Indian leadership on climate change: Punching above its weight

Samir Saran and Vivan Sharan

May 6, 2015 

Source Link

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and others at the highest political level have outlined in recent statements India’s commitment to constructive engagement with the global effort to combat climate change. Taken at face value, these statements indicate that India wants to take a leadership role in addressing climate change. However, in the global discourse on climate change, India often gets singled out for resisting mitigation action and for its reliance on fossil fuels such as coal. In this paper we argue that in addition to the efforts directed toward coping with and adapting to climate impacts (e.g., recent floods in Kashmir and monsoon failure in 2014), India is also “punching above its weight” on mitigation.

India ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in November, 1993 and is a Non Annex 1 Party to the Convention. As a Non Annex 1 Party, India is not bound to mandatory commitments under the Convention. This is a central to the notion of “Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities” as enshrined in Article 3 of the Convention. [i]

Overall development of any nation is directly linked to its energy use and access: energy poverty is a good indicator of low levels of overall development. The United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Reports have established that energy access and development are interlinked. Energy poverty is defined as a lack of adequate access to “modern energy services.” Modern energy services include the access of households to electricity and clean cooking facilities­—fuels and stoves that do not cause indoor air pollution. The poor in India are spending more than the rich in the developed countries on energy generally and clean energy specifically. Around 306.2 million people in India lack access to electricity (Table 1), perhaps the largest energy access challenge anywhere in the world. At around 705 million, India also has the highest number of people without access to non-solid fuels.[ii]

US Navy Expanding Its Cyber Attack and Defensive Forces

Joe Gould

Source Link

May 7, 2015

WASHINGTON — The commander of US Navy Cyber announced a five-year strategy, and like the Pentagon’s cyber strategy announcement two weeks earlier, acknowledged the dire need for talented workers with the skills to fend off the nation’s foes.

Vice Adm. Jan Tighe, who assumed command of Fleet Cyber Command/10th Fleet a year ago, said the US Navy is strengthening its ability to defend against intrusions, launch offensive cyber weapons and field 40 cyber mission teams — a task that is halfway done.

Cyber Strategy Relies on Deterrence, Industry

“You don’t get there from here unless you invest in the capacity pieces,” Tighe said of the Navy’s offensive cyber ambitions, “and that’s essentially what the cyber mission force has done; it’s granting capacity.”

The strategy re-conceptualizes the network as a “war-fighting platform,” which in real terms means assuring awareness, control and security of its networks. The plan comes after Iran reportedly breached Navy networks in 2013, though Tighe said there had been no such breaches since.

“We’ve got to be able to prevent the intrusion in the first place, and if there is an intrusion, respond to prevent lateral movement inside our network,” Tighe said. “How often are people trying? How successful are they? We don’t necessarily have those measures looking back historically as I would like to have them.”

Here's What a Cyber Warfare Arsenal Might Look Like

Larry Greenemeier

May 6, 2015

Source Link

Stuxnet was just the beginning, as malware becomes the new nuclear option 

New Weapons of War: Defense Secretary Ash Carter delivers a lecture, "Rewiring the Pentagon: Charting a New Path on Innovation and Cybersecurity," at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., April 23, 2015. 

The Pentagon has made clear in recent weeks that cyber warfare is no longer just a futuristic threat—it is now a real one. U.S. government agency and industry computer systems are already embroiled in a number of nasty cyber warfare campaigns against attackers based in China, North Korea, Russia and elsewhere. As a counterpoint, hackers with ties to Russia have been accused of stealing a number of Pres. Barack Obama’s e-mails, although the White House has not formally blamed placed any blame at the Kremlin’s doorstep. The Obama administration did, however,call out North Korea for ordering last year’s cyber attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment. 

The battle has begun. “External actors probe and scan [U.S. Department of Defense (DoD)] networks for vulnerabilities millions of times each day, and over 100 foreign intelligence agencies continually attempt to infiltrate DoD networks,” Eric Rosenbach, assistant secretary for homeland defense and global security, testified in April before the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities. “Unfortunately, some incursions—by both state and nonstate entities—have succeeded.” 

Is cyber-warfare really that scary?

6 May 2015 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-32534923 

On 7 December 1941, Japanese aircraft attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The attack was surprising, devastating, and drew the US into World War Two.

Sixty years later, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has warned of the risk of a "cyber-Pearl Harbor".

Is he right, or is the scale of the problem being overhyped? Four experts spoke to the BBC World Service Inquiry programme.

Robert Lee is a US Cyber Warfare Operations Officer, and is studying for a PhD in Cyber Security at King's College London.

Robert Lee argues the threat is exaggerated

"A lot of my research debunks stories. I can't cite them because they're not true. There's a general narrative that horrible things are happening all the time: cyber-war, nation states are crumbling. That's not true.

