Russia, Turkey and the Great Game: Changing teams

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev’s visit to Turkish last month shows that Turkey and Russia are rapidly developing close economic and political ties...

http://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/us-missiles-and-troops-to-russian-border-1/

For all intents and purposes, Turkey has given up on the European Union, recognising it as a bastion of Islamophobia and captive to US diktat. As Switzerland bans minarets and France moves to outlaw the niqab, the popular Islamist government in Istanbul moves in the opposite direction -- supporting the freedom to wear headscarfs, boldly criticising Israel and building bridges with Syria. This is nothing less than a fundamental realignment of Turkish politics towards Turkey’s natural allies -- the Arabs ... and the Russians.

This new alignment with Russia began in 2001 when Turkish and Russian foreign ministers signed the Eurasia Cooperation Action Plan. It went into high gear in February 2009, when Turkish President Abdullah Gul made a state visit to Russia, including a visit to the Russian Federation’s thriving and energy-rich Autonomous Republic of Tatarstan, populated by a majority of Muslim Turks, with pipelines, nuclear energy and trade the focus of attention.

In the past, Russia had poor relations with Turkey, which since its founding as a republic in 1922 was firmly in the Western camp and seen by Moscow as a springboard for infiltration into the Caucasus and its Turkic southern republics. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Yeltsin’s Russia acquiesced to US hegemony in the region, and as part of this opening to the West, Turkish schools, construction firms and traders came in great numbers to the ex-Soviet “stans” (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan). 9/11 convinced Russian president Vladimir Putin to go so far as welcoming US military bases in the most strategic “stans”. The old Great Game appeared to be over, lost resoundingly by Russia.

But as the world tired of the US-sponsored “war on terrorism”, it seemed the Great Game was not over after all. A NATO member, Turkey was soon joined by Bulgaria and Romania, making the Black Sea a de facto NATO lake, alarming a now resurgent Russia.

Ukraine’s Western-backed “Orange Revolution” in 2004 further tilted the balance away from Russia, with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko defiantly vowing to join NATO and kick the Russian fleet out of Crimea. He even armed Georgia in its war with Russia in 2008.

However, not only Russia was fed up with the new pax americana. Over 90 per cent of Turks had an unfavourable view of the US by 2007. It is no surprise that Turkey began to back away from unconditional support of NATO and the US, notably, during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, by its refusal in 2008 to allow US warships through the Bosphorus Strait to support Georgia, and by its outspoken criticism of Israel following the invasion of Gaza that year.

In contrast to the US-sponsored colour revolutions in the ex-socialist bloc, Turkey’s “Green Revolution” brought the religious-oriented Justice and Development Party to power in 2002. Its political direction has been in search of balance in the region and peaceful relations with its neighbours, including Armenia and the Kurds. In 2004 Russian president Vladimir Putin signed a joint declaration of cooperation in Ankara, updated in February 2009 by Gul and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in Moscow. Gul declared, “Russia and Turkey are neighbouring countries that are developing their relations on the basis of mutual confidence. I hope this visit will in turn give a new character to our relations.”

Key to this is Turkey’s proposal for the establishment of a Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform. Following Gul’s visit, Turkish media even described Turkish-Russian relations as a “strategic partnership”, which no doubt set off alarm bells in Washington.

None of this would be taking place without solid economic interests. Turkish-Russian economic ties have greatly expanded over the past decade, with trade reaching $33 billion in 2008, much if it gas and oil, making Russia Turkey’s number one partner. They may soon use the Turkish lira and the Russian ruble in foreign trade.

This is the context of Medvedev’s visit 13 January to Ankara, which focussed primarily on energy cooperation. Russia’s AtomStroiExport had won the tender for the construction of Turkey’s first nuclear plant last year, and Medvedev was eager to get final approval on Turkish cooperation in Gazprom’s South Stream gas pipeline to Europe. Turkey will soon get up to 80 per cent of its gas from Russia, but this dependency is no longer viewed as a liability in light of the two countries’ new strategic relations.

Just what will happen to the West’s rival Nabucco pipeline, also intended to transit Turkey, is now a moot point. Nabucco hopes to bring gas from Iran and Azerbaijan to Europe through Turkey and Georgia. Given the standoff between the West and Iran and the instability of Georgia, this alternative to Russia’s plans looks increasingly unattractive. Azerbaijan, shrewdly, has already signed up with South Stream.

Kommersant quoted Gazprom officials as saying that Turkey could soon join Italy and Germany as Russia’s “strategic partner”. Italy’s ENI is co-funding the South Stream project. The other arm of Gazprom’s pincer move around Ukraine is Nord Stream, and Germany late last year gave its final approval for Nord Stream. A Polish minister compared the Russia-Germany Nord Stream project to the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentropp pact, because the pipeline allows Russia to deliver gas to Western Europe and “turn off the taps” to Ukraine in case it stops paying or starts stealing gas as happened several times under the Orange revolutionaries.

Turkey is very much a key player in this new Great Game, only it appears to have changed sides. The Russian and Turkish prime ministers voiced the hope that their trade would triple by 2015, and announced plans to for a visa-free regime by May this year. “In the end, without doubt, [a visa-free regime] will lead to activating cooperation between our countries,” said Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan.

The presidential elections now in progress in Ukraine could take some of the wind out of the sails of South Stream. Its rationale could be brought into question if the new Ukrainian president succeeds in convincing Moscow that s/he will make sure no further hanky-panky takes place. Ukraine, in dire economic straits, needs the transit fees, which would disappear if current plans go ahead. But the damage the Orange revolutionaries did to Ukraine’s economy and relations with Russia is already a fait accompli. Says Alexander Rahr at the German Council on Foreign Relations, “Under every leadership, Ukraine will try to make use of its geographical position and the Russians realised this some time ago. This is why they desperately need a way to circumvent Ukraine.”

Even if Ukraine, too, changes teams and rejects NATO expansion plans, it will still have to thrash out a new role, most likely minus its gas transit commissions. Contender Viktor Yanukovich has signalled he would sign up to an economic cooperation agreement with Russia and smooth over existing political problems like the question of the Russian fleet and possibly the recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Turkey could well follow suit. “If any Western country is going to recognise the independence of Abkhazia, it will be Turkey because of a large Abkhazian diaspora there,” says Rahr.

