The Horrific Effectiveness of Flamethrowers

By Paul Huard

October 30, 2014

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Between July and November of 1917, one of the greatest disasters of the Great War unfolded near the Belgian town of Ypres, where the British and their allies fought the Germans for control of some ridges running through Flanders.

Better known as the Battle of Passchendaele, hundreds of thousands of men occupied trenches, dugouts and underground tunnels on the front lines. Among the British forces there were many seasoned infantrymen who could claim to have seen all the technological terrors so far gathered together on World War I battlefields—machine gun fire, poison gas, strafing and bombing by aircraft.

But for many soldiers, they would face a weapon for the first time that the Germans had introduced just two years before. The Flammenwerfer—or, in English, the flamethrower.

The results were horrifying. Carried by specially trained assault teams, German flamethrowers were highly effective weapons that would either drive men from their defensive positions … or simply incinerate them.

“When the nozzles were lighted, they threw out a roaring, hissing flame 20 or 30 feet long, swelling at the end to an oily rose, six feet in diameter,” Guy Chapman, a British infantryman at Passchendale, recalled years later in an account about one such assault. “Under the protection of these hideous weapons the enemy surrounded the advance pillbox, stormed it and killed the garrison.”

Fire on the battlefield is nothing new. Fifth-century Greeks during the Peloponnesian War developed a bellows-powered device that squirted flaming liquid at an enemy. Medieval sieges almost always included hurling “fire pots” over the walls of fortified towns or castles in an effort to start a conflagration. The order “set fire the village” is as old as military history.

Germans soldiers with flamethrowers in World War I

But during the 20th century, engineers and scientists placed flames under advanced technological control in an effort to make fire-spouting weapons portable, reliable and reasonably safe—a different kind of “friendly fire” that would not kill the operator while he was doing his best to kill the enemy with a weaponized inferno.

The result is a device with as much psychological impact as lethality—perhaps the chief reason why United States, Great Britain and other world powers used the flamethrower from World War I through the Vietnam War. Even today, Russia still has flamethrowers in its inventory.

“The most dramatic hand weapon of World War II and the most effective for its purpose was the flamethrower,” Edwin Tunis wrote in Weapons: A Pictorial History, his classic compilation of weapons through the ages. “It is hoped that it is less frightfully inhuman than it seems.”

In 1901, German inventor Richard Fiedler developed the first Flammenwerfer. He worked steadily with others from 1908 to 1914, refining the weapon’s design and creating two versions for battlefield use.

The Kleinflammenwerfer was a man-portable flamethrower consisting of a two-tank system, one holding flammable oil and the other a pressurized inert gas that sprayed the mixture out of the nozzle of a long wand.

Scandinavia and the Baltic States Are Forced to Confront Bigger Russian Military Threat

October 29, 2014

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Nordic, Baltic states face ‘new normal’ of Russian military threat

1 of 2. A Latvian army T-55 tank is parked in a military base in Adazi September 30, 2014.

Credit: Reuters/Ints Kalnins

(Reuters) - Fears of Russia re-asserting its Cold War dominance in the Baltic Sea are forcing countries there to re-think their defences, prioritising military spending at home and reducing participation in far-flung U.N. or U.S.-led missions.

Sweden’s fruitless search for a submarine — dubbed by locals “The Hunt for Reds in October” — and Russian violations of airspace are seen as elements of what one defence minister called a ‘hybrid warfare’, where fear and propaganda are deployed to keep countries on their toes.

"It is a new normal," Anna Wieslander, deputy director of the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, said of Russia’s greater military activity. "The readiness to respond to suspected territorial violations needs to be increased."

Most countries on Russia’s northwestern flank are planning higher military spending, reversing sharp falls of recent years, after the crisis in Ukraine revived Cold War tensions and exposed ageing equipment.

The Baltic states, for instance, have just one working tank — a 1955 Soviet-era T-55 in Riga. Sweden’s week-long search for a submarine was hampered by the sale or retirement of anti-submarine helicopters in 2008.

In the Cold War, Nordic nations were on a front line facing the Soviet Union across the Baltic. But the “peace dividend” reaped since then has meant less military spending. Sweden’s defence budget, for example, shrank from 3 percent of gross domestic product in 1980 to 1.2 percent last year.

“Russia sees that … this is a Monty Python type of defence,” said Jonathan Eyal, international director of the Royal United Services Institute think-tank in London.

Estonia has reported six breaches of airspace by Russian aircraft this year, up from two in all of 2013. Latvia says it has sighted more than 40 Russian military vessels near its waters this year, usually a rarity.

To Beat Russian Tanks, the Baltic States Are Studying the Georgia War

By Robert Beckhusen

October 29, 2014

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2008 conflict with Russia proves that anti-tank missiles rule

It was more than six years ago when a tank force from the Georgian army’s 42nd Mechanized Infantry Battalion fought its way overnight through Tskhinvali, South Ossetia.

The tanks were in trouble. They were moving too fast, outrunning their infantry support and taking losses to South Ossetian irregulars scattered throughout the city. Only hours into a war which would last five days, they had to keep moving before Russian reinforcements could arrive to bolster the pro-Russian, breakway Georgian province.