"If you hear, 'There's been some recent research around aviation and planes are going to be hacked and fall out of the sky,' or, 'People are going to cyber-attack trains and derail them,' that's not realistic.

"Security companies are ramping up the threat. The military's relabelled a lot of things 'cyber-warfare' because they want to get the budget from Congress. Nato and the different alliances ramp up the threat to encourage other countries to invest in security.

"One of the narratives that gets built around critical infrastructure is that we're going to have these cascading power failures; someone's going to break in and very easily take down the power grid. While it's true there's vulnerable infrastructure, you can't just take down the entirety of the power grid from a cyber-capability.

NSA Computers Can Now Digitize and Search Through Vast Numbers of Telephone Calls

Dan Froomkin

May 5, 2015

The Computers are Listening: How the NSA Converts Spoken Words Into Searchable Text

Most people realize that emails and other digital communications they once considered private can now become part of their permanent record.

But even as they increasingly use apps that understand what they say, most people don’t realize that the words they speak are not so private anymore, either.

Top-secret documents from the archive of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show the National Security Agency can now automatically recognize the content within phone calls by creating rough transcripts and phonetic representations that can be easily searched and stored.

The documents show NSA analysts celebrating the development of what they called “Google for Voice” nearly a decade ago.

Though perfect transcription of natural conversation apparently remains the Intelligence Community’s “holy grail,” the Snowden documents describe extensive use of keyword searching as well as computer programs designed to analyze and “extract” the content of voice conversations, and even use sophisticated algorithms to flag conversations of interest.

The documents include vivid examples of the use of speech recognition in war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in Latin America. But they leave unclear exactly how widely the spy agency uses this ability, particularly in programs that pick up considerable amounts of conversations that include people who live in or are citizens of the United States.

In line with DoD CIO, Army pushes forward with new cloud policy

Amber Corrin, C4ISR

April 10, 2015 

source Link

In line with broader Defense Department initiatives, the Army expects to soon release a new commercial cloud services provider policy that will outline service-specific acquisition requirements and provide further details about the Army's growing use of the commercial cloud.

"Transitioning to cloud-based solutions and services advances the Army's long-term objective to reduce our ownership, operation and sustainment of hardware and other commoditized information technology," Gary Wang, Army deputy CIO/G-6, wrote in an April 2 blog post. "Procuring these capabilities as services will allow the Army to focus resources more effectively to meet evolving mission needs."at will outline service-specific acquisition requirements and provide further details about the Army's growing use of the commercial cloud.

See our complete coverage of the C4ISR & Networks Conference at our Show Reporter site.

The forthcoming policy, expected "in the coming weeks" per Army sources, will accompany the CIO/G-6's new cloud computing strategy. The strategy outlines the service's evolving practices in IT modernization, providing users and potential vendors with a vision of how the Army plans to buy and use commercial IT, particularly cloud.

"The Army is changing its approach to modernizing IT infrastructure by moving to a cloud-based methodology," the strategy states. "This approach emphasizes reducing IT hardware procurements and sustainment in favor of procuring these capabilities as services from cloud service providers."

DISA grants provisional authorization for 23 cloud offerings

Michael Hardy, C4ISR

May 5, 2015 

Source Link

Defense agencies have 23 more commercial cloud offerings to choose from in the moderate baseline security category. The Defense Information Systems Agency has granted a Department of Defense Provisional Authorization to the 23 offerings, approving them to host mission data up to Impact Level 2.

The approvals were granted March 26 and announced on May 5.

The provisional authorization means that agencies can trust that the offering meets the security standards specified, then consider any additional mission-specific needs before issuing an Authority to Operate (ATO).

DoD defines impact levels based on the sensitivity and risk associated with the data, which was used to establish the minimum protection and controls required. There are four impact levels: 2, 4, 5 and 6, with mandated protections increasing with each successive level. Impact Level 6 is for data classified as Secret.

Impact Level 2 is for Non-Controlled Unclassified Information. It includes all data cleared for public release and some private unclassified information as well.

Cloud service offerings that were granted DoD PAs:

Meet the Shadow Warrior Leading the Fight Against the Islamic State

BY SEÁN D. NAYLOR

MAY 1, 2015 

source Link

Major General Mike Nagata predicted the rise of the militants. Can he train enough rebels to defeat them? 

About 18 months ago, the two most senior U.S. military officers involved in counterterrorism operations in the Middle East sat with several other flag officers in a room at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, and listened as Maj. Gen. Mike Nagata told them their worlds were about to come undone.

Nagata was — and is — the boss of the special operations component of U.S. Central Command. One of the four-star officers to whom he was speaking was his direct boss, Gen. Lloyd Austin, Centcom’s commander. Another was Adm. Bill McRaven, then the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, which shares MacDill with Centcom.

