Silk Road: China’s new battleground

Abhijit Bhattacharyya

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Beijing’s threat to Taiwan is a routine breakfast-lunch-tea-dinner syndrome.

The scenario by now has an expected pattern. China will attack anyone trying to stand up to its pressure.

In general, whoever occupies the battleground first and awaits the enemy will be at ease; whoever occupies the battleground after war and must race to the conflict will be fatigued,” Sun Tzu (The Art of War). China has already illegally occupied the “battleground”, which is illegally occupied by Pakistan too, but is a legally-owned Indian territory around the Karakoram mountain range, where the borders of at least five countries meet (Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Tajikistan and China). China, therefore is “at ease”, having occupied the battleground first. India, on the other hand, could be seen to be psychologically “fatigued”, being nowhere near the Chinese position, as now there is no scope for India even to think of theoretically reaching the “battleground” which stands beyond its reach. Strangely, China is not at ease and India is not fatigued. On the contrary, it is India that is more at ease! Because, despite reaching the battleground first, it has suddenly dawned on China that stubborn India has taken an unreasonable position. Although China stands “supreme” in the landlocked high terrain of Central Asia, the “inferior” India refuses to play ball with it. And that is irritating the Chinese no end because every power in the vicinity of Chinese dream projects like the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC); Belt-Road-Initiative (BRI); One Belt, One Road (OBOR); has to be a part, as ordained by the Lords of Middle Kingdom. Even if that “dream project-party” embraces territory-grabbing, terror-masterminding, diplomatic-bullying as part of its grand scheme of things. Understandably, the Chinese cannot take it, as they are desperate to achieve their unfulfilled ambition to prove their supremacy and make it acceptable to all “inferior powers” in the region. Time is short, and the road long.

China’s worrying activities in the IOR

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China, owning reclaimed land at Colombo, is a worrying development in the Indian Ocean Region.

The importance of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) cannot be over-emphasised. All the ships have to circumnavigate Sri Lanka if they are travelling anywhere in the IOR. And, China’s interest in the Sri Lankan ports of Hambantota and Colombo are well known. China has been overtly assertive in getting contracts for the construction of Hambantota port and the expansion of Colombo port. Now China is eyeing to develop a special economic zone of more than 15,000 acres near Hambantota and a city enclave South of the newly built Colombo container port.

Chinese warships and nuclear submarines have been making port calls at Colombo since last three years. Last year in February, PLAN Type 926 submarine tender (ASR) #865 Liugongdao was seen in Colombo, Sri Lanka, suggesting continuous presence of PLAN submarine(s) in the IOR!

Chinese PLAN submarine support ship ASR #865 Liugongdao in Colombo.

A Predictable Predicament for Hong Kong

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From the eurozone to South Korea, elections are sweeping the world, bringing with them a high likelihood of dramatic policy change. But when Hong Kong's 1,200-member election committee convenes to vote on the city's next chief executive March 26, it will likely usher in more of the same. The Chinese government has extensive influence in the city's electoral system under the Basic Law, which gives it the prerogative to screen candidates, steer the nomination process and exercise veto power as it sees fit. Beijing's active, albeit typically covert, involvement in Hong Kong politics keeps candidates from the city's pan-democratic camp or emerging localist party from receiving nomination for — let alone winning — chief executive and ensures a steady succession of pro-China leaders in the top post. Unlike the highly contentious votes elsewhere in the world, then, the outcome of the Hong Kong election is practically a foregone conclusion.

It will be no less consequential, however. Hong Kong, a bustling metropolis of some 7 million people, is nearing a crossroads. The next chief executive's inauguration on July 1 will coincide with the 20th anniversary of the city's return to Chinese control. (Perhaps fittingly, Chinese President Xi Jinping will likely be in the city that day to preside over commemorative festivities.) Over the past five years, Hong Kong has undergone massive social and economic change as antagonism toward China's rule there has grown. Now the city is nearly halfway through its 50-year transitional period, and the next leader will play a crucial role in determining its fate. No matter who wins, the new chief executive's main task will be to reconcile Hong Kong's social and economic priorities with Beijing's desire to integrate the city with the mainland. But whether that objective can be achieved is a different story.

SRI LANKA IS NOT CHINA’S PEARL IN THE INDIAN OCEAN

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NILANTHI SAMARANAYAKE

Why were Sri Lankan schoolchildren dancing to a U.S. Navy band? Sri Lanka has just finished welcoming a U.S. military operation that seeks to build relationships in the Indo-Pacific region. In fact, this long-running engagement mission in the Asia-Pacific, known as Pacific Partnership, made its first-ever visit to South Asia with this deployment. Through Pacific Partnership, U.S. armed forces and civilian personnel provide medical, dental and engineering assistance to local communities as well as exchange lessons learned while responding to natural disasters.