Later in the day, the tanks arrived at a crossroads near the command center of a local detachment of Russian peacekeepers. And that’s when the full force of the Russian 19th Motor Rifle Division—rushed to reinforce Tskhinvali—slammed into the battalion.

The Russians quickly destroyed four of the Georgian tanks—not with tanks of their own, but with anti-tank guided missiles launched from lighter armored vehicles. Demoralized, the surviving Georgian armor retreated.

Fast forward to today, and the armed forces of the Baltic states are studying what happened during that battle, in the event they might one day find themselves in the same situation as Georgia. Namely, as small states with small armies colliding with a much bigger and much more heavily-armored one. And what they’re learning is that they need lots of anti-tank missiles.

“The Baltic States have integrated the lessons of the battle of Tskhinvali,” writes Frederic Labarre in a near-comprehensive history of the battle for Small Wars Journal. Labarre, a military analyst and former adviser to the Estonian Ministry of Defense, heavily based his account on interviews with Georgian commanders who fought in the war.

A U.S. Army soldier trains with the Javelin (U.S. Army)

The past two years has seen the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania buying up large amounts of anti-tank weapons and ammunition.

Earlier in October, the U.S. approved the sale of $55 million worth of Javelin anti-tank missiles to Estonia. The sale includes a rather large number of 120 launchers and 250 missiles, including batteries and repair parts.

The Estonian military planned to buy the missiles before Russia invaded Crimea and eastern Ukraine, but the war certainly frightened Estonia enough into buying more of them—and doing it faster.

Poland Prepares for Russian Invasion

October 30, 2014

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As Vladimir Putin’s Russia continues to threaten Ukraine, having stolen Crimea in the spring and exerted de facto Kremlin control over much of the Donbas this summer, war worries are mounting on NATO’s eastern frontier. New reports of Russian troop movements on the Ukrainian border this week are not reassuring to those Atlantic Alliance members who suffered Soviet occupation for decades, and still live in Moscow’s neighborhood.

Neither are Russian air force incursions into Western airspace calming nerves with their reborn Cold War antics: yesterday, NATO fighters intercepted no less than nineteen Russian combat aircraft, including several heavy bombers. No NATO countries are more worried about Kremlin aggression than the Baltic states, with their small militaries and lack of strategic depth, which are frankly indefensible in any conventional sense without significant and timely Alliance assistance.

But Poland is the real issue when it comes to defending NATO’s exposed Eastern frontier from Russian aggression. Only Poland, which occupies the Alliance’s central front, has the military power to seriously blunt any Russian moves westward. As in 1920, when the Red Army failed to push past Warsaw, Poland is the wall that will defend Central Europe from any westward movement by Moscow’s military. To their credit, and thanks to a long history of understanding the Russian mentality better than most NATO and EU members, Warsaw last fall, when the violent theft of Crimea was still just a Kremlin dream, announced a revised national security strategy emphasizing territorial defense. Eschewing American-led overseas expeditions like those to Iraq and Afghanistan that occupied Poland’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) during the post-9/11 era, this new doctrine makes defending Poland from Eastern aggression the main job of its military. Presciently, then-Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, contradicting optimistic European and NATO presumptions of our era that conventional war in Europe was unthinkable, stated in May 2013, “I’m afraid conflict in Europe is imaginable.”

Particularly in light of the fact that both NATO and the Obama administrationrejected my advice to seriously bolster Alliance defenses in the East with four heavy brigades, including the two brigades that Warsaw explicitly asked NATO — meaning, in practice, the United States — for after this year’s Russo-Ukrainian War began in earnest, the issue of Poland’s military readiness is of considerable importance to countries far beyond Poland. Instead of creating a militarily viable NATO tripwire that would deter Russian aggression, the Alliance, and Washington, DC, have opted for symbolic gestures — speeches, military visits, small exercises — that impress the Western media but not the Russians.

Simply put: Can Poland defend itself if Putin decides to move his aggression westward? Even if NATO rides to the rescue, as they would be required to under Article 5 — that is now an “if” question to many in Warsaw — will the Polish military be able to buy sufficient time for the Alliance to come to their aid? Notwithstanding that Poland (and Estonia) are the only “new NATO” members that take their Alliance obligations fully seriously, spending more than the required two percent of GDP on defense — a standard almost all longstanding NATO members can’t manage to meet — there are serious doubts about the ability of Poland’s armed forces to defend against a major Russian move to the West.

There is good news. When it comes to resisting what I term Special War — that shadowy amalgam of espionage, terrorism, and subversion at which the Kremlin excels — Warsaw, with its long acquaintance with sneaky Russian games, is probably better equipped than any almost NATO country to deter and defeat Putin’s secret offensive. The recent arrests of two Polish agents of Russian military intelligence (GRU), one of them a Polish military officer assigned to the MoD, sent a clear message to Moscow that Special War will be countered with aggressive counterintelligence.

When it comes to conventional defense, however, the news from Poland appears less rosy. Despite the fact that no one questions the basic competence of the Polish armed forces, nor the impressiveness of their current defense acquisition program, there is a matter of size. The recent MoD announcement that it is moving thousands of troops closer to the country’s borders with Belarus and Ukraine, where any threat would emerge, is encouraging but not sufficient (thanks to the Cold War, when Poland’s Communist military was directed westward, most of its major military bases are closer to Germany than the East). Since the abandonment of conscription five years ago, a cumbersome process that caused readiness problems for some time, Warsaw’s armed forces come to only 120,000 active duty troops, with less than 48,000 in the ground forces (i.e. the army). That number is insufficient to man the army’s structure of three divisions with thirteen maneuver brigades (ten of them armored or mechanized).