The occasion was a conference at McRaven’s headquarters where Nagata was to brief the senior commanders on the Middle East and what his forces might need there. “Mike Nagata basically stood up and told them that Syria and Yemen and Iraq were coming apart at the seams,” said another special operations officer in the room, whose account was confirmed by a former senior intelligence official who also attended the meeting. This was in 2013, before the Islamic State had made its huge territorial gains in Syria and Iraq, and prior to Shiite Houthi rebels sweeping across Yemen, forcing the U.S.-allied government from power. But the passage of time has proved the two-star general with owlish features correct. “Fast-forward 18 months to where we are today,” the special operations officer said, “and Nagata was spot on.”

Today,

How America and Russia Could Start a Nuclear War

Tom Nichols

May 7, 2015 

Source Link

"As during the Cold War, the keys to a strategic nuclear exchange are rigid military planning, political misperception, and natural human frailty."

A few weeks ago, I directed Harvard Extension School’s “Crisis Game,” in which students had to play out a hypothetical Cold War crisis involving nuclear weapons. The realization that a crisis could escalate to nuclear war shocked younger students who had never given much thought to this issue, especially when they found the game sliding from an exercise in negotiation toward nuclear doom. (“I was literally sweating,” one of the players later said.)

But is a nuclear war between Russia and America possible today? After all, there is no longer a Cold War, the Soviet Union and its military alliance were dismantled long ago, and both Russia and America have slashed their nuclear inventories. What could cause a nuclear conflict? How would such an exchange start, and how would it progress?

Unfortunately, nuclear war is still possible. Now, as during the Cold War, the keys to a strategic nuclear exchange are rigid military planning, political misperception, and natural human frailty.

SUMMER READING LIST: 10 BOOKS YOU OVERLOOKED IN YOUR QUEST TO PREDICT THE NEXT GREAT WAR

Robbie Gramer

May 7, 2015

Source Link

During a speech at West Point in 2011, then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates offered a sobering account of the United States’ track record on predicting future conflicts: “When it comes to predicting the nature and location of our next military engagements, since Vietnam, our record has been perfect. We have never once gotten it right.”

Failing to predict future conflicts is nothing new — it is no doubt a systemic headache of leaders throughout history. Many have gotten it wrong, but a select few, such as Otto von Bismarck have gotten it right. But that begs the question: is predicting future conflicts an art, a science, or simply a lucky bulls-eye from a volley of shots in the dark?

Defining the next future conflict in detail may be impossible. But outlining a menu of scenarios that a future conflict could look like is indispensable to current policymakers and defense planners. As Dwight Eisenhower said, “plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

But good news for policymakers: Fiction can provide much-needed insight into future conflict scenarios.

EDUCATING THE U.S. MILITARY: IS REAL CHANGE POSSIBLE?

Joan Johnson-Freese

May 7, 2015 

Source Link

Editor’s Note: This is the latest article in our special series, “The Schoolhouse.” The aim of this series is to explore and debate the state of advanced graduate education in international affairs. We aim to move beyond the often-repetitive and tiresome debates about the usefulness of scholarship to policy. We believe there are deeper issues at stake. In this article, Joan Johnson-Freese addresses issues afflicting the sometimes-underrated and misunderstood field of professional military education.

Joint professional military education (JPME) in the United States needs to be fixed. And yet too few seem willing to take on the challenge. Through JPME members of the United States military learn professional skills, and as they progress in rank, they are prepared to transition from tactical to operational leaders, and eventually strategic leaders. Its importance was legislatively recognized when the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act mandated educational parameters for the military that have since developed into a continuum of learning. But alas, Congressional attention to PME has waned since its last champion and watchdog, Ike Skelton, left Congress in 2011.

US Eyes Expanded Military Exercises with ASEAN Navies

By Prashanth Parameswaran

May 07, 2015

http://thediplomat.com/2015/05/us-eyes-expanded-military-exercises-with-asean-navies/

U.S. and Royal Thai Navy ships transit the Gulf of Thailand during CARAT Thailand 2011.

A senior US navy official suggests more could be on the way soon. 

On May 5, IHS Jane’s quoted a senior U.S. navy official as saying that the U.S. Navy is exploring the possibility of expanding the scope and scale of its present training exercises in Southeast Asia.

Captain Ronald Oswald, Theater Security Cooperation (TSC) Officer at the 7th Fleet, said on board the USS Blue Ridge on May 4 that next year could see the rise of more multilateral exercises between the United States and countries in the region, including previously bilateral exercises expanding into multilateral ones with the addition of new partners.