There is no reason why Ukraine couldn’t join the budding Russian-Turkish alliance, founded on regional stability and peace, unlike the current NATO-led one of confrontation and enmity. This would leave only the mad Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili quixotically fighting his windmills, dictator of a rump state -- the very opposite of his intended role as NATO’s valiant knight leading its march eastward. Even inveterate Turkish foe Armenia seems eager to join the new line-up, as last year’s exchange of ambassadors demonstrated.

Obama is reverting to the George W Bush-era doctrine

http://www.wimp.com/thegovernment/

US policies in practice will always remain complex mixtures of benevolent liberalism, transactional calculation, and strategic realism, with one or more of these facets dominating the others depending on the administration in office....?

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/062908.html

Obama is reverting to the George W Bush-era doctrine

United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates is not new to the field of diplomacy in the South Asian region. The "Gates Mission" in 1990 to defuse a cascading wave of India-Pakistan tensions is the stuff of legends. Historians are still in two minds whether Gates deserves to be credited for having conceivably averted the world's first nuclear war.

In comparison, Gates' mission to New Delhi and Islamabad last week wasn't breathtaking but it stood out as a pivotal moment. He was choreographing the US's global strategy.

Gates charms Indians ...

Delhi faces an existential dilemma: it needs to determine how far it is prepared to go with Uncle Sam down the path into the garden where it has never been before. Gates made it clear the enterprise could be rewarding. He said, "India can be an anchor for regional and global security ... this will be a defining partnership for the 21st century." In the Barack Obama presidency, India has never heard such heady thoughts.

There were three vectors to Gates' visit - Afghanistan, India-Pakistan relations and the US-India security partnership. Gates upheld India's legitimate interests in Afghanistan. He praised the Indian role and in turn received an Indian offer on an enhanced role strictly within the parameters of the overall US/North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) strategy - "frankly, the kind of support and extraordinary support that India is providing in Afghanistan now is really ideal".

India will not complicate the US's diplomacy in Islamabad by seeking any role in the build-up of the Afghan armed forces or police. Beneath that threshold, Delhi will play a role in the "Afghanization" process. Nor is Delhi inclined to raise dust about US plans regarding the "reintegration and reconciliation" of the Taliban. The Indian position was dogmatic but nuances have crept in. This is partly tactical, as it is clear Indian opposition will not stall the process of integrating the Taliban into Afghan political life.
But Washington assured Delhi that the established Afghan government would spearhead the peace process and the United Nations would endorse and promote it. The bottom line for Delhi is that the US should not cut and run from the Hindu Kush. As long as the US remains the supervisor-cum-custodian of the peace process with the Taliban, Delhi feels that a takeover of Afghanistan by Taliban leader Mullah Omar won't be in the cards. Again, the US no longer buys the Pakistani thesis about "Pashtun alienation". Delhi considers that any broad-based government in Kabul that reflects Afghanistan's plural society will be a bulwark against the return to Taliban rule.

In sum, Delhi has opted to hitch its wagon to Washington's strategy. Delhi's choice is limited. Pakistan has done everything possible to keep India out of any regional frameworks, such as Iran-Afghanistan-Pakistan, Turkey-Afghanistan-Pakistan or the Organization of Islamic Conference initiative. Other like-minded countries that abhor religious militancy such as Russia, Uzbekistan and Iran have their own agenda born out of national interests.

... by piling on Pakistan

Delhi's most important consideration is that Washington has at long last accepted the Indian interpretation that the forces of al-CIA-da and the Taliban as well as the Pakistan-based terrorist organizations operating against India are birds of the same feather.... , I.E. all CIA.

What pleases Delhi no end is that Gates underlined it forcefully during the Islamabad leg of his tour. He said:

Al-CIAda, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Haqqani network - this is a syndicate of terrorists that work together. And when one succeeds they all benefit, and they share ideas, they share planning. They don't operationally coordinate their activities, as best as I can tell. But they are in very close contact. They take inspiration from one another, they take ideas from one another....CIA.

Delhi's comfort level with the Obama administration has been rapidly rising since Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to the US last November. Following up on Washington's repeated assurances that it had no intention to "mediate" India-Pakistan differences, Gates went one step further and took note that if there was another terrorist attack on India by Pakistan-based groups, it was entirely conceivable that India might not exercise restraint, as in the past, and may retaliate. "But no country, including the United States, is going to stand idly by if it's being attacked by somebody," he point-blank told a Pakistani interviewer.

Gates also was dismissive of Pakistani criticism regarding US arms sales to India. In essence, Washington has quietly reconfigured its AfPak strategy. Gates repeatedly bracketed Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and the US. Delhi's earlier apprehensions that the US sought a pretext to talk about the Kashmir issue have given way. Whereas Delhi had sought exclusion from the AfPak strategy while Pakistan insisted on India's inclusion, a reversal of roles is happening.

Gates' hidden agenda

Why is the US accommodating India to this extent? Clearly, the US has hardly any non-NATO allies - other than Georgia, perhaps - that endorse its Afghan war effort so enthusiastically as India does. Japan has just rolled back logistic support. Indeed, the Indian role also serves as a pressure point on Pakistan.

However, beyond Pakistan and Afghan-related concerns, Gates went to Delhi with a hefty agenda with regard to military sales and security cooperation with India. He attached strings to the transfer of "dual-use" US technology to India. He linked it to Delhi signing the Logistics Support Agreement and the Communications, Interoperability and Security Memorandum Agreement, which are pending. Gates said the Indian prime minister told him that Delhi needed to be convinced that the agreements brought India substantial advantage.

Gates' message was simple: India must decide quickly whether it is willing to move forward as a fully fledged ally of the US. He underlined the two countries' "common interest in security of the Indian Ocean and security of the global commons, and the global commons meaning the air, sea, space, and if you're talking about the Internet, the ether."

