failed to address the significant practical and policy challenges with employing cyber capabilities at the tactical level. Without squarely addressing these limits at the start of any discussion, tactical cyber will remain a developing capability more risk at from over selling than from under delivering. This article seeks to clarify the issues and practical limits with cyber capability use at the tactical level, while underscoring Maj Stokes call for increased development of viable capabilities that can be tested and trained for. Without experimentation now, the United States risks being at a disadvantage in the future conflicts where adversaries are likely to employ cyber capabilities at every level of war.

Except for a few small efforts, like DARPA’s Plan X[ii], cyber development within the DoD and the U.S. has focused on targets and capabilities at the strategic or national level. [iii], [iv] This focus has left a void during planning for cyber integration into military operations. This gap is particularly acute for the Marine Corps, where plans and capabilities are focused at the tactical level of war.[v]

As a result, during cyber focused exercises like Cyber Flag[vi], there has been a serious attempt to support tactical warfighting but with limited success. Cyber is being integrated to some degree in a growing number of exercises, but not without a struggle during exercise design to come up with realistic scenarios where a national capability for cyber provides effective results for a tactical commander. In exercises where cyber is employed, this struggle usually is overcome by scripting scenarios with white carded results baked into the exercise. Examples include a tactical force calling for fires to be delivered by a cyber capability when the capability has had extensive and high level vetting and approval prior to execution at the tactical level, or the fires require detailed intelligence work to be done before execution is possible. For specialized or small-scale operations with significant high-level interest, these assumptions may be realistic. In the dynamic battlespace of conventional warfighting, the assumption that all the “homework” will be done, or even can be done, remains to be proven.

ISIS Jumping from Account to Account, Twitter Trying to Keep Up

https://www.recordedfuture.com/isis-twitter-activity/

Analysis Summary

ISIS supporters will create a new account, usually under a very similar name, almost immediately after their profile is suspended by Twitter. The new user handle is then promoted by other ISIS-related Twitter accounts.

Despite Twitter’s efforts to shut down accounts, the number of users that talk favorably about ISIS since August 20, 2014 (post-release of the James Foley video) is still quite large at over 27,000 accounts.

Recorded Future’s sentiment and network link analysis can identify Twitter accounts that belong to the same user.

Over the past few months, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has quickly become the most feared terrorist organization in the world. One of their most effective strategies for spreading terror globally is their savvy application of social media.

Almost every organization around the world employs social media to build brand awareness. It’s convenient, free, and offers easy access to a large number of people. So it’s no surprise ISIS has become a sophisticated user of platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to recruit and spread propaganda. Their use of Twitter-integrated apps such as Fajer Al Bashaer (Dawn of Good Omens/Tidings) is a prime example.

As a result, social media websites attempt to shut down accounts that violate their content policy. For example, The Twitter Rules state:

Violence and Threats: You may not publish or post direct, specific threats of violence against others.

Unlawful Use: You may not use our service for any unlawful purposes or in furtherance of illegal activities. International users agree to comply with all local laws regarding online conduct and acceptable content.

However, ISIS still succeeds at spreading its message. So, how do they do this?

Investigating Twitter Activity Related to ISIS

Of course, Twitter is only one of many services used by ISIS. Others include YouTube, Facebook, Tumblr, Scribd, and JustPaste.it. For this analysis we’ll focus on Twitter only.

Recorded Future collects and organizes hundreds of thousands of public web sources including social media, blogs, forums, news, etc. We used our system to identify over 60,000 social media authors, on Twitter in particular, who discuss ISIS and their violent activities in a favorable way. From there, we ranked those Twitter user handles to identify the top six (6) that appear to most closely mimic ISIS’s official pronouncements.

Some First Principles of American Military Strategy

Source Link

This post was provided by Aaron Bazin and Dan Sukman, US Army strategists. The views expressed in this piece are theirs alone and do not represent the US Army or the Department of Defense.

If the ability communicate complex ideas in an easily understood way is a valuable skill to the strategic thinker, then first principles offer one possible point of departure from which to begin any discussion on strategy. A few months ago, we posed a question on various strategy-related email chains and Facebook pages asking interested parties what the first principles of military strategy were. We got numerous responses; some humorous, some vitriolic, but all very interesting.