What is particularly notable is the location of Pacific Partnership within Sri Lanka — Hambantota. This southern district along the main east-west sea lanes in the Indian Ocean is home to a port project that has been scrutinized over the last decade for supposedly being a part of China’s “string of pearls,” or nodes of influence in the Indian Ocean. The country’s increasing commercial and military presence so far from home has raised concerns about its intentions in the region. This concern extends to Sri Lanka. Many observers have written off Sri Lanka as a debt-laden country, beholden to a rising China promising infrastructure in exchange for strategic sway under its Maritime Silk Road initiative. As a result, this significant showing by the United States, plus teams from Australia and Japan, may come as a surprise.

China benefits from nuclear disorder

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W.P.S Sidhu

The rise in global nuclear disorder and its increasing disconnect from world order is epitomized in the nuclear weapon programmes of two weak and potentially failing states—Pakistan and North Korea. While both these countries might understandably perceive some advantage to having acquired nuclear weapons, the real beneficiary is China.

Beijing’s acts of commission and omission in enabling both these crises-instigating states to build nuclear arsenals pose twin threats to the post-Cold War nuclear order. First, the proliferation activities of these countries present an existential challenge to the tottering nuclear non-proliferation regime. Second, these actions in turn also challenge the status of the US as the traditional custodian of the nuclear order; by enabling two weak states to acquire nuclear weapons, the Washington-led regime has been thrown into disarray.

While it could be argued (as non-proliferation purists are prone to do) that New Delhi’s arsenal is equally culpable in creating nuclear disorder, India, as the world’s largest liberal democracy, the fifth largest economy, and a member of every existing and emerging global regime, has more stakes in upholding and enhancing the evolving liberal world order.

Was There Ever An Arab Spring? – Analysis

IDSA 

By K. P. Fabian

The unfolding tragedy in the Arab world began as the Dignity Revolution in Tunisia in December 2010. It led to the fall of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, ruler since the bloodless coup of 1987. In turn, the coup of 1987 had removed from office President Habib Bourguiba who had held office for 30 years right from the country’s independence from France in 1957. Subsequently, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt fell in February 2011 after ruling for 30 years. He was followed by Colonel Gaddafi of Libya who, in power since 1969, fell in August 2011 and was brutally shot dead two months later. Finally, President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen, in power since 1978, reluctantly resigned in February 2012.

In short, between January 2011 and February 2012, four dictators, who had ruled or misruled for a total of 128 years over 120 million human beings, fell. And more than once, it appeared that President Basher al Assad, in power in Syria since 2000, would also fall. But Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah came in and put him on a life-support system. There is no immediate prospect of his fall.

Was the Arab Spring a Mirage?

When President Hosni Mubarak fell on February 11, 2011 as Egyptians fearlessly called for his resignation from the historic Tahrir Square and elsewhere, many long-time observers of the Arab world recalled the immortal words of Wordsworth about the French Revolution “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!”. But after six springs, a horrendous death toll of about 550,000, and 11 million rendered homeless, we realize how starry- eyed we were. To understand what happened and what went wrong, it is necessary to look at each country specifically.

Goodbye, Islamic State. Hello, Anarchy.

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BY CAMPBELL MACDIARMID, DAVID KENNER

MOSUL and BAGHDAD, Iraq — On a quiet morning in late February, a convoy of black SUVs and pickups tore through the outskirts of east Mosul, at times nudging 75 mph on the dusty roads. Packed inside, balaclava-wearing gunmen pulled nervously at slim cigarettes while martial music blasted over the radio.

Three males, bound with strips of cloth, crouched in the back of one truck, their sweatshirts pulled over their heads to cover their faces. The youngest looked to be about 15. All three had been detained minutes earlier on suspicion of affiliation with the Islamic State, which had withdrawn to the west of Mosul in late January but left behind a network of sleeper cells.

The convoy of the National Security Service (NSS), Iraq’s intelligence branch, continued to a second neighborhood. The NSS members ran down alleys to kick in doors at suspect houses. This time, though, a second convoy of tan Humvees stenciled with black Babylon lions pulled up and angry soldiers from the Iraqi Army’s 16th Division poured out, weapons in hand.

“What are you doing? You didn’t coordinate with us,” an irate 16th Division officer shouted, gesticulating at the NSS men.

Five Maps That Will Change How You See The World

from The Conversation

by Donald Houston

Boston public schools recently announced that they will shift to using world maps based on the Peters projection, reportedly the first time a US public school district has done so. Why? Because the Peters projection accurately shows different countries’ relative sizes. Although it distorts countries’ shapes, this way of drawing a world map avoids exaggerating the size of developed nations in Europe and North America and reducing the size of less developed countries in Asia, Africa and South America.

Peters projection. Daniel R. Strebe, CC BY-SA

How to Defeat ISIS

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By LEE SMITH

"Degradation of ISIS is not the end goal,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said last week. In what appeared to be a criticism of the Obama White House's ineffective campaign against the Islamic State, the Trump administration's top diplomat insisted, "We must defeat ISIS." At a two-day summit bringing together officials from the 68 countries and international organizations that form the anti-ISIS coalition, Tillerson said that "defeating ISIS is the United States' number one goal in the region." 

