Poland Announces That It Intends to Beef Up Forces Along Its Eastern Border With Belarus and Ukraine

Poland Says to Beef Up Military on Its Eastern Border

Reuters, October 28, 2014

WARSAW — Poland said on Tuesday it is drawing up a long-term plan to shift some of its military strength towards its eastern border, closer to Ukraine and Russia, in response to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine.

NATO member Poland is anxious that it could be the next target for Kremlin expansion after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula earlier this year.

"We want to strengthen our units in the east of Poland," Polish Defence Minister Tomasz Siemoniak said on public radio.

"It’s a plan that will be spread out over a number of years. The first effects will be seen in 2017. There will be a whole series of initiatives connected to units in the east. There will also be investments in infrastructure."

He declined to say how many additional troops or units would be involved. Poland has eastern borders with Ukraine, with Moscow-allied Belarus, and also with the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, home to the Russian navy’s Baltic fleet.

"Obviously this has a link with what is happening in Ukraine," said Siemoniak. "This is a part of the process of drawing conclusions from that crisis."

After the crisis in Ukraine broke out, Poland’s government asked its NATO allies to establish a permanent military presence on Polish soil to act as a deterrent to Russia.

The alliance has stopped short of meeting that demand, because some members were wary of the cost and of the risk of antagonizing Russia.

NATO has though intensified training exercises in Poland and plans to create a new rapid reaction force with its headquarters in the western Polish city of Szczecin.

The World's Wealthiest Terrorists

RUSSELL BERMAN

OCT 23 2014,

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ISIS has made at least $20 million in ransom this year and millions more in oil revenues, the Treasury Department said Thursday.

A terrorist-captured oil field in 2013 (Sham News Network/AP)

The Islamic State makes about $1 million a day from sales of oil it has seized at war. It has generated $20 million this year alone in ransom. And it has taken untold sums of additional cash at gunpoint in the Syrian and Iraqi towns it controls, and through donations it solicits from sympathizers through social media.

Those are all assessments of the Treasury Department, which is highlighting its expanded efforts to cut off ISIS's funding as part of the broader war against the terrorist group. As explained by David Cohen, the department's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, the targeting of ISIS's money stream is both harder and easier than similar efforts against al-Qaeda.

Cohen's detailed account of the department's findings come as the U.S.-led military campaign against ISIS continues, and he said there were indications that ongoing airstrikes in Iraq and Syria have begun to "hamper its ability" to generate revenue from oil smuggling.

As administration officials have previously acknowledged, the Islamic State is the wealthiest terrorist group it has confronted. That is principally because unlike the syndicate run for years by Osama Bin Laden, it has not operated in the shadows but has seized wide swaths of land, taking control of oil fields, plundered local towns and villages.

"Unlike, for instance, core al-Qaeda, ISIL derives a relatively small share of its funds from deep-pocket donors and thus does not depend principally on moving money across international borders," Cohen said in prepared remarks to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "Instead, ISIL obtains the vast majority of its revenues through local criminal and terrorist activities."

The millions ISIS gets in ransom from its kidnappings have figured significantly in the debate over the U.S. policy not to pay for the release of hostages, which raged after the series of videotaped beheadings the terrorists have conducted.

ISIS also gets funding through online donations, relying on social media networks in a way that officials acknowledge is difficult to intercept. The administration has stepped up its efforts to crack down on terrorist smuggling through sanctions, but as Cohen pointed out in his speech, it cannot hope to stop the flow of money with sanctions and terrorist designation, only to "frustrate ISIL's ability to attract money and fighters."

The Islamic State's territorial ambitions "are a financial burden."At the same time, the Islamic State's territorial ambitions "are a financial burden," Cohen argued. As he told reporters at the White House, ISIS terrorists "act as if they're a real state." The group must spend money to import foreign fighters, and it is trying to provide basic government services, like electricity and water, in the territory it controls.

Libya has become the latest Isil conquest

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Extremists have declared Libya part of the Isil caliphate. Former Libyan militant Noman Benotman examines what's gone wrong

Isil's new offshoot in Derna, Libya, has been carrying out floggings, here on a man reportedly caught drinking wine 

Libya is now in the throes of an extreme political crisis. If the conditions remain unchallenged and, hence, unchanged, it will turn into another Syria or Iraq.

While ISIL has managed to capture the attention of the international media with its powerful propaganda and its violent tactics, the world’s has ignored the equally threatening Islamist groups and movements that have prospered in North Africa in the post-Arab Spring vacuum. Nowhere is this threat more profound than with the rise of radical Islam in Libya.

Since 2012, the capital, Tripoli, has principally been controlled by an Islamist-dominated General National Congress and an array of Islamist militias. In the east, Ansar al-Sharia (AS), the group made infamous for its involvement in the killing of US Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi in September 2012, and designated by the USA as a terror organisation, has grown in military power and political influence. Since early 2013, the city of Benghazi has been plagued by political violence. Assassinations are happening almost daily, and bombings and kidnappings have been a regular feature. Islamist militias, including AS, have been blamed for the violence. The dynamics of Islamism in the eastern region of Libya are a cause for huge concern. We must respond.

The ongoing low-level insurgency in Benghazi is driven by two factors. The first is the radical Islamist ideology of certain groups that refuse to recognise the modern state and its institutions. For example, according to the leader of AS’s Benghazi branch, Mohammed al-Zahawi, his group will not disarm and demobilise until its version of sharia is imposed. The realisation of such an Islamic state constitutes the group’s main aim. In other words, it is the nature of their Jihad.

The religious police in Derna are well equipped with vehicles

The second reason is the Islamists’ history with the state security forces. During the 1990s, Muammar Gaddafi unleashed a crackdown on all expressions of Islamism, which saw thousands of youths arrested and jailed as political prisoners. Many were incarcerated in the notorious Abu-Saleem prison. Today’s rejection of state institutions has its roots in that brutality.

Unfortunately, over the last two years, the central government in Tripoli has not been able to provide the necessary military, political and financial support needed to resolve the crisis in Benghazi. In May 2014, General Hifter, an established Libyan General, announced the beginning of “Operation Dignity”: a military-led campaign to eliminate terror from the country formed from a broad-based coalition in Benghazi and neighbouring cities as well as Cyrenaica. The campaign began with air raids on the bases of some of the most powerful Islamist militias such as Ansar al-Sharia, the Raf Allah al-Sahati Brigade and the 17 February Martyrs Brigade.