“Historically, most of our exercises have been bilateral; [however] we are also exploring doing more multilateral exercises with our counterparts,” Oswald said. “I think you’ll see a number of [expanded] events beginning next year that bring additional partners into previously bilateral exercises.”

His remarks are not surprising. U.S. officials have been looking into broadening these exercises for a while now, and analysts have been suggesting various ways that this might be done.

The existential threat to India posed by China's Pakistan gambit

Source Link

by Rajeev Srinivasan, May 4, 2015 

The late Samuel P Huntington put forth his seductively simple theory of the “clash of civilisations” some years ago. Although many criticised him, it does appear that there are several mutually antagonistic entities constantly in conflict with each other, shifting alliances and at war overtly or covertly. India has the unfortunate fate of being attacked simultaneously by three of these civilisational entities, while desperately trying to convince itself that it is friends with all of them. 

The latest manifestation is the Chinese initiative in Pakistan linking Kashgar in Chinese-held Sinkiang to Gwadar in Balochistan, via Pakistani-Occupied Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. The proposed $46 billion project has a number of alarming and sinister implications, almost none of which is good for India. 

The simplest first: in the Chinese maps that have been reprinted by many in the global media, Chinese-Occupied Kashmir (CoK, or Aksai Chin) is not even marked as disputed territory: it has been integrated into Chinese Sinkiang. Interestingly, western media that insists on drawing dotted lines around all of Kashmir and marking it ostentatiously as a disputed territory has quietly accepted this. Score 1 to the usual Chinese tactic of “creating facts on the ground”, as they did with suddenly referring to the Senkaku Islands with a new name, Daiyou, now widely accepted as an alternative. 

China, Russia boost ties with naval drill in Mediterranean Sea

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/920514.shtml

By Catherine Wong Tsoi-lai 

1st joint exercise in Mediterranean Sea

Military observers believe the first joint naval drill of Chinese and Russian naval forces in the Mediterranean Sea suggests the two countries' determination to further strengthen their military ties amid potential international conflicts. Analysts also see the rare Mediterranean drill in mid-May as a sign that China is fully capable and prepared to protect its commercial interests where countries in the region, such as Libya and Syria, have witnessed escalating tensions. 

Since China's Defense Ministry made the announcement on April 30, the exercise has drawn intense media attention over its political and military implications. "It is the fourth time the two countries have conducted a joint naval drill. Both China and Russia have conducted naval activities in the region. The joint drill is their latest move in strengthening naval cooperation," Zhang Junshe, a research fellow at the Chinese Naval Research Institute, told the Global Times. 

A total of nine ships from the two countries will participate in the drill, including vessels China now has on anti-piracy patrols in waters off Somalia, Chinese defense ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng said at a monthly news briefing. Geng said the aim is to deepen both countries' cooperation and to increase their navies' ability to jointly deal with maritime security threats. 

China and Pak: Little in common yet closest of allies

Brahma Chellaney| May 05, 2015 

Source Link

While the maritime Silk Road is the meretriciously benign name for China’s “string of pearls” strategy, the overland Silk Road project has been designed to advance Chinese interests in Central Asia, the Caspian Sea basin and beyond. These initiatives are part of China’s larger strategy to break out of the East Asia mould and become a more global power. 

Xi has embarked on connecting China’s restive Xinjiang region with the Arabian Sea through a 3,000-kilometre overland transportation corridor to Pakistan’s Chinese-built Gwadar port. The $46-billion corridor through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) will hook up China’s maritime and overland Silk Roads and increase Pakistan’s pivotal importance for Beijing. 

When an Indian prime minister visits Arunachal Pradesh (whose control by India only China questions) or India and Vietnam jointly explore for offshore oil, China protests loudly, claiming it is “disputed territory.” But the Xi-pushed corridor will traverse an internationally recognised disputed region — PoK — where China has been enlarging its military footprint. 

An influx of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops into PoK’s Shia-majority Gilgit-Baltistan region has resulted in Chinese military presence close to Pakistan’s line of control (LoC) with India, presenting New Delhi with a two-front theatre in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) in the event of war with either country. This threat is also being highlighted by PLA officers conducting field exercises close to the LoC to train Pakistani army troops in the use of Chinese-supplied weapons. More fundamentally, India is contained geopolitically by the longstanding axis between China and Pakistan, involving, among other things, covert nuclear, missile and intelligence cooperation. With serious strains emerging in Beijing’s relationship with North Korea, Pakistan is now clearly China’s only real ally. 

When messengers shoot the message

BASHARAT PEER

May 7, 2015

Apart from insensitivity and boisterousness, it was the combination of jingoism and the relentless advertising of India’s aid efforts by television reporters embedded with the Indian forces that led to the intensely hostile reactions from the Nepalese.

