Russia's Misstep: How Putin's Ukraine Adventure Backfired

Sean Mirski

March 11, 2015

Has Moscow overplayed its hand?

“Russia is winning” the Ukraine crisis, or so goes the conventional account. This claim has elements of truth to it—narrowly conceived, Russia has gained much in the last year. President Putin has boldly returned control of the Crimean peninsula to Russia. He has crippled Ukraine through a new “hybrid warfare” that the West seems unable to counter. Moscow has demonstrated its resolve and resilience in the face of Western sanctions, even as President Putin has watched his domestic approval ratings skyrocket. And the Kremlin has reminded the world that Russia is determined to control its neighborhood, and that it remains a great power worthy of respect.

But Putin’s short-term victories should not blind Western policymakers to the significant costs that Russia has racked up. In particular, through its annexation of Crimea and subsequent policies, Moscow has ensured that Ukraine will no longer act as a buffer state and will instead gravitate to the West for the foreseeable future. What’s more, Russia’s security situation has continued to deteriorate amidst a series of missteps and predictable backlashes from the international community. And worst of all, the Kremlin cannot reverse its error and must instead rely on additional, costly policies in order to mitigate the fallout from its initial mistake.

From the end of the Cold War until early 2014, Ukraine acted as the quintessential buffer state. Both Russia and the West wanted to integrate the country into their respective spheres of influence, but Kiev remained independent and largely neutral.

SAUDI ARABIA PREPARES FOR IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL

by Fortuna's Corner 

March 9, 2015 

US Secretary of State John Kerry (L) meets Saudi King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud Salman at Diriyah Farm in Diriyah, March 5, 2015. Kerry met Gulf Arab foreign ministers in Riyadh to brief them on progress in the nuclear talks with Iran and offer reassurance that any deal would not damage their interests. (photo by REUTERS/Evan Vucci)

Saudi Arabia is quietly preparing for an international nuclear agreement with Iran that it fears will rehabilitate its Shiite Persian rival. King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud’s approach eschews the public spectacle of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress (indeed, the Saudis don’t want any association with Israel) and instead focuses on regional alliances to contain an emergent Iran.

Summary⎙ Print Saudi Arabia has been pulling out the diplomatic stops in an effort to contain Iran in anticipation of what it sees as an unfavorable nuclear deal between the West and the Islamic republic.

AuthorBruce RiedelPosted March 8, 2015

The Saudis publicly welcomed US Secretary of State John Kerry’s assurances in Riyadh last week that Washington will not accept a bad nuclear deal with Iran, and that a deal will not inaugurate a grand rapprochement between Washington and Tehran. They remain deeply skeptical about the negotiations, however, and are preparing for any outcome in the P5+1 process.

The Saudis recognize that a successful deal between Iran, the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany will enjoy broad international backing and United Nations endorsement. Riyadh has no interest in being isolated in a dissenting minority with Netanyahu against a deal backed by a global majority. The royal family despises Israel, and Netanyahu is regarded as a war criminal by most Saudis. Any hint of mutual interest with Israel is unpalatable in the kingdom.

U.S. Is Losing The Secret War in Syria

Robert S. Ford

March 10, 2015

America Is Losing the War in Syria

The current U.S. strategy in Syria isn’t working. Despite the coalition airstrikes against the Islamic State, the group still has strategic depth in Syria to back its campaign in Iraq. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, meanwhile, isn’t fighting the Islamic State — it’s locked in combat with the moderate opposition. Despite Washington’s hope for a national political transition away from Assad, there is no sign of a cease-fire, much less a comprehensive political deal.

More than ever, Americans — and Syrians — need to ask themselves what has gone wrong and what can be fixed. U.S. strategy needs to center on taking back ground from the Islamic State and driving a wedge between Assad’s small ruling circle and his increasingly wobbly support base so that a new government can be established to rally more Syrians against the jihadis. Reinforcing Syria’s moderate rebels is still the key component in achieving these goals, but we — and they — have to get the strategy and tactics right.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration should undertake a major diplomatic and assistance effort, or it should walk away from Syria.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration should undertake a major diplomatic and assistance effort, or it should walk away from Syria. Merely continuing to inject small amounts of aid and men in the fight won’t sustainably contain the jihadis or be sufficient to reach the political negotiation the administration keeps hoping for.

The quiet end to the Syrian armed opposition’s Hazm Movement, with which the Americans had worked in northern Syria, was the latest signpost of the current failed policy. With aid coming too little and too late, the movement was easily knocked aside by al Qaeda-linked extremists who gained new territory and border crossings. It is far from the only moderate rebel group to suffer large setbacks in recent months: Others are simultaneously under attack from Assad regime forces (which are strongly reinforced by Iranian and Hezbollah troops), jihadis from the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, and the Islamic State.

Israel’s Hidden Nuclear Weapons Development Program Looks a Lot Like Iran’s

Walter Pincus

March 10, 2015

Another nation blazed the trail for Iran in developing a nuclear program

Iran may be following the path of another country as it seeks clandestinely to develop a capability to produce nuclear weapons.