As a response to this campaign, Islamist militias united to form a brutal coalition now known as the “Shura Council of Benghazi’s Revolutionaries”. The most recent of their attacks involved a suicide bombing in the surroundings of Benghazi’s Benina airport that claimed the lives of 40 soldiers.

However, Benghazi is not the only Islamist stronghold in Libya: the city of Derna, which has historically been a strong recruiting ground for Jihadi fighters to Afghanistan, Iraq, and more recently Syria, is of serious concern. Derna has remained largely outside the influence of the central state since the 2011 uprising, leaving radical Islamists with the freedom to realise their ideal Islamic polity. According to local reports, Derna’s Shura Council of Islamic Youth and Ansar al-Sharia have decided to declare Derna an “Islamic emirate” and publicly announce their allegiance to ISIL and its leader and so called “Caliphate” of Abu Baker al-Baghdadi. This means that ISIL now has its terrorist tentacles in Libya.

If the international community continues to overlook the current Libyan crisis, the country is likely to become an incubator of militant Islamist groups. Such a state would constitute a threat not only to its immediate neighbours but also to the West. Neutralising the influence of radical Islamists should therefore a top priority. In addition to a military response, however, we need a holistic and proactive approach that focuses on achieving reconciliation and stability. This involves forcing all rival political parties to the negotiation table to agree that a newly elected parliament is the sole representative body in the country. It is only from here that an inclusive and broad-based government can be realised.

***** THE VIEW FROM OLYMPUS: THE FALL OF BAGHDAD

WILLIAM S. LIND

OCTOBER 23, 2014 

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ISIS is now in the process of taking Baghdad. Our pathetic excuse for military intelligence does not recognize that fact, because it does not understand how light cavalry operates. ISIS cannot take Baghdad by assault, so U.S. analysts think Baghdad cannot fall. It can, and at present it is on the way to doing so.

ISIS is encircling Baghdad with light, fast-moving forces just as American Indians, who were also irregular light cavalry, encircled a wagon train. The Indians shot in arrows. ISIS is shooting in mortar shells, rockets, and the poor man’s Predators, suicide bombers. ISIS’s object is to get the Shiite forces defending the city to come out into the open countryside, where light cavalry can and will cut them to ribbons. They do not have to come out very far; ISIS is now eight miles from the Baghdad airport.

Punishing Baghdad with bombardment may or may not get the Shiites to make that mistake. So I expect ISIS to undertake other operations to compel them to do so. A thrust at Karbala or even Najaf is likely. ISIS is already south of Baghdad. To those who think Najaf is too far, I would point out that irregular light cavalry warfare advances and retreats in vast sweeps. It is not about taking and holding ground. It is about destroying the enemy’s forces. The elements of the coalition that is ISIS that are holding ground and providing local government are Baathist. They know how to do those things. The Islamic puritans provide the light cavalry. Both are necessary to ISIS’s success: they are the cheng and the chi.

As ISIS encircles Baghdad, it will try to cut off the city’s supplies. Light cavalry cannot undertake a mortar siege, but they can raid supply lines. Shiite forces detailed to guard those lines will find themselves in the positions of the Turkish infantry facing Lawrence of Arabia’s light cavalry. You may recall that did not end well.

What about America’s overestimated air power? ISIS is countering that in a number of ways, some obvious, some quite creative. As I predicted, it has learned the standard countermeasures quickly: dispersion, camouflage, movement at night and in bad weather. I think it is also using the stuff we mistakenly think of as “combat power”: tanks, artillery pieces, APCs, etc. (we leave out maneuver and velocity) as decoys. ISIS may have come up with the best decoy of all, in the form of two or three jet fighters (or rumors thereof, which work almost as well). Every U.S. flyboy will fixate on them, hoping to be able to claim a kill. The cat will go for the catnip rather than the mouse.

I think ISIS may also be decoying us on the operational level with the siege of Kobani. That siege makes little sense except as a deception. As an operatioal Schwerpunkt, it is a dead end, although it works to paralyze the Turks on the mental level of war by pushing them into bed with the Kurds, whom they loath. That isn’t enough of a benefit to justify what even a small siege costs ISIS. But if, as I suspect, ISIS’s real operational and strategic Schwerpunkt is Baghdad, then the price ISIS is paying in Kobani is easily worth it. All last week air strikes intended for Iraq were often diverted to Kobani. Air defenses come in many varieties, not just missiles and guns.

When will Baghdad fall? Probably within a few months or not at all. Light cavalry cannot sustain a status quo. Its power is in its dynamism. If a situation stabilizes, it must alter its objective or fail. However, once the fall of Baghdad begins, it will culminate very fast. The tipoff we have reached that point will be when the Shiite infantry leaves Baghdad to engage ISIS in the open. It will be slaughtered, because with forces so intermixed, only our A-10s will be able to operate effectively. You know, that airplane the Air Force hates and wants to scrap.

If you are an American or other Christian in Baghdad when the infantry marches out to fight the cavalry on the plain, get on the next flight out. There won’t be any more.

FIVE MAJOR REASONS LEADING TO ISIS EMERGENCE – ANALYSIS

By Saeid Jafari

OCTOBER 25, 2014 

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1. Branching from Al-Qaeda

Without a doubt, the emergence of the ISIS terrorist group, which is currently calling itself the Islamic State, was closely related to an organization whose founding leader was slain a few years ago. In terms of its main core and theoretical background, the Islamic State is an offshoot of Al-Qaeda, which has branched from the bigger organizations. Of course, followers of the new branch have shown a special penchant for high degrees of violence.

2. Questionable performance of Nouri Al-Maliki

Unlike his last years in power, when former Iraqi prime minister, Nouri Al-Maliki, came to office succeeding his predecessor, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, he had no good command over the situation in the country. Soon after his appointment as prime minister, Baathist elements who were still loyal to the former Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, were not happy with the changes in the country. This was natural because until quite recently, they saw themselves at the highest levels of power, but now they had been set aside and marginalized. In order to prevent their potential opposition from turning into real action, the United States decided to give them a share in the power game. Al Sahwa militia was made up of former Sunni soldiers who were promised to be paid in return for fighting the extremist forces of Al-Qaeda and protecting order in the new Iraq. According to the primary agreement, they were supposed to be recruited by the Iraq army after a while. Maliki, however, disbanded the militia once he consolidated his power. He disarmed them without even recruiting them for the Iraqi army. Maliki’s performance a year ago and in the face of protests from people in Fallujah was not responsible and he chose to use violence against Sunni protesters. As a result, those forces who had fought to protect the new order turned into critics of the situation because they had been dismissed from the political game. Of course, other inequalities under the government of Maliki further prompted them to turn from critics into the opposition. As a result, when the ISIS attacked Iraq, they gave them a warm welcome and considered ISIS forces as their saviors.