Jamie Dettmer

10.30.14

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Time Is Running Out for Obama on Syria

The idea that U.S.-backed Syrian rebels defeat ISIS and force Assad to the negotiating table has absolutely nothing to do with what’s happening on the ground.

Only three days ago, President Barack Obama’s envoy to the Syrian rebels, retired Marine Gen. John Allen, explained confidently that the U.S. would help to train and equip Western-backed fighters to become a credible force that would compel the Assad regime to negotiate a political deal and end the four-year-long civil war.

Yeah. Right. The Obama administration’s plans have little or nothing to do with what is unfolding all too rapidly on the ground: Rebel brigades are demoralized, disintegrating, and fighting among themselves.

The Americans and their allies are carrying out a desultory air campaign in Syria that appears focused on support for the Kurds. Meanwhile, President Bashar al-Assad’s forces maintain a withering air offensive of their own on rebels and civilians alike in northern Syria.

Last week in a 36-hour period, Assad’s air force launched 210 airstrikes, according to generally reliable opposition activists. That’s more than the entire American-led coalition has mounted in both Iraq and Syria since Sept. 22.

Brigades of secular fighters and relatively moderate Islamists are nearly encircled and their supply lines are threatened in the country’s second largest city, Aleppo. Assad’s forces in the northern Syrian city of Idlib, meanwhile, are moving from defense to offense. On Monday, they recaptured the governor’s mansion and police headquarters.

The rebels are squabbling among themselves as suspicions rage about American designs and intentions.

Clashes erupted this week between Islamist brigades aligned with the Syrian Revolutionaries Front and the al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra after the jihadists seized seven towns and villages in the Idlib countryside they previously controlled. And while U.S. officials may not shed a tear over the infighting between Islamists and jihadists—they have long urged rebel factions to distance themselves from the al Qaeda group—the infighting raises the risks that al Nusra may develop a rapprochement with rival ISIS militants, making it harder to “degrade and ultimately defeat” that group as Obama says he intends to do.

Al Nusra and ISIS, both spinoffs of al Qaeda, have been at war with each other since al Qaeda’s top leadership disavowed ISIS early this year. But there have been a series of meetings between al Nusra commanders and the leaders of other rebel groups to iron out differences, according to Abdul Rahman, a commander in the 3,000-strong Jaysh al-Mujahedeen or Army of Mujahedeen, an Islamist-leaning brigade that emerged from the villages and towns of the Aleppo countryside. “Al Nusra is particularly suspicious of the rebel brigades favored by the Americans who are getting weapons from Washington,” he says.

“We don’t have shoulder-launched ground-to-air missiles, but the Islamic State does.”

That includes the mainly secular Harakat Hazm (The Steadfast Movement), which has received TOW anti-tank missiles from the Obama administration. According to a senior State Department official, who spoke to The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity, it is the FSA-aligned militia most trusted by Washington.

Islamic State fears hang over Baghdad

Author Ali Mamouri

October 27, 2014

Translator(s)Joelle El-Khoury

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A member of the Iraqi security forces stands guard at a checkpoint during an intensive security deployment in Baghdad, June 16, 2014. (photo by REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani)

NAJAF, Iraq — After it took control of Mosul on June 10, the Islamic State (IS) announced that its ultimate goal in Iraq is to control Baghdad, as the capital holds a great symbolic importance to it and its seizure would likely enhance the stability and recognition of its state by other Arab countries. IS knows how difficult this takeover will be.

Summary⎙ Print The Islamic State’s advance toward Baghdad is causing stress and confusion among residents, though government forces are maintaining a tight grip on the capital.

IS has made previous attempts to get closer to Baghdad from the north, after seizing Tikrit, which is located nearly 160 kilometers (100 miles) away. Yet, it failed after the Shiite areas were mobilized against IS’ progress toward Baghdad. The group continued to carry out suicide bombings in Baghdad to inflame the Sunni-Shiite sectarian conflict upon which the group has always strategically depended.

Since Oct. 13, IS has moved on Baghdad from the northern and western sides. At the same time, it relies on the southern and sympathizing areas where large Sunni segments reside. The group has recently dominated most parts of Anbar province, and still retains many areas in the provinces of Diyala and Salahuddin, north and east of Baghdad. It killed Anbar police chief Maj. Gen. Ahmed Saddak al-Dulaimi on Oct.12, upon whom the government relied to control the province, given his tribal affiliation with the area and his long military experience and harsh manner in dealing with terrorists.

The recent developments have led to widespread horror in Baghdad, particularly since they coincided with a series of bombings in Shiite areas, including more than a dozen explosions in Kadhimiya. The area includes a major Shiite shrine. The bombings also led to the killing of Ahmed al-Khafaji, a member of parliament from the Badr Organization's parliamentary bloc, which currently holds the Interior Ministry. In addition, five explosions took place in Karbala, the closest Shiite city to Anbar and which hosts thousands of displaced Iraqis, on Oct. 20. Until now, the security situation was fairly stable in the city.