Was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remembering his own country’s success in hiding its nuclear weapons program in the 1960s from U.S. inspectors when he questioned whether inspections will prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon?

“Iran not only defies inspectors, it also plays a pretty good game of hide-and-cheat with them,” Netanyahu told the joint meeting of Congress last week.

Excuse the metaphor, but the elephant in the House chamber was that Israel blazed a trail decades ago. Its own clandestine building of nuclear weapons facilities in the Negev desert began 60 years ago, and the country now has about 200 nuclear bombs and missile warheads.

When Israel began building a reactor with France’s help, its officials in June 1960 described it to the U.S. Embassy there as “a textile plant” and later as “a metallurgical research installation,” according to a March 1964 memo prepared for then-National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy.

In December 1960, then-Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion announced in the Knesset that the building of a 24-megawatt reactor at Dimona would not be completed for four years. It was, he said, “intended exclusively for peaceful purposes.”

At a Jan. 4, 1961, meeting with then-U.S. Ambassador to Israel Ogden Reid, Ben-Gurion agreed to allow U.S. scientists to visit the reactor provided there were no leaks of information.

The first visit was in May 1961, and the scientists reported that the reactor was “entirely as advertised.”

The Real Challenge to Iranian Nuclear Talks

By Richard Javad Heydarian

March 10, 2015

The true reason why opponents are decrying ongoing negotiations.

Without question, Washington and Tehran have managed to move closer than ever before to a negotiated settlement of a decades-long crisis over the Iranian nuclear program. It remains to be seen, however, whether they have moved close enough to seal a comprehensive, long-term deal in the coming months. But there are growing signs that the two parties may have finally discovered the optimal point of convergence in their possible zones of compromise

The nuclear negotiations have managed to move this far precisely because both sides’ “red lines” have beentaken into consideration. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the great powers, specifically the P5+1 (a grouping comprising the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China, and Russia), are now primarily focused on hammering out remaining concerns over the duration of restrictions on and intrusive inspection of Iran’s nuclear program as well as the pace and breadth of rollback in sanctions against Iran. And this is where the negotiations have become a classic “two-level game,” where domestic political dynamics in both Tehran and Washington is as crucial as the substantive points of discussion among directly negotiating parties.

Assuming the negotiating parties manage to arrive at a final agreement before the July, 2014 deadline, the real challenge down the road is to sell the agreement to hardliners at home. Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial speech at the U.S. Congress — criticized by a majority of the American people (see CNN’s latest poll), and which, in the words of a veteran legislator, represented as “an insult to the intelligence of the U.S.” — was primarily aimed at the second level of negotiations, specifically the U.S. Congress, which has the sole power to permanently suspend all sanctions against Iran to make the deal work.

The Great Convergence

Iran has long made its “red lines” more or less clear. Under no conditions will Iran agree to a complete dismantlement of its much-prized domestic enrichment capacity, which Iran treats as its “inalienable right.” Furthermore, any compromise on Tehran’s part should be reciprocated by the removal of all sanctions, particularly the unilateral punitive measures imposed by Washington and Brussels since late-2012. The Obama administration, in turn, has made it clear that it will settle for nothing less than a comprehensive, real-time, and verifiable inspection regime to ensure there is no diversion of fissile material for nuclear weapons-production,assuming Iran would choose to do so. More precisely, Washington is aiming for at least a one-year “breakout” time cushion.

Crucially, both American and Israeli intelligence agencies indicate that despite mastering the fuel cycle, Iranhasn’t even made the decision to move in that direction. According to leaked documents, Israel’s Mossad recently concluded that Iran is “not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons.” So the Obama administration is simply playing it safe, ensuring that Iran’s nuclear program is strictly maintained within peaceful parameters. President Obama is determined to show that diplomacy is the best way forward even if one can’t fully decipher another party’s intentions.

Tom Cotton's Neocon Recklessness

Daniel R. DePetris

March 11, 2015

The seven Republican lawmakers who didn't sign the Iran letter dodged a diplomatic bullet.

Usually, when forty-seven senators in the same party sign a letter, it gets people’s attention. But I suspect that even Tom Cotton, the freshman senator from Arkansas, Iraq war veteran, and protege of William Kristol, didn’t anticipate the blowback he’s receiving from his missive to the Iranian leadership this week. To their credit, a number of Republican Senators, including Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, declined to sign.

Cotton may consider the correspondence to Tehran as an educational lesson to the Iranians--whom he apparently views in toto as hardliners--on the U.S. system of governance, but it isn’t the job of legislators to educate foreign governments, especially hostile ones, about the workings of American democracy.

In reality, it is an attempt to dare Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to walk away from the negotiations, derailing the eighteen months of work put in by Secretary of State John Kerry, Under Secretary Wendy Sherman, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and the rest of the P5+1 coalition.

Congress, Cotton writes, is the only branch of the U.S. government that has the power to consent to a treaty. Any deal that does not involve a vote from Congress is therefore nothing but an executive agreement. “The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen,” the letter concludes, “and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”

Salvaging Global Order

Richard Fontaine

March 10, 2015

It is on the notion of order that the world turns, or burns.