Arguably, China - and the US missile defense system - couldn't have been far from his mind. Though he pro forma said he "didn't talk about China at length" with Indian officials, he added, "There was a discussion about China's military modernization program and what it meant and what the intentions of that military buildup were." Significantly, in the same breath, Gates drew a parallel between the US policy to engage China in a strategic dialogue and the strategic arms talks with the former Soviet Union.

To be sure, China is back with a bang in the US strategic calculus. That was also the thrust of Gates' mission. The Obama administration is reverting to the George W Bush-era doctrine regarding the potentials of an unbound India as a junior partner in the US's geostrategy. By accommodating India's interests in Afghanistan and by expressing support and understanding for India's security concerns vis-a-vis Pakistan, the US is "freeing" India to play a bigger role.

The US is losing ground to China in the Asia-Pacific. What the Americans call Southwest Asia (which includes the Indian Ocean) becomes the US's "Maginot Line". It must be held if the US is to stay embedded in the Asian region at a time when it is showing unmistakable signs of decline. Gates sought to assess what role India could play in the US's tug-of-war with Beijing.

Suspicion of China runs deep in India, as also does resentment over China's perceived "assertiveness". But a parallel normalization track also runs, which the pro-US lobby in Delhi has not been able to derail. No matter what Gates said, Delhi will have no choice but to keep its fingers crossed as to the fate of the US's AfPak strategy; the best-laid plans have gone awry in the tangled Hindu Kush mountains.

As a leading Pakistani editor mildly put it, "The Pakistani military has no cogent reason to change its strategic paradigm." Gates was still in the region when news broke that Obama had suffered a setback in the election in Massachusetts and it may be that the US is dealing from a weak hand.

Contradictions, lies and deceipt of Robert Gates

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/pentagon-confronts-russia-in-the-baltic-sea/

http://criminalstate.com/2009/08/american-intifada-shaking-off-six-decades-of-deceit/

US secretary of defense Robert Gates has come and gone, after making the noises so pet with American officials nowadays about Pakistan. But hadn’t we heard of this American prattle even when they were fighting a proxy war against the Soviet invaders in Afghanistan? Didn’t they declare us even then the frontline state of their war, which we actually had become foolishly, thanks to a military dictator, General Zia ul Haq, who threw this unfortunate nation into that foray to be clobbered and bled just to earn international legitimacy for his own illegitimate usurpation of power? Weren’t we then too charmed by Washington with hymns of strategic partnerships and long-term relationships? Weren’t we then too pledged $4.2 billion in US military and economic aid? What came of all that once the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan? Well, we don’t want to recall that sorrowful history, lest we embitter the sweet taste of Islamabad’s hierarchy, rollicking in such a binge of exultation and celebration as if they have pulled off a feat that no Halaku Khan of this earth could. Otherwise, the way we are being dealt by protagonists of this America’s so-called war on terror befits not a partner or an ally but only an exalted valet. And for the humiliating conditions on which the Kerry-Lugar Law has sanctioned US aid for Pakistan, not even a third-rate leadership would touch it, even if all charity. But let it pass. If our leadership feels so happy about all this, why to spoil its feel-good mood. After all, over the time this wretched nation has swallowed many an ignoble dignity inflicted on it by Americans for its leaderships’ pleasure. This poisoned chalice too it will gulp up for its present leadership to be happy. http://www.examiner.com/x-18425-LA-County-Nonpartisan-Examiner~y2010m2d1-Barack-Obama-in-the-Crosshairs-Is-the-military-threatening-to-kill-Obama-over-US-war-policy Presently, it is secretary Gates’ discourse that we want to talk about. So nice of him to confess after the Soviet withdrawal the United States committed in the region a strategic mistake “driven by some well-intentioned but short-sighted US legislative and policy decisions”. But his confession is a stark understatement. For, as far as Pakistan is concerned, this wasn’t a US strategic mistake, not even a blunder. It was a callous and deliberate betrayal of a US-declared frontline state, which was clamped down with every nuclear-related sanction and every kind of embargo known to the American statute book and also robbed of its hard-earned money it had paid out from its own pocket for the F-16 planes never delivered to it for sanctions. But, then, Gates’ own discourse was full of contradictions. While he harangued Pakistan that Taliban were all chips of the same block and couldn’t be compartmentalized into good and bad guys, his own people in Afghanistan are going by this categorization. What they call moderate Taliban, they admit trying wooing over. Not only are they talking to them. At their behest, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has also unveiled a plan to buy off wavering Taliban with money and jobs. So what he wants Pakistan not to do, his people are themselves doing exactly this in Afghanistan. Isn’t it an outright hypocrisy, and also mean doublespeak and double standards? Then, all fraught is his assertion that no matter wherever al-CIA-da raises its head, the epicenter of this monstrosity is the border land between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which if translated into plain language only means Pakistan’s North Waziristan Agency. This plainly is a misleading and specious statement. The 9/11 was not planned in North Waziristan, not even in Afghanistan. It was planned in the German city of Hamburg and was executed by Saudi, Egyptian and other Arab students, who had studied in Western universities and trained in America’s aviation academies....and CIA for an inside job par excellence.... Even the Nigerian underwear bomber who attempted a foiled blasting of an American airliner may have stayed in Yemen learning Arabic, but he believably got radicalized in London where he was long studying engineering. North Waziristan he had never visited. But such uncomfortable things never torment an American conscience as doesn’t the clarifications Gates touted with a straight about the presence in Pakistan of the thuggish American private security outfit of Blackwater. His clarifications were more a confirmation than a denial. This outfit of mercenary killers may not be on his Pentagon’s or State Department’s payrolls. But it is the CIA which enrolls and pays them. And Blackwater is heavily represented in about 100,000 hired killers CIA has on its payrolls in Afghanistan alone. The number may not be lesser in Pakistan where CIA has had a free run for years. http://www.examiner.com/x-18425-LA-County-Nonpartisan-Examiner~y2010m2d2-Barack-Obama-in-the-Crosshairs-Is-the-military-threatening-to-kill-Obama-over-US-war-policy-2-of-2 But if the Americans have to be duplicitous, cunning and deceivers to us, do our own people have to be so to their own compatriots? For months, interior minister Rehman Malik has been lying to this nation that Blackwater exists not in this country. Even accosting his challengers he has been to prove him wrong and he will resign. Now he must. Gates with his evasive but confirmatory versions has proved him to be a liar and a big cheat deceiving his own people.