Development of a first principle is akin to boiling down information to uncover the elemental truth that lies within. We culled through the responses and necked down the subject to consider only ‘American’ military strategy to add further clarity and context. Then we tried to synthesize, combine, and distill each one down to the core of its essence. Our final list includes eight, but there are undoubtedly many, many more. We offer the outline of the first principles below for your consideration:

Problem Statement: What are the first principles of American military strategy?

Thesis: America is successful when it aligns the use of force with first principles that reflect the essence of its national character. These first principles could include:

1) Have a Strategy. America is successful when it clearly defines success in terms of ends, ways, means, and risk. Failure occurs when policymakers have tactical fixation, lack as unifying vision, or cannot define achievable goals (e.g. McNamara and body counts). Americans love to win; therefore strategy must define what winning means.

2) American Ideals Matter. Fear, honor, and interest drive strategic decisions. The U.S. employs its military force to fight for its core interests; namely security, freedom, and economic prosperity.

3) Align National Will, Policy, and Military Strategy.Effective strategy making and execution by the U.S. requires a strong civilian-military relationship based in mutual respect and trust. Civilian leaders must find the right military leaders to achieve policy goals (e.g., Lincoln–Grant, FDR–Eisenhower). Likewise, policy goals should align with the depth and level of commitment of the American people.

4) Embark Only on Just Wars, and Then Fight Them Justly.The American people and the world will hold U.S. leaders accountable for taking the nation to war for the wrong reasons (e.g. Tonkin Gulf, Iraq WMD) and for fighting war in an unacceptable way (e.g. My Lai, Abu Ghraib).

5) Lead a Coalition, but Remain Ready to Act Alone.Successful unilateral action is possible in the short-term or covertly. Partners add legitimacy, diversity, and provide strategic access essential to any long-term vision (e.g. WWII, Iraq’s coalition of the willing, Libya, ISAF).

6) Remember that Strategy is Found in What is Funded.Money is the sinews of war. Any strategy or plan without funding is a mere hallucination (e.g. lack of U.S. follow through to Mujahedeen and Pakistan following Soviet-Afghan war).

7) Admit When a Strategy is Not Working and Change.Conflict is volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous and characterized by fog, friction, and chance. Policymakers must have the ability to assess when a strategy is not working and change accordingly (e.g. Iraq surge).

8) Change institutions in peace to win the next war. During conflict, overcoming the enemy equals success. Absent conflict, the ability of military institutions to change determines success (e.g. officer education prior to WWII, U.S. Army’s “Big Five” and AirLand Battle doctrine following Vietnam).

These are only some of the principles of American military strategy. This list is not comprehensive, and one could make academically defensible arguments for the inclusion of many others. Also, a risk of first principles is that actors that hold a belief too tightly in can become dogma, which could lead to hubris and poor decisions. Additionally, these first principles may be too simplistic for the well-educated strategist interested in the many nuances of strategic thinking.

Even with these shortfalls, first principles can help a strategist determine the “so what” bridging understanding with application and creation. The depth of strategic thought is daunting and is often difficult to explain. We’d be interested if you find value in these…and if you have first principles that we are missing.

A precarious balance: Preserving the right mix of conventional and special operations forces

Phillip Lohaus | American Enterprise Institute

September 08, 2014

Source Link

Key Points 

Special operations forces are the military’s innovators; conventional forces are the military’s amplifiers. These are complementary capabilities. 

History reveals that the relationship between conventional and special operations forces is cyclical and governed by two primary factors: a competition for resources and a lack of understanding between the two kinds of forces. 

Current plans to expand US Special Operations Command threaten to repeat this cyclical pattern, creating a dangerous imbalance. 

To maximize the effectiveness of both conventional and special operations forces, their roles must be carefully delineated, giving maximum flexibility to the overall force. 

As the military’s innovators, special operations forces should maintain responsibility for direct-action missions and covert and clandestine foreign military assistance and should establish a mechanism to train conventional forces in the art of the indirect approach. 

