WAR 12-21-2019-to-12-27-2019___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

(397) 11-30-2019-to-12-06-2019___*THE***WINDS****of****WAR
TimeBomb 2000

(398) 12-07-2019-to-12-13-2019___*THE***WINDS****of****WAR

WAR - 12-07-2019-to-12-13-2019___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(395) 11-16-2019-to-11-22-2019___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR**** http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?563807-11-16-2019-to-11-22-2019___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR**** (396)11-23-2019-to-11-29-2019___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****...

xf.timebomb2000.com

(399) 12-14-2019-to-12-20-2019___*THE***WINDS****of****WAR

WAR - 12-14-2019-to-12-20-2019___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(396)11-23-2019-to-11-29-2019___*THE***WINDS****of****WAR TimeBomb 2000 (397) 11-30-2019-to-12-06-2019___*THE***WINDS****of****WAR TimeBomb 2000 (398) 12-07-2019-to-12-13-2019___*THE***WINDS****of****WAR...

xf.timebomb2000.com

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Posted for fair use.....

Put US Post-INF Missiles into Production

The U.S. has waited too long to mimic Chinese intermediate-range weapons.

www.defenseone.com

Put US Post-INF Missiles into Production

• By Rebeccah L. Heinrichs Senior fellow, Hudson Institute Read bio
• Tim Morrison Read bio

December 20, 2019

The U.S. has waited too long to mimic Chinese intermediate-range weapons.

Recent tests of U.S. missiles once banned by the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty are a welcome step. They provide an essential response to Russia’s violations of the now-defunct INF. They help regain an advantage ceded to the People’s Republic of China, which was never constrained by the pact. And they better position the United States to seek new international agreements on arms.
The ballistic missile tested by the Air Force last week and the cruise missile launched by the Navy in August were deliberately flown into the 500-to-5,500-kilometer range proscribed by the 1987 agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union. Russia, of course, did not wait until the treaty was dissolved before testing its own INF-banned missile, the 9M729, around 2010. Beginning around May 2013, and through August 2019, the Obama and Trump administrations sought to convince Russia to change its conduct and comply with the treaty. Russia would not. And so, with the clear and unambiguous support of NATO and other allies, President Trump withdrew the United States from the treaty.
The significance of this decision for the strategic competition with China cannot be overstated. Because China was never a party to the treaty, and steadfastly refused to be brought into the treaty, it was free to deploy intermediate-range ballistic and cruise missiles.
Related: Pentagon Test-Fires 2nd INF-Banned Missile
Related: Save This One Piece of the INF Treaty
Related: Expect a Missile Race After the INF Demise
And it took advantage of that freedom, deploying thousands of such weapons. As then-U.S. Navy Adm. “Harry” Harris answered a question from Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, “I think that we are at a disadvantage with regard to China today, in the sense that China has ground-based ballistic missiles that threaten our basing in the western Pacific and our ships. They have ground-based ballistic anti-ship missiles. And we have nothing — we have no ground-based capability that can threaten China.”

Trump’s withdrawal from the treaty presents the United States the opportunity to regain the advantage. Just as the PLA Rocket force holds U.S. bases, assets, and allies at risk of attack, conventional ground-based theater-range missiles owned and operated by the United States or Japan, or a combination of both, would hold enemy targets at risk. This would help U.S. forces, mainly from the sea and air, operate in areas increasingly covered by PLA missiles.

Now with two successful tests under its belt, what should the Defense Department do next?
First, Defense Secretary Mark Esper should immediately move these systems from the Strategic Capabilities Office, or SCO, which funded them, to the military services for acquisition, deployment, and troop training. It was gratifying to see that the Secretary is already moving in this direction. “We are supporting those activities, with money and technology,” Esper told lawmakers last week. We should watch to ensure the SCO and the Army and Marine Corps sign the needed paperwork to effectuate the transfer as soon as possible.
Second, the administration should immediately reach out to allies with offers to work with them to co-finance and co-develop intermediate range ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles. When allies and partners invest in their own defense, especially in U.S. capabilities, it shares the burden for that defense, multiplies the defensive forces that can be brought to bear to challenge adversaries such as the Chinese Communist Party, and promotes interoperability and integration of Western-aligned military forces. For example, Japan already co-develops missile defense systems with the United States and has, over Beijing’s complaints, opted to buy its own Aegis Ashore missile defense system.
What’s more, offering co-development and co-finance opportunities also deals with one of the most oft-repeated red herrings in the debate over what to do about the Russia’s INF violation: the contention that allies and partners won’t host U.S. intermediate-range missiles. (In the recently passed 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, the House approved a provision that bars funding for intermediate-range missiles until the Defense Department details where such missiles would be based. If a similar provision appears in next year’s NDAA, it would put the Defense Department in the absurd position of negotiating basing agreements with allies and partners to host military capabilities that they don’t even own yet.) Co-developing new missiles would also present an opportunity to sidestep basing negotiations because allies could simply deploy their own weapons. The result: stronger allies, more burden sharing, more allied defensive force, and less political heartburn in the politics of our allies and partners around the world.
Lastly, history reminds us that the Soviet Union was driven to negotiate INF because the Reagan administration, working with NATO allies, deployed nuclear-armed missiles in Europe. Though the weapons we are discussing now are strictly non-nuclear, the steps we outlined above could help the U.S. officials persuade Moscow and Beijing to work towards trilateral arms control. Increasing the operational abilities of U.S. and Japanese forces, for example, can only encourage Beijing to talk.
The Trump administration has an opportunity to change the military balance in East Asia, and elsewhere. These first initial steps by the Defense Department should be applauded, and immediately followed up with the programmatic and budgetary decisions that will offer opportunities for allies and partners to co-develop and co-finance a new, and cost-imposing, capability.

• Rebeccah Heinrichs is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, where she provides research and commentary on a range of national security issues and specializes in missile defense and nuclear deterrence. Full bio
• Tim Morrison was most recently the senior arms control official at the National Security Council. Full bio

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Macron vows to keep fighting extremism in West Africa

French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to boost the fight against Islamic extremism in West Africa where French troops killed 33 Islamic extremists in central Mali.

apnews.com

Macron vows to keep fighting extremism in West Africa

By ALEXIS ADELE and SYLVIE CORBET
an hour ago

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) — France’s President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to boost the fight against Islamic extremism in West Africa as French troops killed 33 Islamic extremists in central Mali.
Saturday was Macron’s second day of his three-day trip to Ivory Coast and Niger that has been dominated by the growing threat posed by jihadist groups.
“We must remain determined and united to face that threat,” Macron said in a news conference in Abidjan. “We will continue the fight.”
By Macron’s side, Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara in Abidjan announced a “historic” reform of the French-backed currency CFA Franc, established in 1945 and used by eight states in West and Central Africa.




The currency’s name will become the “eco” next year and all French officials will withdraw from its decision-making bodies, Ouattara said. In addition, the obligation for member states to keep half of their foreign reserves in France will end.
The currency will remain pegged to the euro, which guarantees its stability, Ouattara stressed.
Macron, who turned 42 on Saturday, welcomed the reform and praised the financial and economic empowerment of the region.
“I don’t belong to a generation that has known colonialism ... so let’s break the ties!” he said, adding that the currency was considered by some, especially the African youth, as a post-colonial heritage.
Earlier that day, Macron announced that a French military operation killed 33 Islamic extremists in the Mopti region of central Mali on Saturday morning.
He tweeted he was “proud of our soldiers who protect us.” Two Malian gendarmes also were rescued in the operation, he said.
France has about 4,500 military personnel in West and Central Africa, much of which was ruled by France during the colonial era. The French led a military operation in 2013 to dislodge Islamic extremists from power in several major towns across Mali’s north.
In the ensuing years, the militants have regrouped and pushed further into central Mali, where Saturday morning’s operation was carried out.
On Friday evening, Macron met with French military personnel stationed in Ivory Coast, which shares a long border with volatile Mali and Burkina Faso. The visit included commandos who were involved in the operation in Mali last month during which 13 soldiers died in a helicopter collision.
Earlier Saturday, Macron and Ouattara highlighted a new training effort being launched. The International Academy to Fight Terrorism will be in charge of “training in Ivory Coast some specialized forces from across Africa,” Macron said. “Then we will collectively be better prepared for the fight against terrorism.”




On Sunday, Macron will pay tribute in Bouake to the victims of a 2004 bombing by the Ivorian air force during the civil war in the country, which killed nine French soldiers and an American civilian who had sought shelter at the French army base.
He also will pay a visit to Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou in Niamey before returning to France, where a summit with West African leaders will be held in mid-January to clarify the strategy of the French military operation in the Sahel region.
__
Krista Larson in Dakar, Senegal contributed to the story.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

U.S. Submarines Are Getting New W76-2 Tactical Nuclear Warheads (And It Might Be a Giant Mistake)

Why?

nationalinterest.org

December 21, 2019 Topic: Security Blog Brand: The Buzz Tags: SubmarinesNuclear WeaponsTactical Nuclear WeaponsMilitary
U.S. Submarines Are Getting New W76-2 Tactical Nuclear Warheads (And It Might Be a Giant Mistake)

Why?

by Sebastien Roblin



It was a small, obscure-sounding item in the 2020 defense budget—a mere $19.6 million to procure W76-2 warheads, a sum which could pay for just one quarter of a single F-35A stealth fighter.

But it, along with a select few other items including plans for a Space Force and border wall funding, generated such controversy that Senate Republicans and House Democrats spent three additional months hashing out a compromise defense budget after striking an initial deal this summer.

Ultimately, the House conceded on most of its defense policy priorities—meaning funding will continue flowing to deploy the W76-2 nuclear warheads manufactured by the Pantex plant in Texas.
The W76-2 is a less powerful variant of the W76-1 warhead deployed on 13.5-meter-tall Trident II ballistic missiles deployed on the U.S. Navy’s Ohio-class submarines. Whereas the four 90- or 100-kiloton independently reentering warheads carried on a standard Trident each explode with six times the force of the Little Boy uranium bomb that killed over 60,000 Japanese at Hiroshima, the 5 to 7 kiloton W76-2 has an explosive yield a third or half that of the Hiroshima blast.
The difference reflects that the W76 is a strategic weapon designed to obliterate hardened nuclear missile silos and annihilate large populated areas in an apocalyptic nuclear war—and more pointedly, to deter foes from initiating such a war—while the W76-2 is a tactical nuclear weapon designed to hit individual military bases and formations on the battlefield.

The W76-2 has been championed by officials such as former Defense Secretary James Mattis as a means to give the U.S. military an additional too with which to retaliate rapidly and proportionally to the tactical nuclear weapons possessed by Russia.
But opponents, including many former senior defense and foreign policy officials and a broad swathe of arms control experts fear that introducing such a capability simply increases the risk of devastating nuclear war.

Escalate to De-Escalate?
In the 1950s, it was initially assumed that small nuclear weapons would liberally—even routinely—be employed in future battlefields. However, when their use was simulated in NATO’s aptly-named Carte Blanche wargame in 1955, the results were horrifying.

At best, the “small” nukes were used in such large numbers that Europe was left a devastated, irradiated wasteland. Worse, the fighting could cause both sides to escalate to large-scale strategic nukes.
Today, U.S. defense officials fear that Moscow may espouse an “escalate to deescalate” doctrine in which a tactical nuclear strike is employed to signal Moscow’s resolve. Such a limited strike or strikes might be employed after Russian conventional forces have secured a vulnerable target (ie. the Baltics) and before NATO has mustered a large-scale counterattack, in order to convince member states to back down from a conventional conflict Russia would likely lose.

Unlike strategic nukes, tactical nuclear weapon numbers are not regulated by treaty. Russia has around 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons which can be launched by tube artillery, cruise and ballistic missiles, and air-dropped munitions.
As Russia’s odds of winning a conventional war against a fully mobilized NATO are slim, the thinking goes that intimidating adversaries into backing down by leveraging the threat of Russia’s nuclear arsenal may be Moscow’s only winning strategy.

Arms control advocates point out Russia’s tactical arsenal actually has shrunk in the last decade, so that claims that the threat is growing are dubious. Furthermore, evidence as to whether Moscow genuinely plans on an “escalate to deescalate” strategy is mixed at best, and contradicted by official doctrine.
However, defense hawks argue that new Russian hypersonic missiles may allow Russia’s nukes to hit their targets faster, and with less chance of being intercepted, than before.

Thus, the Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review argued the United States should expand its tactical nuclear strike capabilities so that it could proportionally retaliate against Russian tactical strikes. As with much nuclear strategy, the ultimate “victory” for such weapon is to deter enemies from necessitating their use in the first place.
However, the United Staes already maintains an arsenal of around 500 air-dropped B61 tactical nuclear bombs with a yield that can be dialed from .3 to 400 kilotons. 150 B61s are forward deployed and shared with select NATO partners. These can be dropped by fourth-generation jet fighters (F-15, F-16 and German Tornados), long-range B-2 stealth bombers and soon F-35 stealth fighters.

Advocates for the W76-2 argue that jets aren’t good enough, as they take longer to deploy and reach their target than ballistic missiles and may suffer losses to Russian air defenses.
By comparison, a Trident missile can be launched within minutes of receiving a low-frequency signal from an E-6 Mercury “doomsday” plane, can hit a target thousands of miles away within a half hour traveling at up to twenty-four times the speed of sound, and doesn’t put pilots at risk.

However, critics point out that the submarine launching the Trident will be placed at increased risk afterwards as the launch exposes its general position, endangering the submarine’s roughly 150 crew and the vital strategic missiles it carries.
They also argue that difference in response speed shouldn’t matter that much for retaliating against a “signaling strike,” as the intention is less about hitting a specific military target in a short time window than conveying a political message.

But there’s a much scarier risk: Russia likely wouldn’t be able to distinguish a Trident carrying a tactical warhead from a strategic one. And a Trident launched from the Atlantic at a tactical target in Eastern Europe may look very much like it could be headed to wipe out Russia’s leadership in Moscow instead.

Thus, a tactical Trident strike could inadvertently trigger a strategic nuclear riposte—the kind that could result in some or all the major cities in the United States and/or Europe meeting the same fate as Hiroshima.
In fact, when the United States tested its own “escalate to deescalate” doctrine in the 1983 “Proud Prophet” wargame, it decided to disavow the strategy after discovering it invited precisely such a disastrous consequence.
Weaker, more “useable” nuclear weapons may indeed also be perceived as having a lower threshold for use—particularly by civilian leaders who misjudge the implications—increasing the risk that the chain of escalation described above occurs.
Thus, most arms control experts argue that deploying additional less-destructive nukes actually increases the odds of a civilization-shattering nuclear conflict.
Essentially, whether the W76-2 improves American security is much more about psychology than technology. Would the presence of tactical-yield Trident missiles dissuade U.S. adversaries from employing their own tactical nukes against U.S. forces or their allies?
And even if that’s the case, would that benefit outweigh the risk that the tactical Trident option makes use of nuclear weapons seemingly more usable and likely, and that such use could inadvertently escalate to a strategic nuclear conflict?
We can only hope such scenarios remain strictly theoretical. With the policy fight resolved in the weapon’s favor in Congress, the new warheads should soon enter service on Ohio-class submarines if they have not already, giving them a new tactical nuclear capability along with their established strategic nuclear mission.
Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

North Korean threat looms over trilateral summit in China

Amid frayed ties, Moon and Abe to have first formal meeting in 15 months

asia.nikkei.com

North Korean threat looms over trilateral summit in China

Amid frayed ties, Moon and Abe to have first formal meeting in 15 months
KIM JAEWON, MITSURU OBE and CK TAN, Nikkei staff writers
December 21, 2019 13:54 JST

SEOUL/TOKYO/SHANGHAI -- Against a backdrop of North Korean threats, the leaders of China, Japan and South Korea will meet in the Chinese city of Chengdu on Tuesday.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang will host Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korea's President Moon Jae-in in the southwestern Sichuan Province. Chinese President Xi Jinping will also meet the Japanese and Korean leaders respectively in Beijing.