USA, Global fatigue and trust deficit

ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE, UPI Editor at Large....

http://www.eurasiagroup.net/pages/top-risks

WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 (UPI) -- The 9.2 magnitude earthquake that triggered the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami claimed some 230,000 lives in 13 countries. But the Port-au-Prince 7.0 quake may exceed that toll in one small country. Haiti's capital will have to be rebuilt from the ground up, like German and Japanese cities after World War II. For a city of 3 million that was designed to handle a mere 50,000, there was little modern infrastructure to begin with. But it will still cost billions.

Fighting two trillion-dollar wars abroad while millions are jobless at home doesn't make much sense to well over half the American people. How many favor something closer to home has not been polled....http://www.newsweek.com/id/231991

There is a growing chorus of geopolitical deep thinkers and intellectuals who favor a strategic retreat from the imperial posture of the Cold War, where we are now fighting terrorist cells on a planetary scale, and a reassessment of priorities. One of the Democratic Party's champion fundraisers, speaking privately, said, "At times I feel that we're exhausted, sitting on the sidewalk, applauding the inevitable as Team China marches by."

We are now saddled with a dysfunctional system of government that raises the key question for the 21st century: Have we allowed ourselves to become ungovernable with a Congress that seems prone to micromanage everything into unworkable policies, courtesy of a system that has moved from no child left behind to no lobbyist left behind.

No fewer than 108 congressional committees and subcommittees claim oversight on the Homeland Security Department, up from 88 in 2004. Countless reports have recommended a single point of congressional contact for DHS. But DHS is still required to produce more than 500 annual reports in addition to more than 6,000 individual requests for information per year. Scores of DHS employees are employed full time catering to Congress. The British, German and French governments would have ground to a halt under a similar deluge of parliamentary requests.

If we're going to be successful in Afghanistan, a long-term commitment of five to 10 years is an essential prerequisite. Pakistan does not believe today's America will sustain such an undertaking, notwithstanding repeated pledges about the long haul commitment from national security adviser James L. Jones, frequent travelers to Pakistan Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen and CENTCOM Commander Gen. David J. Petraeus, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and this week from Defense Secretary Bob Gates.

From his 27 years in the CIA where he is still the only one to rise from level-entry recruit to director, Gates remembers vividly the era of close cooperation with Pakistan when he was deputy director of the CIA. It was that partnership, which included Saudi Intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal, that forced the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan in February 1989 and heralded the downfall of the Soviet empire nine months later. It also led Osama bin Laden to believe that his Arab mujahedin recruits toppled one evil empire and that he had a shot at toppling the remaining one -- imperial America.

Gates disagreed strenuously with the subsequent shabby treatment of our Pakistani ally, including painful economic and military sanctions, as punishment for their secret nuclear weapons program. A whole generation of Pakistani officers was banned from U.S. military facilities and staff colleges. This triggered a long-lasting anti-U.S. culture in the Pakistani military. The trust deficit is still huge. And the lessons of America's defeat in Vietnam 35 years ago lurk just below the surface; it was the U.S. Congress that pulled the plug.

China is only too happy to hold America's coat as it sinks deeper into expensive geopolitical commitments while Chinese leaders win friends and influence people in Asia, Africa, Latin America and a large part of North America (Mexico and Canada). China is also building an ultramodern infrastructure of roads, railroads and airports that is in sharp contrast to America's long-neglected public services, water supplies, power grid, road and rail networks, and air traffic control.

In Afghanistan, a Chinese company is investing $3 billion in Logar province near Kabul to mine 240 million tons of copper ore, worth $88 billion. One must assume they are not worried by the Taliban. The insurgents confide in their Pakistani friends they will need the income when they get back in the saddle. China has 11 nuclear power plants and is planning to add 24. The last U.S. reactor went online in 1997. Only 27 percent of 253 ordered in the 1950s are in operation.

More than 100,000 Chinese students are now studying in the United States. There was a time when most of them would have tried to stay; now they see more exciting horizons in China. Thousands of U.S. schools stopped teaching foreign languages since Sept. 11, 2001, according to a government-funded survey. But there is one significant exception: Chinese. Beijing is sending language instructors abroad and pays for their room and board, presumably also to proselytize for the new superpower.

The electoral cataclysm in Massachusetts, where Democrats lost a seat they held for 47 years, is a major game changer in Congress, but abroad, it's yet another demonstration of fickle unpredictability.

Foreign policymakers see that President Obama's magisterial, turning-a-new-leaf policy for, among other achievements, a Palestinian state in the Middle East was a bridge to nowhere. Israel's Netanyahu put his foot down.

If a Middle East solution continues to elude Obama, as it surely will, what leads him to believe that he can be successful in Afghanistan? Ranking Pakistanis privately say they don't believe he can.

Since October 2009 some 30,000 Pakistani troops have been battling Pakistani Taliban guerrillas in South Waziristan, one of the seven tribal areas along the Afghan border. Heavy snow has now forced a halt in operations. Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani told Gates it would take another six to 12 months to complete. Not good enough for Gates -- and Obama's national security team.

Because that still leaves North Waziristan as a safe haven for Afghan Taliban operating against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. These are the insurgents originally trained by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency to take over Afghanistan in the mid-1990s. Off the record, knowledgeable Pakistanis can see them back in power, posing as moderates, after NATO and U.S. governments tire of fighting an invisible enemy....

PAKISTAN-INDIA PEACE STRATEGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE

Source: South Asia Analysis Group

Web Link: http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers37/paper3617.html

By Dr. Subhash Kapila

Introductory Observations

India is hardly a year removed from the horrendous Pakistan-based and Pakistan Army-facilitated commando style attacks of Mumbai 26/11 which were similar to the Pakistani attacks on the Parliament House in December 2001. India on both occasions under different political dispensations failed to hold Pakistan to account.