As the military’s amplifiers, the conventional force should take responsibility for certain missions currently assigned to special operations forces, such as foreign internal defense, most psychological operations, and civil affairs. 

Executive Summary

American special operations forces (SOF) are in the midst of a golden age. From references in pop culture to commendations from the White House, praise for America's quiet professionals has become anything but quiet.

Such adoration is well-deserved, but underlying SOF's newfound popularity, questions remain as to how they should be employed in the future. When should they lead conventional forces, and when should they act in a supporting role? How might we apply the counterinsurgency lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan to a conventional conflict? Above all, should SOF retain all of their current responsibilities, or should the tip of the metaphorical spear be sharpened to allow SOF to focus on the tactics and techniques that only they can bring to the battlefield?

Towards an Asian century of prosperity

Xi Jinping 

September 17, 2014 

Progress has been made in the negotiations on the boundary question, and the two sides have worked together to maintain peace and tranquillity in the border area. Picture shows the India-China border in Arunachal Pradesh. Photo: AP 

Xi Jinping, President of the People's Republic of China 

The combination of the world’s factory and the world’s back office will produce the most competitive production base, writes Xi Jinping, President of China 

My first visit to this ancient and magic land was 17 years ago, a time when the Indian economy was undergoing reform and beginning to show new vitality in growth. The market was booming in Mumbai, the economic centre. Bangalore was becoming increasingly famous as India’s Silicon Valley. And Bollywood movies and yoga were popular throughout the world. Its people were full of expectations and the ancient civilisation was rejuvenated. 

Now 17 years later, I am about to once again visit India, an enchanting and beautiful land that has captured world attention. India is an emerging economy and a big developing country. It is Asia’s third largest economy and the world’s second largest exporter of software and agriculture products. A member of the United Nations, the G20, the BRICS and other organisations, India is playing an increasingly important role in the regional and international arena. The “Story of India” has spread far and wide. With the new government coming into office, a new wave of reform and development has been sweeping across India, greatly boosting the confidence of the Indian people and attracting keen international interest in its opportunities. 

Progress in relations 

Relations between China and India have made significant progress in the new century. The strategic and cooperative partnership for peace and prosperity has been established. China has become India’s largest trading partner, with their bilateral trade volume increasing from less than US$3 billion early this century to nearly US$70 billion. Mutual visits reached 8,20,000 last year. We have had close coordination and cooperation on climate change, food security, energy security and other global issues and upheld the common interests of our two countries as well as the developing world as a whole. Progress has been made in the negotiations on the boundary question, and the two sides have worked together to maintain peace and tranquillity in the border area. China-India relations have become one of the most dynamic and promising bilateral relations in the 21st century. 

Our bilateral relations have reached where they are today as a result of the following efforts: we have deepened mutual trust by strengthening strategic dialogue and enhancing political confidence; we have brought more benefits to each other by expanding the areas of cooperation and making the pie of common interests bigger; we have forged closer friendship by encouraging more people-to-people exchanges and cementing popular support for our bilateral relations; and we have treated each other with sincerity by respecting and accommodating each other’s concerns and properly managing problems and differences. 

Crucial stage of reform 

Obama’s Syrian dilemma

Vijay Prashad 

September 17, 2014 

Syria provides no easy answers. This time, IS knows that the U.S. will not send massive troop deployments into Syrian territory and has signalled that it does not care about international norms and western reaction. It recognises that the West has its hands tied 

Drawn into a confrontation with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State (IS) by the execution of western journalists and aid workers, United States President Barack Obama asks his bombers to start their engines. Domestic political entanglements make anything more than aerial strikes hard to promote: the U.S. public is exhausted by the long War on Terror. Mr. Obama, unlike Mr. George W. Bush, is too suave for braggadocio. He tried to downgrade the “War on Terror” to “Overseas Contingency Operations,” but this did not have the necessary ring for public opinion. Like Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama has sought a Coalition of the Willing, but unlike Mr. Bush he will not involve U.S. ground troops. There will be “boots on the ground,” but the feet in them will be local. 