The Obama administration failed in its efforts to defeat ISIS mainly because it never took on the Shiite expansionism—emanating from Tehran and spreading through the central government in Baghdad to Damascus and Beirut—that has fueled Sunni extremism. Given a choice between the depredations of the Islamic State and those of the Shiite militias backed by Iran, Sunnis caught in the middle have typically chosen to endure the former rather than risk the latter. 

The Bush administration came to understand the sectarian roots of the problem. The surge that turned around the U.S.-led war in Iraq was premised on the notion that the only way to get Iraq's Sunni tribes to fight foreign extremists was to tackle the Shiite militias that threatened those tribes. Without moving at the same time against Iran and its allies, urging a Sunni-led campaign against Sunni extremists was tantamount to enjoining that sect to wage war on itself while Iran and its affiliates profited from the intramural carnage. 

Stealing water

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Vanda Felbab-Brown

Fresh water is vital for human survival and health, the production of food and energy, industrial activity, and the functioning of the entire global economy, as well as for the survival of other animals, plants, and natural ecosystems. Water scarcity, whatever its cause–natural catastrophes, pollution, poor water management, or theft and smuggling—can have grave consequences.

WATER CRIMES: CONTROVERSY AND SCALE

The topic is controversial in the first place, because there is no common definition as to what constitutes water theft and smuggling—or, for that matter, whether such phenomena exist at all. Water use regulations, including whether water use is priced or free, vary vastly around the world and often within a country, including within the United States.

There are two broad schools of thought on the use of and access to water (and hence on water theft and smuggling). One school defines water as a basic human right, and often opposes the pricing of water, particularly increases in prices. The other sees water as a commodity to which value needs to be assigned—contending that, like electricity, it needs to be priced properly to maintain its sustainability and efficient use. Members of the first school are deeply uncomfortable with the concepts and language of water theft and smuggling. Thus, legislation and regulations concerning water use can be politically divisive and explosive, since these opposite views can be strongly held, even within the same polity.

U.S. MILITARY IS WORKING ON A SECRET PROJECT TO PREVENT THE ISLAMIC STATE FROM LAUNCHING AUTONOMOUS ‘SUICIDE’ OR KAMIKAZE DRONES; THE FUTURE OF DRONE WARFARE IS INDEED SCARY — MASSIVE SWARMS, WMD ‘SUICIDE’ DRONES

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U.S. Military Is Working On A Secret Project To Prevent The Islamic State From Launching Autonomous ‘Suicide’ Or Kamikaze Drones; The Future Of Drone Warfare Is Indeed Scary — Massive Swarms, WMD ‘Suicide’ Drones

Shivali Best had an online article today, March 23, 2017, on the DailyMailOnline with the title above. She begins, “in a bid to stop the Islamic State (ISIS) from launching ‘suicide,’ [kamikaze] drones, the U.S. Army is working on a secret project called, Mobile Force Protection Program (MFPP). Overseen by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) [the Pentagon’s research arm] the program find ways to detect killer drones that do not rely on radio frequencies. The head of the project,” told the Daily Mail that plans could be put in place as early as this May. DARPA “anticipates awarding contracts for the first phase and testing and research, in the next few weeks. Phase I of the project is expected to take about a year; while Phase II will take about 18 months and involve the top two competitors from Phase I. Finally, Phase III will take around 21 months; and, will focus specifically on countering a large raid [swarm] of unmanned drones. Firms picked to proceed into testing, are expected to receive about $3M in funding” Ms. Best wrote. DARPA specified that “any methods used must not cause harm to any U.S. troops, or innocent civilians.” “This means that options such as high-powered, directed energy weapons, high-caliber weapons with ‘uncontrolled projectile trajectories,’ and live animals have all been prohibited,” according to the Daily Mail.

Retired Adm McRaven Explains Why Officers Don’t Always Make The Best Politicians

By ADAM LINEHAN

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When Navy Adm. William H. McRaven took the podium at the University of Texas at Austin to deliver the commencement speech for the graduating class of 2014, few people beyond the military’s close-knit special operations community knew who he was.

Those who did probably knew McRaven from “Dirty Wars,” a 2013 documentary marketed as a revelatory investigation into the blood-soaked exploits of the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, which McRaven helmed between 2008–2011. In the film, McRaven is portrayed as the enigmatic commander of a ruthless commando unit who’d taken the Afghan War into his own hands. However, the McRaven who stood in his Navy dress uniform that May before 8,000 college seniors, telling them they had the power to make the world better a place, was no boogeyman. He was the soon-to-be-appointed chancellor of the largest public university system in Texas, and, while he may not have looked the part, he certainly sounded it. A video of the pep talk went viral.

“If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day,” goes the famous speech. “It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.”

The U.S. Spends More On Defense Than All Other NATO Members Combined from Statista.com

by Dyfed Loesche

U.S. President Donald Trump seemed to be highly skeptical of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), calling it 'obsolete'.

At other instances he referred to it as 'very important to me'. Trump's defense chief, James Mattis, a former general in the Marines, has professed support for NATO. However, he too reprimanded NATO allies at a meeting of defense ministers this week in Brussels. They should pay their fair share for defense or face the consequences.