In Baghdad, tension and rumors spread that IS may take control of the city, leading to the emergence of a broad debate in the media over the ability of the military forces to defend it. On Oct. 14, there were reports that battles took place between IS and the Iraqi army close to Baghdad’s international airport, but the spokesperson for the Iraqi Interior Ministry denied them.

Political leaders expressed concern over the deteriorating security situation. Bayan Jabr, head of the Citizen’s Bloc in the National alliance, said, “Baghdad’s surroundings have witnessed IS attempts designed to disturb the security situation in the towns of Dhuluiya, Balad, Al-Mushahida, Dujail, Tarmiya and Jarf al-Sakhr. These will be accompanied in the coming days with attempts to cause internal strife.”

These developments have pushed Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to express a clear position during his Oct. 16 visit to the Fourth Military College in Dhi Qar province. He said that terrorists have been dealt painful blows by the Iraqi security forces, and that is why they circulated rumors that they are at Baghdad's doors.

Iraqi Kurds Are Joining Fight to Drive Islamic State From Kobani

By KAMIL KAKOL and KAREEM FAHIM

OCT. 28, 2014

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SULAIMANIYA, Iraq — For the first time, pesh merga forces from Iraqi Kurdistan have moved to join the fighting against Islamic State militants besieging the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobani, taking advantage of Turkey’s decision to open its borders to reinforcements.

About 150 pesh merga fighters were expected to arrive near Kobani as early as Tuesday night, joining a battle that has stretched for more than a month despite continued airstrikes by the United States-led military coalition against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

The arrival of the pesh merga had been expected for more than a week, after Turkey announced that it would let the Iraqi fighters cross the border. The cause of the delay was unclear, but Kurdish officials in Kobani had initially seemed cool to the idea of outside forces entering the city.

They insisted that their own fighters, who serve with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or Y.P.G., could defend Kobani if they were provided with arms and ammunition. They suggested that the additional fighters, including those serving with units of the antigovernment Free Syrian Army, could open up other fronts against the Islamic State.

Later, the officials blamed Turkey for the delay. But Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, denied that his government was blocking the entrance of the fighters.

“There are no political setbacks on the issue,” he said Tuesday, according to the semiofficial Anadolu agency. “Turkey has already mentioned several times about helping either pesh merga or the Free Syrian Army fight against ISIL.”

Roads in Iraqi Kurdistan were lined with cheering residents as a convoy of dozens of pesh merga fighters, along with artillery pieces, rocket launchers and heavy machine guns, left a base outside Erbil on its way to the Turkish border. Another contingent of fighters flew to Turkey from Erbil, the regional capital, officials said.

Although the pesh merga will serve under their own commanders in Kobani, their entry to the battle offered a moment of unity among rival Kurdish factions. It remains to be seen, though, whether the reinforcements can shift the momentum in a fight that has become a crucible in the broader war between the United States-led coalition and the Islamic State.

The United States has conducted more than a hundred airstrikes on the militants around Kobani, and has provided weapons and ammunition to the Kurdish fighters with airdrops. Even so, Kurdish officials in Kobani said Tuesday that the Islamic State had recovered from losses it sustained earlier this month as the airstrikes intensified, and now controlled up to half the city.

Kamil Kakol reported from Sulaimaniya, and Kareem Fahim from Cairo. Karam Shoumali contributed reporting from Istanbul.

Wishful thinking in the U.S. plans against the Islamic State

By David Ignatius 

October 28, 2014

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Iraqi soldiers drive a tank in Jurf al-Sakhr on October 27, 2014 after Iraqi military forces retook the large area south of the capital from Islamic State (IS) group militants. (Haidar Mohammed Ali/AFP/Getty Images)

A glimpse of the anxiety sweeping the Arab world surfaced last week when an Arab woman complained during a talk in Amman at the Columbia Global Center for the Middle East. She said my speech’s title about the “crisis” in the region wasn’t accurate. The correct word was “disintegration.” The audience cheered loudly.

The Arab world is suffering a sense of vertigo these days. Extremists from the Islamic State, who have seemingly arisen out of nowhere, have burst through the gates of power. Political elites are confused and frightened. They’re angry at the United States (as always). But at the same time, they want the United States to explain a strategy for combating a group that threatens every structure of stability, including borders.

David Ignatius writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column and contributes to the PostPartisan blog. 

This anxiety has been compounded by President Obama’s slow start in rolling out his plan to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State. It was painful last week to hear Jalal al-Gaood, a tribal leader from the Albu Nimr clan along the Euphrates, tell me how his town was overrun because the United States hadn’t devised a plan to resupply tribal allies.

Since returning home, I’ve heard U.S. officials describe more details of their plans. The strategy has a lot of “ifs” and “maybes,” and it’s definitely a “work in progress,” as one U.S. official frankly admits. Among other drawbacks, it requires patience, in short supply in America and the Middle East; and it’s much clearer about Iraq than Syria. But the campaign plans do provide more clarity and allow for some needed public discussion.

For starters, this is an army at dawn, and U.S. commanders insist on taking little steps before big ones. The United States has posted a string of small successes, with air power backing Iraqi and Kurdish forces that liberated the Mosul and Haditha dams, freed trapped Yazidis on Mount Sinjar and successfully defended Irbil and Amerli.