The Iraq campaign is clearer than the Syrian one. Thus far U.S. close air support has assisted the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga and the Iraqi military. Political problems in Iraq have been swept under the carpet with the removal of Mr. Nouri al-Maliki and the installation of his Dawa Party comrade, Haider al-Abadi. This is more theatre than actual change, but it provides Mr. Obama with the opportunity to speak of new beginnings. 

Little advance 

Syria provides no easy answers. In Syria, IS faces three adversaries: Kurdish fighters, the Syrian government and an assortment of the Syrian opposition. Of these three, the U.S. will not overtly cooperate with the first two. Mr. Obama’s commitment to the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad means that he has rejected the calls from Damascus for a coordinated strategy against the Islamic State. Mr. Assad has mainly ignored the IS, allowing it to fester in the northern reaches as he had recalled his armies to defend Damascus and the western coastline. With the Syrian Army tied down with the defence of Syria’s heartland, the IS has been able to concentrate its firepower against the other rebels. 

The most capable force to tackle the IS has been the Kurdish fighters of the YPG (Syria) and the PKK (Turkey), the latter considered by the U.S. and Turkey as a terrorist organisation. Turkey is loathe to join the U.S. mission in Syria not because the Islamic State holds Turkish hostages but for two other reasons. First, the anti-IS campaign would strengthen the prestige of the PKK and the YPG. Inside Turkey, the government of Recip Tayyip Erdog˘an has conducted negotiations with the imprisoned leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan; but this “Imrali Process” has not provided sufficient confidence to allow the PKK a free run in Syria. Second, Turkey’s government remains committed to the overthrow of Mr. Assad. Mr. Erdog˘an’s pan-Islamism is in line with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, who also rejected the Obama plan unless “the first bullet is directed at Assad’s head.” Turkey is loathed to close its border.Jihadis continue to stream across the border, while injured IS fighters rush to hospitals in Urfa (Turkey) for free medical care. 

Head Strong How Psychology is Revolutionizing War

by Michael D. Matthews, Ph.D.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/head-strong/201408/psychology-and-less-lethal-military-strategy

Psychology and a Less Lethal Military Strategy

A new approach to war and peace.

Published on August 31, 2014 by Michael D. Matthews, Ph.D. in Head Strong

In the two World Wars of the 20th century raw kinetic military firepower was essential to victory. In World War I, rapid advances in chemistry led to more powerful traditional weapons, including explosives and nerve gas. Physics, of course, played a key role in World War II. It produced the atomic bomb – the use of which hastened the end of the war. Arguably, the innovation of useful radar systems – also a product of physics – proved to be a decisive factor in the Allied victory over the Axis powers. In any case, victory was obtained through the mass use of kinetic energy, from rifle fire to the atomic bomb. The enemy nations surrendered when their military, industrial base, and in many cases their cities, lay in ruin.

Psychology played a key role in these wars, of course. It was psychologists who developed the aptitude tests that the military so desperately needed during World War I to assign new soldiers to ever more complicated military jobs. In World War II, psychologists refined these selection tests, clinical psychologists enhanced the understanding of how to treat psychological battle injuries, and applied experimental psychologists laid the groundwork for a new sub discipline of psychology, human factors engineering, as they helped design high performance military aircraft that accounted for strengths and limitations of human

The historian Alan Beyerchen argues that all major wars since 1900 have been greatly influenced by different sciences, which he calls amplifiers.[i]Chemistry was the amplifier for World War I and for World War II it was physics. In the cold war, information technology gave the edge to Western nations. For the Global War on Terror (GWOT), Beyerchen argues that the social sciences are the amplifier.

So while psychology has always been important to warfare, it is only recently that it has risen to the level of being the difference maker in who wins and who loses. The most fundamental reason that kinetic energy alone cannot win the wars we currently find ourselves in is there is no enemy state or nation, per se, against which to unleash megatons of kinetic power. Suppose that the 9/11 attacks had clearly been perpetrated by a specific nation. Once a nation launches an attack of that sort, there is little likelihood of peace through diplomatic channels. The United States, with its vast and unmatched military power, would have quickly destroyed the military and industrial base of the offending nation. Its military defeated, the threat to the United States would be ended. With a clearly defined enemy and threat, there is also a clearly defined end state.