At the trilateral summit, now celebrating the 20th anniversary, the leaders are expected to discuss economic cooperation as well as the renewed tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

The milestone comes as Pyongyang undertakes "critical tests" at its Tongchang-ri missile launch site on the west coast, raising alarm after a shaky two-year detente.

"President Moon will have talks on how to cooperate for the complete denuclearization and permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula," Ko Min-jung, the South Korean leader's spokesperson, told reporters. "We expect to strengthen institutionalization of cooperation among the three countries as well as have constructive talks to improve cooperation."

North Korea has set a deadline for the resumption of denuclearization talks by the end of this year, and called on Washington to lift economic sanctions. Pyongyang has threatened to give the U.S. a "Christmas gift" unless it responds favorably.

"A message on North Korea by the three countries at this time is symbolically important," said Naoko Aoki, an adjunct political scientist at Rand Corporation, a think tank in the U.S. "North Korea is supposed to hold a plenary meeting of the Workers' Party of Korea central committee in the latter half of this month, where we will likely obtain more clues about what the country has in mind."

Nimesh Salike, an associate professor at Xian Jiaotong-Liverpool University in China, said the summit is a perfect opportunity to discuss North Korean issues and assess the isolated country's needs and wants.

"If these three nations could handle the issue properly, [a] clear-cut permanent solution could be on hand -- although completely abandoning the U.S. on this may not be realistic," he said.

China and Russia this week stressed their view that offering sanctions relief to North Korea is the best way to lower tensions.

Tokyo and Seoul, meanwhile, are struggling to mend relations that soured over history and devolved into a trade spat.

Abe and Moon will sit down for a bilateral side-summit to discuss sensitive issues such as compensation for forced labor during the Japanese occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945. This will be their first official meeting in 15 months, although they did confer for about 10 minutes at a regional summit in Bangkok in November.

The leaders may address Japan's decision to remove South Korea from its "whitelist" of preferred trading partners, and Tokyo's export controls on certain materials for semiconductor production. Seoul last month reversed a decision to pull out of an intelligence-sharing agreement with Tokyo, stipulating that its continued commitment to the pact was contingent upon the export restrictions being lifted.

South Korean lawmakers on Wednesday submitted legislation to create a fund that would compensate Koreans forced to work for Japanese companies during World War II, using donations from companies and individuals in both countries.

Analysts expect the Abe-Moon meeting will improve relations, but warn that it will take more for both sides to agree on labor compensation and resolve the trade row.

"The Abe-Moon summit will be an opportunity for the leaders to rebuild personal trust in each other," said Hidehiko Mukoyama, an analyst at the Japan Research Institute.

"The key issue with South Korea is whether Abe and Moon will be able to find a mutually agreeable solution to the forced labor dispute, as the liquidation of Japanese assets seized by the Korean plaintiffs approaches," Mukoyama added, referring to South Korean legal action that contributed to the friction.

Japan and South Korea must also factor in U.S. President Donald Trump's push to make Tokyo and Seoul pay more for hosting American troops -- a move that is straining ties between Washington and its two Asian allies.

Chinese public interest in the summit has focused on reaching the 20th anniversary despite constant hiccups, and promoting closer development in the future.

China, with its vast market and economic might, will tout the "visible and tangible benefits" of cooperation to its two neighbors, according to local media reports.

Analysts expect China to use the summit to show regional leadership while the U.S. presses its Indo-Pacific strategy to keep Beijing in check. Australia, Japan and India have come on board with the U.S., while South Korea has been more reticent.

"China is seeking to strengthen its influence in the Asia-Pacific region to fight the U.S. containment strategy," said Park Byung-kwang, a researcher at the Institute for National Security Strategy. "China will pay more attention to the Belt and Road Initiative in 2020 in response to the U.S. move."

 

[danielboon]

Looks like full out war in the Mediterranean now that a Turkish ship has been seized and a no fly zone development happening with Greece and Libya

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Russia Seeks to Build Local Force in Northeast Syria

The military force reportedly would replace a U.S.-backed, Kurdish-armed group that Turkey claims are terrorists

www.voanews.com

Russia Seeks to Build Local Force in Northeast Syria

By Sirwan Kajjo

December 19, 2019 06:56 PM

Russia has been working to establish a new military force in the Kurdish-majority, northeastern part of Syria with the aim to deploy those troops and hardware to areas along the Syria-Turkey border, local sources told VOA.

The military force reportedly would replace a U.S.-backed, Kurdish-armed group that Turkey claims are terrorists.

"The Russians have already opened recruitment centers in two towns in our region, including Amuda and Tal Tamr," said a Kurdish journalist, requesting anonymity.

He told VOA he knows "several young people who have signed up to join this force," adding that Russia is primarily "recruiting ethnic Kurds."

Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, confirmed to VOA that Russian efforts were under way to build an allied force in the Kurdish region.

Kurdish military officials said they were aware of Russia's plans, noting the new fighters will largely be used for patrol missions, along with Russian troops in the area.

"Those joining the new force are our people," said a senior commander with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). "We want to make sure that we have a close military relationship with Russia," he told VOA on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak about the matter to the media.

The SDF official ruled out any potential confrontation between the newly established Russian forces and the U.S.-backed SDF, since "we are essentially involved in the recruiting and vetting process of the new fighters."

The SDF is a Kurdish-led military alliance that has been an effective partner with the United States in its fight against Islamic State in Syria.

SDF officials have stated to VOA they have at least 85,000 fighters who have been trained and equipped by the U.S.-led coalition to defeat IS.

Following a decision in October by U.S. President Donald Trump to withdraw U.S. forces near the Syria-Turkey border, the Turkish military and allied Syrian militias began an offensive in northeast Syria to clear the region from the Syrian Kurdish fighters Turkey views as terrorists.

Ankara says the SDF is an extension of the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

The U.S., however, makes a distinction between the two Kurdish groups.

'Return of regime authority'

In response to the Turkish incursion into Syria's northeast, Syrian Kurds have allowed the Syrian regime and Russian troops to deploy in the area in an attempt to halt the Turkish operation. Since then, Russia has been trying to increase its presence in the region, experts say.

"Russia's goal is the return of regime authority in the east of the Euphrates," said Jonathan Spyer, a research fellow at the Middle East Forum, a U.S.-based think tank.

Syrian Kurdish forces took control of the area in 2012 after Syrian government troops withdrew to focus on fighting rebel groups elsewhere in the war-ravaged country.

With the U.S. withdrawal from some areas in northeast Syria, Syrian government forces appear to be poised to regain control of the Kurdish-held region.

Largely depleted after eight years of fighting rebels throughout the country, the Syrian military is unlikely capable of asserting its authority over this part of Syria.

Russia "understands that the regime is currently too weak to achieve this," Spyer told VOA. "Hence, Moscow appears to be establishing new bodies to try to push the gradual reconnection of Kurdish forces in northeast Syria to the Syrian state."

Long-term presence

Some experts, such as Anna Borshchevskaya, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, think Russia's recent move suggests it has plans for a long-term presence in the area.

"This is consistent with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's overall approach to the region — control by relying on local actors," she told VOA. "The relationship with the Kurds is especially important because Syria's oil right now is critical to control in Syria," Borshchevskaya added.

Russia vs. U.S.

After mounting pressure from the U.S. Congress and U.S. foreign allies, Trump decided to keep about 500 U.S. troops in the area to protect the region's oil fields, and prevent IS and Syrian regime troops from accessing them.

"As minuscule as Syria's oil reserves are in terms of its global market share, oil revenue has become critical for keeping the [Syrian President Bashar] al-Assad regime afloat," Borshchevskaya said. "U.S. and Kurdish-led forces collect oil revenue, but with the U.S. military withdrawal from Syria, the Kurds have little choice but to work more closely with Putin and Assad."

"These latest Kremlin moves in Syria show that Putin is building additional leverage in Syria, with implications for the entire region — and U.S. interests," Borshchevskaya added.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Two More Tajik Suspects In Deadly Stockholm Attack Reportedly Detained In Syria

Two more Tajik men -- described by Swedish police as "terrorist contacts" in a deadly attack in Stockholm two years ago -- are reportedly being held in custody in Syria.

www.rferl.org

Two More Tajik Suspects In Deadly Stockholm Attack Reportedly Detained In Syria
December 20, 2019 20:35 GMT

• By RFE/RL's Tajik Service

Two more Tajik men -- described by Swedish police as "terrorist contacts" in a deadly attack in Stockholm two years ago -- are reportedly being held in custody in Syria.
The men, known by the aliases Kori Usmon and Abu Ayub Kulobi, according to Swedish police, were in contact with Rahmat Akilov, who is imprisoned for killing five people when he intentionally drove a truck through a pedestrian zone in central Stockholm in 2017.
The two Tajiks contacted Akilov, an ethnic Tajik from Uzbekistan, via messaging apps like Zello and Telegram before his deadly attack that also injured 10 people.
A Stockholm district court sentenced Akilov, 41, to life in prison last year, but the identities of his alleged accomplices, with whom he had been in contact, were unknown.
Swedish police found the contacts of several people described as "terrorist-related" on the Zello and Telegram apps found on Akilov's smartphone.
On December 18, RFE/RL reported that two Tajik men believed to be involved in the attack were apparently in custody in Syria.
In a November 23 report on Islamic State (IS) fighters captured in Syria, Turkish TRT Haber TV showed a man in the custody of Syrian regime forces who appeared to be Parviz Saidrahmonov.
Saidrahmonov, who is known as Abu Davud, is wanted in Russia and Tajikistan on terrorism charges. The other man found was Tojiddin Nazarov, known as Abu Osama Noraki. Both men are 32.
Saidrahmonov is currently being held in a prison in the Syrian town of Afrin. Nazarov is being held at a different prison in Syria.
RFE/RL's Tajik Service, after an investigation with Swedish TV4, can now reveal that the two other Tajik men -- known as Usmon and Kulobi -- are also held in the same prison.
According to a Swedish police report, Usmon gave Akilov detailed instructions on how to make a bomb, and Kulobi "encouraged him" right before the attack.
The actual identities of these two men are not known to RFE/RL.
But an official at the Tajik Interior Ministry told RFE/RL on December 20 on condition of anonymity that "these two are indeed from Tajikistan: Kori Usmon is from central Tajikistan and Abu Ayub Kulobi is from the southern town of Kulyab."
He added that Tajik authorities were working "hard" to extradite to Tajikistan all those held in Syria's Afrin prison, which is currently in territory held by Turkish forces.
But officials in Stockholm want the men extradited to Sweden.
"If there are people who can clearly be linked to this terrorist act, the Swedish people expect them to be held accountable," Swedish Interior Minister Michael Damberg said. "It is quite clear that there is no statute-of-limitations period for terrorist offenses or [for those who give] assistance [to such crimes]."
The father of Ebba Akerunds, an 11-year-old girl killed in the truck rampage, has also called for the men to be extradited to Sweden.
"I expect that [the government] will do what they say, that they will bring them here to Sweden for a trial against these people," Stefan Agerberg said.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Esper wants to move troops from Afghanistan to the Indo-Pacific to confront China

“I would like to go down to a lower number because I want to either bring those troops home, so they can refit and retrain for other missions or/and be redeployed to the Indo-Pacific to face off our greatest challenge in terms of the great power competition that’s vis-a-vis China.”

www.militarytimes.com

Esper wants to move troops from Afghanistan to the Indo-Pacific to confront China

By: Shawn Snow   3 days ago

Soldiers using the M4A1 SOPMOD Block II during a raid in Afghanistan circa 2012 (Spc Justin Young/Army)



While an announcement of a drawdown of several thousand American troops from Afghanistan is expected soon from the White House, the secretary of defense wants to redeploy those forces to the Indo-Pacific region to confront China.

There are currently 13,000 U.S. troops deployed to Afghanistan. During a Monday visit to Kabul, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said President Donald Trump may soon announce a decision to reduce the American footprint in Afghanistan to as low as 8,600 troops.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters Monday that he has not yet issued any orders to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan, but he explained that a reduced footprint with or without a settled peace agreement with the Taliban was still a possibility.

“I would like to go down to a lower number because I want to either bring those troops home, so they can refit and retrain for other missions or/and be redeployed to the Indo-Pacific to face off our greatest challenge in terms of the great power competition that’s vis-a-vis China,” Esper said Monday.

Esper said he believes the U.S. can reduce the number of troops because the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan Army Gen. Austin Miller says he can conduct both the counterterrorism and advising mission in Afghanistan with fewer troops.





Airstrikes called in as Taliban attempt to breach Bagram Air Base
U.S. and Afghan forces were pulled into a nearly nine to 10 hour firefight after a suicide bombing targeted a medical facility that was under construction near the base, a source on the ground detailed to Military Times.

By: Shawn Snow

“We’ll just take this a day at a time and see how things play out in the coming weeks,” Esper said. “This is a conversation that has to be had between me and the secretary of state.”

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill expressed concern Dec. 11 during a House Armed Services Committee Hearing on Syria that the DoD’s focus on Iran and the U.S. Central Command area of operations was sapping resources and attention to rising near-peers and China in the Indo-Pacific region.

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Republican Wisconsin Rep. Michael Gallagher told Esper during the the Dec. 11 hearing that in a “resource constrained environment” the U.S. needs to make choices and “Indo-Pacom [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command] should be the priority.”

“We’ll have to assume risk,” Gallagher said.

Esper responded to Gallagher’s concern about the need to focus on China and the Pacific and explained that if he “had to pour concrete in some locations” he would rather “prioritize” Indo-Pacom.



Esper has oft said that China is the Pentagon’s number one priority as outlined in the National Defense Strategy.

But analysts and national security experts have criticized the Pentagon’s inability to pull itself out of Middle East quagmires.

While the U.S. is considering withdrawing troops in Afghanistan, it has deployed 14,000 additional troops over the last six months to the Middle East to confront Iranian malign behaviors.

Esper has hinted that the Pentagon is considering sending more troops to deter Iran in the wake of rocket strikes on American bases in Iraq and attacks on commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf that bear Tehran’s fingerprints.

The U.S. also says Iran is culpable for the September attacks that damaged two Saudi Arabian oil fields.

“The Pentagon can’t seem to shed missions and requirements to better focus on great powers — especially China,” Mackenzie Eaglen, a resident fellow for the American Enterprise Institute, previously wrote in an opinion column for War on the Rocks about near-peer challenges.



“For example, the military is building back up in the Middle East to deter Iran (not a great power by any definition), negating the benefits of a modest troop withdrawal in Syria,” Eaglen wrote.

Trump has long touted his desire to end America’s war in Afghanistan. During a surprise Thanksgiving Day visit to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, Trump touted recent success against ISIS militants in the country and announced that peace negotiations with the Taliban had been restarted.



ISIS is taking a beating in Afghanistan setting the stage for potential US troop withdrawal
ISIS is down to a few hundred fighters in Afghanistan following sustained operations by U.S. and Afghan forces and even Taliban fighters.

By: Shawn Snow

Peace talks with the Taliban resumed on Dec. 7 following a brief suspension in September. Trump ended the talks in September following a Taliban-claimed attack that killed a U.S. service member.

Following a brazen but failed attempt to storm Bagram on Dec. 11, Trump’s envoy leading peace negotiations with the Taliban Zalmay Khalilzad said peace talks were taking a brief pause.

“When I met the Talibs today, I expressed outrage about yesterday’s attack on Bagram, which recklessly killed two and wounded dozens of civilians. #Taliban must show they are willing & able to respond to Afghan desire for peace,” Khalilzad tweeted on Dec. 12.



Khalilzad said Wednesday that he just wrapped up two days of consultations in Kabul.