Dozens of Iraq's Kurdish fighters are set to fly to Turkey on Tuesday and cross into the Syrian border town of Kobane to help fight Islamic State militants. (AP)

Big, risky operations such as retaking the city of Mosul are many months away. But the ops tempo increased modestly this week as Iraqi security forces pushed to regain control of the strategic Baiji refinery and Kurdish forces attacked jihadists in Zumar in northern Iraq. Commanders believe that as U.S.-backed forces take the offensive, the extremists will face tough choices: They can fight, risking heavy casualties, retreat, or hunker down. All three slow their momentum.

U.S. commanders know they must act quickly to gain credibility with Sunnis, especially after Albu Nimr and other tribal strongholds in Anbar province fell recently. These areas were sacrificed because U.S. military leaders believed it was unwise to mount ad hoc operations to free small, stranded pockets. U.S. air power could have been used but the risk of collateral damage was judged too high.

The Terrible Price of a Single Iraqi Military Victory Over ISIS

Iraq’s victory over militants in Sunni town underlines challenges government faces

Loveday Morris

Washington Post

October 29, 2014

Militiamen stand on a destroyed bridge on Oct. 28, 2014, in Jurf al-Sakhar, an Iraqi town southwest of Baghdad which has been a flashpoint for clashes for months. (Loveday Morris/The Washington Post)

JURF AL-SAKHAR, Iraq — Iraq renamed this town on the banks of the Euphrates this week to reflect the triumph of its security forces here against Islamic State militants, who were driven out last week. Jurf al-Sakhar, or “rocky bank,” became Jurf al-Nasr, or “victory bank.”

But a visit to the Sunni settlement Tuesday laid bare the huge cost of that victory. The town is now emptied of its 80,000 residents, and building after building has been annihilated — from airstrikes, bombings and artillery fire.

After four months of battles between the Islamic State and the Iraqi army, about 10,000 pro-government Shiite militiamen were poured into the area for a final push, according to Hadi al-Amiri, who leads the Badr Brigade and coordinated the operation. Defeating the militants involved clearing out all of the residents and leaving the town near-flattened, underscoring the challenge the Shiite-led government faces in areas where demographics do not work in its favor.

Here, there was no choice but to push forward. In just over a month, the nearby highway would be packed with millions of Shiite pilgrims heading south to commemorate the death of Imam Hussein, a figure revered in Shiite Islam. Militants based in Jurf al-Sakhar had stepped up attacks in recent weeks on the holy city of Karbala, about 20 miles south and home to the Imam Hussein Shrine. Officials said clearing Jurf al-Sakhar of militants had been essential to prevent large-scale assaults during more than a month of religious events.

On Tuesday, hundreds of militiamen trundled out of Jurf al-Sakhar in trucks and buses, handing over control of the town and outlying villages and farms to Iraqi security forces. As flatbed trucks carrying field artillery waited to move out, Humvees and bomb-disposal vehicles burned in streets that the insurgents had laced with explosives. In the town center, the smell of death lingered in the air.

The Shiite forces could not remain in the area, militia commanders said. Their presence would only spark controversy and accusations of sectarian killings, they said. There already have been reports of revenge attacks in the aftermath of the Jurf al-Sakhar victory.

It was not hard to see why such reports were circulating. A convoy of trucks blaring religious music from loudspeakers drove out on a dusty road just north of the town. The men in the truck were jovial and flashed peace signs, but the decaying body of an accused insurgent hung from the back of the vehicle. A commander with the militiamen, newly recruited volunteers who joined under a religious order to take up arms in June, became angry about the body being photographed.

“They are worried that it looks bad that we are killing them,” said a Badr commander who gave his name as Abu Muslim. “But they killed us at Speicher, so we should be able to kill them,” he added, referring to what Iraqi officials allege was the execution of 700 soldiers at the Camp Speicher base in northern Iraq in June by Islamic State militants.

U.S.-Israeli Relations: Don't Call It a Crisis

Paul R. Pillar

October 29, 2014

A piece by Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic bearing the title “The Crisis in U.S.-Israeli Relations is Officially Here” has elicited much comment, including fromcolleagues at The National Interest. Goldberg has performed a useful service in at least two respects. One is that his piece highlights how friction in the U.S.-Israeli relationship is primarily an epiphenomenon of an Israeli policy trajectory that is detrimental to Israel itself—no matter what U.S. officials may or may not say about the policies, publicly or privately—and not only detrimental to others. In commenting, for example, on the latest insertion of right-wing Jewish settlers into Arab areas of East Jerusalem—which many Palestinians unsurprisingly see as another step in de-Palestinianizing East Jerusalem so much that it could not become capital of a Palestinian state—Goldberg writes, “It is the Netanyahu government that appears to be disconnected from reality. Jerusalem is on the verge of exploding into a third Palestinian uprising.” He's right about the potential for a new intifada, one that could emerge spontaneously from bottled-up frustration and anger and would not need to be ordered or directed by anyone.

Another service by Gol;dberg is to portray the relationship far more realistically than one would conclude from the boilerplate that both governments routinely serve up about supposedly unshakeable ties between close, bosom-buddy allies. The fact is that the interests that this Israeli government pursues (not to be confused with fundamental, long-term interests of Israel and Israelis generally) are in sharp and substantial conflict with U.S. interests. No amount of pablum from official spokespersons can hide that fact.