International order is all the rage these days. Not since end of Cold War has so much sustained attention focused on the web of norms, institutions, rules, and relationships that has for seven decades regulated large swathes of international behavior.

And for good reason: among global leaders there is a palpable sense that global order is fraying, but there is far less agreement on what to do about it. George H.W. Bush may have held out the prospect of a New World Order as the Soviet bloc collapsed, but today’s leaders have put forth few coherent plans. This invites danger, as the future of world order is in many ways the question of our geopolitical age.

It’s clear that global fragmentation preoccupies foreign policy minds these days. President Obama devoted a full quarter of his recently released National Security Strategy to international order and America’s efforts to strengthen it. Henry Kissinger’s new book World Order is a bestseller, and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright this month expressed great concern the international order “because there is a lot of pressure on the system.” The Council on Foreign Relations’ Richard Haass recently wrote of the “era of disorder” and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the U.S. Congress that last year saw the highest rate of political instability across the world since 1992.

The CIA and the Cult of Reorganization

Paul R. Pillar

March 10, 2015 

Re-arranging bureaucracies has long been a favorite Washington way of pretending to make improvements. It is a handy recourse in the absence of good ideas to make real improvement. Revising a wiring diagram is the sort of change that can be made visible to the outside world. It does not require reaching consensus about significant increases or decreases in the priority given particular programs or their budgets. It offers a basis for convincing ourselves that the bureaucracies involved will perform better, even if the main reasons we don't get everything we would like to get from those bureaucracies are to be found in the inherent, unavoidable challenges of the tasks they are assigned to perform.

The urge to reorganize is not limited to government. Revising wiring diagrams is alluring to senior managers in private sector organizations as well. It is a way of showing initiative and appearing to be dedicated both to improving the organization and keeping pace with changes in the outside world. It is one of the most visible ways for any senior manager to leave a mark and establish a legacy.

Now the Central Intelligence Agency is being hit again with the reorganization bug, with changes that director John Brennan announced last week. The intelligence community has been subjected to this sort of thing at least as much as other parts of the federal bureaucracy. The most notable instance was a reorganization of the community a decade ago as the most visible part of the 9/11 Commission's response to a popular demand to shake things up after a terrible terrorist attack. That change added new bureaucracy on top of continuing old organizations, and in the years since has given us little or no reason to believe that it was a net improvement.

The principal feature of the changes that Brennan announced is to move all of the agency's operational and analytical work, and not just selected parts of it, into integrated “mission centers” covering issue areas defined either geographically or functionally. As with most other reorganizations, both criticism and praise tend to be overstated. Any change in a bureaucracy's performance, for good or for ill, resulting from changing the wiring diagram will not be nearly as pronounced as either critics or promoters usually would lead us to believe.

A criticism of this newest reorganization, for example, is that it would lead to still more focus on current doings at the expense of longer-range analysis. But within each issue area there is no reason to believe that worthwhile long-range analysis cannot be done in the mission centers. Another line of criticism involves a feared compromise of the integrity of analysis because of overly close association of the analysts with operators. This would only be a problem, however, where covert action is involved. Although some unfortunate experiences involving Central America in the 1980s demonstrate the corrupting potential, covert action—despite the public image of what the CIA does—constitutes a small (and usually well-compartmented) portion of the agency's work. There is a substantial hazard of policy preferences influencing analysis stemming from relations with policy-makers, but that is a separate matter from relations between analysts and operators within an intelligence agency.

TRUE EXPERTS IN NATIONAL SECURITY AND FOREIGN POLICY

Thomas Spincic

March 10, 2015

Editor’s note: We asked contributors to the War on the Rocks Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to tell other readers, in their own words, why they chose to support WOTR. The responses we received have been amazing. Here’s one of them.

If you want informed commentary on foreign policy and musings on various liquors, you needn’t keep looking—you’ve found War on the Rocks. It’s hard to nail down what they do best. WOTR’s contributing authors are true experts in national security and foreign policy, and the editorial staff has vetted them to make sure they have the right amount of street cred to back it up. The content is varied and easy to digest; it doesn’t read like an overwritten field manual. I contributed to WOTR’s campaign because I love what they do. I want to see them get bigger.

— Thomas Spincic, Assistant Editor, ARMY Magazine (released monthly by the Association of the U.S. Army)

CYBER WARRIORS NEED NOT BE SOLDIERS

by Fortuna's Corner 

March 9, 2015 

Source Link

The Cyber Operations Center on Fort Gordon, Ga., is home to signal and military intelligence non-commissioned officers, who watch for and respond to network attacks from adversaries as varied as nation-states, terrorists and “hacktivists.” Credit: Michael L. Lewis

The Cyber Operations Center on Fort Gordon, Ga., is home to signal and military intelligence non-commissioned officers, who watch for and respond to network attacks from adversaries as varied as nation-states, terrorists and “hacktivists.” Credit: Michael L. Lewis

Throughout history, warriors of all cultures have trained their bodies to endure physical hardship and combat, whether they wielded swords and shields or carried guns and ammunition. In the 21st century, countries such as China and Estonia have recruited a new breed of warriors who fight as part of cyber militias rather than as official military personnel in uniform. Such cyber warriors often represent civilians with high-tech jobs who spend their days tapping away at keyboards rather than practicing how to accurately shoot an assault rifle or pass fitness tests. A number of U.S. military officers and national security experts say that the United States also needs to begin recruiting tech-savvy civilians without requiring them to become traditional soldiers.