Met w/ @USAmbKabul Bass and @ResoluteSupport General Miller. Together we consulted Pres @ashrafghani, CE @DrabdullahCE, ex-Pres @KarzaiH, women activists, and other political leaders. We discussed efforts to achieve reduced violence and pave the way to intra-Afghan negotiations. pic.twitter.com/CHEDbMWYzi
— U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad (@US4AfghanPeace) December 18, 2019

“We’re approaching an important stage in the #AfghanPeaceProcess. Wrapped up two days of consultations in #Kabul. Productive trip,” he tweeted Wednesday.

The U.S. is amid one of its most intense bombing campaigns since the start of the 18-year long war. According to U.S. Air Forces Central Command, U.S. aircraft have released 6,727 munitions as of the end of November.

In 2018, the U.S. dropped nearly 7,400 bombs, according to AFCENT.





About
this
Author

About Shawn Snow
Shawn Snow is the senior reporter for Marine Corps Times and a Marine Corps veteran.



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[danielboon]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1208637983420755969

View: https://mobile.twitter.com/EndGameWW3/status/1208637983420755969

 

[danielboon]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1208629864531726336

View: https://mobile.twitter.com/EndGameWW3/status/1208629864531726336

 

[danielboon]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1208574064924774400

View: https://mobile.twitter.com/DEFCONWSALERTS/status/1208574064924774400

 

[jward]

Intel Air & Sea and ELINT News liked
Global: MilitaryInfo
@Global_Mil_Info
·
13h
What can the US do if NK conducts another nuke or ICBM test?

• Sanctions.
• Strategic bomber flights.
• Re-activate US/SK exercises.
• US carrier exercies.
• Cyber Warfare.
• (Aegis) SM-3 interceptions

 

[danielboon]

The drums of war are beating hard.

 

[danielboon]

Intel Air & Sea and ELINT News liked
Global: MilitaryInfo
@Global_Mil_Info
·
13h
What can the US do if NK conducts another nuke or ICBM test?

• Sanctions.
• Strategic bomber flights.
• Re-activate US/SK exercises.
• US carrier exercies.
• Cyber Warfare.
• (Aegis) SM-3 interceptions

War is not on the list

 

[jward]

War is not on the list

Recall I've instructed all immenient out breaks of war to assume a holding pattern for the foreseeable future, as we're simply out of space and sanity to handle any more at this time!! I would join you in the hair on fire exercises, but fear House would send me to the dog house for it . And FTR i still don't worry too much bout North Korea...though the recent threat to bomb guam did get my attention! WTH dog house is soundin' kinda safe and cozy, hope i do get banished

 

[danielboon]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1208866605851123712

View: https://mobile.twitter.com/EndGameWW3/status/1208866605851123712

 

[Housecarl]

Recall I've instructed all immenient out breaks of war to assume a holding pattern for the foreseeable future, as we're simply out of space and sanity to handle any more at this time!! I would join you in the hair on fire exercises, but fear House would send me to the dog house for it . And FTR i still don't worry too much bout North Korea...though the recent threat to bomb guam did get my attention! WTH dog house is soundin' kinda safe and cozy, hope i do get banished

Jward,

I wouldn't send you to a "time out" Jward. If Little Kim desides to pop one because he isn't getting enough attention, it will be the biggest BLACK SWAN in decades. It would give POTUS so much cover to ACT on several fronts as to be chilling, as in "MERDE!", just to think about.

HC

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

A NATO Urban Delaying Strategy for the Baltic States | Small Wars Journal

Any successful Russian thrust into one or more of the Baltic States depends on the calculus of speed. They need to make the action a fait accompli before NATO reinforcement can arrive. A 2016 Rand war game indicated that current NATO capabilities cannot properly offset the Russian 6-1 armor...

smallwarsjournal.com

A NATO Urban Delaying Strategy for the Baltic States
by Gary Anderson | Thu, 12/19/2019 - 2:57am | 1 comment

Eastern Europe was once the bulwark of the old Soviet Union but is has become NATO’s first line of defense against a resurgent Russia. The NATO alliance now faces the same problem that French-British coalition faced at the dawn of World War II. Great Britain and France had assured Poland that they would come to its aid in the event that it was attacked, but when the Germans crossed the Polish border in 1939, there was no way that the allies could move quickly enough to assist their eastern partner. A 2016 Rand Corporation war game showed that -while the situation is better today- it will be hard to quickly reinforce Eastern Europe in time to prevent the Russians from overrunning the Baltic States.
The game would tend to vindicate critics who believe that NATO’s eastern expansion was ill-advised, but that is now water under the bridge. US military planners have been trying to come up with non-traditional ways to deter the Russians from adventurism in the Poland and the Baltics for several years. One of their schemes has been to turn the Russian use of hybrid warfare against them in the form of non-uniformed and uniformed partisans in the event of a Russian invasion.
In an article for the December 10th issue of The National Interest by David Axe -which quotes an Army Times article by Kyle Rempfer that points out that: “This summer, [troops from] Latvia and Poland traveled to West Virginia for the program,” Rempfer wrote. “Both nations have newly invigorated homeland defense forces capable of pushing back against an invading force and opposing a potential occupation.”
Rempfer continues: “The units are trained to provide response during the early stages of a hybrid conflict. Their tasks could include slowing the advancing units of an aggressor nation by destroying key transportation infrastructure such as bridges, attacking enemy forces at chokepoints and potentially serving as forward observers for NATO aircraft responding with air strikes”.
While this approach might give NATO some tactical force multipliers, as a meaningful strategic deterrent it is probably a minor stumbling block for the Russians. This is true for two reasons. First the Baltics are relatively flat and do not have the mountains and dense forests that are conducive to guerilla warfare. Second, the brutal Russian approach to counterinsurgency would see any tactical gains outweighed by the cost of reprisals to the civilian population. Simply stated, the threat of irregular warfare in the open against tank-heavy Russian forces would provide a realistic deterrent. This does not mean that such an idea is totally without merit. Placing irregular warfare in an urban context holds real promise.
The Merits of an Urban “Festung” Approach. Any successful Russian thrust into one or more of the Baltic States depends on the calculus of speed. They need to make the action a fait accompli before NATO reinforcement can arrive. The previously mentioned 2016 Rand war game indicated that current NATO capabilities cannot properly offset the Russian 6-1 armor advantage in the Baltics in a timely manner. However, if key Baltic urban areas can be turned into potential urban fortresses, the equation changes radically.
Hitler’s concept of turning German cities into fortresses (festungs) at the end of World War II has been justifiably derided, but the Russian successes at Leningrad and Stalingrad were keys to Soviet victory on the Eastern Front in that conflict. The Germans also used urban fortress tactics as an operational tool effectively earlier in the war. The difference between the two was that the Soviets always had a viable plan for relieving the cities; by 1945, the Germans did not have that capability. The festungs were doomed to defeat in detail.
NATO has a plan for relieving the Baltics, but in its present state it is likely that it will be an attempt at liberation rather than relief at the current state of NATO readiness. However, the credible threat of a Russian coup de main being held up by a series of urban strong points would give Moscow serious second thought about the viability of a lightning strike into the Baltics.
Strategic Deterrence. It is difficult to measure the efficacy of strategic deterrence except after the fact due to the difficulties of proving the negative case. But we do have some good evidence of what basic elements constitute credible deterrence. First, the nation or alliance can demonstrate the will to fight if needed. During the Cold War in both Europe and Korea, a series of scheduled exercises demonstrated that will.
Second, a show of credible capability to back up the will to fight is also necessary. Capability exercises and technical demonstrations can do this although they always run the risk of giving the potential enemy technical information on friendly technological developments. One has to wonder whether clear demonstrations of the power of French machine guns and rapid firing artillery prior to World War I might have shown the Germans that the dependence on rapid strategic movement called for in the Von Schlieffen plan to be misplaced.
The reality of deterrence in the Baltics would be in creating a mindset among Russian strategic and military planners that an adventure in that region would not be worth the risk. The ease with which the Russians retook Crimea may well have created hubris in Moscow. Disabusing the Russians of that mindset is critical in avoiding war by miscalculation.
Operational Readiness. Using unconventional delaying means in an urban context will require creating a coherent doctrine for urban defense in the Baltic region and training and equipping local forces to implement that doctrine. This requires the creation of a unified vision for a Baltic urban delaying strategy by the nations in question as well as creating a consensus that that this approach is feasible at the operational level of war. Each urban area is unique in culture and outlook, but a successful urban delaying effort must have three key components:
Logistic Feasibility. A successful delaying urban action will mean that each urban area must be self-sustaining in a situation where it may be surrounded and isolated for up to a month while NATO forces deploy and organize a counterattack. This means that supplies of water, food, ammunition, and medical supplies must be stocked down to the neighborhood level.
Coordinated Fire Support. Urban areas provide natural choke points that can be exploited by fire and local maneuver with NATO proving precision fires and a variety of assets providing the eyes on target. But to be effective, local observers must be trained in how to call-in fire correctly and recognize worthwhile targets among the clutter of urban combat. The plethora of security cameras that now dominate the urban landscape can integrate with and augment the human sensor-to-shooter grid, but it will require big data to separate the targeting wheat from the proverbial chaff.
Centralized Commander’s Intent- Decentralized Execution. The Russians almost certainly can disrupt any attempt by a city to exercise centralized command and control in its defense, so execution should be decentralized to the maximum extent possible applying previously determined commander’s intent.
One thing that the Marine Corps found early-on in its 1990s Urban Warrior experiments was that the Red Teams defending urban areas were inherently superior to the Blue attackers who were trying to execute predetermined experimental tactics. Having had time to familiarize themselves with the terrain and unconstrained by fixed doctrine, these Red Teams almost always had an innate advantage over Blue as they could improvise and use their imagination. NATO should exploit this advantage and allow neighborhood defense units the latitude to use maneuver warfare to adapt their tactics to the unique terrain in their individual and unique battle space.
A Neighborhood Watch on Steroids. A key tactic in recent Russian operations in Crimea and the Ukraine has been the use of Spetsnaz and irregular force to seize and/or disrupt key locations and communications in advance of regular forces. Any successful urban delaying action must defend effectively against such efforts in their early stages. Local residents must be trained to immediately report suspicious activity, and local police and paramilitary forces prepared to deal with attempts at sabotage quickly. The defensive urban campaign would be a disconnected series of neighborhood battles that may not be fully coordinated until NATO reinforcements arrive. The Russians are adept at disrupting urban communications grids. The key to success will be creating an atmosphere of decentralized chaos that impact the Russian attackers more seriously than the urban defenders.
Tactics, Techniques, and Technology. Weaponizing an urban delaying strategy in a way that will make it a credible deterrent will not be overly expensive, but it will require a new approach to tactics and training in the Baltic region of NATO. Rand analysts suggest that NATO provide Baltic States with unconventional forces with training and technology to include sniper and sabotage techniques, night vision equipment, and drones -presumably both armed and unarmed). Recent Army futures war games have examined this urban approach and found it promising.
Such an approach would also benefit from other elements designed to give an asymmetrical advantage to urban irregular troops augmenting regular forces:
Teleoperated Tanks. Any vehicle can be rigged for teleoperation. Older, obsolete tanks can be easily reinforced structurally and reconfigured as assault guns and placed around key infrastructure and choke points. They do not need to go far and can be concealed from aerial targeting in parking garages and other structures providing overhead cover. Due to Russian expertise with electronic warfare jamming, they should be fitted with both frequency hopping radio and fiber-optic controls. They would be useful against Russian armor as well as “little green men” if configured with both anti-tank and anti-personnel weapons.
Integrated Targeting. NATO has a tremendous capability for precision targeting that would cause minimal urban collateral damage. To be most effective, it requires precision target acquisition. As mentioned earlier, a combination of civilian eyes on target and the network of security cameras now ubiquitous in almost all of the developed world’s major cities can give excellent coverage. However. Such targeting sensors must be combined with big data. This will require integration with NATO’s fire support system. This will require much coordination and training, but it is feasible.
Low Impact Exercises. A coordinated defense of an urban area will require repetitive exercises to get everyone on the same sheet of music. A Russian attack will most likely depend on stealth and surprise in its initial stages and the speed with which the population and its defenders can react will be critical in defending against an urban coup de main. Such exercises need not be disruptive. Success will depend on getting key players into position to provide overwatch, protect critical infrastructure, and tie in with NATO. They have the advantage that they can be conducted quietly during normal working days and holidays without major disruptions to urban life. These should be augmented by tabletop neighborhood level war games which would allow irregular local defense forces to design improvisational tactics to anticipate various Russian approaches.
The Importance of Will. To be a credible deterrent, an urban delaying strategy must demonstrate the will of the populace to accept the damage and casualties that war will bring if deterrence fails. To be sure, not all of the populations of Baltic urban areas will buy in. All three Baltic states have residual Russian ethnic populations which might welcome a return of their brethren. The Soviet occupation ended three decades ago and many citizens -particularly millennials- never knew the thinly disguised weight of oppressive Russian domination.
However -as in all civil societies- twenty percent of the people do most of the heavy lifting. It is the determination of that element that will be needed to deter Russian aggression.

Categories: NATO - Baltics - Russia - urban operations - urban environment

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About the Author(s)


Gary Anderson
Gary Anderson is a retired Marine Corps Colonel who has been a civilian advisor in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is an adjunct professor at the George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs.
Comments

Morgan


Thu, 12/19/2019 - 11:26am


Permalink


Moving all of 10th SFG back…
Moving all of 10th SFG back into Europe, possibly based in Poland if they agree, would serve as the basis for a credible deterrence force to support what this author is advocating.

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[danielboon]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1209237326100094976

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[Housecarl]

Hummm.....

Posted for fair use.....

The less-hyped, but more realistic threats to US national security

These vulnerabilities pose a far greater threat to our national security than our Southern Border.

thehill.com

The less-hyped, but more realistic threats to US national security
By Robert Turkavage, opinion contributor — 12/21/19 01:00 PM EST 418
The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

Statements by President Donald Trump and some members of Congress have caused many Americans to view unsecured borders as the preeminent threat to our nation’s security. While secure borders are important to our economic and physical security, recent information has disclosed alarming deficiencies in U.S. military capabilities. Other information has revealed inadequate cybersecurity requirements in our weapons systems and in other infrastructure systems. These vulnerabilities pose a far greater threat to our national security than our Southern Border.

Hypersonic missile threat
The U.S. missile defense system operates on the assumption that the incoming threat is a ballistic missile traveling on a predictable trajectory. To defeat these systems, Russia has developed several types of weapons classified as “hypersonic” because they travel at speeds greater than five times the speed of sound (Mach 5). Russia claims one such weapon, the Avangard, consists of a glide vehicle attached to a ballistic missile and has a range of 3,700 miles. Once launched, the glide vehicle — which can carry a conventional or nuclear payload — separates from the missile and is able to make rapid lateral and vertical movements as it travels to its target at speeds purportedly reaching Mach 20. Russia claims to possess another missile with similar maneuverability, the Kinzhal. Russia contends that this missile, which is fired from a fighter jet, has a range of 1,200 miles, and a speed up to Mach 10.

If Russian claims are true, the Kinzhal and Avangard would be almost impossible to intercept due to their speed and their ability to rapidly change direction. The Avangard was reportedly placed into service in 2019, and the Kinzhal is slated to be placed into service in 2020. The U.S. currently does not possess hypersonic weapons but has awarded contracts to Lockheed Martin to develop a hypersonic capability. U.S. General John Hyten, Commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, stated of the hypersonic threat: “We don’t have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us.”

Weapons systems cybersecurity threat
U.S. weapons systems heavily depend on software, IT, and networking to achieve their intended performance. Weapons systems are connected to an extensive set of networks within the Department of Defense (DOD). Some weapons systems are connected to external networks of subcontractors while other systems are connected to non-networked systems that connect to the internet. A successful compromise of any of these systems may allow a cyberattacker to gain access to other systems through the network interconnections.