Television is a noisy medium but it can convey silence with great power and effectiveness, when it chooses to. In the past week, Indian television journalists covering the earthquake in Nepal have generated a great deal of sound and fury. Apart from the insensitivity and the boisterousness, it was the combination of jingoism and the relentless advertising of India’s aid efforts by television reporters embedded with the Indian forces that led to the intensely hostile reactions from Nepalese citizens on Twitter, the creation of the hash tag of protest:#IndianMediaGoHome. It is undeniably an age of advertised charity but the gloating does hurt the recipients of your generosity.

Unlike the televised hysterics, the broken villages of Nepal and their residents were quiet, subdued, dignified. Whether it was mountainous expanses of Sindhupalchowk district, where more than 1,100 people were killed, or Sankhu outside Kathmandu, where several thousand houses in a dense urban cluster were wiped out, the dignity of the Nepalese men and women, quietly digging through the remains of their lost homes was the most striking aspect of reporting on the earthquake.

Separate rhetoric from reality

G Parthasarathy

May 7 2015

Source Link

Assessments of President Xi Jinping’s visit to Pakistan have varied from characterising the visit as a “positive development” for India, to describing it as a “threat” to India’s security. Pakistani hyperbole outdid itself when a senior Pakistan diplomat gushingly described the relationship with China as “higher than the mountains, deeper than the oceans, stronger than steel, dearer than eyesight and sweeter than honey”. Nawaz Sharif described the relationship as “unique, unparalleled in the history of sovereign nations”. President Xi noted in Pakistan's Parliament: “Pakistan has stood on the frontline of the international fight against terrorism”. He called for elevating the relationship to an “all-weather strategic partnership”. Nawaz Sharif gushingly responded: “We are friends forever”!

The Chinese are supreme realists in assessing power equations within Pakistan. President Xi made the unprecedented gesture of separately meeting Pakistan's Service Chiefs, led by Generals Rashad Mahmood and Raheel Sharif. He had no time to spare for Pakistan’s hapless and mostly invisible Defence Minister Khwaja Mohammad Asif! Mercifully, President Xi did not follow the precedent set by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who paid his respects to Pakistan's Generals by visiting their GHQ in Rawalpindi. We should be clear about the emerging contours of the Rawalpindi-Beijing military nexus. The strategically located Gwadar Port close to the mouth of the Straits of Hormuz is now leased for 40 years to China. President Parvez Musharraf declared in 2003, just after the visit of the then Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji that India would find the Chinese navy positioned in Gwadar, in the event of hostilities.

A pen of delusion - The protest against the Charlie Hebdo award

Ruchir Joshi

Source Link

I don't expect to change the minds of any of the 35 writers who have now joined the protest against PEN America giving an award to Charlie Hebdo magazine. Some of the signatories I respect hugely, one or two sycophantic wind-vane weasels on the list I would normally ignore, and at least one of the signatories is a close friend, someone who I'm sure has given this whole business much thought. How this motley bunch ends up signing one ill-judged letter I don't know, but they're wrong. Here's why.

The main argument being squeezed to pulp is that CH was, and is, an inherently racist magazine. That it is staffed by "privileged white men", who either deliberately or like "wanton boys", continuously defecate on a beleaguered minority (French Muslims, whether from the Maghreb or other parts of Africa) while making their jejune barbs. That they've been doing this while ignoring France's history of colonial oppression, and while trying to impose a shallow Enlightenment universalism that blindly feeds into the West's project of re-colonizing Muslim countries.

Sea Trials of Indian Navy's Deadliest Sub Going 'Very Well'

By Franz-Stefan Gady

May 05, 2015

Source Link

Sea trials of India’s first indigenously developed ballistic missile nuclear submarine (SSBN) are going “very well”, Indian Navy chief of staff Admiral RK Dhowan observed last week on the sidelines of a naval aviation conference, according to local media reports.

The 6,000-ton nuclear-powered submarine, INS Arihant, began sea-trials in the Bay of Bengal on December 16, 2014 (the day Pakistan formally surrendered to India in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 that lead to the creation of Bangladesh). The sea-trials are scheduled to last nine months, followed by extensive weapons testing on board of the vessel lasting at least an equal amount of time. The Arihant‘s reactor already went critical in August 2013.

“There are no problems in the INS Arihant project. The trials are underway and going on very well. We are satisfied with the way the project is progressing,” he noted. However, the admiral added that he is “not in a position to give timelines with regard to the completion of INS Arihant trials or what happens thereafter.”

The indigenously designed submarine, based on the Russian Project 971 Akula I-class nuclear powered attack boats, is the lead vessel of the Indian Navy’s future fleet of four (some media reports say five) Arihant-class SSBNs. India already began construction of INS Aridhaman, the second vessel of the Arihant-class, this year.