The U.S. military has trained a growing number of uniformed cyber warriors. But it faces a special challenge in recruiting a certain caliber of computer professionals who would rather work at high-paying jobs in Silicon Valley than enlist for military service. That issue came up during a session of the “Future of War” conference hosted by the New America Foundation on Feb. 25, when an audience member asked a panel of experts if the U.S. should “militarize” the country’s technological talent and resources in Silicon Valley.

CIA Tried to Crack Encryption Used on Apple Phones and Apps

Jeremy Scahill and Josh Begley

March 10, 2015

RESEARCHERS WORKING with the Central Intelligence Agency have conducted a multi-year, sustained effort to break the security of Apple’s iPhones and iPads, according to top-secret documents obtained by The Intercept.

The security researchers presented their latest tactics and achievements at a secret annual gathering, called the “Jamboree,” where attendees discussed strategies for exploiting security flaws in household and commercial electronics. The conferences have spanned nearly a decade, with the first CIA-sponsored meeting taking place a year before the first iPhone was released.

By targeting essential security keys used to encrypt data stored on Apple’s devices, the researchers have sought to thwart the company’s attempts to provide mobile security to hundreds of millions of Apple customers across the globe. Studying both “physical” and “non-invasive” techniques, U.S. government-sponsored research has been aimed at discovering ways to decrypt and ultimately penetrate Apple’s encrypted firmware. This could enable spies to plant malicious code on Apple devices and seek out potential vulnerabilities in other parts of the iPhone and iPad currently masked by encryption.

The CIA declined to comment for this story.

The security researchers also claimed they had created a modified version of Apple’s proprietary software development tool, Xcode, which could sneak surveillance backdoors into any apps or programs created using the tool. Xcode, which is distributed by Apple to hundreds of thousands of developers, is used to create apps that are sold through Apple’s App Store.

The modified version of Xcode, the researchers claimed, could enable spies to steal passwords and grab messages on infected devices. Researchers also claimed the modified Xcode could “force all iOS applications to send embedded data to a listening post.” It remains unclear how intelligence agencies would get developers to use the poisoned version of Xcode.

French Intelligence Services Tied to Family of Trojan Horse Malware Systems

Lucian Constantin

March 9, 2015

Cyberespionage arsenal could be tied to French intelligence agencies

A collection of computer Trojans that have been used since 2009 to steal data from government agencies, military contractors, media organizations and other companies is tied to cyberespionage malware possibly created by French intelligence agencies.

Researchers from several antivirus companies have found links between the malware programs, which they call Babar, Bunny, Casper, Dino, NBot and Tafacalou. Some share the same command-and-control servers and some use the same implementations for Windows process listing, process blacklisting or export hashing.

In January, German news magazine Der Spiegel published several secret documents about the malware activities of the U.S. National Security Agency and its closest partners, the intelligence agencies of the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand—collectively known as the Five Eyes intelligence alliance.

One of those documents, which was part of the files leaked to journalists by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, was a presentation from the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) dated 2011 that described a foreign cyberespionage operation dubbed SNOWGLOBE.

CSEC, a Canadian government intelligence agency, named the Trojan program used in the operation SNOWBALL, but noted that its internal name was Babar, the name of a popular French children’s book series and television show. It also noted other French connections including the user name of the malware’s developer “titi,” which the French diminutive for Thiery; the use of kilooctet (ko) instead of kilobyte (KB), which is typical of the French technical community; and the language option of the development computer being “fr_FR.”

According to CSEC, Babar’s victims also matched French intelligence priorities: Iranian science and technology research organizations, European financial associations, French-speaking media organizations and organizations in former French colonies like Algeria and the Ivory Coast.

“CSEC assesses, with moderate certainty, SNOWGLOBE to be a state-sponsored CNO [computer network operation] effort, put forth by a French intelligence agency,” CSEC concluded in the presentation that was shared with the Five Eyes partners.

In February, researchers from security firm Cyphort identified and analyzed an information-stealing Trojan, whose internal project name was Babar64. The malware program was capable of logging key strokes, taking screen shots, capturing audio streams from Voice-over-IP applications, stealing clipboard data, and more.

Silk Road Reporters: An Independent News Site for Central Asia?

By Casey Michel

March 11, 2015

Why a new site covering Central Asia might not be all that it seems. 

In late October, the Kazakhstan embassy in Washington, D.C., pushed an article to those who had subscribed to its listserv. The post, pitched as news from the online publication Silk Road Reporters, spent nearly two thousand words lobbying for the inclusion of Kazakhstan as one of the UN Security Council’s non-permanent members. The writer, John C. K. Daly, claimed Kazakhstan deserved a seat on the Council, painting the nation as a “progressive, peaceful country … that will bring perspectives to the UNSC that have yet to be heard.”