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report highlighted that our weapons system vulnerability stems from the fact that DOD historically focused on the cybersecurity of its networks but not the weapons systems themselves. DOD’s cyberfocus was on the use and operation of weapon system hardware rather than on the IT systems that support the use and operation of the weapons and critical IT capabilities embedded with those systems. Alarmingly, GAO reported that until recently, cyber survivability was not factored into “Requirements,” the most important system capabilities that must be met when developing weapons systems. As a result, there was limited emphasis on cybersecurity during weapons system design. Further, GAO reported until around 2014, weapons system testing was limited due to absence of cybersecurity requirements. GAO concluded that nearly all major weapons systems acquisition programs that were operationally tested between 2012 and 2017 had mission critical cyber vulnerabilities that adversaries could compromise.

Recent prosecutions have confirmed exploitations of these vulnerabilities by adversaries. In 2018, two individuals associated with APT 10, a cybergroup tied to China Ministry of State Security, were federally charged for engaging in a campaign which, in part, compromised more than 40 computers in order to steal data from U.S. Navy Department systems. In 2018, a member of the North Korean government- sponsored hacking team known as the Lazarus Group was federally charged in connection with cyberattacks targeting Lockheed Martin and other defense contractors.

Electrical grid cybersecurity threats
The U.S. electrical grid is comprised of three separate grids: the eastern interconnection, the western interconnection, and the “Texas” interconnection. Each interconnection meets the electrical needs of its territory and has limited ability to share electricity with other Interconnections. The generation, transmission and distribution of electricity within a grid is supported by “Internal Control Systems” (ICS), network-based systems that monitor and control grid processes such as opening and closing grid circuit breakers. Grids have become more vulnerable to cyberattacks, in part, due to less reliance on proprietary devices in ICS systems, in favor of more widely available devices that use traditional IT network protocols.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) oversee federal efforts in grid operations including cybersecurity. According to a GAO report, DOE has conducted two assessments of a cyberattack on a single interconnection. Those assessments produced varying reports of the potential scale of power outages that could result from cyberattacks. The third assessment by FERC focused on a cyberattack on all three interconnections and concluded an attack could result in a widespread blackout spanning the contiguous U.S.

In 2018, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued an alert warning of Russian cyber intrusions targeting the energy sector. The alert linked the cybergroup “Dragonfly” to this activity, which included targeting ICS infrastructure. In another case, in 2018, nine Iranian citizens were federally charged in connection with cyberintrusions conducted at the behest of the government of Iran. FERC employee computers were among those hacked during this cyber campaign.

Our president, Congress, and intelligence agencies need to heed these “red flag” threats to our national security. Events of 9/11 serve as a reminder as to what may happen if they do not.

Robert Turkavage is a retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent; a former Vice-President (Global Security) with JPMorgan Chase and Co., and an unsuccessful Republican Party candidate for U.S. Congress (N.J.) in 2018.

 

[jward]

Hummm.....

Posted for fair use.....

The less-hyped, but more realistic threats to US national security

These vulnerabilities pose a far greater threat to our national security than our Southern Border.

thehill.com

The less-hyped, but more realistic threats to US national security
By Robert Turkavage, opinion contributor — 12/21/19 01:00 PM EST 418
The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

Statements by President Donald Trump and some members of Congress have caused many Americans to view unsecured borders as the preeminent threat to our nation’s security. While secure borders are important to our economic and physical security, recent information has disclosed alarming deficiencies in U.S. military capabilities. Other information has revealed inadequate cybersecurity requirements in our weapons systems and in other infrastructure systems. These vulnerabilities pose a far greater threat to our national security than our Southern Border.
Hypersonic missile threat
The U.S. missile defense system operates on the assumption that the incoming threat is a ballistic missile traveling on a predictable trajectory. To defeat these systems, Russia has developed several types of weapons classified as “hypersonic” because they travel at speeds greater than five times the speed of sound (Mach 5). Russia claims one such weapon, the Avangard, consists of a glide vehicle attached to a ballistic missile and has a range of 3,700 miles. Once launched, the glide vehicle — which can carry a conventional or nuclear payload — separates from the missile and is able to make rapid lateral and vertical movements as it travels to its target at speeds purportedly reaching Mach 20. Russia claims to possess another missile with similar maneuverability, the Kinzhal. Russia contends that this missile, which is fired from a fighter jet, has a range of 1,200 miles, and a speed up to Mach 10.
ADVERTISEMENT
If Russian claims are true, the Kinzhal and Avangard would be almost impossible to intercept due to their speed and their ability to rapidly change direction. The Avangard was reportedly placed into service in 2019, and the Kinzhal is slated to be placed into service in 2020. The U.S. currently does not possess hypersonic weapons but has awarded contracts to Lockheed Martin to develop a hypersonic capability. U.S. General John Hyten, Commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, stated of the hypersonic threat: “We don’t have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us.”
Weapons systems cybersecurity threat
U.S. weapons systems heavily depend on software, IT, and networking to achieve their intended performance. Weapons systems are connected to an extensive set of networks within the Department of Defense (DOD). Some weapons systems are connected to external networks of subcontractors while other systems are connected to non-networked systems that connect to the internet. A successful compromise of any of these systems may allow a cyberattacker to gain access to other systems through the network interconnections.
A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report highlighted that our weapons system vulnerability stems from the fact that DOD historically focused on the cybersecurity of its networks but not the weapons systems themselves. DOD’s cyberfocus was on the use and operation of weapon system hardware rather than on the IT systems that support the use and operation of the weapons and critical IT capabilities embedded with those systems. Alarmingly, GAO reported that until recently, cyber survivability was not factored into “Requirements,” the most important system capabilities that must be met when developing weapons systems. As a result, there was limited emphasis on cybersecurity during weapons system design. Further, GAO reported until around 2014, weapons system testing was limited due to absence of cybersecurity requirements. GAO concluded that nearly all major weapons systems acquisition programs that were operationally tested between 2012 and 2017 had mission critical cyber vulnerabilities that adversaries could compromise.
Recent prosecutions have confirmed exploitations of these vulnerabilities by adversaries. In 2018, two individuals associated with APT 10, a cybergroup tied to China Ministry of State Security, were federally charged for engaging in a campaign which, in part, compromised more than 40 computers in order to steal data from U.S. Navy Department systems. In 2018, a member of the North Korean government- sponsored hacking team known as the Lazarus Group was federally charged in connection with cyberattacks targeting Lockheed Martin and other defense contractors.
ADVERTISEMENT
Electrical grid cybersecurity threats
The U.S. electrical grid is comprised of three separate grids: the eastern interconnection, the western interconnection, and the “Texas” interconnection. Each interconnection meets the electrical needs of its territory and has limited ability to share electricity with other Interconnections. The generation, transmission and distribution of electricity within a grid is supported by “Internal Control Systems” (ICS), network-based systems that monitor and control grid processes such as opening and closing grid circuit breakers. Grids have become more vulnerable to cyberattacks, in part, due to less reliance on proprietary devices in ICS systems, in favor of more widely available devices that use traditional IT network protocols.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) oversee federal efforts in grid operations including cybersecurity. According to a GAO report, DOE has conducted two assessments of a cyberattack on a single interconnection. Those assessments produced varying reports of the potential scale of power outages that could result from cyberattacks. The third assessment by FERC focused on a cyberattack on all three interconnections and concluded an attack could result in a widespread blackout spanning the contiguous U.S.
In 2018, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued an alert warning of Russian cyber intrusions targeting the energy sector. The alert linked the cybergroup “Dragonfly” to this activity, which included targeting ICS infrastructure. In another case, in 2018, nine Iranian citizens were federally charged in connection with cyberintrusions conducted at the behest of the government of Iran. FERC employee computers were among those hacked during this cyber campaign.
Our president, Congress, and intelligence agencies need to heed these “red flag” threats to our national security. Events of 9/11 serve as a reminder as to what may happen if they do not.
Robert Turkavage is a retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent; a former Vice-President (Global Security) with JPMorgan Chase and Co., and an unsuccessful Republican Party candidate for U.S. Congress (N.J.) in 2018.

Sound's like someone's been reading this board & makin' lists & checkin' em 2ce...

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Putin says Russia is leading world in hypersonic weapons

MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia has got a strong edge in designing new weapons and that it has become the only country in the world to deploy hypersonic weapons.

apnews.com

Putin says Russia is leading world in hypersonic weapons
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
2 hours ago

MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia has got a strong edge in designing new weapons and that it has become the only country in the world to deploy hypersonic weapons.
Speaking at a meeting with top military brass, Putin said that for the first time in history Russia is now leading the world in developing an entire new class of weapons unlike in the past when it was catching up with the United States.
The Russian leader noted that during Cold War times, the Soviet Union was behind the United States in designing the atomic bomb and building strategic bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles.




“Now we have a situation that is unique in modern history when they are trying to catch up to us,” he said. “Not a single country has hypersonic weapons, let alone hypersonic weapons of intercontinental range.”
The Pentagon and the U.S. military services have been working on the development of hypersonic weapons in recent years, and Defense Secretary Mark Esper said in August that he believes “it’s probably a matter of a couple of years” before the U.S. has one. He has called it a priority as the military works to develop new long-range fire capabilities.
The U.S. also has repeatedly warned Congress about hypersonic missiles being developed by Russia and China that will be harder to track and defeat. U.S. officials have talked about putting a layer of sensors in space to more quickly detect enemy missiles, particularly the more advanced hypersonic threats. The administration also plans to study the idea of basing interceptors in space, so the U.S. can strike incoming enemy missiles during the first minutes of flight when the booster engines are still burning.
Putin said that the first unit equipped with the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle is set to go on duty this month, while the air-launched Kinzhal hypersonic missiles already have entered service.
The Russian leader first mentioned the Avangard and the Kinzhal among other prospective weapons systems in his state-of-the-nation address in March 2018.
Putin said then that the Avangard has an intercontinental range and can fly in the atmosphere at a speed 20 times the speed of sound. He noted that the weapon’s ability to change both its course and its altitude en route to a target makes it immune to interception by the the enemy.
“It’s a weapon of the future, capable of penetrating both existing and prospective missile defense systems,” Putin said Tuesday.




The Kinzhal, which is carried by MiG-31 fighter jets, entered service with the Russian air force last year. Putin has said that the missile flies 10 times faster than the speed of sound, has a range of more than 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) and can carry a nuclear or a conventional warhead. The military said it’s capable of hitting both land targets and navy ships.
The United States and other countries also have worked on designing hypersonic weapons, but they haven’t entered service yet.
The Kremlin has made military modernization its top priority amid tensions with the West that followed the 2014 Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea.
Putin on Tuesday described a buildup of NATO’s forces near Russia’s western borders and the U.S. withdrawal earlier this year from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty among top security threats.
He argued that Russia must have the best weapons in the world.
“It’s not a chess game where it’s OK to play to a draw,” he said. “Our technology must be better. We can achieve that in key areas and we will.”
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported Tuesday that the military this year has received 143 warplanes and helicopters, 624 armored vehicles, a submarine and eight surface warships. He said that the modernization of Russia’s arsenals will continue at the same rapid pace next year, with 22 intercontinental ballistic missiles, 106 new aircraft, 565 armored vehicles, three submarines and 14 surface ships to enter duty.
Putin noted that the work to develop other prospective weapons, including the Sarmat heavy intercontinental ballistic missile, the Poseidon nuclear-powered underwater drone and the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile was going according to plan.
The Burevestnik has stoked particular controversy. The U.S. and the Soviet Union worked on nuclear-powered rocket engines during the Cold War, but they eventually spiked those projects considering them to be too hazardous.
The Burevestnik reportedly suffered an explosion in August during tests at a Russian navy range on the White Sea, killing five nuclear engineers and two servicemen and resulting in a brief spike in radioactivity that fueled radiation fears in a nearby city. Russian officials never named the weapon involved in the incident, but the U.S. said it was the Burevestnik.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Al-Shabab extremist attack on Somali base kills 3 soldiers

Officials in Somalia say al-Shabab extremists killed three soldiers during an attack on a military base in the southwest on Monday.

apnews.com

Al-Shabab extremist attack on Somali base kills 3 soldiers
today


MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Officials in Somalia say al-Shabab extremists killed three soldiers during an attack on a military base in the southwest on Monday.
The assault on the Gofgadud base in the Bay region by the al-Qaida-affiliated extremist group marks the latest setback for Somalia’s army, which is expected to take over responsibility for the country’s security from an African Union force next year.
Col. Ahmed Yusuf, a Somali military officer, told The Associated Press that Somali troops made a brief tactical withdrawal amid heavy artillery shelling before regaining control of the base. He said six al-Shabab fighters were killed in the army’s counter-attack that forced the extremists to withdraw.

Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack, asserting that it killed or wounded more than 30 soldiers.

Years of conflict and al-Shabab attacks, along with famine, shattered Somalia, which is home to more than 12 million people.

The Horn of Africa nation has been trying to rebuild since establishing its first functioning transitional government in 2012. Al-Shabab was pushed out of the capital, Mogadishu, and other major cities several years ago but still carries out suicide attacks across Somalia.
With a federal government established, pressure is growing on Somalia’s military to assume full responsibility for the country’s security.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Ethiopian Muslims protest after several mosques burned

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Several thousand Muslims across Ethiopia in recent days have protested the burning of four mosques in the Amhara region.

apnews.com

Ethiopian Muslims protest after several mosques burned
today


ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Several thousand Muslims across Ethiopia in recent days have protested the burning of four mosques in the Amhara region. The Dec. 20 attacks in Motta town also targeted Muslim-owned businesses. Muslims have called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has called the attacks “attempts by extremists to break down our rich history of religious tolerance and coexistence.” Recent ethnic-based unrest in some parts of the country has at times taken religious form.
Prominent Muslim scholar Kamil Shemsu on Tuesday told The Associated Press there are “political actors who want to pit one religious group against another” and blamed the negative role of activists and videos circulated online.

Amhara regional officials said they have arrested 15 suspects in connection with the attacks. Police commander Jemal Mekonnen told state media the attacks appeared to be triggered by news of a fire that broke out in an Orthodox church a few days earlier.
Regional officials were criticized for their slow response and their inability to stop similar attacks.
Many communities across Ethiopia have seen demonstrations including the capital, Addis Ababa.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

France says it carries out first armed drone strike in Mali

France's defense ministry says it has carried out its first armed drone strike. The strike killed seven Islamic extremists in central Mali over the weekend.

apnews.com

France says it carries out first armed drone strike in Mali

By ANGELA CHARLTON and KRISTA LARSON
yesterday

PARIS (AP) — France’s defense ministry announced Monday it had carried out its first armed drone strike, killing seven Islamic extremists in central Mali over the weekend.
France joins a tiny group of countries that use armed drones, including the United States.
The drone deployment came nearly one month after two French helicopters collided in Mali, killing 13 soldiers in the deadliest military loss for France in nearly four decades.

A defense ministry statement said the drone strike took place Saturday while French President Emmanuel Macron was visiting neighboring Ivory Coast, where France has a military base. Macron already had announced that French forces had killed 33 extremists that day.

The drone strike targeted jihadis in the Ouagadou forest, where a group known as the Macina Liberation Front is active. French commandos “were attacked by a group of terrorists who infiltrated on motorcycles,” the ministry said.

“Working in a difficult environment, in a densely wooded region, this action was made possible by the action of ground troops supported by the air component,” the ministry said.

The French military successfully tested its weaponized Reaper drone for the first time last week, and Defense Minister Florence Parly called the drones “protectors for our troops and effective against the enemy.”

She said they allow French troops more discretion and flexibility, and insisted that France will respect rules of armed conflict in using the drones. She had announced in 2017 that France would arm its surveillance drones after the country suffered a string of extremist attacks.
The use of armed drones has been somewhat sensitive in France, notably because of civilians killed by U.S. drones in Afghanistan and Somalia.