3 Chinese Warships Sail Through Bosphorus Into the Black Sea

May 6, 2015

PLA task force enters Black Sea before Xi’s Russia visit

China’s 19th naval escort task force consisting of a Type 903 replenishment ship and two Type 054A guided-missile frigates entered the Black Sea through the Bosphorus on May 4 according to photos uploaded by internet users in Turkey, reports China’s Global Times.

The Russian defense ministry announced that the Chinese warships are expected to arrive at the port of Novorossiysk before May 9, the day that a military parade will be held in Moscow to celebrate the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II in Europe 70 years ago, according to the Sina Military Network based in Beijing. President Xi Jinping of China has accepted an invitation from President Vladimir Putin of Russia to attend the event.

Fan Changlong, vice chair of China’s Central Military Commission, will begin an official visit to Moscow after Xi Jinping returns to Beijing on May 10. Fan will meet the Russian defense minister, Sergey Shoygu, to discuss buying more advanced weapons and hardware from Russia as well as defense cooperation.

The PLA task force will then sail for the Mediterranean together with the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Navy at Novorossiysk to carry out air defense, anti-submarine and escort drills as part of the Joint Sea 2015 exercise. A Russian expert said a similar joint exercise will be held in the Sea of Japan in September — timed to coincide with China’s celebrations to mark the 70th anniversary of Japan’s surrender and the end of WWII in the Pacific.

Afghanistan Is Too Dangerous for Congressional Visits

Tim Mak

05.06.15

Source Link

Lawmakers and their aides say that oversight of America’s longest war is hampered by the military’s decision.

President Obama may have declared that the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan has ended. But the country is still so dangerous that the Pentagon has banned members of Congress and their aides from traveling there this summer, U.S. officials told The Daily Beast.

While the Pentagon’s ban was officially issued as “guidance,” congressional aides are calling it a “blackout” that prevents lawmakers from performing their oversight duties. The U.S. has spent trillions in taxpayer dollars fighting a war in Afghanistan and training and equipping the country’s security forces. But this summer sees the beginning of the traditional fighting season, when Taliban violence flares up. And with thousands of American troops pulling out of the country, the Pentagon doesn’t have the equipment and manpower to keep visiting legislators and their staff safe, officials said.

“What we find problematic about this is that it highlights the fact that we don’t have enough troops there to support the mission,” one senior Senate aide told The Daily Beast. “Concerns regarding taking U.S. congressional staff or lawmakers to the region show that there aren’t enough resources in the region to take people there safely—and that it’s not safe even though [the Obama administration] said the war is over.”

Afghanistan Reconstruction: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

By Catherine Putz

May 06, 2015

http://thediplomat.com/2015/05/afghanistan-reconstruction-lies-damn-lies-and-statistics/

Special Inspector General John F. Sopko inspects damaged ANSF vehicles at Camp Shorabak in Helmand in 2012.

Speaking at Cornell’s College of Medicine, SIGAR likens Afghan reconstruction to diagnosing an intractable disease. 

The Weill Cornell College of Medicine may seem at first glance to be an odd place for John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR) to deliver a speech. But as he said in his opening remarks:

Obviously, the thought was that with your expertise in treating intractable diseases, you would also be interested in Afghanistan reconstruction.

As Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction—SIGAR for short—my business is checking alleged facts, digging out actual facts, and identifying weaknesses, failures, uncertainties, corrupt acts, and delusions. I hope that makes me the bureaucratic counterpart of a careful diagnostician, and not a low-budget version of Doctor Oz.

Jokes aside, however, Sopko used the speech to comment on the difficulties of data and the importance of parsing fact from fantasy with regard to U.S. reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. He concludes that “we know a lot more than nothing, but a lot less than we think.”

Sopko says that “just as doctors must be willing to face the truth about whether a treatment is working, we in the United States must be willing to face the truth” about how effectively the more than $100 billion invested in Afghanistan reconstruction has been spent. Add to that the more than $700 billion in military operations since the U.S. first intervened in Afghanistan in late 2001 and the human costs–the lives of more than 2,000 U.S. service members, another thousand from coalition countries, and more than 13,000 Afghan army and police. The number of civilians casualties is estimated to be more than 21,000, according to Costs of War, a nonprofit scholarly initiative based at Brown University.

Afghan Forces are Suffering Record Losses

By Franz-Stefan Gady

May 05, 2015

Source Link

As Afghanistan’s fighting season is heating up casualties within the Afghan National Security Forces have been mounting at record levels.

In the first 15 weeks of 2015, government casualties have increased by 70 percent, compared to the same period last year, USA Today reports. Casualties average around 330 a week, which means that the 195,000 members of the Afghan army and the 157,000 members of the police force have so far sustained almost 5,000 losses.