For those unfamiliar with Kazakhstan, the plea may have proven persuasive – a nascent nation, with a new perspective, from a part of the world often overlooked. And for those unfamiliar with English-language media covering Central Asia, Silk Road Reporters may have appeared as simply another media outlet for a long-neglected region.

On digging a bit deeper, however, and a number of questions emerge about Silk Road Reporters – which bills itself as an “independent news website” and is one of the few English-language outfits focusing on Central Asia. Questions about its “contributors” and their lack of track record, or indeed any kind of record. Questions about connections to consultants and PR specialists, and links to those lobbying on behalf of the Kazakhstan government. While no paperwork linking Silk Road Reporters to Astana has emerged, numerous signs surrounding the publication point to the outlet as yet another effort at Astana’s image-burnishing efforts in the United States – an effort that has not only roped in Tony Blair, but has already extended to assorted American media outlets.

Silk Road Reporters, which first began publishing stories on the region last January, says it offers “compelling original reporting, analysis, interviews, and investigations from Central Asia[.]” The publication is run by James Kimer, the site’s self-described “owner and editor.” In an interview, Kimer said that he had visited Central Asia multiple times over the past decade, and wanted to give a voice to those in the region “who had almost no coverage in English-language media.” With his own money and an “inheritance” from his grandmother, Kimer began Silk Road Reporters in early 2014, and has been publishing regularly ever since.

ASEAN Is Not a Security Community (Yet)

By Morgan Potts

March 10, 2015

Has the bloc really been the force for peace in the region that some claim? 

Since the formation of the Association of South East Asian Nations in 1967 with the Bangkok Declaration, there have been no major wars between its members – although there have been a number of militarized border disputes. Constructivists (Amitav Acharya premier among them, writing on the subject from 1991–present) maintain that this “lasting peace” is the result of community, and that ASEAN is therefore a security community (SC). I contend that there are more important factors than community at play that are responsible for the lack of war, and moreover that ASEAN is not as secure as it appears.

To begin, let’s define our terms. “Security” is, to be concise, the absence of violence and threat of violence. A “community,” aptly described by Acharya, is a group with a shared identity and common norms. “Security community,” a term coined by Karl Deutsch in 1957 and best defined by him, is a group “with reasonable expectations for lasting peaceful change” – that is, the resolution of disputes by peaceful means.

Is ASEAN a security community? Both the assertion that it is secure and a community are dubious – while there has been no war, the militarized border disputes have occasionally resulted in casualties, including civilian losses. Individual member states also have tainted track records on human rights and human security, raising questions about the security of individual citizens: Thailand’s 2003 “war on drugs” witnessed the extra-judicial killing of at least 2500 alleged drug dealers; according to Human Rights Watch’s recent assessment, Burma’s human rights situation is regressing; and several ASEAN states have questionable levels of freedom of speech and assembly.

A community feeling is suspiciously absent as well, evidenced in the 2003 anti-Thai riots in Phnom Penh, theMalaysian threats to cut off Singapore’s water supply to apply political pressure, and the disputed territories of Pedra Branca (claimed by Singapore and Malaysia; the ICJ ruled in Singapore’s favor in 2008) and the Ambalat sea block (claimed by Malaysia and Indonesia; still contested). Most telling, however, is the 2003 Bali Concord IIwhich establishes the goal of an ASEAN SC, acknowledging that it is as of yet unreached; this was reaffirmed in the 2009 “Blueprint.”

How Powerful Is America's Military Really?

Zachary Keck

March 10, 2015

Politicians are fond of telling Americans that they have the most powerful military in the history of mankind. However, they rarely can explain how they reached that conclusion.

As it turns out, despite the seemingly endless number of government and think-tank reports being published daily, there isn’t a single index measuring America’s military power. Until now, that is.

Last week, the Heritage Foundationreleased the first of what will be an annual report on America’s military might. The report, entitled 2015 Index of U.S. Military Strength: Assessing America’s Ability to Provide for the Common Defense, is modeled on Heritage's widely successful Index of Economic Freedom.

The new index assesses America’s hard power, which is measured in terms of “capability or modernity, capacity for operations, and readiness,” against threats to vital U.S. interests. It also looks at “the ease or difficulty of operating in key regions based on existing alliances, regional political stability, the presence of U.S. military forces, and the condition of key infrastructure.”

The conclusion of the report is not exactly comforting: namely, America only possesses “marginal” military strength to defend its vital interests in the current threat environment. “Overall, the Index concludes that the current U.S. military force is adequate to meeting the demands of a single major regional conflict while also attending to various presence and engagement activities,” the report states. “But it would be very hard-pressed to do more and certainly would be ill-equipped to handle two, near-simultaneous major regional contingencies,” as successive administrations of both political parties have used as their benchmark for military strength.

LYING TO OURSELVES: THE DEMISE OF MILITARY INTEGRITY

David Barno and Nora Bensahel

March 10, 2015

War on the Rocks is expanding, and we need your help!