France, Mali’s former colonial ruler, led a 2013 military operation to oust Islamic extremists from power in northern Mali, where they had implemented a harsh version of Sharia law. Since then, however, Mali’s military has failed to stem the violence despite support from the French and a United Nations peacekeeping mission.

This year has been particularly deadly for Malian forces, prompting the president to reassign some soldiers in the most remote and vulnerable desert outposts.

The French military has 4,500 personnel in West and Central Africa. Macron is set to discuss the future of France’s military mission in Africa’s Sahel region at a meeting in France next month with presidents from the countries taking part in the regional G5 Sahel counterterror force.
___
Krista Larson reported from Dakar, Senegal.

 

[jward]

Iran to hold joint, four-day navy drill with Russia and China​

By NASSER KARIMIToday, 3:34 pm

Illustrative: An Iranian warship Alborz, foreground, prepares to leave Iran's waters, April 7, 2015. (Fars News Agency, Mahdi Marizad/AP) AP — Iran’s armed forces will hold a joint, four-day naval exercise with Russia and China in the northern part of the Indian Ocean, a spokesman said Wednesday. The drill, which is to start on Saturday, will be the first such trilateral exercise as Tehran seeks to boost military cooperation with Beijing and Moscow amid unprecedented economic sanctions from Washington. Visits to Iran by Russian and Chinese naval representatives have also stepped up in recent years. Iranian military spokesman Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi said the joint maneuvers, which are aimed at promoting regional security, will extend as far as the Sea of Oman. The drill is seen as a response to recent US maneuvers with its regional ally Saudi Arabia, in which China also participated In the wake of recent escalating tensions in the Persian Gulf, including attacks on oil vessels and a missile-and-drone assault on the Saudi oil industry, the US has sent a number of American troops to the region and additional missile defense systems to Saudi Arabia. In this photo taken on a trip organized by the Saudi information ministry, a man stands in front of the Khurais oil field in Khurais, Saudi Arabia, September 20, 2019, after it was hit in a September 14 missile and drone attack blamed on Iran. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil) Washington alleges that Iran carried out the September attack on the world’s largest oil processor in the kingdom and an oil field, which caused oil prices to spike by the biggest percentage since the 1991 Gulf War. While Yemen’s Iranian-allied Houthi rebels claimed the assault, Saudi Arabia said it was “unquestionably sponsored by Iran.” Iran has denied this and warned that any retaliatory attack targeting it would result in an “all-out war.” Tehran, meanwhile, has also begun enriching uranium beyond the terms of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, which the US unilaterally withdrew from over a year ago. In 2017, Iran conducted a joint naval exercise with China near the strategic Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, a passageway for nearly a third of all oil traded by sea. Iran to hold joint, four-day navy drill with Russia and China Maneuvers in the Indian Ocean seen as response to recent US exercise with Saudi Arabia in which Chinese navy also participated www.timesofisrael.com Posted for fair use

 

[danielboon]

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View: https://mobile.twitter.com/5472_nde/status/1209848170638958592
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[danielboon]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1209938321125842944

View: https://mobile.twitter.com/EndGameWW3/status/1209938321125842944

 

[jward]

The Christmas Truce of 1914 – Why There Is Still No Peace On Earth, by David Stockman This post was originally published on this site https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/805203347f71b4a9606694b65ac317ee?s=96&d=identicon&r=G The dissolution of the USSR in 1991 presented the US with a golden opportunity to dramatically reduce military spending and to promote peace. George H.W. Bush blew that opportunity. From David Stockman at davidstockmanscontracorner.com via lewrockwell.com: After the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 and the death of the Soviet Union was confirmed two years later when Boris Yeltsin courageously stood down the Red Army tanks in front of Moscow’s White House, a dark era in human history came to an end. The world had descended into a 77-Year War, incepting with the mobilization of the armies of old Europe in August 1914. If you want to count bodies, 150 million were killed by all the depredations that germinated in the Great War, its foolish aftermath at Versailles, and the march of history into World War II and the Cold War that followed inexorably thereupon. Upwards of 8% of the human race was wiped out during that span. The toll encompassed the madness of trench warfare during 1914-1918; the murderous regimes of Soviet and Nazi totalitarianism that rose from the ashes of the Great War and Versailles; and then the carnage of WWII and all the lesser (unnecessary) wars and invasions of the Cold War including Korea and Vietnam. At the end of the Cold War, therefore, the last embers of the fiery madness that had incepted with the guns of August 1914 had finally burned out. Peace was at hand. Yet 28 years later there is still no peace because Imperial Washington confounds it. In fact, the War Party entrenched in the nation’s capital is dedicated to economic interests and ideological perversions that guarantee perpetual war. These forces ensure endless waste on armaments; they cause the inestimable death and human suffering that stems from 21st-century high-tech warfare; and they inherently generate terrorist blowback from those upon whom the War Party inflicts its violent hegemony. Worse still, Washington’s great war machine and teeming national security industry is its own agent of self-perpetuation. When it is not invading, occupying and regime changing, its vast apparatus of internal policy bureaus and outside contractors, lobbies, think tanks and NGOs is busy generating reasons for new imperial ventures. So there was a virulent threat to peace still lurking on the Potomac after the 77-Year War ended. The great general and President, Dwight Eisenhower, had called it the “military-industrial complex” in his farewell address. But that memorable phrase had been abbreviated by his speechwriters, who deleted the word “congressional” in a gesture of comity to the legislative branch. So restore Ike’s deleted reference to the pork barrels and Sunday-afternoon warriors of Capitol Hill and toss in the legions of Beltway busybodies who constituted the civilian branches of the Cold War armada (CIA, State, AID, NED and the rest) and the circle would have been complete. It constituted the most awesome machine of warfare and imperial hegemony since the Roman legions bestrode most of the civilized world. In a word, the real threat to peace circa 1991 was that the American Imperium would not go away quietly into the good night. In fact, during the past 28 years Imperial Washington has lost all memory that peace was ever possible at the end of the Cold War. Today it is as feckless, misguided and bloodthirsty as were Berlin, Paris, St. Petersburg, Vienna and London in August 1914. A few months after that horrendous slaughter had been unleashed 105 years ago, however, soldiers along the western front broke into spontaneous truces of Christmas celebration, song and even exchange of gifts. For a brief moment they wondered why they were juxtaposed in lethal combat along the jaws of hell. As Will Griggs once described it, A sudden cold snap had left the battlefield frozen, which was actually a relief for troops wallowing in sodden mire. Along the Front, troops extracted themselves from their trenches and dugouts, approaching each other warily, and then eagerly, across No Man’s Land. Greetings and handshakes were exchanged, as were gifts scavenged from care packages sent from home. German souvenirs that ordinarily would have been obtained only through bloodshed – such as spiked pickelhaube helmets, or Gott mit uns belt buckles – were bartered for similar British trinkets. Carols were sung in German, English, and French. A few photographs were taken of British and German officers standing alongside each other, unarmed, in No Man’s Land. Near the Ypres salient, Germans and Scotsmen chased after wild hares that, once caught, served as an unexpected Christmas feast. Perhaps the sudden exertion of chasing wild hares prompted some of the soldiers to think of having a football match. Then again, little prompting would have been necessary to inspire young, competitive men – many of whom were English youth recruited off soccer fields – to stage a match. In any case, numerous accounts in letters and journals attest to the fact that on Christmas 1914, German and English soldiers played soccer on the frozen turf of No Man’s Land. British Field Artillery Lieutenant John Wedderburn-Maxwell described the event as “probably the most extraordinary event of the whole war – a soldier’s truce without any higher sanction by officers and generals….” The truth is, there was no good reason for the Great War. The world had stumbled into war based on false narratives and the institutional imperatives of military mobilization plans, alliances and treaties arrayed into a doomsday machine and petty short-term diplomatic maneuvers and political calculus. Yet it took more than three-quarters of a century for all the consequential impacts and evils to be purged from the life of the planet. The peace that was lost last time has not been regained this time, however, and for the same reasons. Historians can readily name the culprits from 105 years ago. These include the German general staff’s plan for a lightning mobilization and strike on the western front called the Schlieffen Plan; the incompetence and intrigue in the court at St. Petersburg; French President Poincare’s anti-German irredentism owing to the 1871 loss of his home province, Alsace-Lorraine; and the bloodthirsty cabal around Winston Churchill who forced England into an unnecessary war, among countless others. Since these casus belli of 1914 were criminally trivial in light of all that metastasized thereafter, it might do well to name the institutions and false narratives that block the return of peace today. The fact is, these impediments are even more contemptible than the forces that crushed the Christmas truces one century ago. IMPERIAL WASHINGTON – THE NEW GLOBAL MENACE There is no peace on earth today for reasons mainly rooted in Imperial Washington – not Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Damascus, Mosul or the rubble of Raqqa. Imperial Washington has become a global menace owing to what didn’t happen in 1991. At that crucial inflection point, Bush the Elder should have declared “mission accomplished” and parachuted into the great Ramstein air base in Germany to begin the demobilization of the America’s war machine. So doing, he could have slashed the Pentagon budget from $600 billion to $250 billion (2015 $); demobilized the military-industrial complex by putting a moratorium on all new weapons development, procurement and export sales; dissolved NATO and dismantled the far-flung network of U.S. military bases; reduced the United States’ standing armed forces from 1.5 million to a few hundred thousand; and organized and led a world-disarmament and peace campaign, as did his Republican predecessors during the 1920s. Unfortunately, George H. W. Bush was not a man of peace, vision or even middling intelligence. He was the malleable tool of the War Party, and it was he who single-handedly blew the peace when, in the very year the 77-Year War ended with the demise of the Soviet Union, he plunged America into a petty argument between the impetuous dictator of Iraq and the gluttonous emir of Kuwait. But that argument was none of George Bush’s or America’s business. By contrast, even though liberal historians have reviled Warren G. Harding as some kind of dummkopf politician, he well understood that the Great War had been for naught, and that to ensure it never happened again the nations of the world needed to rid themselves of their huge navies and standing armies. To that end, he achieved the largest global-disarmament agreement ever during the Washington Naval Conference of 1921, which halted the construction of new battleships for more than a decade. And even then, the moratorium ended only because the vengeful victors at Versailles never ceased exacting their revenge on Germany. And while he was at it, President Harding also pardoned Eugene Debs. In so doing, he gave witness to the truth that the intrepid socialist candidate for president and vehement antiwar protester, who Wilson had thrown in prison for exercising his First Amendment right to speak against US entry into a pointless European war, had been right all along. In short, Warren G. Harding knew the war was over and the folly of Wilson’s 1917 plunge into Europe’s bloodbath should not be repeated, at all hazards. But not George H. W. Bush. The man should never be forgiven for enabling the likes of Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Gates and their neocon pack of jackals to come to power – even if he eventually denounced them in his doddering old age. Alas, upon his death, Bush the Elder was deified, not vilified, by the mainstream press and the bipartisan duopoly. And that tells you all you need to know about why Washington is ensnared in its Forever Wars and is the very reason why there is still no peace on earth. Even more to the point, by opting not for peace but for war and oil in the Persian Gulf in 1991 Washington opened the gates to an unnecessary confrontation with Islam and nurtured the rise of jihadist terrorism that would not haunt the world today save for forces unleashed by George H. W. Bush’s petulant quarrel with Saddam Hussein. We will momentarily get to the 45-year-old error that holds the Persian Gulf is an American lake and that the answer to high oil prices and energy security is the Fifth Fleet. Suffice it to say here that the answer to high oil prices everywhere and always is high oil prices – a truth driven home in spades by the oil busts of 2009 and 2015 and the fact the real price of oil today (2019 $) is lower than it was on the eve of the great oil embargo of 1973. But first it is well to remember that in 1991 there was no plausible threat anywhere on the planet to the safety and security of the citizens of Springfield, MA, Lincoln, NE or Spokane, WA when the Cold War ended. The Warsaw Pact had dissolved into more than a dozen woebegone sovereign statelets; the Soviet Union was now unscrambled into 15 independent and far-flung republics from Belarus to Tajikistan; and the Russian motherland would soon plunge into an economic depression that would leave it with a GDP about the size of the Philadelphia MSA. Likewise, China’s GDP was even smaller and more primitive than Russia’s. Even as Mr. Deng was discovering the People’s Bank of China’s printing press, which would enable it to become a great mercantilist exporter, an incipient Chinese threat to national security was never in the cards. After all, it was the 4,000 Wal-Marts in America upon which the prosperity of the new Red Capitalism inextricably depended and upon which the rule of the Communist oligarchs in Beijing was ultimately anchored. Even the hardliners among them could see that in swapping militarism for mercantilism and invading America with tennis shoes, neckties and home textiles – that the door had been closed to any other kind of invasion thereafter. NO ISLAMIC TERRORISTS OR JIHADI THREAT CIRCA 1991 Likewise, in 1991 there was no global Islamic threat or jihadi terrorist menace at all. What existed under those headings were sundry fragments and deposits of Middle Eastern religious, ethnic and tribal histories that were of moment in their immediate region, but no threat to America’s homeland security whatsoever. The Shiite/Sunni divide had coexisted since A.D. 671, but its episodic eruptions into battles and wars over the centuries had rarely extended beyond the region, and certainly had no reason to fester into open conflict in 1991. Inside the artificial state of Iraq, which had been drawn on a map by historically ignorant European diplomats in 1916, for instance, the Shiite and Sunni got along tolerably. That’s because the nation was ruled by Saddam Hussein’s Baathist brand of secular Arab nationalism, flavored by a muscular propensity for violent repression of internal dissent. Hussein championed law and order, state-driven economic development and politically apportioned distributions from the spoils of the extensive government-controlled oil sector. To be sure, Baathist socialism didn’t bring much prosperity to the well-endowed lands of Mesopotamia, but Hussein did have a Christian foreign minister and no sympathy for religious extremism or violent pursuit of sectarian causes. As it happened, the bloody Shiite/Sunni strife that plagues Iraq, Syria and the greater middle east today and which functioned as a hatchery for angry young jihadi terrorists in their thousands was initially unleashed only after Hussein had been driven from Kuwait in 1991 and the CIA had instigated an armed uprising in the Shiite heartland around Basra.. That revolt was brutally suppressed by Hussein’s republican guards, but it left an undertow of resentment and revenge boiling below the surface. That was one of many of George H. W. Bush’s fetid legacies in the region. Needless to say, when it came their turn, Bush the Younger and his cabal of neocon warmongers could not leave well enough alone. When they foolishly destroyed Saddam Hussein and his entire regime in the pursuit of nonexistent WMDs and alleged ties with al-Qaeda, they literally opened the gates of hell, leaving Iraq as a lawless failed state where both recent and ancient religious and tribal animosities were given unlimited violent vent. WHY THE WAR PARTY NEEDED TO DEMONIZE IRAN Also circa 1990, the Shiite theocracy ensconced in Tehran was no threat to America’s safety and security – even if it was an unfortunate albatross on the Persian people. The very idea that Tehran is an expansionist power bent on exporting terrorism to the rest of the world is a giant fiction and tissue of lies invented by the Washington War Party and its Bibi Netanyahu branch in order to win political support for their confrontationist policies. Indeed, the three-decade-long demonization of Iran has served one overarching purpose. Namely, it has enabled both branches of the War Party to conjure up a fearsome enemy, thereby justifying aggressive policies that call for a constant state of war and military mobilization. Indeed, Iran has not been demonized by happenstance. When the Cold War officially ended in 1991, the Cheney/neocon cabal feared the kind of drastic demobilization of the US military-industrial complex that was warranted by the suddenly more pacific strategic environment. In response, they developed an anti-Iranian doctrine that was explicitly described as a way of keeping defense spending at high Cold War levels. If the fearsome Soviet Union was gone, a vastly inflated threat emanating from Iran’s minuscule GDP of $350 billion and tiny defense budget of $15 billion would needs be invented and hyperbolized. And the narrative they developed to this end is one of the more egregious Big Lies ever to come out of the Beltway. It puts you in mind of the young boy who killed his parents, and then threw himself on the mercy of the courts on the grounds that he was an orphan! To wit, during the 1980s the neocons in the Reagan Administration issued their own fatwa against the Islamic Republic of Iran based on its rhetorical hostility to America. Yet that enmity was grounded in Washington’s 25-year support for the tyrannical and illegitimate regime of the Shah, and constituted a founding narrative of the Islamic Republic that was not much different than America’s revolutionary castigation of King George. That the Iranians had a case is beyond doubt. The open US archives now prove that the CIA overthrew Iran’s democratically elected government in 1953 and put the utterly unsuited and megalomaniacal Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi on the Peacock Throne to rule as a puppet on behalf of US security and oil interests. During the subsequent decades the Shah not only massively and baldly plundered the wealth of the Persian nation; with the help of the CIA and US military, he also created a brutal secret police force known as SAVAK. The latter made the East German Stasi look civilized by comparison. Allean imperialism, Islamic confessional politics and the frequently misguided and counterproductive security policies of Israel. . The Christmas Truce of 1914 – Why There Is Still No Peace On Earth, by David Stockman - Russia News Now This post was originally published on this sitehttps://2.gravatar.com/avatar/805203347f71b4a9606694b65ac317ee?s=96&d=identicon&r=G The dissolution of the USSR in 1991 presented the US with a golden opportunity to dramatically reduce military spending and to promote peace. George H.W. Bush blew... www.therussophile.org