3. Failure of the Arab Spring

Soon after sentimental Egyptian youth along with simplistic political elite of the country poured into the streets to celebrate the ouster of the former Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, they did not know that they were paving the way for another coup d’état in history of their country. At that time it was quite possible to predict that after dialogue as well as peaceful change and transition to democracy hit a deadlock, the country would fall into the vortex of violence and radicalism. From that time, the more radical parts of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood became critical of the moderate figures of this group noting that if they had appeared firmer in the face of their opposites, they would not have been in prison. Basically, a review of historical events will reveal that any time that peaceful processes for change end in failure, that change will take place in a violent manner. The fall of the government of Morsi in Egypt caused people to lose hope in the possibility of a soft change and it was under those circumstances that the discourse advocated by radical groups gained more ground.

4. Developments in Syria

Most opposition groups in Syria believed that the country’s President Bashar Assad is nearing the end of his rule and Western countries along with regional Arab states and Turkey can speed up that process by lending their support to opposition forces fighting against the Syrian government. However, certain factors, which cannot be fully discussed here, changed the equation in Syria. Assad has remained in power and those political currents which had been equipped and armed by the Syrian opposition became bigger and more dangerous. The Al-Nusra Front and the ISIS were among the most important of those groups. Finally, those groups, which saw their jockeying ground becoming increasingly limited in Syria, turned to its eastern neighbor, Iraq. At that time, Iraq was a country that for a variety of reasons enjoyed enough potentials to be used by extremist groups for their activities.

5. Popularity of extremism theory in Arab Middle East

Whether we like it or not, the theory of extremism is very popular in the Arab Middle East. There are many reasons to explain this situation. They include a sense of humiliation among Arabs following the collapse of the Islamic civilization, especially in relation to developments between Arabs and Israel; inefficiency of political systems in this region; depriving people of their right to determine their own destiny in a peaceful manner; and a host of economic and other problems. To the above list should be added the failure of developments known as the Arab Spring. Through those developments the Arab nations made another attempt to determine their destiny in a peaceful manner, but their efforts failed. Therefore, a large part of the Arab society (or maybe a small part but with a high degree of influence on other parts) reached the conclusion that violence and brute force was the only way remained to change the status quo. That part also tried to bank on such theories as Salafism and a return to original religious tenets to define a new path for its moves.

Tiny Qatar Plays Outsize Role in US War Strategy

Source: Black Press USA

Just miles from where former Guantanamo Bay terror suspects have resettled, American warplanes take off from Qatar’s al-Udeid air base in the global war on extremism.

The contrast in images illustrates why tiny but rich Qatar is an intriguing player in what President Barack Obama says will be a long battle to stop and eventually destroy the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

Qatar plays an outsize role as a U.S. military partner. It gained public praise from Obama for brokering the controversial deal that freed Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from Taliban captivity in May in exchange for the release of five senior Taliban officials who had been imprisoned for years at the U.S.-run Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. Qatar promised Obama it would keep the five under watch for one year, although they would then be free to leave. The Obama administration also praised Qatar for its role in securing the release of extremist hostage Peter Theo Curtis.

But Qatar also has a reputation as a supporter of Islamist groups in disfavor in Washington. Some in Congress suspect Qatar of funneling money to Islamic State militants, though the State Department says the U.S. has no evidence of it.

Qatari officials in Doha had no immediate comment for this story, but the government has unequivocally denied that it backs the Islamic State group. Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid bin Mohammed al-Attiyah said last month that his country “does not support extremist groups, including ISIS, in any way.”

Western analysts say Qatar is attempting a sometimes awkward balancing act between its desire for good relations with the United States and its efforts to maintain influence closer to home.

“Qatar is always looking for the angle, and that’s really the best way to explain it,” said Daniel Benjamin, a former State Department counterterrorism coordinator who now directs Dartmouth’s Dickey Center for International Understanding. “By having connections that are so broad, so wide ranging, it can put itself at the center of just about every issue.”

Qatar gives a home to Khaled Mashaal, exiled leader of Hamas, a Palestinian militant organization considered by the U.S. to be a terrorist group. But Qatar also has maintained ties to Hamas’ enemy, Israel. And to Islamist groups including the Muslim Brotherhood for which other Gulf states like Saudi Arabia have little tolerance.

“This is a small and wealthy country that is trying to maintain influence 360 degrees,” said Michele Flournoy, a former undersecretary of defense for policy and now chief executive officer of the Center for a New American Security.

“They are hedging their bets and trying to make sure they have influence no matter who comes out on top” in the multifaceted struggle for power in the Middle East, she added. Asked whether she believes Qatar has actually provided money to the Islamic State group, she said there is at least a widespread perception that it has.

In the Syria We Don’t Know

Charles Glass

NOVEMBER 6, 2014 

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Contact Press Images

Supporters of Bashar al-Assad at a demonstration in Homs, May 2012

A young woman in Damascus produced a smart phone from her handbag and asked, “May I show you something?” The phone’s screen displayed a sequence of images. The first was a family photograph of a sparsely bearded young man in his twenties. Beside him were two boys, who appeared to be five and six, in T-shirts. The young man and his sons were smiling. Pointing at the father, the woman said, “This is my cousin.” The next picture, unlike the first, came from the Internet. It was the same young man, but his head was severed. Beside him lay five other men in their twenties whose bloody heads were similarly stacked on their chests. I looked away. 

Her finger skimmed the screen, revealing another photo of her cousin that she insisted I see. His once happy face had been impaled on a metal spike. The spike was one of many in a fence enclosing a public park in Raqqa, a remote provincial capital on the Euphrates River in central Syria. Along the fence were other decapitated heads that children had to pass on their way to the playground. 

The woman’s cousin and his five comrades were soldiers in the Syrian army’s 17th Reserve Division. The Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS) had captured them when it overran the Tabqa military airfield, about twenty-five miles from ISIS headquarters in Raqqa, on August 24. The family’s sole hope was that the young man was already dead when they cut off his head. There was no question of returning the body or holding a funeral. Only a few weeks later ISIS savagery touched the United States and Britain, as it already had Syria and Iraq, with the beheadings of the journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and the aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning. 