India's political leadership, policy establishment and its liberalist glitterati of different hues, in a total disconnect with Indian public’s pronounced opinions went ahead earlier and now advocating once again the resumption of India-Pakistan Composite Peace Dialogue. There are some who have advocated Sub-Composite Peace Dialogue – whatever it means.

Once again, in January 2010, advocacy of resumption of the Composite Peace Dialogue seems to have become the flavor of the season in India. On analysis of the trend, it emerges that there is a concerted and calibrated subtle campaign to prepare Indian public opinion for what the Indian Prime Minister might succumb to due to his his personal inclinations and external pressures for resumption of the Composite Peace Dialogue.

Such an Indian official decision would be in total disconnect with the well-grounded Indian public opinion's suspicions on Pakistan establishment’s sincerity for peace. With the Pakistan establishment not having displayed the minimum modicum for making amends on Mumbai 9/11, India's official decision for resumption of Composite Peace Dialogue would therefore be contextually insensitive to Indian public opinion and rubbing in salt into the wounds of India’s public psyche brought about by Mumbai 26/11.Further, India would not be paying respect to strategic realities which militate against it.

India's politicians need not be reminded of the public contempt which was directed at them, and which was visibly and vocally visible on Indian TV channels following Mumbai 26/11.

Pakistan’s policy postures, Pakistan Army’s compulsive anti-India attitudinal fixations and its continued proxy war do not display any changes for the better justifying a change in Indian public opinion. Pakistan’s adversarial postures and conflictual propensities have sharpened since Mumbai 9/11.

The danger of another Mumbai 9/11 being inflicted by Pakistani elements allied to the Pakistan Army like Al Qaeda and the Lashkar-e Toiba has been pointed out officially by the United States during the visit of US Defense Secretary to New Delhi this week. Obviously the United States has credible intelligence on this count and this public statement indicates that Pakistan Army has not taken any steps to pre-empt such an eventuality.

It is strange therefore that international seminars in New Delhi and Indian prominent political scientists and strategic analysts should be advocating resumption of peace talks with Pakistan which continues to be as intransigent and threatening to India as before.

Peace with Pakistan is desirable and a common aspiration of the people of both India and Pakistan. The emphasis is on “the people of Pakistan”. The Pakistan Army which even today controls Pakistan does not share that sentiment of the Pakistani people.

Sixty three years of India's persistent efforts to engage Pakistan to ensure Pakistan. -India peace have failed time and again, defeated by Pakistan Army’s imperial strategic pretensions.

Pakistan-India peace cannot be achieved by delusionary political and idealistic mindsets of India's political establishment and “Pakistan apologists” within India.

Pakistan- India peace is impossible through the political route of political negotiations, mediation and conflict resolution processes. The Pakistan Army is both blind and deaf to such processes.

Pakistan-India peace is strategically impossible till India recognizes the “strategic realities" that hover over and impede any achievement of realistic and lasting peace with Pakistan.

India needs to recognize that any peace process is not a one-way street. It takes two to make peace and with mutual trust between the two as the predominant force. Regrettably, Pakistan- India mutual trust is nowhere on the horizon.

Relevant to these two propositions this Paper examines the following aspects:

Pakistan’s Strategic Mindsets: Major Impediment
Pakistan’s Ideological Frontier Fixations: A Major Obstacle
Pakistan – India Peace Unachievable Till Pakistan Army Subjugated to Civilian Control
Pakistan – India Peace Realization: The China Factor in Pakistan Polices as an Impediment
Pakistan’s Strategic Mindsets: Major Impediment

Pakistan’s strategic mindsets more modulated and crafted by Pakistan Army’s anti- India strategic fixations seriously impede the processes towards Pakistan- India peace whether internally stimulated in both countries or externally generated.

Some of the major strategic myths that dominate Pakistan Army thinking and distorts its realistic view of the South Asian strategic landscape can be enumerated as follows: (1) Pakistan Army especially now with nuclear weapons arsenal is the “strategic equal” of India (2) The Pakistan Army provides muscle to Pakistan’s foreign policy in relation to “strategic bargaining” with United States and China, playing “balance of power” politics. (3) Pakistan so equipped is in a position to herd South Asia’s smaller nation into similar confrontations with India.

Consequently, the Pakistan Army which determines Pakistan’s foreign policy perceives India not through political prisms but through strategic perspectives. This is more true in relation to Pakistan policy perspectives on India and Afghanistan.

The over-riding passion of the Pakistan Army is therefore the strategic diminution of India and the strategic erosion of India's strategic asymmetry with the rest of South Asia and Pakistan in particular. Galling for the Pakistan Army is that its nuclear weapons arsenal also could not reduce Pakistan’s military asymmetry with India.

Till such time Pakistan continues to view its differences with its neighbors in military terms rather than political perspectives it would be naive for India's ‘Pakistan apologists’ to strive for Pakistan – India peace.

Pakistan’s Ideological Frontier Fixations: A Major Obstacle

Only yesterday, the Pakistan Prime Minister was quoted by the Pakistani media that the Government of Pakistan and the Pakistan Army are committed to protect Pakistan’s “ideological frontiers”.

Has anybody in Pakistan realistically delineated Pakistan’s ideological frontiers and especially, even if there was some political ideology like it, what was its relevance to Pakistan’s continued existence and Pakistan's place in the 21st century?

Pakistan’ s constant references to Pakistan’s ideological frontiers can therefore be read as Pakistan’s continued fixation with Jinnah’s ‘Two Nation Theory’ and the exploitation of the fair name of Islam for political control of Pakistan and further using it as a policy tool in Pakistan Army’s use of proxy was and terrorism against India.

So what is India faced with? India has to contend with the strategic myths of the Pakistan Army with the “religious additive” to reinforce its anti-India strategies.

Are there any “reconcilables” in this framework which India's ‘Pakistan apologists’ can read and which the average Indian is unable to discern?