For both these reasons, Goldberg's article deserves a wide readership.

The most recent expressions that reflect the true nature of the relationship are not just a matter of unnamed U.S. officials mouthing off. Goldberg notes in the third sentence of his piece that the comments he is reporting are “representative of the gloves-off manner in which American and Israeli [emphasis added] officials now talk about each other behind closed doors.” So the barbed tongues extend in both directions, but with two differences. One is that in this relationship the United States is the giver (of many billions in aid, and much political cover in international organizations) and Israel is the taker; harsh comments are far harder to justify when they are directed by an ungrateful beneficiary to its patron rather than the other way around. The other difference is that Israeli leaders insult the United States not just through anonymous comments to journalists but also publicly and openly; the current Israeli defense minister is one of the more recent and blatant practitioners of this.

One can legitimately question some of the particular accusations by the U.S. officials that Goldberg reports, not to mention the scatological and indecorous terminology employed. But to concentrate on this is to overlook the larger and far more important contours of the relationship. The most fundamental truth about the relationship is that, notwithstanding routine references to Israel as an “ally,” it is not an ally of the United States beyond being the recipient of all that U.S. material and political largesse. An ally is someone who offers something comparably significant and useful in return, particularly on security matters. That this is not true of Israel's relationship with the United States is underscored by the priority that the United States has placed, during some of its own past conflicts in the Middle East such as Operation Desert Storm, on Israel not getting involved because such involvement would be a liability, not an asset.

The core policy around which much of this Israeli government's other behavior revolves, and which defines Israel in the eyes of much of the rest of the world, is the unending occupation of conquered territory under a practice of Israel never defining its own borders and thus never permitting political rights to Palestinians under either a two-state or a one-state formula. This policy is directly contrary to U.S. interests in multiple respects, not least in that the United States through its close association with Israel shares in the resulting widespread antagonism and opprobrium.

One of the biggest and most recent U.S. foreign policy endeavors is the negotiation of an agreement to restrict and monitor Iran's nuclear program to ensure it stays peaceful. Completion of an agreement would be a major accomplishment in the interest of nonproliferation and regional stability. The Israeli “ally” has been doing everything it can to sabotage the negotiations and prevent an agreement.

It is a fallacy to think that making nice to the Israeli government will get it to back off from its opposition. It is a fallacy because that government has shown it does not want any agreement with Iran no matter what the terms, and because it is dishonest in expressing its opposition. There certainly is genuine concern in Israel about the possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapon, but that is clearly not what is behind the Israeli government's opposition because the sort of agreement that is shaping up would make it markedly less likely, in terms of both Iranian motivations and capabilities, for Iran ever to make a nuclear weapon than would be the case with no agreement. The Israeli government instead seeks to keep Iran permanently in diplomatic exile, precluding any cooperation between Iran and the United States on other issues (which would dilute Israel's claim to being the only worthwhile U.S. partner in the Middle East) and retaining the specter of Iran and a nuclear threat from it as the “real problem” in the Middle East supposedly more worthy of international attention than the occupation and unresolved plight of the Palestinians. These objectives, as well as the setback for the cause of nonproliferation that collapse of an agreement with Iran would entail, also are directly contrary to U.S. interests.

It's Time to Wake Up: Chinese Hacking Is Eroding U.S. Military Superiority

By Mackenzie Eaglen & Charles Morrison

October 22, 2014

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Countering Chinese cyber espionage must be a top priority

Earlier this month, the latest cyber-attack against J.P. Morgan garnered national headlines. And most Americans are aware of – if not affected by – last year’s Target and this year’s Home Depot data breaches.

Yet many Americans know much less about the regular and sophisticated theft of many of the U.S. military’s cutting-edge weapons systems. The cybercrime has reached the point where the FBI has warned American companies about a group of sophisticated Chinese government-backed hackers that has been working for years to steal economic and national security secrets from the U.S. government and private contractors. The notice comes after the Justice Department indicted five People’s Liberation Army officials in May for commercial espionage.

Systematic Chinese cyber espionage has resulted in significant damage to U.S. national security. However, Congress seems to be doing little to help. Part of it can surely be chalked up to what has been called “data breach fatigue.” Presumably the same mindset has infected the nation’s capital.

But the Pentagon cares about these breaches, and Congress should start paying serious attention. Last year, the Washington Post reported on a classified Defense Department report that revealed Chinese hackers have compromised the designs of more than two dozen U.S. military weapons systems. The list of impacted programs reads like a catalogue of weapons critical to current U.S. military dominance, including the stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the F/A-18 fighter jet, the Patriot missile system, the Army’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile defense system, the Navy’s Aegis ballistic missile-defense program, the V-22 Osprey, UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, and the Littoral Combat Ship. The Washington Free Beacon reports that other data stolen by the Chinese include the P-8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft and RQ-4 Global Hawk drones.

As the Chinese continue their military modernization while undermining America’s, Pentagon officials have increasingly sounded the alarm that U.S. military technological superiority is at risk. This technological superiority, in the words of Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Frank Kendall, “is being challenged in ways that I have not seen for decades, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. Technological superiority is not assured and we cannot be complacent about our posture. This is not a future problem. It is a ‘here-now’ problem.”