 

[jward]

(continued)

elements of Iranian society including universities, labor unions, businesses, civic organizations, peasant farmers and many more were subjected to intense surveillance by the SAVAK agents and paid informants. As one critic described it:
Over the years, Savak became a law unto itself, having legal authority to arrest, detain, brutally interrogate and torture suspected people indefinitely. Savak operated its own prisons in Tehran, such as Qezel-Qalaeh and Evin facilities and many suspected places throughout the country as well. Many of those activities were carried out without any institutional checks.
Ironically, among his many grandiose follies, the Shah had embarked on a massive civilian nuclear-power campaign in the 1970s, which envisioned literally paving the Iranian landscape with dozens of nuclear power plants.
He would use Iran’s surging oil revenues after 1973 to buy all the equipment required from Western companies – and also fuel-cycle support services such as uranium enrichment – in order to provide his kingdom with cheap power for centuries.
At the time of the revolution, the first of these plants at Bushehr was nearly complete, but the whole grandiose project was put on hold amidst the turmoil of the new regime and the onset of Saddam Hussein’s war against Iran in September 1980. As a consequence, a $2 billion deposit languished at the French nuclear agency that had originally obtained it from the Shah to fund a ramp-up of its enrichment capacity to supply his planned battery of reactors.

Indeed, in this very context the new Iranian regime proved quite dramatically that it was not hell-bent on obtaining nuclear bombs or any other weapons of mass destruction. In the midst of Iraq’s unprovoked invasion of Iran in the early 1980s, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against biological and chemical weapons.
Yet at that very time, Saddam was dropping these horrific weapons on Iranian battle forces – some of them barely armed teenage boys – with the spotting help of CIA tracking satellites and the concurrence of Washington. So from the very beginning, the Iranian posture was wholly contrary to the War Party’s endless blizzard of false charges about its quest for nukes.
However benighted and medieval its religious views, the theocracy that ruled Iran did not consist of demented warmongers. In the heat of battle they were willing to sacrifice their own forces rather than violate their religious scruples to counter Saddam’s WMDs.

HOW WASHINGTON INSPIRED THE MYTH OF IRAN’S SECRET NUCLEAR-WEAPONS PROGRAM
Then in 1983 the new Iranian regime decided to complete the Bushehr power plant and some additional elements of the Shah’s grand plan. But when they attempted to reactivate the French enrichment-services contract and buy necessary power plant equipment from the original German suppliers they were stopped cold by Washington. And when they tried to get their $2 billion deposit back, they were curtly denied that, too.
To make a long story short, the entire subsequent history of off-again, on-again efforts by the Iranians to purchase dual-use equipment and components on the international market, often from black market sources like Pakistan, was in response to Washington’s relentless efforts to block its legitimate rights as a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to complete some parts of the Shah’s civilian nuclear project.

Needless to say, it did not take much effort by the neocon “regime change” fanatics that inhabited Washington’s national-security machinery, especially after the 2000 election, to spin every attempt by Iran to purchase even a lowly pump or pipe fitting as evidence of a secret campaign to get “the bomb”.
The exaggerations, lies, distortions and fear mongering that came out of this neocon campaign are truly deplorable. Yet they incepted way back in the early 1990s when George H. W. Bush actually did reach out to the newly elected government of Hashemi Rafsanjani to bury the hatchet after it had cooperated in obtaining the release of American prisoners being held in Lebanon in 1989.

Rafsanjani was self-evidently a pragmatist who did not want conflict with the United States and the West; and after the devastation of the eight-year war with Iraq, he was wholly focused on economic reconstruction and even free market reforms of Iran’s faltering economy.
It is one of the great tragedies of history that the neocons managed to squelch even Bush the Elder’s better instincts with respect to rapprochement with Tehran.
So the prisoner-release opening was short-lived – especially after the top post at the CIA was assumed in 1991 by the despicable Robert Gates.

He was one of the very worst of the unreconstructed Cold War apparatchiks who looked peace in the eye, and elected, instead, to pervert John Quincy Adams’ wise maxim. That is, Gates spent the rest of his career searching the globe for monsters to fabricate.
In this case the motivation was especially loathsome. Gates had been Bill Casey’s right-hand man during the latter’s rogue tenure at the CIA in the Reagan Administration. Among the many untoward projects that Gates shepherded was the Iran-Contra affair that nearly destroyed his career when it blew up, and for which he blamed the Iranians for its public disclosure.
From his post as deputy national-security director in 1989 (and then as CIA head shortly thereafter), Gates pulled out all the stops to get even. Almost single-handedly he killed off the White House goodwill from the prisoner release, and launched the blatant myth that Iran was both sponsoring terrorism and seeking to obtain nuclear weapons.
Indeed, it was Gates who was the architect of the demonization of Iran that became a staple of War Party propaganda after 1991. In time that morphed into the utterly false claim that Iran is an aggressive would-be hegemon and a fount of terrorism dedicated to the destruction of the state of Israel, among other treacherous purposes.

The latter giant lie was almost single-handedly fashioned by the neocons and Bibi Netanyahu’s coterie of power-hungry henchman after the mid-1990s. Indeed, the false claim that Iran posed an “existential threat” to Israel is a product of the pure red meat domestic Israeli politics that kept Bibi in power for much of the last two decades – a plague on mankind that hopefully is finally ending.
But the truth is Iran has only a tiny fraction of Israel’s conventional military capability. And compared to the latter’s 200-odd nukes, Iran never even had a nuclear weaponization program after a small-scale research program was abandoned in 2003.
And that is not our opinion. It was the sober assessment of the nation’s top 17 intelligence agencies in the official National Intelligence Estimates for 2007, and has been confirmed ever since.

It’s the reason that the neocon plan to bomb Iran at the end of George W. Bush’s term didn’t happen. As Dubya confessed in his autobiography, even he couldn’t figure out how he could explain to the American public why he was bombing facilities that all his intelligence agencies had said did not exist. That is, he would have been impaled on WMD 2.0 on his way out of the White House.
Moreover, now via a further study arising from the 2015 international nuclear accord – which would have straitjacketed even Iran’s civilian program and eliminated most of its enriched-uranium stockpiles and spinning capacity had not the Donald foolishly shit-canned it – the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has also confirmed that Iran had no secret nuclear-weapons program after 2003.

The whole scary bedtime story was false War Party propaganda manufactured from whole cloth.
MORE WAR PARTY LIES – DEMONIZATION OF THE SHIITE CRESCENT
In this context, the War Party’s bloviating about Iran’s leadership of the so-called Shiite Crescent is another component of Imperial Washington’s 28-year-long roadblock to peace. Iran wasn’t a threat to American security in 1991, and since then it has never organized a hostile coalition of terrorists that requires Washington’s intervention.
Start with Iran’s long-standing support of Bashir Assad’s government in Syria. That alliance goes back to his father’s era and is rooted in the historic confessional politics of the Islamic world.

The Assad regime is Alawite, a branch of the Shiites, and despite the regime’s brutality, it has been a bulwark of protection for all of Syria’s minority sects, including Christians, against a majority-Sunni ethnic cleansing. The latter would surely occur if US and Saudi-supported rebels, led by the Nusra Front and ISIS, had been permitted to take full power.
Likewise, the fact that the Baghdad government of the broken state of Iraq – that is, the artificial 1916 concoction of two striped-pants European diplomats (Messrs. Sykes and Picot of the British and French foreign offices, respectively) – is now aligned with Iran is also a result of confessional politics and geo-economic propinquity.

For all practical purposes, Iraq has been partitioned. The Kurds of the Northeast have declared their independence and have been collecting their own oil revenue for the past few years and operating their own security forces.
And the western Sunni lands of the upper Euphrates, of course, were first conquered by ISIS with American weapons dropped in place by the hapless $25 billion Iraqi army minted by Washington’s departing proconsuls; and then obliterated during Obama’s vicious bombing and droning campaign designed to uproot the terrorist evil that Washington itself had spawned.
Accordingly, what is left of the rump state of Iraq is a population that is overwhelmingly Shiite and nurses bitter resentments after two decades of violent conflict with the Sunni forces. Why in the world, therefore, wouldn’t they ally with their Shiite neighbor?

 

[jward]

Likewise, the claim that Iran is now trying to annex Yemen, thereby justifying the sheer genocide wreaked upon it by the Saudi air war, is pure claptrap. The ancient territory of Yemen had been racked by civil war off and on since the early 1970s. And a major driving force of that conflict has been confessional differences between the Sunni South and the Shiite North.
In more recent times, Washington’s blatant drone war inside Yemen against alleged terrorists and its domination and financing of Yemen’s government eventually produced the same old outcome – that is, another failed state and an illegitimate government that fled at the 11th hour, leaving another vast cache of American arms and equipment behind.
Accordingly, the Houthis forces now in control of substantial parts of the country are not some kind of advanced guard sent in by Tehran. They are indigenous partisans who share a confessional tie with Iran, but who have actually been armed, if inadvertently, by Washington.
Finally, there is the fourth element of the purported Iranian axis – the Hezbollah-controlled Shiite communities of southern Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley in the northeast. Like everything else in the Middle East, Hezbollah is a product of historical Europe


In the first place, Lebanon was not any more a real country than Iraq was when Sykes and Picot laid their straight-edged rulers on a map. The result was a stew of religious and ethnic divisions – Maronite Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Copts, Druse, Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites, Kurds, Armenians, Jews and countless more – that made the fashioning of a viable state virtually impossible.

At length, an alliance of Christians and Sunnis gained control of the country, leaving the 40% Shiite population disenfranchised and economically disadvantaged, as well. But it was the inflow of Palestinian refugees in the 1960s and 1970s that eventually upset the balance of sectarian forces and triggered a civil war that essentially lasted from 1975 until the turn of the century.

It also triggered a catastrophically wrong-headed Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon in 1982, and a subsequent repressive occupation of mostly Shiite territories for the next 18 years. The alleged purpose of this invasion was to chase the PLO and Yasser Arafat out of the enclave in southern Lebanon that they had established after being driven out of Jordan in 1970.

Eventually Israel succeeded in sending Arafat packing to North Africa, but in the process created a militant, Shiite-based resistance movement that did not even exist in 1982 and that in due course became the strongest single force in Lebanon’s fractured domestic political arrangements.

After Israel withdrew in 2000, the then-Christian president of the country made abundantly clear that Hezbollah had become a legitimate and respected force within the Lebanese polity, not merely some subversive agent of Tehran:

“For us Lebanese, and I can tell you the majority of Lebanese, Hezbollah is a national resistance movement. If it wasn’t for them, we couldn’t have liberated our land. And because of that, we have big esteem for the Hezbollah movement.”

So, yes, Hezbollah is an integral component of the so-called Shiite Crescent, and its confessional and political alignment with Tehran is entirely plausible. But that arrangement – however uncomfortable for Israel – does not represent unprovoked Iranian aggression on Israel’s northern border.



Instead, it’s actually the blowback from the stubborn refusal of Israeli governments – especially the right-wing Likud governments of modern times – to deal constructively with the Palestinian question.

In lieu of a two-state solution in the territory of Palestine, therefore, Israeli policy has produced a chronic state of confrontation and war with the huge share of the Lebanese population represented by Hezbollah.

The latter is surely no agency of peaceful governance and has committed its share of atrocities. But the point at hand is that given the last 35 years of history and Israeli policy, Hezbollah would exist as a menacing force on its northern border even if the Iranian theocracy didn’t exist and the shah or his heir was still on the Peacock Throne.

In short, there is no alliance of terrorism in the Shiite Crescent that threatens American security. That proposition is simply one of the big lies that was promulgated by the War Party after 1991 and that has been happily embraced by Imperial Washington since then in order to keep the military-industrial-security complex alive, and justify its self-appointed role as policeman of the world



WASHINGTON’S ERRONEOUS VIEW THAT THE PERSIAN GULF IS AN AMERICAN LAKE – THE ROOT OF SUNNI JIHADISM

The actual terrorist threat has arisen from the Sunni, not the Shiite, side of the Islamic divide. But that, in turn, is largely of Washington’s own making; and it is being nurtured by endless US meddling in the region’s politics and by the bombing and droning campaigns against Washington’s self-created enemies.

At the root of Sunni-based terrorism is the long-standing Washington error that America’s security and economic well-being depend upon keeping an armada in the Persian Gulf in order to protect the surrounding oil fields and the flow of tankers through the straits of Hormuz.



That doctrine has been wrong from the day it was officially enunciated by one of America’s great economic ignoramuses, Henry Kissinger, at the time of the original oil crisis in 1973. The 46 years since then have proven in spades that it doesn’t matter who controls the oil fields, and that the only effective cure for high oil prices is the free market.

Every tin pot dictatorship from Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, to Saddam Hussein, to the bloody-minded chieftains of Nigeria, to the purportedly medieval mullahs and fanatical revolutionary guards of Iran has produced oil – and all they could because they desperately needed the revenue.

For crying out loud, even while the barbaric thugs of ISIS were briefly in power in eastern Syria, they milked every possible drop of petroleum from the tiny, wheezing oil fields scattered around their backwater domain. So there is no economic case whatsoever for Imperial Washington’s massive military presence in the Middle East.

The truth is, there is no such thing as an OPEC cartel – virtually every member produces all they can and cheats whenever possible. The only thing that resembles production control in the global oil market is the fact that the Saudi princes treat their oil reserves not much differently than Exxon.

That is, they attempt to maximize the present value of their 270 billion barrels of reserves, but ultimately are no more clairvoyant at calibrating the best oil price to accomplish that than are the economists at Exxon or the International Energy Agency.



During the last decade, for example, the Saudis have repeatedly underestimated how rapidly and extensively the $100-per-barrel marker reached in early 2008 and again in 2014 would trigger a flow of investment, technology and cheap debt into the US shale patch, the Canadian tar sands, the tired petroleum provinces of Russia, the deep waters offshore Brazil and the like. And that’s to say nothing of solar, wind and all the other government-subsidized alternative sources of BTUs.

Way back when Jimmy Carter was telling us to turn down the thermostats and put on our cardigan sweaters, those of us in Congress on the free market side of the so-called energy-shortage debate said that high oil prices would bring about their own cure. Now we know.

So the Fifth Fleet and its overt and covert auxiliaries should never have been there – going all the way back to the CIA’s coup against Iranian democracy in 1953.

But having turned Iran into an enemy, Imperial Washington was just getting started when 1990 rolled around. Once again in the name of “oil security” it plunged the American war machine into the politics and religious fissures of the Persian Gulf, and did so on account of the above referenced small-potatoes conflict that had no bearing whatsoever on the safety and security of American citizens.