However, the high numbers of active duty security forces may be deceiving. “Neither the United States nor its Afghan allies truly know how many Afghan soldiers and police are available for duty or, by extension, the true nature of their operational capabilities,” a newly released report by the office of John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR) emphasized (see: “Taliban Onslaught: What is Happening in Afghanistan?”).

Like in previous years, casualties are particularly high among locally recruited Afghan police forces. “The Taliban sees that as easy prey. They’re not using them the way they should,” the commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, Gen. John F. Campbell, told USA Today.

Glimpses of Cambodia's French Past

By Poppy McPherson

May 05, 2015

Source Link

At some point in the early twentieth or late nineteenth century, when France still ruled over vast swathes of the globe, a colonized woman in modern-day Southeast Asia was filmed as she encountered the camera. In the recording, she totters towards the lens and toys with its gaze. Behind and unseen, two French men laugh at her. The clip has a timeless quality: the woman’s curious focus recalls a child taking its first steps; the cruel men, framed in the shadow of a grand stone edifice, could be slave owners in the American south or conspirators from Julius Caesar – any men in the seat of power at any time.

Cambodian-French director Rithy Panh’s new documentary, doing the rounds of international film festivals, is pieced together from scenes such as this, unearthed from extensive French archives. “Powerful people don’t watch the camera the same way as weak and poor people,” he said, during a recent interview in his cozy, cluttered Phnom Penh office. These clips, examples of what he calls the “historic image,” were the gold dust of his search to compile footage for La France est Notre Patrie (“France is Our Mother Country”), a 75-minute romp through the scrapbook of colonialism in Southeast Asia and Africa.

“There are a lot of images that aren’t historic because we can watch them and find nothing interesting, but some have an echo – there’s a link to your living condition, your politics, your morals,” said the director, who speaks with a strong French accent.

The U.S. Military Knew the Nepal Quake Was Coming The Pentagon had been preparing for potential disaster

JOSEPH TREVITHICK

Source Link

Eight months ago, the Pentagon’s top command in the Pacific hosted a training exercise in Nepal, prepping to deal with a major earthquake in the Kathmandu Valley.

On April 25, that scenario came devastatingly, horrifyingly true. A quake between 7.8 and 8.1 magnitude rocked the small Himalayan nation.

Thousands of buildings collapsed. Thousands of people died.

And now, acting out the responses it practiced back in August, the U.S. Marine Corps has sent UH-1Y helicopters and MV-22 Osprey tiltrotors—which fly like regular planes but can land like choppers—to help deliver rescuers and supplies, scout damaged towns and retrieve the injured.

The Ospreys are capable of “delivering aid twice as fast and five times farther than previous helicopters,” which “enhances the operational reach of relief efforts,” according to a Marine Corps press release boasted. The tiltrotors flew in from Japan under their own power.

The U.S. Air Force ferried the shorter range UH-1s to Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport. The flying branch’s cargo planes had already delivered tons of humanitarian aid and ferried in civilian first-responders.

Can China and the EU Boost Defense Cooperation?

By Shannon Tiezzi

May 06, 2015

http://thediplomat.com/2015/05/can-china-and-the-eu-boost-defense-cooperation/

While in Beijing, EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini pledges more security and defense cooperation with China. 

The European Union’s foreign affairs and security policy chief, Federica Mogherini, met with Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi in Beijing today for a high-level strategic dialogue. For Mogherini, who assumed her current post in November 2014, this trip marked her first official visit to China. The two diplomats discussed a wide range of issues, from climate change to defense cooperation. In terms of global hot spots, the conversation touched on Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Libya (in the context of the on-going migrant crisis), and Iran.

To date, China and the EU have enjoyed far more success on the economic front of their relationship than on security cooperation. Premier Li Keqiang, who is responsible for economic policy, has been a frequent visitor to the region. However, both sides understand how important such cooperation can be if realized. “[W]e can play a joint role on regional and global challenges and issues, for the mutual benefit of our people,” Mogherini said during a joint press meeting with Yang. “Even if geographically we are far away from each other, still we all know very well that global issues have no borders.”

Mogherini also highlighted the existing areas of security cooperation between China and the EU, pointing to “the extremely successful cooperation … on fighting piracy in the Gulf of Aden.” She and Yang discussed “concrete possibilities” for building on the cooperation in the security and defense realm, she added.