The woman explained that her cousin had recently turned down a chance to leave his unit for a safer post near his home. It would not be right, he reasoned, for him, as a member of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s minority Alawite sect, to desert his Sunni comrades. He stayed with them, and he died with them. 

The Syrian government does not publish casualty figures by sect, but martyrs’ notices pasted on the walls in Jabal Alawia, the Alawite heartland in the hills east of the port of Latakia, indicate that the Alawites have suffered a disproportionate share of deaths in the war to preserve the Alawite president. A myth promulgated by the Sunni Islamist opposition is that the Alawites have been the main beneficiaries of forty-four years of Assad family rule over Syria, but evidence of Alawite wealth outside the presidential clan and entourage is hard to find. The meager peasant landholdings that marked the pre-Assad era are still the rule in Jabal Alawia, where most families live on the fruits of a few acres. Some Alawite merchants have done better in the seaside cities of Latakia and Tartous, but so have Sunni, Druze, and Christian businessmen. This may explain in part why, from my own observations, a considerable proportion of Syrian Sunnis, who comprise about 75 percent of the population, have not taken up arms against the regime. If they had, the regime would not have survived. 

The rising number of Alawite young men killed or severely wounded while serving in the army and in regime-backed militias has led to resentment among people who have no choice other than to fight for President Assad and to keep their state’s institutions intact. Their survival, as long as Sunni jihadists kill them wherever they find them, requires them to support a regime that many of them oppose and blame for forcing them into this predicament. 

After my friend’s cousin and his comrades were decapitated at Tabqa and their corpses left on the streets of Raqqa, ISIS publicly executed another two hundred captured soldiers. It was then that someone, said to be an Alawite dissident, declared on Facebook, “Assad is in his palace and our sons are in their graves.” 

Kemlin Paying a Price For Trying to Hide The Deaths of Soldiers Killed in War in the Ukraine

Silent Deaths: The Price of a Russian Soldier’s Life

Anna Pivovarchuk

Moscow Times, October 27, 2014

On Oct. 17, following a search at the offices of the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers in the southern Russian city of Budyonnovsk, Lyudmila Bogatenkova, the head of the branch, was arrested and charged with fraud. The 73-year-old, who is disabled and suffers from diabetes, spent two nights at a detention center and had to be taken to the local hospital following her release on Oct. 20. She has released a statement declaring her innocence.

The case is unprecedented, and not only on legal grounds. Under Russian law, it is unusual to detain those charged with economic crimes, as well as pensioners or invalids, unless they represent a risk to society. Given Bogatenkova’s age, health and charges, the incident demonstrates the depravity that enters the justice system when politics are involved.

The revelations made by the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers about the number of Russian soldiers dying in Ukraine are just another example of the Kremlin’s complete lack of regard for the lives of those serving in the Russian army, writes columnist Anna Pivovarchuk.

In late August, Bogatenkova was one of the first to announce that the 11 Russian soldiers declared dead earlier that month were killed in Ukraine. According to official statements, they were either killed during an exercise in the Rostov region on the border with eastern Ukraine or were discharged from the Russian armed forces and entered Ukraine as volunteers.

The Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers stated that all were contract soldiers who were part of the 18th Brigade, stationed in Chechnya. The Defense Ministry refused to comment, citing that it had no information about the death of its soldiers on Ukrainian territory.

Great Britain’s Time of Troubles: Why it Matters

Peter Harris

October 24, 2014 

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British politics is in a state of flux, with potentially major implications for European unity and transatlantic relations. 

Last month, the United Kingdom came close to dissolution as the Scottish electorate toyed with the idea of striking out alone. Earlier this year, the UK Independence Party (Ukip) beat all three of the major parties in elections to the European Parliament—the first time in over a century that a party other than the Conservatives and Labour had won the popular vote in a UK-wide election.

There were points during the Scottish referendum campaign that it looked as though the 307-year old union between England and Scotland would be terminated. Many believe that a decisive slice of Scotland’s voters were persuaded to maintain the status quo only on the promise that Scotland’s devolved parliament at Holyrood would be given extra powers. As such, the ‘No’ campaign’s victory hardly can be interpreted as a vote of confidence in the British system. Scots demanded constitutional reform. What is more, politicians from across the political spectrum undertook to respond.

The defeat of Scotland’s bid for independence, then, offered only momentary respite for those invested in maintaining the Union. A commitment has been made to rush extra powers for Holyrood. At the same time, however, the demand for heightened devolution (“devo-max”) in Scotland has been matched by cries of unfairness by politicians in England. Why should Scotland be afforded greater insulation from politicians in London when English matters are still being voted on by Scottish MPs? Why is England the only country of the United Kingdom to lack its own devolved assembly? Although English nationalism has not yet reached fever pitch, there is at least a growing appetite for the entire apparatus of the British state—not just its Scottish elements—to be revisited. An uneven and unequal distribution of power cannot survive in the long-term.

Sub-national constitutional questions are not the only ones plaguing the Conservative-led government in Westminster, however. Ever since Ukip won the European elections this summer, the question of Britain’s future in the European Union has been placed firmly at the top of the national agenda. Ukip is virulently anti-European, with withdrawal from the EU comprising the party’s flagship policy. Ukip’s stubborn popularity, then, is cause for consternation among the largely pro-European Westminster political elite. Simply put: many ordinary Britons would like to see the back of Brussels.

The Conservative party in particular finds itself squeezed by the rise of Ukip. Desperate to win a parliamentary majority next year, the Conservatives can ill afford to hemorrhage votes to the nationalistic Ukip on its right flank. Two Conservative MPs already have defected to Ukip, their resignations prompting high-profile by-elections when the government would much rather project an image of unity, competence and stability. Earlier this month, Ukip won its first ever elected Member of Parliament as a result of one of these by-elections. Analysts predict that the insurgent force could gain as many as 30 seats in the House of Commons next year.

Ukip’s electoral success points to another trend that threatens to undermine the stability of British politics—that is, the country’s long suffering two-party system looks to be in potentially terminal decline. A third party, the Liberal Democrats, has been in government since 2010. As noted above, Ukip came first in national polls held this summer. The Scottish National Party has been the largest party in the Scottish Parliament since 2007. Nationalists also poll strongly in Wales, while Northern Ireland operates its own party system altogether. Across Britain, Ukip and other parties such as the Greens—whose numbers have swollen of late—threaten to chip away at the Conservatives’ and Labour’s electoral dominance.