Pakistan – India Peace Unachievable Till Pakistan Army Subjugated to Civilian Control

The foregoing discussion suggests amply that Pakistan – India peace is unachievable till such time Pakistan Army is subjugated to civilian control of Pakistan’s political leaders. This is a very distant possibility.

Even in the latest US-generated political experiment of civilian democratic government in Pakistan, the Pakistan Army still reigns supreme in terms of Pakistan’s foreign policy towards Afghanistan and India.

President Zardari’s well meaning utterances of reconciliation towards India and that India was not a threat to Pakistan were immediately shot down by the Pakistan Army.

President Zardari’s offer to send ISI Chief to India for assistance in Mumbai 9/11 attacks investigation was overruled by Pakistan Army Chief.

Pakistan Army’s stranglehold on Pakistan’s governance, foreign policy and security policies is complete. Peace with India is not on Pakistan Army's agenda.

So however well-meaning Pakistani peace activists may be, they too should be aware that no peace process would be allowed to proceed further by the Pakistan Army.

Pakistanis should therefore first strive to save Pakistan from the Pakistan Army before they can aspire for peace with India. The Pakistani people have displayed in 2007 and 2009 that they can mobilize themselves in massive numbers to transform Pakistan’s governance. They can mobilize to bring Pakistan Army under firm civil control to ensure peace with their neighbors.

Indian well-wishers of Pakistan aspiring for peace with Pakistan would be well-advised to pend their efforts till such time the Pakistani people bring the Pakistan Army under firm civilian political control.

Pakistan – India Peace Realization: The China Factor in Pakistan Polices as an Impediment

Strategically, even if Pakistan Army is brought under firm civilian control, possibilities exist that China is unlikely to relinquish its strategic hold over Pakistan in its strategic calculus.

China would continue to be an impediment and a complication factor in Pakistan’s approaches towards peace with India for many years to come.

If Pakistan is forced to choose between China and peace with India, Pakistan would always side with China.

China’s strategic imperatives would never dictate that Pakistan – India peace should materialize. This is a strategic reality that India needs to factor in its peace formulations with Pakistan at all levels – official, political and academic.

Concluding Observations

Sixty three years of India's sincere engagements with Pakistan to achieve peace between the two counties stand frustrated by the Pakistan Army as a major impediment in any peace process materialization. India has tried all routes in the last sixty three years to move ahead through political dialogue, Track II diplomacy and back-door high-level interlocutors. No headway till date has been achieved in any of these multiple initiatives.

India's “talking-shops” which champion peace with Pakistan are not being strategically realistic when they advocate peace divorced from contextual strategic realities that dominate Pakistan’s decision-making space.

On date, no indicators exist to suggest that the Pakistan Army has ceded space to Pakistan polity or Pakistani public opinion to embark on a viable peace process with India.

This strategic reality needs to be recognized at all levels in India advocating resumption of Composite Peace Dialogue with Pakistan. India's peace approaches to Pakistan need to be modulated by India's strategic imperatives and not political or idealistic delusions or succumbing to one-way Indian appeasement polices.

(The author is an International Relations and Strategic Affairs analyst. He is the Consultant, Strategic Affairs with South Asia Analysis Group. Email: drsubhashkapila.007@gmail.com)

India targets China's satellites

By Peter J Brown

Source: http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LA22Df01.html

http://www.icnnd.org/reference/reports/ent/contents.html

The goals for India's anti-ballistic missile (ABM) and ballistic missile defense (BMD) programs may be shifting to accommodate an anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon more quickly than previously planned, and this could radically alter the agenda of US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who is currently in the middle of a three-day visit to India.

"Memories in New Delhi run deep about how India's relative tardiness in developing strategic offensive systems [nuclear weapons] redounded in its relegation on 'judgment day' [when the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed in 1968] to the formal category of non-nuclear weapons state," said Sourabh Gupta, senior research associate at Samuels International Associates in Washington, DC.

"With its early support of the former US president George W Bush's ballistic missile defense program and its current drive to

develop anti-ballistic missile/anti-satellite capability, New Delhi is determined not to make the same mistake twice," added Gupta. "If and when globally negotiated restraints are placed on such strategic defensive systems or technologies - perhaps restraints of some sort of ASAT testing/hit-to-kill technologies - India will already have crossed the technical threshold in that regard, and acknowledgement of such status [will be] grand-fathered into any such future agreement."

After watching China's moves since the highly controversial satellite shootdown which China undertook in January 2007, India has now openly declared its desire to match China.

"There is no reason to be surprised. India is anxious to be seen as not lagging behind China - ergo - if China has an ASATprogram, India can do it, too. That's all there is to it." said Uzi Rubin, a defense consultant and former head of Israel's missile defense organization.

China was not specifically mentioned by V K Saraswat, director general of India's Defense Research and DevelopmentOrganization (DRDO), when he announced at the 97th Indian Science Congress earlier this month that India had begun to develop an anti-satellite capability. He declared that India is "working to ensure space security and protect our satellites. At the same time, we are also working on how to deny the enemy access to its space assets."

There is no doubt as to the identity of the "enemy" in question.

"The Indians are engaged in a major active missile defenseprogram which, because of the technological affinity betweenmissile defense and ASAT, could eventually grow up to the latter," said Rubin. "India, like all countries with their own space assets, is aware that ASAT is a double-edged sword and that if they embark on a program, they will legitimize the Chinese programand endanger their own national satellites."

As for Saraswat's statement - "India is putting together building blocks of technology that could be used to neutralize enemysatellites" - Rubin almost downplays it entirely.

"His is quite a tepid statement, I wouldn't make much of it," said Rubin.

On the other hand, Subrata Ghoshroy, research associate in the Working Group in the Science, Technology, and Global SecurityProgram at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has met senior former India Space Research Organization (ISRO) officials who were eager to let it be known that India has the capacity to respond.

"There are growing ties between ISRO and the Indian Ministry of Defense and the two are beginning to feed off each other," said Ghoshroy.

What Saraswat did was, in effect, to inject a powerful destabilizing element into the South Asian strategic equation at a time when the US is determined to do everything in its power to bolster regional stability.