How China Will Become More Cooperative in Cyberspace

By Greg Austin

May 06, 2015

http://thediplomat.com/2015/05/how-china-will-become-more-cooperative-in-cyberspace/

On April 13, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and State Council issued new guidelines on strengthening internal security in the wake of unprecedented terrorist attacks inside the country, rising public order concerns, and increasing online dissent. The guidelines called out the use of new high-technology and cyber-based assets, including data mining, closed circuit TV, and satellites, to help restore central government control. This is the last in a series of five brief items (see: “Part IV: How China Assesses Civil Disobedience in Cyber Space”) by Greg Austin, based on his 2014 book, Cyber Policy in China, providing some political context on how the country is using its cyber power in the service of internal security. 

Part V: Foreign Investment in China’s Internal Security Technologies

Since the launch of its electronics revolution in 1983, when the government set itself the goal of increasing output in the sector by a factor of 8 by the year 2000, China has consistently pursued and obtained foreign investment in its internal security technologies and significant technology transfer in the field. The scale of foreign involvement in China’s internal security industry and operations has never been extensively analyzed in the public domain, but it has been the subject of political protest and court cases by human rights activists in the West against a number of leading U.S. corporations. China remains a business target of the highest priority for leading U.S. based technology companies, such as Microsoft, Cisco, Google and Facebook in spite of a range of political and regulatory challenges.

Tanmen Militia: China’s 'Maritime Rights Protection' Vanguard

Andrew S. EricksonConor M. Kennedy

May 6, 2015 

Source Link

"The maritime militias built out of the fishing industry are becoming a major foreign policy tool for the consolidation of China’s claims."

Hainan Province is using the fishing industry as a launching pad for the nation’s consolidation of the South China Sea (SCS). It is one of many measures—such as strengthening maritime law enforcement forces, enhancing administrative measures, augmenting infrastructure through island building, and delivery of 3G cellular coverage—but one with particular potential. China’s fishing industry and the world’s largest fleet that it wields has been an important foreign policy tool in Beijing’s repertoire since much of China’s historic claim on the SCS and current presence therein hinges on fishing activities. The fishing fleet’s political and strategic role has been given special significance and potential by China’s widespread employment of a relatively unknown paramilitary organization: the maritime militia.

The Tibet Issue – A Troubled Neighbourhood

ByLt Gen Prakash Katoch

06 May, 2015

http://www.indiandefencereview.com/news/the-tibet-issue-a-troubled-neighbourhood/0/

While Sardar Patel had warned Nehru about Chinese irredentism and communist imperialism being different from the expansionism or imperialism of Western powers and Chinese ideological expansion concealed behind racial, national or historical claims, China apparently feels her aggression is warranted because under the Tianxia (天下; “Under Heaven”) concept, Chinese perceive all territories under the sun belonging to them. Hence the ambiguity and deceit, and the ‘Doctrine of Pre-emption and Surprise’ encompassing surprise, deception and shock – plus the façade of peace homilies. That is why China has been providing tacit support to Pakistan’s anti-India jihadist groups in India; ‘Shashou Jian (Assassin’s Mace) incapacitating India from within through insurgencies and terrorism. It is also well understood that Chinese aggression of Tibet and Aksai Chin has been tempered because of the presence of minerals and natural resources like water, including possible thorium reserves.

Until the early 13 Century, China had no claims on Tibet which ruled half of present day China but looked to India for its most significant influence, Buddhism…

“Even during the 1962 conflict, Chinese leaders, including Mao, acknowledged that the conflict was not about the boundary or territory but about Tibet. The Chinese consistently tried to obtain reassurance from India that…India would not ‘meddle’ in Tibetan affairs…Boundary infringements by the Chinese continued. Sino-Indian border negotiations are stalemated and progress, if any, is at a snail’s pace. Thus, Tibet still remains the core issue.” —R.S Kalha, IFS (Retd.)

Moscow Is Playing Second Fiddle to Beijing

By Mark Galeotti

Source Link 

May. 05 2015

U.S. President Barack Obama has talked a great deal about a pivot to Asia, but recent news make it look on the surface as if it is Russian President Vladimir Putin who is actually delivering.

Not only is his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping going to be in Moscow attending the May 9 Victory Day parade that his Western counterparts are so conspicuously snubbing, but every day seems to bring reports of new Russo-Chinese initiatives.

This month, six Russian and three Chinese warships will carry out live-fire training in the Mediterranean. Exercise Joint Sea 2015 will be the very first time they have operated together in the Mediterranean (they have been mounting joint exercises in the Pacific and Asian seas since 2012).

This is essentially a political gesture, but as such it is effective, especially combined with the slew of recent announcements of defense sales and joint projects. China is to become the first foreign buyer of the advanced S-400 surface-to-air missile system, for example, and the two countries are to cooperate on upgrading the Russian Mi-26 heavy military transport helicopter design.

There is even talk of Moscow having a role in Beijing's ambitious $40 billion planned moon base, as well as license-production of Russian space rockets to support the program.