Many Pentagon leaders have looked to “leap-ahead” technologies to address this growing problem, investing in “seed corn” that will eventually sprout into game-changing technologies and capabilities. Yet, alarmingly, the Chinese have also compromised many of the next-generation technologies that the U.S. military is relying upon to maintain a leg-up in its competition with China. According to the Free Beacon, compromised technologies include “know-how related to directed energy weapons, drone video systems, technical data links, satellite communications, electronic warfare systems, and electromagnetic aircraft launch systems.”

If this trend continues unabated, the consequences would be palpable for security in East Asia and beyond. The better Beijing is able to counter the U.S. military’s most advanced capabilities of both today and tomorrow, the lower the threshold will be for aggression and coercion in the region.

Russian Hackers Believed to Be Responsible for Recent Breach of White House Computers

Hackers breach some White House computers

Ellen Nakashima

Washington Post

October 29, 2014

White House officials said the hackers did not damage any of the systems when they breached the unclassified network, and to date, there is no evidence that the classified network was hacked. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

Hackers thought to be working for the Russian government breached the unclassified White House computer networks in recent weeks, sources said, resulting in temporary disruptions to some services while cybersecurity teams worked to contain the intrusion.

White House officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said that the intruders did not damage any of the systems and that, to date, there is no evidence the classified network was hacked.

“In the course of assessing recent threats, we identified activity of concern on the unclassified Executive Office of the President network,” said one White House official. “We took immediate measures to evaluate and mitigate the activity. . . . Unfortunately, some of that resulted in the disruption of regular services to users. But people were on it and are dealing with it.”

The FBI, Secret Service and National Security Agency are all involved in the investigation. White House officials are not commenting on who was behind the intrusion or how much data, if any, was taken.

“Certainly a variety of actors find our networks to be attractive targets and seek access to sensitive information,” the White House official said. “We are still assessing the activity of concern.”

U.S. officials were alerted to the breach by an ally, sources said.

Recent reports by security firms have identified cyber-­espionage campaigns by Russian hackers thought to be working for the government. Targets have included NATO, the Ukrainian government and U.S. defense contractors. Russia is regarded by U.S. officials as being in the top tier of states with cyber-capabilities.

In the case of the White House, the nature of the target is consistent with a state-sponsored campaign, sources said.

The breach was discovered two to three weeks ago, sources said. Some staffers were asked to change their passwords. Intranet or VPN access was shut off for awhile, but the email system, apart from some minor delays, was never down, sources said.

The Deepening Divide in U.S.-China Cyber Relations

Adam Segal

October 29, 2014

Recent revelations by a group of security researchers of another China-based hacking group, reportedly more sophisticated than Unit 61398, is likely to set off the usual recriminations and denials, but have very little impact on the U.S.-China bilateral relationship. The Chinese embassy has already responded that “these kinds of reports or allegations are usually fictitious,” a response that Robert Dix, vice president of government affairs for Juniper Networks, colorfully and baldly describes as the Chinese giving “a big middle finger to anybody in the United States that’s tried to out them or point fingers in their direction.”

The report on the group, called Axiom, describes a six-year campaign against companies, journalists, civil society group, academics, and governments, and may preclude any real discussion on cyber issues between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit next week. There was, however, very little chance that their sidebar discussion was going to lead to major progress. The differences between the two sides are deep.

An article that ran last week in thePeople’s Liberation Army Daily[Chinese] criticizing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and efforts to develop the laws of armed conflict in cyberspace shows just how deep the differences are. The focus of the piece is the Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyberspace. Written by a group of international experts at the invitation of NATO’sCooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, the manual addresses many of the specific applications of law to cyberspace, including the use of force, when and how states can defend themselves, as well as questions of proportionality, distinction, and neutrality. The report was non-binding and is not the official ruling of NATO, the United States, or any other government.

The Chinese have long been skeptical about the applicability of international law to cyberspace. This article goes one step further, casting the manual as an effort to manipulate cyberspace using law. In particular, the author levels four charges:

- Post hoc justification: the manual argues that using the Internet for strategic action is permissible, and that countries can send false information to make the enemy believe that there is an ongoing error, wage psychological warfare, fabricate command issues, and steal enemy codes, signals, and passwords, all things the United States is said to have already done.

- Unilateralism: this is another example of the U.S. military using its strength to define rules that reinforce its dominance.

-Cold War thinking: NATO is an alliance designed for collective defense. Even though it is supposed to be a partnership, the United States will lead the organization into a confrontation over cyberspace.

-Bad faith: NATO says the group that researched and wrote the manual is independent, but the author of the article implies this cannot be true because of the leadership of Michael Schmitt, who teaches at the U.S. Naval War College.

There was some hope that discussions about international law might be a useful area of cooperation for the United States and China. The 2013 Council on Foreign Relations Independent Task Force report suggested that the U.S. State and Defense Departments “should call together a group of legal advisers from Kenya, Brazil, China, India, Tunisia, South Africa, Turkey, and other important developing cyber powers to work on these questions.” Perhaps the task force was naive in its hope that these discussions could be the basis for collaboration, but it is surely not a good sign that some in Beijing see the process as a weapon and source of greater mistrust.

The above first appeared in CFR’s blog Net Politics here.