Leaders lie “in the routine performance of their duties,” and “ethical and moral transgressions [occur] across all levels” of the organization. Leaders have also become “ethically numb,” using “justifications and rationalizations” to overcome any ethical doubts. This “tacit acceptance of dishonesty… [facilitates] hypocrisy” among leaders.

These quotations sound like they are ripped from the headlines about some major corporate scandal. But they’re not describing Enron before its collapse in 2001, or firms like Lehman Brothers and Countrywide before the 2008 financial crisis. Instead, they describe one of the country’s most respected institutions: the U.S. Army.

Leonard Wong and Stephen Gerras, who are both professors at the U.S. Army War College, just published a devastating study called Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession. They state up front that indications of ethical and moral problems can be found throughout the entire U.S. military, not just in the Army. These include (but certainly are not limited to) U.S. Air Force personnel cheating on tests about nuclear launch systems, and U.S. Navy admirals and others sharing classified information in exchange for gifts and bribes. Last year, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel appointed a two-star admiral as the first Senior Advisor for Military Professionalism to address mounting concerns about ethical issues throughout the force.

India Gears Up to Tackle China in Its Backyard

By Harsh V. Pant

March 10, 2015

With Narendra Modi’s tour of three Indian Ocean states this week, New Delhi will renew its commitment to the region. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be on a three-nation trip this week which will take him to the Seychelles, Mauritius and Sri Lanka – three key Indian Ocean island nations. There were suggestions that the prime minister will be visiting Maldives as well but it was dropped from the itinerary after the arrest and incarceration of the country’s first democratically elected president and current opposition leader Mohamed Nasheed in an expression of India’s disapproval of these moves. Indian Prime Minister is likely to step up his nation’s military and civilian assistance to the Seychelles, Mauritius and Sri Lanka during his visit in an effort to balance China’s growing imprint in the region, which has built highways, power plants, and seaports in these small island nations. India envisages its role as a net security provider in the Indian Ocean region and towards that end it is providing patrol ships, surveillance radars and ocean mapping for the island states.

The visit of the Indian Prime Minister to the nation’s maritime neighbors is reflective of India’s desire to shore up its profile in the Indian Ocean region, a region long considered India’s backyard but where New Delhi’s influence has been eroding slowly but steadily. China has extended a quiet challenge to India’s preeminence in South Asia through diplomatic and aid efforts directed at the small island nations dotting the Indian Ocean. While China, Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asian nations fight over specks of islands and reefs in East and South China Sea, mainly because of undersea resources, islands in the Indian Ocean are emerging as a new focus for struggle between China and India.

China has also been busy forging special ties with island nations on India’s periphery including Sri Lanka, Seychelles and Mauritius. China’s attempt to gain a foothold in the Indian Ocean came into view in 2012 when reports emerged of an offer from Seychelles – a strategically located island nation in the Indian Ocean – to China for a base to provide relief and resupply facilities to the People’s Liberation Army Navy. Though promptly denied by Beijing, the offer underscored the changing balance of power in the region. India has traditionally been the main defense provider for Seychelles – providing armaments and training to its Peoples’ Defense Forces, or SPDF. India extended a $50 million line of credit and $25 million grant to Seychelles in 2012 in an attempt to cement strategic ties. The Indian Navy has also been making regular forays into the island nation’s surrounding waters.

India No Longer the World's Top Arms Importer

By Ankit Panda

March 09, 2015

IHS reports that Saudi Arabia surpassed India to become the world’s top arms importer in 2014. 

A recently released study by defense research company IHS notes that India conceded its position as the world’s top arms exporter — a superlative it had held for several years running — to Saudi Arabia in 2014. Saudi spending on arms last year stood at $6.5 billion while India spent $5.8 billion on its needs. IHS predicts that the trend will be lasting. Saudi Arabia, according to the report, will spend $9.8 billion in 2015, accounting for a seventh of worldwide expenditure on arms imports. Global defense trade rose to a record $64.4 billion, representing the sixth consecutive year-on-year increase, according to the same report.

India’s recently announced 2015 government budget earmarked $40 billion for defense expenditure, a sum that some have described as inadequate for the country’s ambitious defense modernization plans. For example, Defense News reported recently that India’s newly announced budget casts doubt that the long-running contract negotiations with France’s Dassault Aviation for the purchase of 126 Rafale fighters to fulfill India’s Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) needs could fail due to inadequate funding. The Rafale deal is expected to cost $12 billion. New Delhi currently has nearly $20 billion in foreign procurement proposals pending, with the MMRCA contract being the largest. Following the MMRCA, India is considering acquiring Airbus A330 tankers, Boeing Apache attack helicopters, nearly 200 light utility helicopters, and heavy lift helicopters. Despite its long wishlist of foreign military equipment, the current Indian government has placed a major strategic emphasis on building an indigenous defense industrial base.

Afghanistan: Five Tasks for Ghani’s Crucial U.S. Visit

By Tamim Asey

March 09, 2015

With his country at a critical juncture, the Afghan president needs to make the most of his Washington visit. 