As US Ambassador Glaspie rightly told Saddam Hussein on the eve of Hussein’s Kuwait invasion, America had no dog in that hunt.

Kuwait wasn’t even a country; it was a bank account sitting on a swath of oil fields surrounding an ancient trading city that had been abandoned by Ibn Saud in the early 20th century. That’s because Saud didn’t know what oil was or that it was there; and in any event, it had been made a separate protectorate by the British in 1913 for reasons that are lost in the fog of diplomatic history.



Likewise, Iraq’s contentious dispute with Kuwait had been over its claim that the emir of Kuwait was “slant drilling” across his border into Iraq’s Rumaila field. Yet it was a wholly elastic boundary of no significance whatsoever.

In fact, the dispute over the Rumaila field started in 1960 when an Arab League declaration arbitrarily marked the Iraq – Kuwait border two miles north of the southernmost tip of the Rumaila field.

And that newly defined boundary, in turn, had come only 44 years after a pair of English and French diplomats had carved up their winnings from the Ottoman Empire’s demise by laying a straight-edged ruler on the map. In so doing, they thereby confected the artificial country of “Iraq” from the historically independent and hostile Mesopotamian provinces of the Shiites in the South, the Sunnis in the West and the Kurds in the North.

In short, it did not matter who controlled the southern tip of the Rumaila field – the brutal dictator of Baghdad or the opulent emir of Kuwait. Neither the price of oil, nor the peace of America, nor the security of Europe nor the future of Asia depended upon it.

 

[jward]

THE FIRST GULF WAR – A CATASTROPHIC ERROR

But once again Bush the Elder got persuaded to take the path of war. This time it was by Henry Kissinger’s economically illiterate protégés at the National Security Council and Bush’s Texas oilman secretary of state. They falsely claimed that the will-o’-the-wisp of “oil security” was at stake, and that 500,000 American troops needed to be planted in the sands of Arabia.

That was a catastrophic error, and not only because the presence of “crusader” boots on the purportedly sacred soil of Arabia offended the CIA-trained mujahedeen of Afghanistan, who had become unemployed when the Soviet Union collapsed.

(Cont)

The 1991 CNN-glorified war games in the Gulf also further empowered another group of unemployed crusaders. Namely, the neocon national-security fanatics who had misled Ronald Reagan into a massive military buildup to thwart what they claimed to be an ascendant Soviet Union bent on nuclear-war-winning capabilities and global conquest.

All things being equal, the sight of Boris Yeltsin, vodka flask in hand, facing down the Red Army a few months later should have sent the neocons into the permanent disrepute and obscurity they so richly deserved. But Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz managed to extract from Washington’s Pyrrhic victory in Kuwait a whole new lease on life for Imperial Washington.



Right then and there came the second erroneous predicate – to wit, that “regime change” among the assorted tyrannies of the Middle East was in America’s national interest.

More fatally, the neocons now insisted that the first Gulf War proved it could be achieved through a sweeping interventionist menu of coalition diplomacy, security assistance, arms shipments, covert action and open military attack and occupation.

What the neocon doctrine of regime change actually did, of course, was to foster the Frankenstein that ultimately became ISIS. In fact, the only real terrorists in the world who threaten normal civilian life in the West are the rogue offspring of



Imperial Washington’s post-1990 machinations in the Middle East.



The CIA-trained and CIA-armed mujahedeen mutated into al-Qaeda not because bin Laden suddenly had a religious epiphany that his Washington benefactors were actually the Great Satan owing to America’s freedom and liberty.

His murderous crusade was inspired by the Wahhabi fundamentalism loose in Saudi Arabia. This benighted religious fanaticism became agitated to a fever pitch by Imperial Washington’s violent plunge into Persian Gulf political and religious quarrels, the stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia, and the decade-long barrage of sanctions, embargoes, no-fly zones, covert actions and open hostility against the Sunni regime in Baghdad after 1991.

Yes, bin Laden would have amputated Saddam’s secularist head if Washington hadn’t done it first, but that’s just the point. The attempt at regime change in March 2003 was one of the most foolish acts of state in American history.

Bush the Younger’s neocon advisers had no clue about the sectarian animosities and historical grievances that Hussein had bottled up by parsing the oil loot and wielding the sword under the banner of Baathist nationalism. But shock and awe blew the lid and the de-Baathification campaign unleashed the furies.

Indeed, no sooner had George Bush pranced around on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln declaring “mission accomplished” than Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a CIA recruit to the Afghan war a decade earlier and smalltime specialist in hostage taking and poisons, fled his no-count redoubt in Kurdistan to emerge as a flamboyant agitator in the now-dispossessed Sunni heartland.



The founder of ISIS succeeded in Fallujah and Anbar province just like the long list of other terrorist leaders Washington claims to have exterminated. That is, Zarqawi gained his following and notoriety among the region’s population of deprived, brutalized and humiliated young men by dint of being more brutal than their occupiers.

Indeed, even as Washington was crowing about the demise of Zarqawi, the remnants of the Baathist regime and the hundreds of thousands of demobilized republican guards were coalescing into al-Qaeda in Iraq, and their future leaders were being incubated in a monstrous nearby detention center called Camp Bucca that contained more than 26,000 prisoners.



As one former U.S. Army officer, Mitchell Gray, later described it,

“You never see hatred like you saw on the faces of these detainees,” Gray remembers of his 2008 tour. “When I say they hated us, I mean they looked like they would have killed us in a heartbeat if given the chance. I turned to the warrant officer I was with and I said, ‘If they could, they would rip our heads off and drink our blood.

What Gray didn’t know – but might have expected – was that he was not merely looking at the United States’ former enemies, but its future ones as well. According to intelligence experts and Department of Defense records, the vast majority of the leadership of what is today known as ISIS, including its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, did time at Camp Bucca.

And not only did the US feed, clothe and house these jihadists, it also played a vital, if unwitting, role in facilitating their transformation into the most formidable terrorist force in modern history.

Early in Bucca’s existence, the most extreme inmates were congregated in Compound 6. There were not enough Americans guards to safely enter the compound – and, in any event, the guards didn’t speak Arabic. So the detainees were left alone to preach to one another and share deadly vocational advice . . .

Bucca also housed Haji Bakr, a former colonel in Saddam Hussein’s air-defense force. Bakr was no religious zealot. He was just a guy who lost his job when the Coalition Provisional Authority disbanded the Iraqi military and instituted de-Baathification, a policy of banning Saddam’s past supporters from government work.

According to documents recently obtained by German newspaper Der Spiegel, Bakr was the real mastermind behind ISIS’s organizational structure and also mapped out the strategies that fueled its early successes. Bakr, who died in fighting in 2014, was incarcerated at Bucca from 2006-’ 08, along with a dozen or more of ISIS’s top lieutenants.”



The point is, regime change and nation building can never be accomplished by the lethal violence of 21st-century armed forces; and they were an especially preposterous assignment in the context of a land rent with 13-century-old religious fissures and animosities.



In fact, the wobbly, synthetic state of Iraq was doomed the minute Cheney and his bloody gang decided to liberate it from the brutal but serviceable and secular tyranny of Saddam’s Baathist regime. That’s because the process of elections and majority rule necessarily imposed by Washington was guaranteed to elect a government beholden to the Shiite majority.

After decades of mistreatment and Saddam’s brutal suppression of their 1991 uprising, did the latter have revenge on their minds and in their communal DNA? Did the Kurds have dreams of an independent Kurdistan spilling into Turkey and Syria that had been denied their 30-million-strong tribe way back at Versailles and ever since?

Yes, they did. So the $25 billion spent on training and equipping the putative armed forces of post-liberation Iraq was bound to end up in the hands of sectarian militias, not a national army.



In fact, when the Shiite commanders fled Sunni-dominated Mosul in June 2014 they transformed the ISIS uprising against the government in Baghdad into a vicious fledgling state in one fell swoop. But it wasn’t by beheadings and fiery jihadist sermons that it quickly enslaved dozens of towns and several million people in western Iraq and the Euphrates Valley of Syria.



THE ISLAMIC STATE WAS WASHINGTON’S VERY OWN FRANKENSTEIN

To the contrary, its instruments of terror and occupation were the best weapons that the American taxpayers could buy. That included 2,300 Humvees and tens of thousands of automatic weapons, as well as vast stores of ammunition, trucks, rockets, artillery pieces and even tanks and helicopters.



And that wasn’t the half of it. The Islamic State also filled the power vacuum in Syria created by its so-called civil war. But in truth that was another exercise in Washington-inspired and Washington-financed regime change undertaken in connivance with Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

The princes of the petro-states were surely not interested in expelling the tyranny next door. Instead, the rebellion was about removing Iran’s Alawite/Shiite ally from power in Damascus and laying the gas pipelines to Europe – which Assad had vetoed – across the upper Euphrates Valley.



In any event, due to Washington’s regime change policy in Syria, ISIS soon had even more troves of American weapons. Some of them were supplied to Sunni radicals by way of Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

More came up the so-called ratline from Gaddafi’s former arsenals in Benghazi through Turkey. And still more came through Jordan from the “moderate” opposition trained there by the CIA, which more often than not sold them or defected to the other side.

So, that the Islamic State was Washington’s Frankenstein monster became evident from the moment it rushed upon the scene in mid 2014. But even then the Washington War Party could not resist adding fuel to the fire, whooping up another round of Islamophobia among the American public and forcing the Obama White House into a futile bombing campaign for the third time in a quarter century.



But the short-lived Islamic State was never a real threat to America’s homeland security.

The dusty, broken, impoverished towns and villages along the margins of the Euphrates River and in the bombed-out precincts of Anbar province did not attract thousands of wannabe jihadists from the failed states of the Middle East and the alienated Muslim townships of Europe because the caliphate offered prosperity, salvation or any future at all.

What recruited them was outrage at the bombs and drones dropped on Sunni communities by the US Air Force and by the cruise missiles launched from the bowels of the Mediterranean that ripped apart homes, shops, offices and mosques which mostly contained as many innocent civilians as ISIS terrorists.



The truth is, the Islamic State was destined for a short half-life anyway. It had been contained by the Kurds in the North and East and by Turkey with NATO’s second-largest army and air force in the Northwest. And it was further surrounded by the Shiite Crescent in the populated, economically viable regions of lower Syria and Iraq.



Absent Washington’s misbegotten campaign to unseat Assad in Damascus and demonize his confession-based Iranian ally, there would have been nowhere for the murderous fanatics who had pitched a makeshift capital in Raqqa to go. They would have run out of money, recruits, momentum and public acquiescence in their horrific rule in any event.

But with the US Air Force functioning as their recruiting arm and France’s anti-Assad foreign policy helping to foment a final spasm of anarchy in Syria, the gates of hell had been opened wide, unnecessarily.



What has been puked out was not an organized war on Western civilization as former French president Hollande so hysterically proclaimed in response to one of the predictable terrorist episodes of mayhem in Paris.

It was just blowback carried out by that infinitesimally small contingent of mentally deformed young men who can be persuaded to strap on a suicide belt.

In any event, bombing did not defeat ISIS; it just temporarily made more of them.

Ironically, what did extinguish the Islamic State was the Assad government, the Russian air force invited into Syria by its official government and the ground forces of its Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard allies. It was they who settled an ancient quarrel that had never been any of America’s business anyway.



But Imperial Washington was so caught up in its myths, lies and hegemonic stupidity that it could not see the obvious. Accordingly, 28 years after the Cold War ended and several years after Syria and friends extinguished the Islamic State, Washington has learned no lessons. The American Imperium still stalks the planet for new monsters to destroy.

And that’s why there is still no peace on earth 28 years after it should have broken out, as did the Christmas Truce of 1914.

 

[jward]

CHINA POWER | SECURITY China-Pakistan to Deepen Military Ties With Arabian Sea Exercises The January 2020 drills are just one facet of a growing China-Pakistan defense partnership. By Eleanor Albert December 25, 2019​

Credit: U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Sam ShaversADVERTISEMENT China and Pakistan are set to hold joint military exercises in January 2020 in the Arabian Sea. The naval exercises are anticipated to include the participation of a Chinese destroyer, frigate, a supplement ship, and submarine rescue ships, according to China’s Ministry of National Defense. “The exercise is conducive to deepening security cooperation between the two militaries, consolidating and developing the China-Pakistan all-weather strategic cooperative partnership, and promoting the building of a maritime community with a shared future,” said Ren Guoqiang, the ministry’s spokesman. The joint drills are significant, especially for China, as it gains experience in conducting operations off of the Pakistani coast in the Arabian Sea. This body of water feeds into the Indian Ocean, a maritime area that has grown in strategic importance as Chinese economic ties have expanded and as the country has sought to modernize its military and establish a blue water navy. China and Pakistan engage in a series of other bilateral and multilateral joint exercises across different branches of their militaries. The Sino-Pakistani “Warrior” series is dedicated to curbing terrorism threats. Its seventh iteration, held earlier this month in Pakistan with members of each military’s special forces, included mobilization of forces using vehicles and aerial transportation. Chinese officials stated that the drills focused on deepening cooperation and communication. A new exercise was also introduced, the joint defense of key facilities in mountainous areas, likely in an effort to simulate protection of government or civilian buildings, as well as major investment projects under the umbrella of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), one of the branches of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The Chinese consulate in Karachi was targeted in late 2018 by terrorists. More recently, in May 2019, gunmen attacked and stormed a luxury hotel in Balochistan overlooking that port of Gwadar. Gwadar has been the site of significant Chinese investment and is viewed as one of the core hubs of CPEC. Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month. Additionally, the two air forces also carry out extensive joint drills, including the Shaheen exercises, which wrapped up their eight iteration in a two-week drill in September that featured top aircraft from China and Pakistan in northwestern China. Various warplanes, surface-to-air missiles, and radar installations from both China and Pakistan participated in mock battles. Multilaterally, Pakistan hosted the sixth iteration of Aman-19 in early February, which brought together 46 countries, international warships, and observers for a set of maritime conferences, seminars, ship visits, sea operations (including main-gun firing, formation movement, and at-sea refueling). The multilateral exercises are intended to boost cooperation among regional and extraregional navies in the Indian Ocean; among the regular attendees are China and the United States. While the Beijing-Islamabad relationship is often touted as tight-knit and special, the flurry of joint exercises conducted by Chinese military units is not only unique to Pakistan. China has steadily expanded its military exchanges and drills with many partners over the past decade and a half, particularly with other neighboring powers such as Russia, Pakistan, and India, as well as in multilateral settings via the Shanghai Cooperation Organization or the U.S.-hosted multilateral RIMPAC exercise. ADVERTISEMENT These joint drills are a visible diplomatic demonstration of capabilities but are also a valuable resource and opportunity for training, cross military coordination, readiness, and information gathering. As China continues to invest significantly in Pakistan, the label of “all-weather friend” may be tested if the security environment continues to be challenged. Still, the two neighbors are likely to remain regular military partners going into 2020 and beyond. AUTHORS China-Pakistan to Deepen Military Ties With Arabian Sea Exercises The January 2020 drills are just one facet of a growing China-Pakistan defense partnership. thediplomat.com

 

[jward]

not sure how such an "accident" could possibly occur, "accidently".... don't people wake up dead this way?!

Japan’s broadcaster NHK reported a missile launch from North Korea, stating the projectile was estimated to have fallen some 2,000 km off Hokkaido's coast. The news, however, was retracted shortly afterwards. Aleph ️ א (@no_itsmyturn) Tweeted: All clear. Gearoid Reidy on Twitter https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1210229017313521665 View: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1210229017313521665 https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1210229017313521665 View: https://twitter.com/no_itsmyturn/status/1210229017313521665 All clear. https://twitter.com/GearoidReidy/status/1210226561615482881 … Gearoid Reidy ✔@GearoidReidy Japan public broadcaster NHK just mistakenly sent out an alert saying a missile from North Korea flew over Hokkaido, and have now retracted. Seriously guys. 11 10:00 AM - Dec 26, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy See Aleph א's other Tweets View: https://twitter.com/no_itsmyturn/status/1210229017313521665?s=20

 

[Pinecone]

Maybe they hired the guy who was responsible for Hawai'i's little mishap? Another oopsie?