But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are fundamentally different. In Iraq, the United States quickly defeated the Iraqi military and overthrew Saddam Hussein’s regime. In Afghanistan, the objective initially was to find and kill Osama bin Laden, and later expanded to stop insurgent fighters including Al Qaeda. After the fall of Hussein’s government, and throughout the war in Afghanistan, coalition forces have been mired down in a fight against a completely different sort of foe – ideologically based and inspired insurgents – not a formal, state-based military force.

US to fight its noblest war against Ebola

Chidanand Rajghatta

Sep 17, 2014

Barack Obama delivers remarks at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after a briefing on the response to the deadly Ebola virus epidemic in west Africa in Atlanta.

WASHINGTON: Pilloried for fighting needless, provocative wars across the world, the United States is embarking on one of its noblest interventions - fighting the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. President Barack Obama is sending 3,000 American military personnel and committing $500 million from country's war chest to combat the spread of the deadly virus that a German virologist has alarmingly declared is already out of control and will kill 5 million people. 

The US President is expected to roll out details of the plan in an address at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta later today but initial information coming from the administration is that U.S troops will use Liberia, one of the countries most affected, as a beachhead to help in the construction of 17 Ebola treatment centers with 1700 beds. The military will be providing engineers to help build the additional treatment facilities and will also send people to train up to 500 health care workers a week to deal with the crisis. 

The US government will also provide 400,000 Ebola home health and treatment kits to Liberia and neighboring countries to help test whether people have the disease. Public health campaigns will be broadcast through existing networks in the countries most affected by the virus -- Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea -- from where people are still trying to flee even as the world has imposed a cordon sanitaire around the region. 

"We've seen dozens of cases turn into hundreds, then hundreds turn into thousands," one US official who briefed journalists ahead of Obama's address in Atlanta said. "If we do not arrest that growth, and don't arrest that growth now, we could be looking at hundreds of thousands of cases." 

Already, a West German virologist has said it is too late to contain the virus in the affected countries and the next strategy should be to prevent it from escaping the region. "The right time to get this epidemic under control in these countries has been missed," Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit of the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg told Radio Deutsche Welle. "That time was May and June. Now it is too late." 

The virologist said hope is all but lost for the inhabitants of Sierra Leone and Liberia and that the virus will only "burn itself out" when it has infected the entire population and killed five million people in the region alone. 

The World Health Organisation and the US have refused to take such a grim, alarmist view. On Monday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said there was still a "very low" likelihood the Ebola virus could mutate in a way that poses a threat to the United States, but warned, "that risk would only increase if there were not a robust response on the part of the United States." 

Officials estimate that the effort could cost up to $750 million over the next six months, and since the Pentagon will lead the fight, at least $500 million of it will come from the country's depleted war chest that funded operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

GROWTH AND CHAOS - Roadblocks in development

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1140917/jsp/opinion/story_18828195.jsp#.VBjuRfmSzb4

COMMENTARAO: S.L. Rao

The Modi government won the general election on the promise of development. Its focus in office seems to be on it. What is not in focus is also important. That is the rising wave ofHindutva and anti-Muslim propaganda. If the government is not careful this could swamp the development agenda. To repeat the development mantra: development must result in improvement in living standards, better health services that are accessible and affordable to all, more educational institutions and greater focus on their quality, improving livelihoods through a massive programme of skills development, and constantly expanding the numbers in employment. India is a country with very many poor who lack basic comforts, sometimes not even enough food, and poor services for health, education, skills development and nutrition. Clearly, any rational expectation must be that economic growth and development will result in more consumption of goods, and also of services like health, education, and so on. This must reflect in an increasing volume of the production of consumption goods (from agriculture and manufacturing). There must also be a greater availability of services.

Thus, services in the Gross Domestic Product have two aspects: those that are directly consumed and those that enable consumption. Health services, education, skills training, rail transport and other public transportation, hotel and restaurant services, retail stores are services that are directly consumed. But there is also the other aspect, that they have to be constructed. For that there has to be investment in buildings, classrooms, roads, railways, hospitals, shops and so on. This construction provides employment. A different quality of employee is required to deliver these services to the consumer.