NATO had agreed that each member country should invest at least 2 percent of its GDP into its military. As our infographic shows, the United States spends more than double the amount on defense than all other members combined. The United Kingdom spends second most in absolute terms and is also past the 2 percent of GDP post, unlike Germany.

This chart shows defense spending of the United States and other NATO-Members 2016.

You will find more statistics at Statista.

The Sky Is the Limit: Geospatial Data, Global Food Security, and Political Stability

Download PDF file of "The Sky Is the Limit"

CSIS

The international development and security sectors have both benefited from an increasing quality of geospatial data and analyses. Currently, the U.S. government leverages vast troves of data to identify correlations between food security and political instability. For this reason, the traditionally separate development and security communities are experiencing increasing interdependence and commonality.

To examine how the development and security sectors can work together to leverage geospatial data in ways that identify, mitigate, and respond to food insecurity, the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) explored the nexus of global food security, geospatial data collection and analyses, and political instability.

Want to fix cybersecurity? Think about worst-case scenarios first

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Steven Weber

MARCH 24, 2017 —Cybersecurity depends on managing the consequences of a single powerful insight: The ongoing and ever-increasing demand for features, performance, and extensions of digital capabilities will expand to fill the space of what is technically possible, and then go beyond it. More than anything else, this is what drives innovation and the rapid rate of change that people and institutions have had to grapple with in the digital world.

It also means that the digital realm will evolve very much like other security realms have evolved in human affairs, but more quickly, with ever-changing vulnerabilities that will never fully be mastered. In other words, bad (illicit) actors coevolve with good, and the meanings and identities of "good" and "bad" are never settled. Threats don’t disappear; they change shape. Since the illicit players don’t need to follow rules or norms other than the ruthless pursuit of profit (for criminals) and strategic advantage (for states), they have a structural advantage and move faster and more boldly than the legal players.

Policymakers struggling with the consequences of digital insecurity need ways to get out ahead of this game rather than continuing to play catch-up. This essay explains one process for doing that – the development of scenarios that sketch a future landscape for the cybersecurity problem space. Scenario thinking is a systematic methodology that aims to specify the most important and most uncertain causal drivers in a system at the same time. It then combines these drivers together in models that explore unexpected pathways of change, using narratives to highlight what could be significantly different and how an observer would know in advance that those differences were beginning to emerge. Policymakers often use scenarios to rehearse how they might respond to "what if" types of questions, but in the cybersecurity world the need is even more urgent. The key question that scenario thinking can help address for policy is this: If X or Y happens, what will governments wish they had in place at that moment to maximize the upside and minimize the threat from the emerging digital environment?

Industrial control systems: The holy grail of cyberwar

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Joe Weiss

MARCH 24, 2017 —Industrial control systems (ICSs) are critical to the operation of a modern society. ICSs were designed to be reliable and safe, rather than cybersecure, and to ensure safe operations within specific known engineered states.

These systems carefully manage transitions to control risk between operational states that are defined to protect against random occurring failures of a component or a few components. However, focused cyberattacks such as Stuxnet or Aurora that can push a system into known dangerous states are not commonly expected in the normal operation of ICSs. This essay identifies a number of very critical issues that threat analysts, policymakers, and critical infrastructure protection personnel need to understand and address. That is, how cyber compromise of ICSs or physical system design features can cause physical damage to hardware and/or physical processes.

Hackers view exploits that can damage physical processes as the holy grail of cyberwarfare. Any device that can cause catastrophic damage through remote operation of cybercomponents could be a target for compromise. The more high risk components that can be compromised in an ICS, the greater the risk to the operator and value to the attacker.

ICSs are not designed to ensure resilience against concerted attacks that intend to place components in dangerous operating states. As ICS systems/components were designed prior to consideration of cyberthreats, securing these systems will be a growing area of cyberwarfare and engineering research.

Challenges for situational awareness

By: Adam Stone

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The Future Armoured Vehicles Situational Awareness 2017 conference is set for March 29-30 in London. In advance of the event, organizer SMi Group released interviews with European military leaders. Here they discuss opportunities and challenges in the emerging situational awareness landscape. 

What are the key areas for development in situational awareness domain? 

Martin Röder, project manager, IT department, PSM (Projekt System und Management GmbH), Germany: On military vehicles the commander has many important tasks. To assure he could fulfill the right activity in the right time it is extremely important to have a crew that assists him and an assisting vehicle-system. Our objective is to generate one unit getting all players together. Therefore, the information generation and information assignment on the one hand and the support on automated functions on the other hand are our main aims. 

Col. Manuel Jesus De Hoyos Sanchez, head of 8x8 VCR programme, Spanish Army: Situational awareness is not about technologies themselves but about the capabilities they provide. The interaction with the operator needs to be carefully designed in order to reduce their cognitive load. The right balance between the amount of information provided by the systems and the useful information for the combatant in a situation of distress is also a very important factor. 

From scenario planning to stress testing: The next step for energy companies By Sven Heiligtag, Susanne Maurenbrecher, and Niklas Niemann

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Utilities and oil and gas firms have long used scenario analysis, but extraordinary times call for new measures.