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is about to embark on his first official visit to the U.S. as head of state. He will be hosted at the White House along with his former rival and now partner in the National Unity Government (NUG), Abdullah Abdullah. Both leaders inherit a bumpy legacy of U.S.-Afghan relations. Ghani’s predecessor Hamid Karzai had a rocky relationship with U.S. President Barack Obama and his national security team. That deep distrust, together with Karzai’s very public outbursts at U.S. policies, has cost Afghanistan dearly in terms of both image and goodwill amongst the U.S. public and its policymakers. According to recent polls, Afghanistan no longer ranks among the top foreign policy priorities for the United States.

President Ghani and his team have a major task ahead of them reversing the damaged relationship between the two countries and rebuilding goodwill in the United States. Besides repairing the damaged relationship, the Afghan delegation should try to secure long-term economic assistance and security guarantees from the United States. Without them, Afghanistan will fast descend into chaos, with repercussions for the entire region. The cost of inaction will be far greater than a long-term commitment to peace and stability.

Specifically, Ghani and his delegation should try to accomplish the following five tasks.

1. Rebuild Afghanistan’s image and its relations with the U.S.

Karzai was the darling of the West during his first term in office. It was his sense of insecurity and some misguided tactics by the late Richard Holbrooke and his team in trying to unseat Karzai during the 2009 elections that cultivated deep resentment and distrust. With Karzai’s outbursts, bilateral relationships soured and the interest of the U.S. public in the Afghan war and economic assistance waned.

Ghani and his delegation must convince the American public and policymakers that Afghanistan is worth the fight and that the sacrifices the U.S. has made should not be for nothing. The national security interests of both countries are at stake.

Preserving History: Lessons From Afghanistan and Iraq

By Jack Detsch

March 10, 2015

ISIS’s destruction of sacred historical monuments deserves condemnation. But it is part of a broader and older problem. 

The Islamic State’s bulldozing of statues, walls, and a castle in the ancient Assyrian capital of Nimrud drewinternational condemnation last week.

Writer Mohammad Rabia Chaar, speaking with Anne Barnard of The New York Times, was particularly sickened. “Daesh wants people wit no memory, with no history, with no culture, no past, no future,” Chaar said, referring to an Arabic derivation of the group’s name. ISIS even destroyed the winged bulls that adorn Iraqi currency, calling the statues “false idols.”

This is nothing new for militant groups. A week before the Nimrud attack, ISIS tore through Mosul, ransacking the city’s museum, library, and Nirgal Gate, taking sledgehammers to ancient Assyrian treasures, some which dated back to the 13th century. Before American forces drove Taliban militants out of Afghanistan in March 2001, Mullah Omar ordered the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, relics of the ancient Gandhara civilization, which inhabited the region in the sixth century CE.

But it’s not just armed militants that are destroying the treasures of antiquity. In Afghanistan, farmers, merchants, and vandals venture to the northern city of Balkh, once the crossroads of traders and conquerors like Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, in hopes of digging up ancient relics to bring to the illicit marketplace.

In Afghanistan, the black market for ancient treasures has become increasingly lucrative. With their eyes on keeping the peace, neither the government nor the army has the interest in punishing such crimes. For Afghans,preserving artifacts like the Bactrian Hoard, fine golden jewelry dating to the first century CE that was excavated just before the Soviet invasion in 1978, seems less important than dealing with basic human needs.

China Challenges ASEAN with Land Fills in South China Sea

By Luke Hunt

March 10, 2015

With ongoing reclamation work, the outlook for the region remains grim. 

A stunning series of photos released by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington D.C. offer a grim outlook for the region as Beijing ratchets-up its territorial assertions over the hotly disputed Spratly and Paracel islands.

At least four major man-made structures have been erected on Itu, Gaven, Johnson South and Fiery Cross reefs with supply platforms, communications, gun emplacements, and docking facilities installed alongside artificial islands over the winter months.

CSIS analyst Greg Poling said China’s reclamation work in the South China Sea – known as the East Sea in Hanoi and the West Philippines Sea in Manila – was progressing faster than anticipated and that Beijing had gone further than any other claimant.

“Its reclamation certainly violates the spirit of the 2002 Declaration of Conduct (DOC) between China and ASEAN, and is at best on shaky legal grounds,” he said.

The DOC is supposed to facilitate dialogue among the 10 members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China, providing a means to halt potential confrontations in the South China Sea before they escalate into something much worse.

But its implementation remains incomplete and Beijing is demanding territorial disputes involving the Spratly or Paracels be dealt with on a bilateral basis and not at a regional level through a unified ASEAN approach. That has divided loyalties within ASEAN.

Of members with overlapping claims, the Philippines and Vietnam have been vocal and Hanoi has been on a defense build-up through a series of major arms acquisitions with Russia worth billions of dollars, including six Kilo-class submarines and up to 20 Su-30 fighter-bombers.

China’s lawless path

By Fred Hiatt

March 8,2015

The biggest beneficiary of Vladimir Putin’s depredations, at least in the short term, may be China. 