Surprisingly for a poor country, the primary and secondary elements in the net domestic produce (at 2004-05 prices), namely agriculture and allied products, mining and quarrying, manufacturing in both registered and unregistered enterprises have varied between 40 and 50 per cent. Transport, communications, hotels, trade, finance, insurance, real estate, public administration and defence make up the rest, and are higher than the primary products. One would have expected that, as a country develops and consumption expands to more of the population, primary products would account for a growing proportion. In this, manufacturing is low.

US general is open to ground forces in fight against ISIS

Mark Landler & Jeremy W Peters

Sep 17, 2014

US defense secretary Chuck Hagel (L) and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Army Gen Martin Dempsey.

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama's top military adviser said on Tuesday that he would recommend deploying United States forces in ground operations against Islamic extremists in Iraq if airstrikes prove insufficient, opening the door to a riskier, more expansive American combat role than the president has publicly outlined. 

Gen Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that while he was confident that an American-led coalition would defeat the Islamic State, he would not foreclose the possibility of asking Obama to send American troops to fight the militants on the ground — something Obama has ruled out. 

"My view at this point is that this coalition is the appropriate way forward. I believe that will prove true," General Dempsey said. "But if it fails to be true, and if there are threats to the United States, then I, of course, would go back to the president and make a recommendation that may include the use of US military ground forces." 

General Dempsey acknowledged that this would run counter to the president's policy, but he said, "He has told me as well to come back to him on a case-by-case basis." 

The general's statement lays bare the challenge the president will face in selling an expanded military campaign to a war-weary American public. Obama, seeking to allay fears of another Iraq war, has promised that American ground troops will not be involved in fighting the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. In a sign of the administration's mixed message, the president pointedly did not call it a war, while his advisers later did. 

China's Tibetan Tussle

http://www.newindianexpress.com/columns/Chinas-Tibetan-Tussle/2014/09/17/article2434296.ece

By JAYADEVA RANADE

Published: 17th September 2014 

China has raised the profile of the Tibet issue in the weeks leading up to Chinese president Xi Jinping’s visit (September 17-19) to India. There have been at least two direct propaganda initiatives and another is planned for September 19, when the Chinese ministry of defence will take dozens of Beijing-based defence attaches to witness the progress Tibet has made since the Chinese takeover. Incidentally, Chinese defence attaches based in India do not travel to Jammu and Kashmir on tours organised by India’s defence ministry as China considers the state “disputed”. Reliable reports earlier emanating from Beijing indicated China’s leadership was deliberating whether to insist that, in the joint statement to be issued after Xi Jinping’s visit, India should reiterate that Tibet is a part of China, a statement India has withheld making for the past four years.

The first propaganda initiative to get international endorsement of Tibet’s progress under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule was when China organised its first ever international “2014 Forum on the Development of Tibet’” in Lhasa on August 12-13. Over 100 invitees including 40 foreign delegates attended. N Ram —chairman of Kasturi and Sons Limited and publisher of The Hindu and an invitee—was quoted as saying that “thanks to China, Tibet’s interaction and integration with the rest of China has deepened and its isolation from the rest of the world has decisively been ended”. The delegates were later taken on “field trips” in Lhasa and to Nyingchi prefecture, which includes Arunachal Pradesh within its administrative jurisdiction.

Article 7 of the “Lhasa Consensus” issued by the conference, explicitly attacked the Dalai Lama and international media coverage of Tibet, generating some controversy. It stated that: “Participants unanimously agree that what they have actually seen in Tibet differs radically from what the 14th Dalai [Lama] and the Dalai clique have said. The Dalai clique’s statements on Tibet are distorted and incorrect... Many Western media reports are biased and have led to much misunderstanding.” Sir Bob Parker, former mayor of Christchurch, New Zealand, while still in Tibet clarified: “I’m aware that the statement was made but I certainly haven’t signed up to it. I think a number of people who were there were a little surprised to hear about that statement.”