Russia’s Push to the South—A Net Assessment of the Geopolitical Developments in the Black Sea Region Since the Start of 2014

By: Stephen Blank

October 16, 2014 

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(Source: RIA Novosti)

The strategic implications of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine far transcend Ukraine, Russia, Poland and the Baltic States. They also prominently include the entire Black Sea littoral, including the Balkans, and even the Eastern Mediterranean. Historically, domination of the Black Sea opened the way to Russia’s projection of its power into these areas, and recent events show signs that this process may be repeating itself again. Moscow’s conquest and annexation of Crimea in February 2014 has set the stage for a new Russian drive to the south.

Since the onset of the Ukraine crisis, the Black Sea has become an area of competing naval powers as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) now maintains a fluctuating but constant military presence there. Indeed, a constant naval presence is arguably needed in the Black Sea to ensure the security of Ukraine and particularly Odesa, Ukraine’s last remaining and crucial seaport. Furthermore, the Russian naval presence in the Black Sea, Russia’s takeover of much of Ukraine’s navy, as well as Moscow’s acquisition of new naval bases and infrastructure in this strategic region all directly threaten Turkey—the other major local naval power of the Black Sea. Yet, over the last nine months, Turkey’s reaction to the Russian invasion has been as muted as the Western response, if not more so.

Apart from the desire for warm-water southern bases, Moscow has also continued to obstruct efforts to bring all the Balkan states into NATO and the European Union. Moreover, over this past year, Russia has continued to economically pressure Moldova and even apparently entertained plans to tie Moldova and Ukraine together to the Russian Federation. Ukrainian sources report that during the current Russian-Ukrainian war, Moscow has widened the airport in Tiraspol, the “capital” of Moldova’s breakaway Transnistrian “republic,” to permit the landings of military flights with heavier forces. Moreover, Russia has apparently stationed 2,000 spetsnaz (special forces) units in Transnistria and planned so-called “humanitarian intervention exercises” there in order to create and then exploit a pretext for intervening in Ukraine from this separatist Moldovan region. Since Odesa is only 80 kilometers from Transnistria, the operation would have aimed to bisect Ukraine and capture this strategically vital Ukrainian port city (Author’s interview, June 19).

Allegedly due to NATO’s reenergized military presence in Southeastern Europe, but actually in line with earlier ambitions, Moscow also has launched a major expansion of its Black Sea Fleet this year. In addition, it has been carrying out improvements to its air and air defense infrastructure—clear starting points for building up Russia’s power projection capabilities into the Mediterranean and beyond (seeEDM, September 22). Indeed, Russia has sought military bases in Montenegro for its fleet, which would have provided it with a physical presence in the Adriatic Sea (balkaneu.com, December 20, 2013), and a base in Serbia for landward projection of power throughout the Balkans.

Similarly Russia’s expanding presence in the Middle East stems, in no small measure, from its ability to project and sustain naval power in the Mediterranean from its bases and robust presence in the Black Sea—a capability and objective that will likely continue to grow if Moscow’s conquest of Ukraine cannot be arrested and reversed. Already, Moscow has permanently reconstituted its Mediterranean Naval Squadron and repeatedly employed gunboat diplomacy to deter Western intervention in Syria and Turkish intervention in Cyprus (see EDM, December 12, 2011). It has also acquired naval bases in Syria and Cyprus, as well as an air base in Cyprus. Other potential opportunities abound. Indeed, the new Egyptian government has said it stands ready to allow Russia to build a military base either in the Red Sea or the Mediterranean (see EDM, May 15; Middle East Monitor, November 9, 2013; Al-Arabiya, November 20, 2013). Such “power projection activities” represent attempts to gain access, influence and power with the aim of restructuring the regional strategic order (Henk Houweling and Mehdi Parvizi Amineh, “Introduction,” in Amineh and Houweling, eds., Central Eurasia in Global Politics: Conflict, Security, and Development, Leiden: Brill, 2004, p. 15). And, as the British historian Niall Ferguson observed, “Russia, thanks to its own extensive energy reserves, is the only power that has no vested interest in stability in the Middle East” (Quoted in Gordon G. Chang, “How China and Russia Threaten the World,” Commentary, June 2007, p. 29).

Myth and Reality—A Net Assessment of Russia’s ‘Hybrid Warfare’ Strategy Since the Start of 2014

By: Roger McDermott

October 17, 2014 

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Myth and Reality—A Net Assessment of Russia’s ‘Hybrid Warfare’ Strategy Since the Start of 2014 (Part One)

(Source: gazeta.ru)

Russian commentators noted the significance of President Vladimir Putin’s mid-October decision to order troops back to their bases after several months of high readiness in proximity to the Russia-Ukraine border. Military forces in the area were placed on high alert in the run-up to the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi in February 2014 and were maintained at such levels since. Although it may not signal the end of the crisis, and was most likely triggered by the agreement to hold a bilateral meeting between President Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro Poroshenko, in Milan, it presents an opportunity to reflect on Russia’s use of military power during the crisis since the start of the year (gazeta.ru, October 13).

Essential in such reflections on the success of Moscow’s policy to annex Crimea, destabilize eastern and southeastern Ukraine, and fundamentally challenge post-Cold War European security architecture is the concept and mythology which developed around the phrase “hybrid warfare.” At an early stage, following the sudden appearance of the “polite people”—denoting the Russian military deployment across the Crimean peninsula in late February and March 2014—this phrase came into Western parlance. In fact, “hybrid warfare” reflects two quite distinctive and misleading articles in the Russian media: one by Putin’s close advisor Vladislav Surkov (under a pseudonym) and the other, written one year earlier, allegedly by the chief of the General Staff (CGS), Army-General Valeriy Gerasimov. Surkov’s phrase, in a futuristic piece written in March 2014, used the term “non-linear” warfare, marking something new in Russian conventional operations. While the term also appeared in the thinking expressed under Gerasimov’s name in February 2013 (ruspioner.ru, March 12; Voyenno-Promyshlennyy Kuryer, February 27, 2013).