Strategic and financial scenario analysis has a long, venerable history at energy companies. Shell Oil popularized the technique in the 1970s, and almost all of them have adopted it as a vital part of their decision-making processes. But as executives know well, scenario planning has its pitfalls; 40 percent of the leaders we surveyed in 2013 said that it didn’t meet their expectations. Often, companies fall prey to one of several tendencies, such as availability or stability bias, that hinder the exercise and produce unusable results.

Energy companies are finding that in today’s volatile world, one flaw of scenario planning is particularly acute: when business leaders consider a range of scenarios, they tend to “chop the tails off the distribution” and zero in on those that most resemble their current experience. Extreme scenarios are deemed a waste of time because “they won’t happen” or, if they do, “all bets are off.” But this approach leaves companies dangerously exposed to dramatic changes.

Consider the shocks and disruptions of recent years. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster had far-reaching effects on the oil companies involved, and many others. The 2011 Fukushima earthquake and tsunami upended nuclear policy in Japan and elsewhere, changing the industry’s structure. Geopolitical shocks have upset the plans of energy companies in too many countries to name. Most recently, the rise of antiglobalization sentiment has thrown a new wrench into energy planning.

Want to fix cybersecurity? Think about worst-case scenarios first

Source Link

Steven Weber

MARCH 24, 2017 —Cybersecurity depends on managing the consequences of a single powerful insight: The ongoing and ever-increasing demand for features, performance, and extensions of digital capabilities will expand to fill the space of what is technically possible, and then go beyond it. More than anything else, this is what drives innovation and the rapid rate of change that people and institutions have had to grapple with in the digital world.

It also means that the digital realm will evolve very much like other security realms have evolved in human affairs, but more quickly, with ever-changing vulnerabilities that will never fully be mastered. In other words, bad (illicit) actors coevolve with good, and the meanings and identities of "good" and "bad" are never settled. Threats don’t disappear; they change shape. Since the illicit players don’t need to follow rules or norms other than the ruthless pursuit of profit (for criminals) and strategic advantage (for states), they have a structural advantage and move faster and more boldly than the legal players.

Policymakers struggling with the consequences of digital insecurity need ways to get out ahead of this game rather than continuing to play catch-up. This essay explains one process for doing that – the development of scenarios that sketch a future landscape for the cybersecurity problem space. Scenario thinking is a systematic methodology that aims to specify the most important and most uncertain causal drivers in a system at the same time. It then combines these drivers together in models that explore unexpected pathways of change, using narratives to highlight what could be significantly different and how an observer would know in advance that those differences were beginning to emerge. Policymakers often use scenarios to rehearse how they might respond to "what if" types of questions, but in the cybersecurity world the need is even more urgent. The key question that scenario thinking can help address for policy is this: If X or Y happens, what will governments wish they had in place at that moment to maximize the upside and minimize the threat from the emerging digital environment?

*** What Prompted The Electronic Devices Ban

by Scott Stewart

On the afternoon of March 20, Royal Jordanian Airlines announced on Twitter that effective March 21, it would ban all electronic items from passenger cabins of its aircraft traveling directly to and from the United States with the exception of cellphones and medical devices. The announcement, which was later deleted from the airline's Twitter account, noted that the security measures were being instituted at the request of "concerned U.S. Departments." The U.S. government soon confirmed the ban and added that, in addition to Royal Jordanian, it applied to flights from eight other airlines originating from 10 airports in eight Middle Eastern countries.

The airports covered by the ban are located in Cairo, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Istanbul, Doha, Amman, Kuwait City, Casablanca, Jeddah and Riyadh. The airlines affected include Etihad Airways, EgyptAir, Qatar Airways, Emirates Airlines, Kuwait Airways, Royal Air Maroc, Saudi Arabian Airlines and Turkish Airlines. A U.S. Transportation Security Administration notice reportedly gave the affected airlines 96 hours to implement the new security measures. Noncompliance would result in their losing authorization to land in the United States. U.S. airlines were not affected by the measure because none of them fly from the affected airports to the United States.

*** In Japan, Russia and China Find Common Ground

Geopolitical Diary

For the first time in three years, Russia and Japan have revived an avenue of negotiation that had stalled in the face of enduring tension between the two nations. Foreign and defense ministers from both countries met in Tokyo on Monday to hold 2+2 talks on security issues in the Asia-Pacific region. As expected, Japan took the opportunity to question Russia's recent attempts to bolster its defenses on the southern Kuril Islands, to which Tokyo has long laid claim. Russia fired back with its own objections to Japan's desire to build up its ballistic missile defenses as North Korea pushes ahead with its nuclear program.

For the Russians, not to mention Pyongyang's Chinese backers, the deployment of U.S. antiballistic missile (ABM) technology around the world is becoming a bigger and bigger concern. The Kremlin's anxiety, on clear display in Europe over the past few years, has more recently come to include the Asia-Pacific as the United States wraps up its delivery of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system to South Korea. That these systems will extend the coverage of missile defense radars operated by U.S. allies to include Chinese and Russian territory is an obvious concern to Beijing and Moscow, since the systems will enable Washington to better track missile flights and tests in both countries. But their fears go far beyond these immediate consequences.