U.S. Eyes Cyber ‘Deterrence’ To Stop Hackers

The best defense against this problem is a good offense. RCP

Agence France-Presse, 

Oct. 28 | Rob Lever

The US military is looking to flex its muscles in cyberspace as a “deterrence” to hackers eying American targets, the nation’s top cyber-warrior said Tuesday.

Admiral Mike Rogers, who heads the Pentagon’s Cyber Command as well as the National Security Agency, evoked a policy often put forward for avoiding nuclear warfare, because holding powerful weapons is seen as a deterrent.

Rogers said that as part of his role as the head of Cyber Command, he wants to send a message to potential cyber-attackers that there are consequences for their actions.

“Right now, if you are a nation-state, if you are a group, if you are an individual, my assessment is that most (hackers) come to the conclusion that it is incredibly low-risk, that there is little price to pay for the actions that they are taking,” Rogers told a cyber security conference at the US Chamber of Commerce in Washington.

“I’m not saying I agree with that but I believe most look at that and in light of that feel that they can be pretty aggressive. That’s not in our best interests in the long term as a nation to have that perception. We need to try to change that over time.”

Rogers said the US military has a “legal framework” for the use of any offensive cyber-weapons, noting that a decision to use these tools needs approval from the president and secretary of defense.

But he said US officials are in the midst of discussions on defining offensive military actions in cyberspace and how to implement them.

“What I hope we can develop over time is a set of norms and rules that get us into an area where we can get a better definition of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable (in cyberspace), and even into the idea of deterrence,” he told the conference.

The comments came the same day that security researchers, in two separate reports, said the Russian and Chinese governments are likely behind widespread cyber-espionage that has hit targets in the United States and elsewhere.

One team of researchers led by the security firm Novetta Solutions said it identified a hacker group believed to act “on behalf of a Chinese government intelligence apparatus.”

A separate report by the security firm FireEye said a long-running effort to hack into US defense contractors, Eastern European governments and European security organizations is “likely sponsored by the Russian government.”

The Chinese group, which was dubbed Axiom, “is a well-resourced, disciplined and sophisticated cyber-espionage group operating out of mainland China,” Novetta chief executive Peter LaMontagne said in a statement released with the study.

The report said the firms went beyond simply collecting information and cooperated on a “coordinated, effective remediation and disruption” of the Chinese networks.

“Novetta feels that the unified approach… provides the highest level of visibility and establishes the foundation necessary to effectively counter a threat of this nature,” the report said.

Rogers did not specifically comment on Axiom but said he is generally cautious on the use of “cyber-mercenaries” who retaliate against hackers.

Hackers Are Using Gmail Drafts To Update Their Malware And Steal Data

October 29, 2014 

http://www.fortunascorner.wordpress.com

Andy Greenberg, writing on the October 29, 2014 website Wired.com, begins by noting that “in his career-ending extramarital affair that came to light in 2012, General David Petraeus used a stealthy technique to communicate with his lover Paula Broadwell: the pair left messages for each other in the drafts folder of a shared Gmail account. Now hackers have learned this same trick,” Mr. Greenberg warns. “Only instead of a mistress, they’re sharing their lovers letters with data-sharing malware buried deep on a victim’s computer.”

“Researchers at the [cyber] security startup, Shape Security, say they’ve found a strain of malware on a client’s network that uses the new, furtive form of “command and control” — the communications channel that connects hackers to their malicious software — allowing them to send updates and instructions, and receive stolen data. Because the commands are hidden,” Mr. Greenberg writes, “in unassuming Gmail drafts that are never even sent, the hidden communications channel is particularly difficult to detect.”

“What we’re seeing here is command and control that is using a fully allowed service, and that makes it super-stealthy and very hard to identify,” said Wade Williamson, a [cyber] security researcher at Shape. “It’s stealthily passing messages back and forth without even having to press send. You never see the bullet fired.”

“Here’s how the attack worked in the case Shape observed,” Mr. Greenberg notes: “The hacker first set up an anonymous Gmail account, then infected a computer on the target’s [victim's] network with malware. (Shape declined to name the victim of the attack). After gaining control of the target machine, the hacker opened their anonymous Gmail account — on the victim’s computer…in an invisible instance of Internet Explorer — IE allows itself to be run by Windows programs so that they can seamlessly query web pages for information, so [and] the user has no idea a web page is even open on the [their] computer.”

And, the digital version of cat-and-mouse continues. V/R, RCP

“With the Gmail drafts folder open and hidden, the malware is programmed to use a Python script to retrieve commands and code that the hacker enters into that draft field. The malware responds with its own acknowledgements in Gmail draft form, along with the target data it’s programmed to exfiltrate from the victim’s network. All the communication is encoded to prevent it from being spotted by intrusion detection, or data-leak prevention. The use of a reputable web service instead of the usual IRC or HTTP protocols the hackers typically use to command their malware…also helps keep the hack hidden.”

“Williamson says the new infection is in fact a variant of a remote access Trojan (RAT) called Icoscript, first found by the German [cyber] security firm G-Data in August. At the time, G-data said that Icoscript had been infecting machines since 2012, and that its use of Yahoo Mail emails to obscure its command and control had helped to keep it from being discovered. The switch to Gmail drafts, said Williamson, could make the malware stealthier still,” Mr. Greenberg wrote.