Surkov’s phrase, following the surprise activities in Crimea, which marked Moscow’s annexation of the territory, was seized upon by commentators in search of a convenient hook to make sense of rapidly unfolding developments. Moreover, many pointed to the holy grail of “non-linear” warfare, preferring the term “hybrid warfare” while appealing to the Gerasimov article from February 2013 in Voyenno-Promyshlennyy Kuryer. Unfortunately, the search is somewhat misleading for a number of salient reasons: Gerasimov was only in the post for three months at that point. Second, he was not known for advanced thinking on future warfare developments. And finally, there is a long tradition established in the Soviet era of lower-ranking General Staff officers publishing under the name of the CGS. Consequently, those who rushed for easy interpretations of the Russian tactics used in Ukraine coined the phrase: “Gerasimov doctrine,” as one explainer. However, many of the features of the Russian operations in Crimea, for instance, were put in place by Gerasimov’s predecessor Nikolai Makarov (Voyenno-Promyshlennyy Kuryer, February 27, 2013).

The Russian Federation’s aggression toward Ukraine swung between unconventional and conventional warfare. Russia absorbed Crimea and subsequently carried out operations to promote “rebel forces” in Ukraine in what appeared as a war for “Novorossiya” (“New Russia”—a historical name for lands occupying mainly southeastern Ukraine), with ever increasing gains on the ground for the pro-Russia elements within Ukraine’s east. Russian actions ranged from the use of “polite people” or a new special forces mix in Crimea, to a threat of full-scale invasion by combined-arms units in the Donbas region—and included high-profile “humanitarian convoys” used to great effect (see EDM, September 2). The actual use of Russian troops within Ukraine amounted to a relatively small force, compared to the high-readiness combined-arms units closer to the border. These operations themselves ranged from conventional through to special forces operations, combined with an ongoing information campaign aimed at destabilization Ukraine and combatting the West’s narrative of the conflict (see EDM, July 8).

Russian and Western commentators quickly lost sight of how the Crimea operation was handled and precisely why it was so effective. They overlooked the actual force mix that was utilized in conjunction with the Kremlin’s mixture of hard and soft power to slice off part of the territory of a neighboring state and apply continued pressure on the government in Kyiv. Slogans about “polite people” and references to “non-linear war” masked the actual nature of executing such operations. By April 2014, Russia’s political-military elite were so buoyed by the confidence of this experiment in harnessing hard and soft power that they were poking fun at leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) who were condemning Russian actions in Ukraine. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu dismissed the West’s search for Russian military involvement in eastern Ukraine as like looking for “a black cat in a dark room,” while offering admiration for Russian special forces, by acknowledging that such black cats are “smart, polite and brave” (see EDM, April 23).

Blurring Russian military theory, doctrine, capabilities and force development with the opinions of Moscow media in a full blown information campaign became a matrix for explaining the on-the-ground activities of Russian units. But this explanation eclipsed many of the real themes present in the original “Gerasimov” article. These are worth noting in order to reach a proper understanding of the use of unconventional tactics to good effect in Crimea and later in destabilizing eastern and southeastern Ukraine (EDM, June 17; EDM, June 12).

The problem is that the Gerasimov article does not entirely fit Russian operations in Ukraine. Its context, with references to Russian thinking on future warfare as well as efforts to bolster military science and the domestic defense industry, are vital clues in the reading of the piece. A dominant theme in this discourse, reinforced by the need to stress continuity with the previous CGS, is the interest in both network-centric and non-linear warfare—themes present in the Armed Forces reform launched in 2008 and the subsequent military modernization to 2020. Moreover, these ideas and concepts were not developed in a vacuum; they were and are responses to and interpretations of military developments within NATO and elsewhere (Voyenno-Promyshlennyy Kuryer, February 27, 2013).

Fears of a Tajik Maidan—A Net Assessment of the Ukraine Crisis’ Impact on the Domestic Situation in Tajikistan Since the Start of 2014

By: Mark Vinson

October 17, 2014 

Source Link

The Euromaidan protests that took place during winter 2013–2014, in Ukraine, have cast their shadow over Tajikistan. The short-term effect of the protests (particularly the Russian response), along with the increasingly violent and intractable nature of the civil war in Syria, makes comparable protests unlikely in Tajikistan in the near to medium term. However, this has not kept some from trying.

Earlier this month, the opposition figure Umarali Quvatov called for protests to take place in Dushanbe on October 10. Quvatov, the exiled leader of the now banned opposition organization “Group 24,” enjoys limited popularity, and the protests failed to materialize. Despite Quvatov’s lack of broad appeal, the government responded to his call by beefing up security in the capital and blocking websites and text message services. Some media outlets reported that President Emomali Rahmon even invited 800 Chinese troops into the capital to help suppress potential protests, although it remains unclear if these allegations are true or simply misinformation emanating from Quvatov and his camp (BBC Tajiki, October 13).

Perhaps more interesting than Quvatov’s call for protest or the government’s reaction to it was the fact that the protests were condemned by nearly all of Tajikistan’s domestic opposition, including former civil war military commanders such as Mirzohuja Ahmadov, opposition political parties such as The Islamic Renaissance Party, and prominent clerics such as Hoji Mirzo (Ozodi, October 8, 10, 11). Generally speaking, anti-government protests are not favorably viewed by most Tajikistanis. They are typically seen as a prelude to chaos and violence as witnessed in the case of Ukraine and Syria or even Tajikistan’s own recent history. In 1992, anti-government demonstrations were the proximate cause of Tajikistan’s civil war, a fact that weighs heavily on the collective consciousness of Tajikistanis both because of the extreme violence and destruction caused by the war and because the regime’s propaganda machine will not let anyone forget what they consider to be the self-evident lesson of that episode, namely: opposition leads to anarchy, obedience leads to peace.

Incidents this past year in the semi-autonomous region of Gorno-Badakhshan (see EDM, April 29) have demonstrated that the regime is willing to use lethal force to suppress public displays of dissent, which may further dampen the appetite for protest. One of the most widely cited reasons for the unlikelihood of protests is the fact that a significant percentage of Tajikistan’s military-age men live in Russia as migrant laborers. If this diversion of manpower does prove to be a crucial factor in forestalling protest movements in Tajikistan, it might prove a pyrrhic victory for the regime for three reasons:

First, over the long run, the domestic economic hardships that drive Tajikistani laborers to Russia in search of work may exacerbate their underlying grievances against the regime. This would particularly be the case if a sudden change in Russian migration policy led to quotas or deportations that drastically reduced the number of Tajikistani migrants. Despite its reliance on cheap labor, Russia has a long history of threatening such actions as a way of extracting concessions from Dushanbe. A sudden and large repatriation of Tajikistani migrant labors with no means of supporting their families would have negative consequences for regime stability.