** What Happens After China Invades Taiwan?

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By Wang Mouzhou

Even a tactically “successful” invasion of the island might lead to strategic defeat for the PRC and the Communist Party. 

Let’s assume, hypothetically, that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) successfully conquers Taiwan. Most analyses of an attempted invasion consider only if the PRC could successfully subdue Taiwan. The consequences of an attempted invasion –even a tactically successful one – have received little thought, however. This analysis considers some likely consequences for the PRC if it attempts and/or completes an invasion of Taiwan. Likely consequences include: the direct human and economic expenditures of the invasion itself; the costs of garrisoning Taiwan; the PRC’s post-war diplomatic and economic isolation; and, finally, the significant and potentially destabilizing process of incorporating 23 million individuals into the PRC.

It is still too soon to say if Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in Crimea and the Donbass produced a strategic defeat or victory for Russia. However, the elements that advantaged Russia vis-à-vis Ukraine will not avail themselves to the PRC in a cross-straits crisis. Invading Taiwan would prove highly dangerous and costly for Beijing. Incorporation of Taiwan into the PRC would prove to be, at best, a Pyrrhic victory if attempted in the near or medium term.

** The Idea of ISIS Will Outlive the Caliphate

BY SIMON COTTEE

Source Link 

Despite claiming responsibility for attacks like the one in London, the group is dying. It will retain the ability to inspire. 

The Islamic State is claiming responsibility for the London attack that left three people and the attacker dead on Wednesday. “It is believed that this attacker acted alone,” Prime Minister Theresa May said, adding that the British-born man, already known to authorities, was inspired by “Islamist terrorism.” For its part, ISIS called the attacker its “soldier” in a report published by its Amaq news agency in both Arabic and English. The caliphate, it seemed, was eager to signal to a broad audience that it was as busy and effective as ever. The facts, however, tell a different story.

Back in 2014, God was on the side of ISIS—or so it appeared, and so ISIS claimed, with some plausibility. The speed and scope of its ascent was extraordinary. In mid-June it seized Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and in the following months it annexed a Britain-sized swath of territory crossing Syria and Iraq. In his historic June 29 statement, in which he declared the restoration of the caliphate and announced Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as its leader or caliph, ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani said:

Of swayamsevaks and intellectuals

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by Dr Rakesh Sinha

At the three-day meeting of the All India Pratinidhi Sabha (AIPS), the highest decision-making body of the RSS, that concluded in Coimbatore on March 22, the swayamsevaks felt unburdened. They are no longer in direct confrontation with the state. Those who considered the RSS the enemy of “secularism and nationalism” no longer hold state power. However, they still hold the dominant position in academia.

In the past, the annihilation of dominant political regimes, whether in the former Soviet Union, Britain, France or in Latin America, was preceded by the assertion of intellectual hegemony. However, the situation in India is different. While the RSS dominates India’s politics, its domination in the country’s intellectual discourse is awaited. The only change is that forces whose secular discourse required the exclusion of the RSS now realise that the presence of the organisation is necessary.

Anti-RSSism is not a monolith. The organisation’s critics can be divided into three broad categories. One, those academics and intellectuals who critique the RSS position on the nation and the state: Their misconception is not far-fetched since they find little substance in popular literature on the RSS to allay their misgivings. But the closer they come to the RSS, the more they will shed their misgivings. There is definitely a paucity of literature that delineates the value-loaded terminologies and narratives of the movement, like Hindu Rashtra and cultural nationalism. This gives rise to misconceptions. For instance, all anti-RSS literature and narratives describe the Hindu rashtra as a theocratic idea. That is absolutely against the RSS’s own understanding. But then, these critics have not felt the need to delve into serious work by RSS’s theoreticians. Dattopant Thengadi’s book Rashtra (nation), for example, is an attempt to delineate RSS’s understanding of the nation and the Hindu Rashtra.

India’s Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP): Will it Help India’s Upstream Oil and Gas?

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India’s petroleum and natural gas minster, Dharmendra Pradhan, recently announced that the ministry will hold a new auction for oil and gas exploration blocks in July. 

This auction will be the first under a relatively new exploration and licensing policy passed in March 2016 known as the Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP). 

HELP unifies the authority to grant licenses for exploration and production (E&P) of conventional and unconventional oil and gas resources, including oil, gas, coal bed methane, shale gas/oil, tight gas, and gas hydrates. 

HELP introduces an Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP) that will allow companies to approach the government at any time and seek permission to explore any block. It also gives companies access to the National Data Repository (NDR) maintained by the government, to consult these maps and data to help inform them about which areas to bid on. Previously, companies had to wait for formal bid rounds by the government, and E&P activity was restricted to only those blocks offered for bidding by the government. 

The previous licensing policy, New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP), was criticized for its narrow scope (it required companies to obtain a separate license if they discovered unconventional oil or gas that was not covered under the initial permit) and for the production sharing and marketing relationship with the government, which was seen as burdensome. 