It’s not just that, with his European markets constricting, Putin is easy pickings for Chinese negotiators when he comes selling natural gas. 

Fred Hiatt is the editorial page editor of The Post. He writes editorials for the newspaper and a biweekly column that appears on Mondays. He also contributes to the PostPartisan blog. 

It’s also that he makes China look good by comparison — which is not easy, given that China is in the midst of a historic crackdown on civil society and freedom. 

With Russia invading and occupying a neighboring nation, and repeatedly lying about it, China’s bullying in the South China Sea seems tame. 

And with opposition politicians being gunned down gangland-style within walking distance of the Kremlin, China’s harassment and imprisonment of human rights activists comes across as almost civilized. 

Yet for all of Putin’s barbarities, China may pose a greater challenge to the democratic world — and to the next U.S. president — because its turn toward repression has upended the basic assumptions of U.S. policy toward China since it opened to the world decades ago. 

The crackdown itself is no longer in dispute. Last year President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party “unleashed the harshest campaign of politically motivated investigations, detentions, and sentencing in the past decade, marking a sharp turn toward intolerance of criticism,” Human Rights Watch said recently in its annual world report. 

From the beginning of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, party control coincided with “an expansion of space for citizens and society,” as the organization’s senior Asia researcher Nicholas Bequelin told me during a recent visit to Washington. 

That loosening ended in 2007, as the Beijing Olympics approached, and China began going in the opposite direction. The trend has accelerated since Xi took over two years ago. “The space is not expanding any more, and the walls are getting higher,” Bequelin said. 

Confirmed: China Is Building 2nd Aircraft Carrier

Zachary Keck

March 9, 2015 

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is building its second aircraft carrier, several senior Chinese military officials have confirmed, a Hong Kong daily is reporting.

On Monday, Taiwan Focus News Channel cited the Chinese-language The Hong Kong Commercial Daily in reporting that China has begun work on its second aircraft carrier, which will have a more advanced launch system the one currently used on China’s only aircraft carrier, the Liaoning.

According to Taiwan Focus News Channel, the initial report cited Liu Xiaojiang, the former political commissioner of the PLA Navy, as saying that the “government's industrial and manufacturing agencies are now in charge of the ship's construction.” The report also cited Ding Haichun, who was promoted to the position of deputy political commissioner of the PLA Navy back in January, as confirming that China’s second aircraft carrier is under construction.

Taiwan Focus News Channel went on to paraphrase Ding as saying that “after the completion of the ship's construction, it will be turned over to the Navy for training maneuvers.”

Revealed: The Battleground in China's Next War

Michael Raska

March 10, 2015 

The opening salvo in China's next major conflict is likely to take place in cyberspace.

East Asia’s strategic assessments and debates currently focus on five key issues: the pace, character, and direction of China’s military modernization; the struggle for dominance by the region’s two major powers (China and Japan); the future of the Korean Peninsula; intra-regional competition in territorial disputes in the East China Sea and South China Sea; and perhaps most importantly, the contours of long-term regional strategic competition and rivalry between China and the United States. In every major security issue facing East Asia, however, there is a major Chinese footprint, both direct and indirect.

Traditionally, China’s primary strategic interests, influence, and military modernization initiatives have aimed at prevailing in any future conflict over the status of Taiwan. While Taiwan scenarios remain the baseline for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) defense planning, China’s military is gradually developing asymmetric warfare strategies and technologies designed to constrain U.S. freedom of action in East Asia. Notwithstanding China’s development of fifth-generation air platforms, standoff precision weapons, ballistic and cruise missiles, early warning, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets to naval assets, the key emphasis in PLA strategy is the applicability of computer network operations. Indeed, the next main conflict involving China will likely start in cyberspace.

PLA’s Integrated Network Electronic Warfare

Sorry, America: China Is NOT Going to Collapse

Chen Dingding

March 10, 2015 

The American fantasy that refuses to die...

In a recent piece published in the Wall Street Journal, The Coming Chinese Crackup, China scholar and George Washington University professor David Shambaugh boldly predicts that the Communist Party of China (CCP)’s endgame has begun. Although, in the past, such brave predictions of the CCP’s collapse have been proven wrong, the fact that such a prediction has come from Shambaugh, a leading China expert, makes it all the more interesting. Ina report from China’s Foreign Affairs University, Shambaugh was named the second most influential China expert in the United States. As such, Chinese scholars and officials will take his opinions seriously.

Professor Shambaugh listed five indicators that point to China’s coming collapse. However, a closer analysis of these five points reveals thatShambaugh’s conclusion is based on incorrect facts and flawed interpretations of China’s recent socioeconomic and political developments.

First, he asserts that wealthy Chinese are fleeing China. Actually, this is only half true. While a large number of wealthy Chinese have migrated to countries like Canada, most of them still do business in China, meaning that they are still have a positive outlook on China’s future. In any case, a good number of these wealthy people move their assets out of China to avoid corruption charges, which has nothing to do with China’s future development. Moreover, in recent years an increasing number of overseas students have chosen to come back to China because they have confidence in China’s future.