Chinese takeaway

 

 A banner in Mandarin area of Ahmedabad welcomes the Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Written by C Raja Mohan | Posted: September 17, 2014 

SABARMATI SUMMIT

In receiving Chinese President Xi Jinping in Ahmedabad on Wednesday and hosting a private dinner for him on the banks of the Sabarmati river , Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a chance to break the mould of Indian diplomacy towards China. For too long, India’s summit-level engagement with China has been too formal, with little space for relaxed conversation. With Modi at the helm in New Delhi for five years and Xi slated to rule China for nine, it makes sense to add a touch of political informality and personal intimacy to the interaction between the two leaderships.

China’s political investment in Modi when he was chief minister of Gujarat, at a time when America and Europe were unwilling to touch him with a bargepole, has generated rare personal goodwill for Beijing with an Indian leader. The ease of doing business in Gujarat during Modi’s tenure saw many Chinese companies set up shop in the state. Since his election as prime minister, the Chinese media has written glowingly about the “Gujarat model” of economic development and the likelihood of its extension to the rest of the country.

China is also conscious of the fact that Modi is the first Indian leader since Rajiv Gandhi to have a majority in the Lok Sabha and the popularity at home to address difficult issues in bilateral relations and seize the possibilities for changing the nature of the bilateral ties.

Beijing recognises that Delhi’s political will has been burnished under Modi and is willing to overlook, at least for the moment, the PM’s statements on “Chinese expansionism” and his outreach to Japan and the United States. In agreeing to spend time with Modi on his birthday in Gujarat, Xi is signalling that he is ready to build a long-term personal relationship with the Indian PM.

Beyond sweet talk and tempting deals

http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/beyond-sweet-talk-and-tempting-deals/99/

For Xi, the stakes in a successful visit to Delhi are high.

Posted: September 17, 2014 

By: Minxin Pei

As New Delhi gets ready to roll out the red carpet for Chinese President Xi Jinping, the question on the minds of most observers is, what exactly does he seek to accomplish during his state visit to India?

Few doubt the importance of Xi’s visit. Both countries have recently changed top leadership. Establishing a good working relationship at the top is a necessary step towards managing the complex and friction-prone Sino-Indian ties. For Xi, the stakes in a successful visit to Delhi are high. Since assuming his position as the Communist Party of China’s general secretary in November 2012, Xi has opted for a risky foreign policy strategy that has resulted in a simultaneous deterioration in Sino-Japanese and Sino-American relations — a troubling development for a country that has prided itself on a pragmatic and low-profile foreign policy for the last three decades.

While Xi may be eager to show Washington and Tokyo his toughness, he nevertheless seems aware that he would be courting assured strategic encirclement if he antagonises China’s powerful neighbour to the west — India. A sensible policy towards Delhi, therefore, should be one that seeks to reduce India’s fears of growing Chinese power and assertive foreign policy behaviour. This objective, modest as it may seem on the surface, is not easy to achieve. Mutual strategic suspicions run deep. Longstanding contentious issues, in particular unresolved border disputes and Chinese support for Pakistan, greatly limit the extent to which bilateral relations can be improved.

Therefore, from the Chinese perspective, Xi’s visit has high stakes but modest, albeit realistic, objectives. The India-China summit will be seen as a success if both sides reach a fundamental understanding that a strategic conflict between the world’s two largest developing nations is both unnecessary and calamitous.

Yet, reassuring rhetoric may not be enough to allow Xi to earn Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s trust. Xi needs to back up his words of reassurance with concrete action. There are three ways Xi can charm and convince Modi, who has carefully avoided upsetting Beijing, that India can gain far more from working with China than working against it.

LEFT BEHIND FOR LONG, WE MUST CATCH UP

http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/edit/left-behind-for-long-we-must-catch-up.html

Wednesday, 17 September 2014 |

  Ashok K Mehta | 

As in 1962 and other military crises, none will come to India's help. India should quickly close the strategic and military gaps with China. That will strengthen the tool-kit for bargaining and influence

The most powerful President of China since Mao, Mr Xi Jinping starts his visit to India on September 17, armed with charm, guile and $100 billion. My mother used to say, “With Pakistan you act tough but when it comes to China you become docile”. After all, the Chinese inflicted a humiliating Himalayan defeat in 1962. China’s tumultuous economic and military rise has left India way behind, nursing an inferiority complex. That imposes costs and diminishes leverage and bargaining power to settle border disputes. But now, worried that India may align itself with the US, China has offered a strategic and cooperative partnership agreement.

In Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Earnest is seeking the hand of his beloved, Gwendolyn. While probing his status, Lady Bracknell enquires about his family. She is informed that he has lost both his parents. “To lose one parent”, she tells Earnest “is unfortunate.” “But to lose both is carelessness”. New Delhi has been both unfortunate and careless in carrying the baggage of two unsettled borders with all-weather allies, China and Pakistan. The indirect cost of unsettled borders is nearly five percent of the GDP. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has wisely identified growth and strength to boost influence and bargaining power.

From offering a swap deal in the 1960s, China raised the stakes from concessions in the East for concessions in the West, to demanding concessions in both sectors. It spurned the clarification of Line of Actual Control and exchange of maps, and has now stalled the 2005 agreement on political parameters and guiding principles for settling the border dispute. According to a mandarin in South Block, during the Special Representatives talks, the addition of the word “due” — on the insistence of the Chinese — to the parameter on settled populations, created ambiguities to the detriment of Indian interests. .

Richer, yet not safer

The Statesman

17 Sep 2014

ARKADIPTA GHOSH

http://www.thestatesman.net/news/77610-richer-yet-not-safer.html

Increased road fatalities in India have garnered a lot of attention in recent times, especially after the tragic death of a senior politician in a car crash at the heart of the Indian capital within days of being sworn in as a Union Minister. The high number of road fatalities in countries like India and China is justifiably of concern. However, a higher absolute number of fatalities in China and India is not unexpected, given their large populations, which place many more people at risk of accidents. According to data published by the World Health Organization (WHO), the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) account for a much larger share of worldwide road fatalities than the more developed and industrialized Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries ~ 48 per cent versus 9 per cent, with BRICS also accounting for a much larger share of the global population ~ 44 versus 18 per cent. Not surprisingly, the BRICS nations also have a smaller share of total registered vehicles in the world ~ 28 per cent, in contrast to nearly half (49 per cent) of the registered vehicles being in the richer OECD bloc.

A more useful and reliable metric than the absolute number or share of fatalities is the rate of fatalities per 100,000 people, since it takes the contribution of relative size of the population into account, or helps in leaving population-size out of the picture in such comparisons. Using such a robust metric, the BRICS still end up with a much higher rate of fatalities ~ 22.5 per 100,000 versus 7.4 in the OECD countries. These aggregated data would therefore seem to suggest an inevitability of higher incidence of fatalities in the relatively poorer countries, together with lower fatalities in the developed and richer countries that have higher vehicle ownership as well as better transportation facilities. It is almost as if more wealth is also associated with safer roads. Such a sweeping generalization can however mask important details and complexities in individual country-level data. Also, it is important to ask ~ what roles can public policy and regulation play in curbing traffic fatalities?

To probe deeper into the pattern identified above, we look at the relationship between fatalities per 100,000 and the number of registered vehicles per 100,000 for a handful of countries. Specifically, we look at this relationship for the three largest countries in BRICS ~ China, India, and Brazil ~ that account for more than 90 per cent of the BRICS population, as well as for the three largest OECD countries ~ USA, Japan, and Mexico ~ that account for close to half of the OECD population.

For the three largest BRICS countries, an increase in per capita income and the number of registered vehicles per 100,000 moving from India to China to Brazil is actually accompanied by a simultaneous increase in fatalities per 100,000, instead of the expected decrease suggested by the broad pattern across the two groups of countries (Panel A). In other words, greater prosperity, that is, higher per capita income, and an increase in the number of registered vehicles on the road are associated with a greater risk of dying from traffic accidents in China and Brazil, compared to that in India. Hence, the experience of the three largest BRICS countries runs counter to the broad pattern in the data identified above.