HELP changes India’s E&P policy in the following ways: 

The Afghan Quagmire

Paul Pillar

The National Interest

Fifteen years and counting. America’s longest war keeps getting longer. The very duration of the expedition, with an end no more in sight now than it had been at any of several points one could have chosen over the last several years, ought to indicate the need for a fundamental redirection of policy. And yet there continue to be calls, including from influential members of Congress, to sustain and even enlarge the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan.

That campaign has now continued under three U.S. presidents, two Afghan presidents, too many U.S. military commanders to count, and a variety of operational strategies associated with the different generals. Different levels of U.S. troops also have been tried, with the peak of just over 100,000 American troops reached in 2011.

Something approaching peace and stability will come to Afghanistan the only way it ever has come to Afghanistan in the past: through deals reached among the different factions, power centers, and ethnic groups within Afghanistan. External military intervention does not negate or obviate that process, and instead becomes the object of Afghan resistance to outside interference. It is not for nothing that the place is called the graveyard of empires.

The shape of any deals reached among Afghan factions matters relatively little to the United States. One need make no apologies for borrowing from old speeches in describing the current conflict in Afghanistan as a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing. Unlike the circumstances in which that phrase was first used, there is no hostile and threatening power poised to exploit passivity on our part.

Let's admit the obvious: Afghanistan War is unwinnable

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BY DOUGLAS A. WISSING

The Afghanistan War is unwinnable. Partnered with a corrupt and ineffective Afghan government, U.S. forces confront a robust and growing insurgency, substantively funded by skimmed American contracts. After 15 years of dysfunctional U.S. development schemes costing over $100 billion, Afghans remain near the bottom of most human development indices.

Beyond the counterinsurgency failures, many Afghans remain resistant to ideas imposed by foreigners. One Kentucky sergeant, frustrated by his team's failed development mission, drawled to me, "The Afghans ain't buyin' what we're sellin'."

There is no good way forward. The systemic failure of the 21st-century American way of war and development cannot easily be reformed. The many entrenched beneficiaries, both Afghan and American, have perverse incentives to continue the futile war. "It's the perfect war," one intelligence officer told me. "Everyone is making money."

Doing more of the same won't yield a different outcome.

With operations ramping up in Syria, Afghanistan is the forgotten war. Americans are often surprised to learn Afghanistan remains our largest military foreign engagement, with 8,400 troops plus untold numbers of special forces, and tens of thousands of contractors for the Department of Defense and other agencies.

Deterring Chinese Aggression

by Nathan Jennings

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Tensions between China and nations across the South China Sea have simmered for the past decade as competing states contest territorial waters and economic exclusion zones. As the leading power in the Asia-Pacific region since World War II, the United States, and its peerless military in particular, should begin deploying diverse and scalable elements of national power to promote coalitions to deter Chinese aggression. This would fulfil the 2015 National Security Strategy’s imperative to, “manage competition from a position of strength while insisting that China uphold international rules and norms.”[1] While objectives should both limit and accommodate Chinese ambitions, the judicious application of diplomatic, military, economic, and informational capabilities in the South China Sea and across the Pacific basin—in concert with empowering coalitions—offers the best hope for achieving a peaceful balance of power.

Any effort to form coalitions to deter Chinese belligerence begins with American diplomatic leadership. As the traditional guarantor of international freedom of navigation and commerce in the region, the United States is uniquely positioned to sponsor and guide any emerging multinational partnerships. It alone possesses the national power and influence and lead combinations of conciliatory and provocative diplomacy. This would include both bi-lateral and multi-lateral economic arrangements and broader military coalitions with long-standing allies like Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia, and newer partnerships with modernizing powers like India, Vietnam, and Burma.

Driving India Into the Arms of the Dragon

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by E. John Teichert

In the midst of an American pivot towards Asia, the United States has telegraphed a clear intent to improve upon its relationship with India. During President Obama’s visit to India early last year he contended that the relationship was “one of the defining partnerships of this century.” During Indian Defense Minister Parrikar’s recent visit to the United States, Secretary Carter called the U.S.-Indian defense partnership one that “will become an anchor of global security.” Yet, in spite of common values, warming ties, and shared interests, a fruitful and enduring relationship between the United States and India is not guaranteed, nor should it be taken for granted. Doing so would place American strategic interests in peril.

A diagnosis of the relationships between India, China, and the United States reveals that a strong partnership between India and China is possible, and must be carefully considered as a part of American strategy. While not likely, this relationship is plausible based on shared Chinese-Indian interests, independent Chinese and Indian objectives, and potential American strategic mistakes in South Asia. A proper American strategy would consider this possibility, watch for strategic warnings of it, and design a current strategy to hedge against it. Otherwise, the desired strategic partnership between the United States and India may not come to fruition.

Trump administration weighs deeper involvement in Yemen war

Karen DeYoung and Missy Ryan

Washington Post

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has asked the White House to lift Obama-era restrictions on U.S. military support for Persian Gulf states engaged in a protracted civil war against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, according to senior Trump administration officials.