Second, long-term mass labor migration has considerable effects on Tajikistani social—and by extension—political dynamics. While regionalism, entrenched patronage networks, and loyalty to local strong men have hampered Rahmon’s ability to fully consolidate power in a centralized government, the existence of local power brokers do at least provide him with a finite (and familiar) number of interlocutors to deal with in times of crisis. Recent history is replete with examples of Rahmon using a combination of threats and inducements to compel local strong men to bring themselves (and their constituents) into line. Mass labor migration, however, may erode traditional patronage networks and regional identities, thereby degrading the ability of local strong men to “deliver” their constituents. The aforementioned Mirzohuja Ahmadov, who rejected calls for domestic street protests in Tajikistan, is a prime example of the trajectory of a regional war lord–turned Rahmon ally. A reader response to an interview with Ahmadov on Radio Free Europe’s Tajik-language website, however, is indicative of the potentially evolving sentiment of migrant laborers: “Mr. Ahmadov, do not speak for all of the Gharmis, I am a migrant in Moscow and I support Umarali Quvatov one hundred percent” (Ozodi, October 11). “Gharmis” refers to people who live in, or trace their lineage back to, the region of Gharm in Tajikistan.

How Moscow Is Playing the Russian Autonomy Card in Kazakhstan

By: Paul Goble

October 21, 2014 

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(Source: Svobodnaya Pressa)

In the world of labor union–business relations, it is commonly understood that, oftentimes, the threat of a strike, as long as it is credible, can achieve more than an actual strike itself. On the one hand, the business against which a strike may be launched can never be sure just what the union will in fact be able to do. And on the other, by avoiding going into the streets, the union does not have to pay as high a price, either in the loss of wages by its members or in public estimation of its role as a responsible social actor.

A similar dynamic can be observed in Vladimir Putin’s efforts to dominate the post-Soviet states by threatening to create what he calls “the Russian world” (“Russkiy mir”). When Moscow has actually employed force to try to achieve its dominance over a neighboring country as in Georgia in 2008 or in Ukraine now, it has succeeded; but such actions have has entailed real costs. However, by establishing its credibility in this area, the Russian government has, like many labor unions, intimidated others. And in the future, Moscow may be able to achieve its goals of bending other governments to its will without actually having to repeat what it has already done elsewhere.

That is an especially attractive option not only because few Western governments will raise any objections to such acts of implied intimidation but also because, if such implicit threats do not work, Moscow always retains the option to engage in more direct action and will even have laid the groundwork for doing so by talking about the need to protect the “Russian world” in this or that country.

At present, Moscow appears to be employing just such a strategy in Kazakhstan, a country with a large ethnic-Russian minority. Many in Moscow are now talking about the need to “protect” ethnic Russians there by making demands for a Russian autonomy in the same way that they earlier made such comments about Ukraine and are also doing in the cases of the Baltic countries and even Belarus. But to date, the Russian government has not felt compelled to move much beyond such talk because it has relatively good relations with President Nursultan Nazarbayev and because raising this issue appears to have made Astana even more willing to cooperate with Moscow than it had been earlier.

Viktor Shatskikh, a Russian journalist who was born in Kazakhstan and lived there until 2000, provides one of the clearest insights into how many in the Russian capital have viewed the Russian issue in Kazakhstan since Soviet times. Furthermore, he discusses why there had been growing concern there about Astana’s nationality policy in recent years and how what he euphemistically labels “the Ukrainian events” have had a sobering and, from Russia’s point of view, positive impact on Kazakhstan’s approach to its Russian minority (svpressa.ru, October 15, 17).

He points out that many Russians, including most prominently the writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, have long argued that the Soviet government made a mistake in giving so much of what they believe to be Russian territory to Kazakhstan. And he reports that in 1992, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Mikhail Poltoranin, who had earlier worked in Kazakhstan, proposed to Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Kazakhstani President Nazarbayev that they work to set up a Russian-dominated autonomy in northeastern Kazakhstan. Poltoranin suggested that this territory be called the Irtysh Republic and include all the territories that Moscow had transferred from the Russian Federation to Kazakhstan after 1917.

As Poltoranin recently told Shatskikh, Nazarbayev, was furious about this idea, and Yeltsin said he was not interested in becoming involved in the ethnic politics of Kazakhstan or other “new independent states.” The Russian president pointedly asked “why do we need another Sevastopol?” The idea was quickly dropped. For the next decade, largely because the ethnic-Russian community in Kazakhstan remained large and the Kazakhs did not challenge its language rights—indeed, many Kazakhs, Shatskikh points out, spoke Russian better than their national language—the situation there remained relatively calm.

Fears of a Tajik Maidan—A Net Assessment of the Ukraine Crisis’ Impact on the Domestic Situation in Tajikistan Since the Start of 2014

By: Mark Vinson

October 17, 2014 

The Euromaidan protests that took place during winter 2013–2014, in Ukraine, have cast their shadow over Tajikistan. The short-term effect of the protests (particularly the Russian response), along with the increasingly violent and intractable nature of the civil war in Syria, makes comparable protests unlikely in Tajikistan in the near to medium term. However, this has not kept some from trying.

Earlier this month, the opposition figure Umarali Quvatov called for protests to take place in Dushanbe on October 10. Quvatov, the exiled leader of the now banned opposition organization “Group 24,” enjoys limited popularity, and the protests failed to materialize. Despite Quvatov’s lack of broad appeal, the government responded to his call by beefing up security in the capital and blocking websites and text message services. Some media outlets reported that President Emomali Rahmon even invited 800 Chinese troops into the capital to help suppress potential protests, although it remains unclear if these allegations are true or simply misinformation emanating from Quvatov and his camp (BBC Tajiki, October 13).