 

[jward]

Vipin Narang

@NarangVipin
35m

Deleting all tweets on this North Korean missile test false alarm.





Vipin Narang

@NarangVipin
34m

Everyone is so keyed up for it. Apologies to all for not waiting for confirmation from an official source. The dangers of social media missile twitter, early (mis)reports can spread fast.




Vipin Narang

@NarangVipin

Something smelled off initially because normally we get a launch alert and then wait for splashdown notice. It seemed odd that we would just get a 2000 km *east* of Hokkaido story with no prior notification. I should’ve been more skeptical and I apologize for not doing better.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Secret sub reveals China’s chilling plan

The Andaman Sea is fast becoming the latest target of Chinese expansionism. India says it has seen a surge of Chinese submarine activity in the strategically critical waterway.

www.news.com.au

‘Right on our doorstep’: Secret sub reveals China’s chilling plan
After years of domination in the South China Sea, Chinese submarines have started popping up somewhere new – and it’s on our doorstep.
Jamie Seidel
news.com.auDecember 24, 20191:11pm

• Video

The Andaman Sea is fast becoming the latest target of Chinese expansionism. India says it has seen a surge of Chinese submarine activity in the strategically critical waterway.
And, last month, its navy booted a Chinese spy ship out of its waters. But Indian Navy sources say Chinese submarines have become a regular visitor to the region. And they’re much harder to deal with.
In September, the Indian navy evicted the Chinese survey ship Shiyan-1 for intruding upon its exclusive economic zone. It was sailing among the Andaman and Nicobar Islands without permission. And such survey ships map the ocean floor for just two purposes: military or economic.
Seeking oil, gas or other significant resource deposits inside Indian waters would be … cheeky.
Gleaning high-resolution charts of canyons on the sea floor for submarines to hide among would be … offensive.
Exactly why China would be interested in these islands can be inferred by the proximity of Malacca Strait. The narrow channel is a natural choke-point for most of Asia’s trade and fuel supplies.
In any future conflict, knowledge of the waters surrounding it would be a matter of victory or defeat.
And that fight would be on Australia’s doorstep.

PRYING EYE

Shiyan 1 was a highly visible intrusion into India’s waters. International shipping has freedom of navigation through such economic zones. But they cannot do whatever they want.
India’s chief of Navy, Admiral Karambir Singh, recently told media the survey ship was operating there without permission.

China’s Shiyan-1 survey vessel was in September evicted from India’s exclusive economic zone around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Picture: Chinese Academy of SciencesSource:Supplied
“Our stance has been that if you do anything in our region, you have to notify us or get our permission,” he said.
But it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Just 10 years ago, China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) seldom visited the region. Now, India says some eight to 10 ships and submarines are found there each year.
And those submarines are only the ones India detects.

A Chinese nuclear-powered attack submarine. These can stay underwater for months at a time. Picture: Japan Self Defence ForceSource:Supplied
Since 2012, Beijing has been sending regular submarine patrols into the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal. India says it has been finding between three and four of them every three months.
It’s a sign of things to come, warns Institute of South Asian Studies research fellow Yogesh Joshi. “The Andaman Sea is slowly but surely becoming (a) most crucial battlefront. While this does not necessarily imply that a clash between the two navies is inevitable, the waters around the Andaman Sea will see the two navies jostling more frequently than in the past.”
TIPPING POINT
Whoever controls the Andaman Sea controls the Malacca Strait.
Whoever controls Malacca Strait has a chokehold on the arterial flow of oil tankers, grain ships and bulk-cargo carriers supplying the whole western Pacific.
In particular, China.
“China’s economy relies heavily on sea lanes of communication passing through the waterway; it, therefore, fears a situation where hostile powers could interdict these vital economic lifelines,” Joshi writes.

A Chinese Yuan-class attack submarine during a recent naval parade. Picture: PLANSource:Supplied
To mitigate this, Beijing began work on an important deep-sea port in Myanmar. A new rail network was to link it to the Chinese province of Yunnan. But these projects are now in doubt.
Beijing continues, however, to fund a massive canal project to link the Andaman Sea to the Gulf of Thailand.
While both projects bypass Malacca Strait, India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands remain astride the routes any shipping must take into the Indian Ocean. And China’s been busy establishing a presence in Sri Lanka and the Maldives, where it is building artificial islands to house major port and industrial facilities.
“These projects have dramatically changed China’s economic and political interests in the Andaman Sea,” Joshi writes.
ISLAND FORTRESSES
In the same way Beijing has built up its illegal artificial islands into fortresses, New Delhi is looking to turn the Andaman and Nicobar Islands into its own unsinkable aircraft carriers.
Airfields and port facilities there allow it to watch over the Bay of Bengal in the west to the Malacca Strait.

China’s artificial island-building skills are being used as part of its ‘Belt and Road’ infrastructure project to establish a new port in Sri Lanka. Picture: CHEC Port City ColomboSource:Supplied
New Delhi has now announced that it would invest up to $US50 billion in upgrading infrastructure on these islands. It wants to be able to base up to 32 warships there by 2022. And it wants a large military air base providing around-the-clock anti-submarine surveillance.
Submarines are the key.
“Unlike the South China Sea, the PLAN cannot project naval power in the Andaman Sea because of its geographical disadvantage,” Joshi says. “However, using sea-denial platforms such as submarines, it can also eliminate the possibility of India dominating these waters.”
VACUUM OF POWER
While India is showing new interest in monitoring the Andaman Sea, a recent Lowy Institute essay warns much of the southeastern Indian Ocean remains a “blind spot”.
Nobody really knows what’s going on there.
“This includes the choke-points at the Sunda and Lombok straits which, while more circuitous than the Malacca route, are nevertheless viable lines of communication linking the Indian Ocean to Northeast Asia,” notes defence analyst Arzan Tarapore.
Canberra must step up and help New Delhi cover this void. “Australia has a highly capable navy, and is committed to upholding a “free and open Indo-Pacific” – a strategic vision shared with India,” he says.
And Australia has the means to do so.

Indian and Australian warships form a joint Task Force during a bilateral naval exercise off southern India in April 2019. Picture: DefenceSource:Supplied
AUSTRALIA’S ISLAND CHAIN
The Christmas and Cocos (Keeling) Island territories are well-positioned to monitor the Sunda and Lombok straits. And a runway on Cocos Island may soon be able to operate the RAAF’s new P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft.
But the opportunity also exists for Indonesia to get on-board. In November, navy chiefs of all three nations met in Freemantle to discuss enhanced co-operation. But it’s early days yet.
“Those pooled resources would cover an impressive and unbroken geographic spread across the eastern Indian Ocean, stretching from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, through the Indonesian archipelago, down to the Australian mainland,” says Tarapore.
“This could eventually allow the trilateral partners to fuse together a common MDA picture and, for example, hand-off tracking of particular vessels of interest.”
Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @JamieSeidel

 

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‘Cutting each other’s throats’: Allies fear Russia will annex Belarus to save Putin’s life - Washington Examiner

Western allies fear that Russia will gain sovereignty over Belarus, a former Soviet satellite state that could help preserve Vladimir Putin’s grip on power and sharpen Kremlin threats against NATO members. Russian expansion is on the table because Putin is trying to finalize the implementation...

www.washingtonexaminer.com

‘Cutting each other's throats’: Allies fear Russia will annex Belarus to save Putin’s life

by Joel Gehrke

| December 26, 2019 12:05 AM

Western allies fear that Russia will gain sovereignty over Belarus, a former Soviet satellite state that could help preserve Vladimir Putin’s grip on power and sharpen Kremlin threats against NATO members.


Russian expansion is on the table because Putin is trying to finalize the implementation of a union treaty that the two countries signed in 1998. Moscow and Minsk interpret the agreement differently, but Putin has begun to apply economic pressure to Belarus while scheduling a flurry of meetings with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko over the last year.

“I think this mild annexation will just happen, probably next year,” Alisa Muzergues, a foreign policy analyst at GLOBSEC in the Slovak Republic, told the Washington Examiner. “To be honest, my personal feeling is that it's already a done deal."

Such a maneuver could end Lukashenko’s tenure as “the last dictator in Europe,” while providing Putin with a political life-preserver. Currently, presidential term limit laws require him to leave the Kremlin in 2024. A union with Belarus would allow him to circumvent those limits and continue to rule the revised Russian state, pending a new election he is expected to win.





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Inside the Magazine: December 17



The prospective agreement is widely regarded as a way to provide a new legal basis for Putin to remain in power, sources told the Washington Examiner. The stakes for Putin are high.

“The Kremlin is not monolithic, there are many factions,”a Baltic official told the Washington Examiner. “Right now, Putin is the force which keeps them from cutting each other's throats, but if he leaves power he understands that he himself becomes vulnerable.”


The prospect of a Russian expansion has caused open anxiety among NATO allies, including in Lithuania, a Baltic Sea neighbor that joined the transatlantic alliance in 2004.

“During the last year, Russia’s pressure towards Belarus to implement the obligations under the Agreement on Establishment of the Union State of Belarus and Russia increased,” Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry told the Washington Examiner, referring to an ambiguous union agreement that the two sides signed in 1998. “It is a sovereign choice of Belarus with whom and how to integrate. However, independent, sovereign Belarus is our national interest.”

Lukashenko has balked at what he calls Putin’s demand that he “bury the sovereignty and independence” of Belarus. He has avoided signing an agreement, but the two leaders have met twice in the first three weeks of December.

"Overall, since the Soviet Union collapse we have not drifted apart too much from each other,” Lukashenko said following a Friday meeting with Putin in St. Petersburg. “Even though we did not enact the points envisaged there, we did not stray away from each other either as it happened with Russia and other republics in the post-Soviet space and not only the Baltic states or Ukraine.”

Hundreds of activists risked the wrath of Lukashenko’s security services to protest against integration with Russia during both of his meetings with Putin, including a Friday gathering of 1,500 people who warned that “Union with Russia means War and Poverty.” An unknown street artist lampooned the meeting with graffiti of Putin and Lukashenko kissing, to the delight of Belarusian nationalists.

“Lukashenko signed most of the agreements with Putin,” Franak Viačorka, a prominent local journalist, tweeted. “It seems 2020 will be the critical year for Belarus' future and independence. And these protests are not the last.”

Lithuania’s acknowledgement that Vilnius is “closely monitoring” the possibility that Russia will absorb Belarus reflects the concern that a merger would fortify Putin’s political and military power within quick striking distance of a vulnerable part of the NATO alliance.

“Baltic states are in between Kaliningrad and Belarus, and that also is probably the weakest link in NATO,” the Baltic official said. “Belarus is very far to the west, so Russians can use it to project power.”

Kaliningrad is a Russian exclave that Moscow has controlled since the Cold War, even though the territory does not connect by land to Russia. The district, stocked with Russian military assets, is surrounded by Poland and Lithuania, but the Polish-Lithuanian border creates only a small buffer of NATO territory between Kaliningrad and Belarus.

“In that 50 miles, they're cutting off the three Baltic states from the territory of NATO,” the Baltic official said, while discussing the possibility that Putin might try to connect Belarus with Kalinigrad.

That fear is unlikely to become a reality as long as NATO forces, such as the small contingent of U.S. soldiers currently deployed to Lithuania, remain on the ground, the source added. Belarus has no such protection, though U.S. officials are trying to provide indirect political help. Then-White House National Security Advisor John Bolton traveled to Minsk to meet Lukashenko in August. State Department officials, for their part, are encouraging Belarusian independence by meeting with local activists.

“They are kind of on the front lines,” Robert Destro, who leads the State Department's democracy and human rights bureau, told reporters last week. “They get . . . that in order to really stave off the embrace of the Russian bear that they have to develop their own civil societies. I mean, what does it mean to be a Belarusian?”

That’s difficult, observers say, because Lukashenko’s autocracy has repressed Belarusian activists, while allowing Putin to expand Russian influence in the country.

“It's a bit too little too late, to be honest with you, because the country is completely dependent on Russia,” Muzergues, the GLOBSEC analyst, said. “If something were to happen [like what's] happening in Ukraine, I'm not sure the population would resist it.”

Still, some observers hold out hope that the authorities in Minsk can thwart Putin’s ambitions.


“It's worrisome to see the increased pressure and slight urgency from Russia to get this union state,” the Baltic official said. “But, on the other hand, Lukashenko is in power longer than Putin. And, that is a sign in itself.”

 

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Top adviser to Syria’s president warns of ‘operations’ against US troops guarding oil fields

A top adviser to Syrian President Bashar Assad is warning of “operations” against American troops guarding Syrian oil fields, saying the U.S. has “absolutely no right” …

thehill.com

Top adviser to Syria's president warns of 'operations' against US troops guarding oil fields
By Rachel Frazin - 12/25/19 06:12 PM EST 840

338

A top adviser to Syrian President Bashar Assad is warning of "operations" against American troops guarding Syrian oil fields, saying the U.S. has "absolutely no right" to Syria's oil.
"It is our oil," Bouthaina Shaaban recently told NBC News, while warning of “popular opposition and operations against the American occupiers of our oil.”
President Trump announced in October that he would withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria, saying he wanted to bring them home. He later approved a mission to secure oil fields in the country.
“He’s talking about stealing it,” Shaaban said, adding that Assad believes "our land should be totally and completely liberated from foreign occupiers, whether they are terrorists, or the Turks or the Americans.”
The Syrian government is attempting to recover the remaining rebel-held territories after years of civil war. The government has been accused of using chemical weapons on civilians at times during the eight-year-old conflict.
According to the United Nations, there has been a recent escalation of violence in Northwest Syria, causing tens of thousands of civilians to flee since Dec. 16.

 

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14 dead in Niger after Islamic extremists attack convoy

NIAMEY, Niger (AP) — Islamic extremists on motorcycles killed 14 security force members who were escorting election officials in the West African nation of Niger, the first large attack there since 71 soldiers were killed in a massive ambush earlier this month, authorities said Thursday.

apnews.com

14 dead in Niger after Islamic extremists attack convoy
By DALATOU MAMANE
2 hours ago

NIAMEY, Niger (AP) — Islamic extremists on motorcycles killed 14 security force members who were escorting election officials in the West African nation of Niger, the first large attack there since 71 soldiers were killed in a massive ambush earlier this month, authorities said Thursday.
The attack took place Wednesday night near Sanam, which is about 200 kilometers (125 miles) from the capital of Niamey, according to a government statement. Officials from the national electoral commission were in the area to conduct a census before next year’s vote.
The victims were seven military police officers and seven national guard members, the statement said.




Niger has long been vulnerable to Islamic extremism because it shares a border with Nigeria, where Boko Haram insurgents have been carrying out attacks for a decade.
But now Niger is increasingly threatened by extremists from the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara group, which carried out a 2017 attack that left four U.S. service members dead in Niger. Those same extremists who are active along the Niger-Mali border also claimed the unprecedented massacre at the army camp earlier this month that left 71 dead.
Niger’s military has undergone training for years from both American and French forces, but the Dec. 10 attack near the town of Inates underscored the threat extremists still pose. French President Emmanuel Macron has postponed a meeting with Niger’s president and other regional leaders until January.
Niger is also a member of the G5 Sahel regional military force — along with Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Mauritania — which has unsuccessfully tried to drive jihadis out of the vast region south of the Sahara desert. The cross-border joint force was launched in July 2017, but has been beset by financial shortfalls and other challenges.
The crisis across the Sahel has deepened over the past year, particularly in Mali and Burkina Faso. Jihadi attacks on military outposts became so frequent that Mali’s president shut down the most remote and vulnerable as part of a military reorganization.
___
Associated Press writer Krista Larson in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report.