When US Defense Secretary Robert Gates planned his trip to India this week, the last thing Gates probably expected to contend with was the possibility that New Delhi might be accelerating its timetable for the development of an ASAT weapon. Writing in the Times of India in advance of his visit, Gates made no mention whatsoever of space, anti-missile activities or ASAT weapons in particular, although there are certainly space-related items on the agenda.

What Gates avoided entirely was any mention of the US acting as a solid partner and supporter of India's ASAT program. While that might well be the case, it could be argued that in the interest of regional stability, the US might at least be rethinking how it will proceed in these matters in light of mounting concerns over the situation in Pakistan where China obviously enjoys significant leverage.

China's decision this month to proceed with a well-publicized test of its midcourse missile interceptor technology - just a few days after Pradeep Kumar, India's Defense Secretary, departed from Beijing - certainly has sent a strong message, while doing the US a favor in terms of providing the US with a timely excuse for allowing India to go ahead with its plans.

However, the US cannot have it both ways in the end. Courting India as a favored client for major arms purchases one moment, and as a strategic hedge against China, and then trying to promote regional stability the next moment is not a very coherent way to make meaningful progress in South Asia. The dilemma for the US is considerable.

Saraswat was quite careful in his choice of words, and went out of his way this time to assure any interested parties, including Gates, that no actual ASAT tests were now planned by India.

Saraswat has good reason to be very careful about his choice of words. A day after the US Navy cruiser USS Lake Erie shot down an errant US spy satellite in February 2008, for example, former Indian president APJ Abdul Kalam - one of the key players in India's nuclear and missile programs - told reporters at a DRDO-sponsored International Conference on Avionics Systems in Hyderabad that India has, "the ability to intercept and destroy any spatial object or debris in a radius of 200 kilometers. We will definitely do that if it endangers Indian territory".

Saraswat, on the other hand, was less specific at the time. And while seeming to agree with Kalam's statement, he did not do so with absolute certainty.

"It is just a matter of time before we could place the necessary wherewithal to meet such requirements," Saraswat said. "We can predict and can always tackle such challenges."

India's position at the time of the China's ASAT test in January 2007 is hard to ignore. Pranab Mukherjee, India's external affairs minister, appealed for a more reasoned and less destabilizing approach by all nations as their military activities in space intensified.

"The security and safety of assets in outer space is of crucial importance," said Mukherjee. "We call upon all states to redouble efforts to strengthen the international legal regime for peaceful uses of outer space. Recent developments show that we are treading a thin line between current defense-related uses of space and its actual weaponization."

The same theme surfaced in a speech last year about the Indo-US Civil Nuclear Agreement given by Shyam Saran, special envoy to the prime minister on climate change, at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC last March, when Saran briefly mentioned ASAT weapons.

"India is one of a handful of countries with significant space capabilities. We have a large number of communications and resource survey satellites currently in orbit. Although this does not fall strictly within the nuclear domain, the need to ensure the peaceful uses of outer space, is important for nuclear stability and international security," said Saran.

"We welcome [US President Barack Obama's] intention to join multilateral efforts to prevent military conflict in space and to negotiate an agreement to prohibit the testing of anti-satellite weapons. This is an area of convergence on which we would be happy to work together with the US and contribute to a multilateralagreement."

In early 2010, India's objectives are very clear.

"From a political/diplomatic angle, the guiding principle of India'smissile defense/ASAT policy is not much different from China's - ie, maintain a basic political commitment to the non-weaponization of space, or, at minimum, the non-deployment of space-based offensive capabilities in global disarmament talks while assiduously cultivating the domestic technical capability to use space-based resources for strategic missile defensepurposes," said Gupta.

At this point, nobody believes that some sort of magic firewall separates ongoing work on ABM and ASAT systems in a growing number of countries around the world.

"As for the linkage between BMD and ASAT, the linkage is very obvious - many Low Earth Orbit satellites orbit no higher than the ceiling of large BMD interceptors (like the US-built SM3, which was used by the US to shoot down a satellite in February, 2008) which are designed to take out very fast targets with km/sec closing speeds. Some modifications are necessary of course to take into account the greater closing speeds, but nothing drastic," said Rubin.

Saraswat knew this all too well back in 2008 when he admitted that India's efforts to deploy a missile defense system had been given a substantial boost by radar technology for tracking and fire control which the DRDO developed jointly with Israel and France. (See China can't stop India's missile system, Asia Times Online, Jan 16, 2009.)

"Israel is playing a major role in the ABM program. One can read from the open literature that they are helping India upgrade the Green Pine radar to act as the so-called Long-Range Tracking Radar (LRTR) that India has deployed and used during its ABM system tests," said Ghoshroy. "The Israelis are also reportedly providing UAV-type [unmanned aerial vehicles] platforms for forward-deployment of radars. I would not be surprised if BMC3 [battle management, command, control, and communications] expertise for the ABM system is also shared with India."

Rubin disagrees with this assessment.

"As for the question of an Israeli-Indian link in missile defense, I'm not aware of such a link since the US banned the sale of [the] Arrow [missile interceptor]," said Rubin. "If the US lifts the ban then [US defense contractors] Lockheed Martin and Raytheon will see to it that Israel is squeezed out. Anyway, the Indians have embarked on their own program."

According to Gupta, Israel's primary role is two-fold: sale of off-the-shelf defensive platforms at the present time to cover gaps in India's defense preparedness, such as the "Phalcon" phased array radar system slowly giving way to joint research and development projects in the future, such as the short-range naval anti-missile system.

"Other point radar and anti-missile defenses currently in the pipeline include aerostat (blimp/balloon-based) radars to provide coverage in sparse border areas as well as a medium-range anti-aircraft system,' said Gupta. "India's government sector defense research and development unit has a particularly poor track record in developing air-defense systems. Given Israel's immense defense-industrial sophistication in radars and avionics, the relationship between the two parties is likely to remain more in the supplier-purchaser mode rather than the joint collaborator mode."

For India, Israel is all about access to cutting-edge platforms and technologies without the unpleasant compromises to India's much cherished strategic autonomy that similar systems from the US entail.