In a memo this month to national security adviser H.R. ­McMaster, Mattis said that “limited support” for Yemen operations being conducted by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — including a planned Emirati offensive to retake a key Red Sea port — would help combat a “common threat.”

How To Counter Political Islam

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by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

It is refreshing and heartening that President Trump acknowledges the need for an ideological campaign against “radical Islam.” This deserves to be called a paradigm shift. President Bush often referred to a “war on terror,” but terror is a tactic that can be used for a variety of ideological objectives. President Obama stated that he was opposed to “violent extremism” and even organized an international summit around this subject. Yet at times he made it seem as if he worried more about “Islamophobia” than about radical Islam. In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in 2012, Obama declared: “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”

In what follows, however, I shall refer to “political Islam” rather than radical Islam. Political Islam is not just a religion as most Western citizens recognize the term “religion,” a faith; it is also a political ideology, a legal order, and in many ways also a military doctrine associated with the campaigns of the Prophet Muhammad. Political Islam rejects any kind of distinction between religion and politics, mosque and state. Political Islam even rejects the modern state in favor of a caliphate. My central argument is that political Islam implies a constitutional order fundamentally incompatible with the US Constitution and with the “constitution of liberty” that is the foundation of the American way of life.

There is no point in denying that political Islam as an ideology has its foundation in Islamic doctrine. However, “Islam,” “Islamism,” and “Muslims” are distinct concepts. Not all Muslims are Islamists, let alone violent, but all Islamists—including those who use violence—are Muslims. I believe the religion of Islam itself is indeed capable of reformation, if only to distinguish it more clearly from the political ideology of Islamism. But that task of reform can only be carried out by Muslims.

The National Security Economics of the Middle East: Comparative Spending, Burden Sharing, and Modernization

By Anthony H. Cordesman and Abdullah Toukan 

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The economics of national security in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region have changed dramatically since 2001. Counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and internal security have emerged as having the same priority as military forces, and the rise of non-state actors, the use of proxies, and the increased use of asymmetric warfare has changed the nature of warfighting as well. Nuclear and missile threats are not new to the region, but they are a rising threat, and one that affects the cost and shape of many of the region’s military forces. 

Internal security has also increased in priority and in cost. The 9/11 attacks made it clear that violent Islamist extremism posed a major threat inside and outside the region, a threat reinforced by the al Qaeda attacks inside Saudi Arabia in 2011, and by the emergence of ISIS and its claims of creating a “Caliphate” in Syria and Iraq in 2011. 

At the same time, the major political upheavals that began in 2011 have shown that national security faces a critical threat to internal stability growing out of failures to provide effective governance and development, and that regional states need to pay far more attention to the needs of their peoples, to the impact of massive population growth, to the need to create jobs and higher levels of income, and to dealing with social change. 

Critical Assumptions and American Grand Strategy

Hal Brands, Peter Feaver, William Inboden, Paul D. Miller 

Every grand strategy rests on a set of critical assumptions about how the world works. Today, the assumptions underpinning American grand strategy are becoming more contested and uncertain than at any time in a generation. 

This report examines America's grand strategy in the post-Cold War era, it explores the global and regional assumptions that are now coming under strain, and it offers suggestions for how U.S. planners can best adapt to a more competitive and uncertain world.

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Concrete Barriers: A False Counterinsurgency Idol

by The Modern War Institute

In 2013, David Kilcullen, an advisor to Gen. David Petraeus during the Iraq War, was asked how the US military reduced violence in Baghdad by 95 percent. “We did it by killing the city,” he responded. “We shut the city down. We brought in more than 100 kilometers of concrete T-wall. We put troops on every street corner.” The US military’s counterinsurgency campaign—and the concrete barriers that were an integral part of it—certainly brought impressive, measurable short-term improvements to the security situation in Baghdad. However, by 2014, just after Kilcullen’s explanation, civilian deaths in Iraq had returned to 2006–2007 levels. The concrete barriers emplaced during the “surge” dramatically slowed sectarian violence—for a time—but also cemented the sectarian and ethnic divisions that empowered Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s power grab, contributed to government corruption, and set the conditions for the rise of ISIS. These same divisions will threaten Iraq long after ISIS is defeated if a political solution that incorporates and adequately represents all sects and ethnicities is not further developed.

Population-centric counterinsurgency primarily emphasizes securing the population instead of targeting the enemy and seeks to reinforce the legitimacy of the government while reducing insurgent influence. While US COIN efforts produced an array of tactical successes, the overall result cannot be construed as a total success. This is not a reflection of US service members, their efforts, or their sacrifices, but rather a function of the ambiguity typical of a COIN mission, time constraints, and poor quantitative metrics with which to assess mission progress. While policy debates take place at the strategic level, stop-gap measures and temporary solutions are constantly tried and tested in a process of tactical innovation that attempts to compensate for strategic challenges. However, what appear to be militarily successful tactical innovations can inadvertently compound strategic failures and erode progress toward a political objective. The widespread employment of concrete on the streets of Baghdad offers an illustrative example.