Perhaps more interesting than Quvatov’s call for protest or the government’s reaction to it was the fact that the protests were condemned by nearly all of Tajikistan’s domestic opposition, including former civil war military commanders such as Mirzohuja Ahmadov, opposition political parties such as The Islamic Renaissance Party, and prominent clerics such as Hoji Mirzo (Ozodi, October 8, 10, 11). Generally speaking, anti-government protests are not favorably viewed by most Tajikistanis. They are typically seen as a prelude to chaos and violence as witnessed in the case of Ukraine and Syria or even Tajikistan’s own recent history. In 1992, anti-government demonstrations were the proximate cause of Tajikistan’s civil war, a fact that weighs heavily on the collective consciousness of Tajikistanis both because of the extreme violence and destruction caused by the war and because the regime’s propaganda machine will not let anyone forget what they consider to be the self-evident lesson of that episode, namely: opposition leads to anarchy, obedience leads to peace.

Incidents this past year in the semi-autonomous region of Gorno-Badakhshan (see EDM, April 29) have demonstrated that the regime is willing to use lethal force to suppress public displays of dissent, which may further dampen the appetite for protest. One of the most widely cited reasons for the unlikelihood of protests is the fact that a significant percentage of Tajikistan’s military-age men live in Russia as migrant laborers. If this diversion of manpower does prove to be a crucial factor in forestalling protest movements in Tajikistan, it might prove a pyrrhic victory for the regime for three reasons:

First, over the long run, the domestic economic hardships that drive Tajikistani laborers to Russia in search of work may exacerbate their underlying grievances against the regime. This would particularly be the case if a sudden change in Russian migration policy led to quotas or deportations that drastically reduced the number of Tajikistani migrants. Despite its reliance on cheap labor, Russia has a long history of threatening such actions as a way of extracting concessions from Dushanbe. A sudden and large repatriation of Tajikistani migrant labors with no means of supporting their families would have negative consequences for regime stability.

Second, long-term mass labor migration has considerable effects on Tajikistani social—and by extension—political dynamics. While regionalism, entrenched patronage networks, and loyalty to local strong men have hampered Rahmon’s ability to fully consolidate power in a centralized government, the existence of local power brokers do at least provide him with a finite (and familiar) number of interlocutors to deal with in times of crisis. Recent history is replete with examples of Rahmon using a combination of threats and inducements to compel local strong men to bring themselves (and their constituents) into line. Mass labor migration, however, may erode traditional patronage networks and regional identities, thereby degrading the ability of local strong men to “deliver” their constituents. The aforementioned Mirzohuja Ahmadov, who rejected calls for domestic street protests in Tajikistan, is a prime example of the trajectory of a regional war lord–turned Rahmon ally. A reader response to an interview with Ahmadov on Radio Free Europe’s Tajik-language website, however, is indicative of the potentially evolving sentiment of migrant laborers: “Mr. Ahmadov, do not speak for all of the Gharmis, I am a migrant in Moscow and I support Umarali Quvatov one hundred percent” (Ozodi, October 11). “Gharmis” refers to people who live in, or trace their lineage back to, the region of Gharm in Tajikistan.

U.S. Should Not Neglect Europe in China Policy

By Anthony Chang

October 25, 2014

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Europe still has an important role to play in Washington’s policy for East Asia. 

Earlier this month, German Chancellor Angela Merkel voiced support for free speech in Hong Kong and condemned the conviction of Uighur academic Ilham Tohti, just days before she and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang signed multi-billion-euro trade deals in Berlin. Merkel’s remarks illustrate how important democratic principles remain in Sino-European relations, but also how such principles coexist, at times uneasily, with an economic partnership that China and Europe both now view as essential to their futures. In the U.S., however, where the notion of a “pivot” or “rebalancing” to Asia reflects – independent of actual policies – a deeper sense that the region deserves a greater share of Washington’s attention span, Europe is more often seen as peripheral, if not a distraction, in China policy.

Trading Places

And yet, to work effectively with China this century, the U.S. will have no more important ally to cultivate than Europe. European trade with China has quadrupled over the past decade, and the European Union now vies with the U.S. as China’s number one export market. Chinese leaders regularly lead commercial delegations through Europe, with former Premier Wen Jiabao visiting Germany alone six times while in office, and his successor already making three trips to the continent within the past year. With Chinese banks struggling withweak balance sheets, and housing prices declining for the past four months, boosting exports to Europe will remain key for Beijing as it seeks to avoid an economic slump.

China itself is an increasingly lucrative market for the EU: Though the U.S. still ranks as its top trading partner, Europe’s shipments to America have declined 37 percent as a share of exports over the past decade, while China’s share has risen 77 percent. Imports tell a similar story, with China already surpassing the U.S. as the chief source of European imports. As China and Europe continue to grow closer, this interdependence risks sidelining U.S. influence in both lands.

Yet there are also complications on the trade front that suggest the U.S. and Europe share some common interests. In 2012, the EU launched against China the largest anti-dumping investigation in its history, involving $26.5 billion in solar panel exports. While the EU settled the case last year, it has left European solar producers deeply unsatisfied; the U.S. has reacted more harshly, with the Commerce Department levying tariffs of up to 35 percent on Chinese solar imports. The EU also joined the U.S. and Japan in its WTO complaint against China on rare earth export quotas, a case that China lost on appeal this August.

Foreign direct investment also reveals shared concerns: Surveys this year by the U.S. and EU Chambers of Commerce found that 60 percent of respondents felt foreign companies received unfavorable treatment in China, encompassing everything from market access barriers to politically motivated investigations. Along with trade, there is clearly significant overlap here between U.S. and European priorities. While the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has attracted the most attention as an American attempt to pressure China on reforms, theTransatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) between the U.S. and Europe would also play a role, as it would advance international norms and standards at a time when global trade talks are on life support. And yet, despite perennial calls in Washington for China to play by the rules, both TTP and T-TIP have yet to achieve real momentum, with Obama not even possessing the fast-track authority he needs to move the deals forward.

Guns and Poses

For regional security, military cooperation and joint exercises with Asian allies continue to form the backboneof U.S. policy. At the same time, were U.S.-China tensions ever to come to a head, NATO would be called on as a key, if not the key, U.S. partner. As unlikely as this may sound, in early 2001, the notion that NATO would fight for over a decade in Central Asia would have appeared far more implausible, as would the alliance’s 2011 campaign in Libya.

Skeptics can raise a number of objections here: NATO members’ unity and capabilities have fallen short in Afghanistan and Libya; moreover, disorganization when confronting this year’s Ukraine conflict, as well as Turkey’s reticence in joining U.S. efforts against the Islamic State, only compound doubts about the plausibility of a future Asian mission. Plus, NATO’s non-U.S. military spending, while still greater than China’s, could soon be matched by the PRC at current Chinese growth rates.