"Though Israel with US co-development assistance has made immense strides in its strategic anti-missile capabilities, the Israeli-Indian anti-missile defense conversation has mostly concentrated on plugging gaps in the area of point defenses. Theater and strategic defenses particularly have been a lesser focus," said Gupta. "Also, the conversation has mostly been a bilateral one, and not a [trilateral] one, except [when] US technologies are embedded within Israeli systems."

More than anything else, the US is trying to open doors, not close them, as far as defense sales to India are concerned. However, India has enjoyed a long-term and relatively stable relationship with the Russians, and while that relationship has been a bit rocky of late, India may see the Russians as more reliable - and perhaps more affordable - than others standing in line.

"The Russians will come in much cheaper than the US and possibly, also the Israeli systems. For example, the Russian ABM system S-300-PMU2 is much less expensive and better performing than the US's PAC-3 or THAAD systems," said Ghoshroy.

According to Gupta, while India is increasingly open to distributing its near-term procurement needs according to the quality of the bids, India remains reticent to the extreme in broadening its procurement of strategically salient items beyond its trusted Russian sales partner.

"This calculation will change only slowly even as US defense suppliers slowly build up a relationship of trust starting with sales of platforms and moving gradually perhaps thereafter towards co-licensing/development with its Indian private defense sector partners," said Gupta.

What India really wants is for its ASAT-related technology to evolve quite quickly because India senses that China's lead is steadily increasing.

"India's anti-missile system is still embryonic. They do not yet have an infrared sensor that will be absolutely necessary for tracking and final homing," said Ghoshroy. "The Chinese obviously got that technology since they were able to track and hit their satellite."
On a side not about India...:
The United States, still by far the strongest military, economic, technological and cultural power, has begun to face the reality of limitations of military power and that the taller the rhetoric, the harder the fall. There is a realization and sotto voce admission among America’s leaders that they can no longer act unilaterally. China, possibly acting under premature hubris, seeks space for itself while the US finds it is unable to have the kind of free run it had earlier. It is this assessment that may have led to Zbigniew Brzezinski’s formulation of the Group of Two (China and US) as global arbiters. US President Barack Obama had leant backwards while in Beijing when he accommodated China in South Asia. Taking a cue from this, influential US thinktanks have now suggested that for US policies to succeed in Afghanistan, it is essential to solve the India-Pakistan tangle of Kashmir and for that it is necessary to involve China in a tripartite arrangement.

A significant power shift is likely to take place in Asia in the next few years. Whether or not India can make the triangle of US-Russia-China from Lisbon to Vladivostok into a rectangle that includes India will depend on India as much as the other players. There is a great churning of the oceans that has begun in Asia with the rise of China, the emergence of India and reawakening in Japan. The next few years will see continued struggle and competition for markets and vital resources that will shape military policies of nations and choke points will remain unstable.

The Indian Ocean has been an attraction for most empires in the past and the Czarist thrust for warm waters, or the later Soviet thrust into Afghanistan reflected this. Today the Indian Ocean acquires another strategic importance as it provides vital sea lanes to China and the rest of East Asia. China, despite the vastness of the Pacific, feels landlocked without control over the Indian Ocean. Its deep pockets have helped it acquire vital energy sources and routes that take gas through the Central Asian land mass into China, but the vast majority of energy-producing countries — Russia and West Asia — still look to the West as their main buyers. India ranks a poor third in this race.

Our own neighborhood is likely to remain unstable and Afghanistan will not get sorted out in the foreseeable future, much less by mid-2011. It is not known how many and for how long will the Western forces remain in Afghanistan. Talks with elements of the Taliban have begun at some level. Pakistan’s quest for "strategic depth" — which at best means control over the Pushtun on both sides of the Durand Line — will keep the region unsettled and increasingly Talibanised. Consequently, Pakistan will, in the next few years, become increasingly irrational in its attitude, and flail before it threatens to fail.

Handling our new-found relationship with the United States and our old friendship with Russia is going to be a challenge and an opportunity. We must accept that the US, whatever its level of desire of friendship with India, will overlook Pakistan’s India-specific delinquencies and will not even remotely jeopardize its own interests in and with China. In fact, on Pakistan, there seems to be a strong level of understanding between the two even though this may become the next battleground between both of them in the unfolding Great Game. The US has concluded that the only points of departure between the US and India are on trade, climate change and Iran. They do not think that India’s sensitivities on Pakistan’s continued support to terrorism in India and the US continuously soft-pedaling this is a serious point of departure. Behind all the conviviality and bonhomie with the US, there lurk suspicions about the various defense-related acronyms like CISMOA (Communications Interoperability Security Memorandum of Agreement), EUMA (End-Use Monitoring Agreement), Logistical Services Agreement (LSA) and Basic Exchange Cooperation Agreement (BECA), and their small print.

Pakistan is unlikely to give up its policy of using terrorism as a force multiplier as long as its leadership does not have to pay a price for this. The tactics of terrorism will become more complicated where attacks will be planned in one country, financed from another, terrorists recruited elsewhere in another country and targeted somewhere else; they will be more sophisticated and lethal in the next few years; cyber-terror by terrorists and cyberwarfare by states will be more common. There are many players in the field today — the fanatics, criminals, drug traffickers and human traffickers — which complicates even further the task of intelligence agencies.

Other global and regional issues will impact India’s security. Issues like climate change, terrorism, energy security, water shortages, food security, migration, and some purely our own — our abysmal law and order, leading to insurgencies in many cases, health, education and infrastructure issues — will ultimately create security problems. Rapid economic growth will create socio-economic pressures arising from exploding expectations and demographic pressures on urban areas.

In a tangled and shrinking world, where various — and at times — contradictory interests coalesce, with different triangular or quadrilateral groupings overlapping, the new NSA will have to have the nimbleness of a Mizo Cheraw dancer, but one is sure he is surefooted enough for these intricacies. It will be useful to remember that the job is about advising the Prime Minister on national security in its widest connotation, which includes internal as well as external security matters. The NSA’s job requirement should not include running the security and intelligence apparatus. The NSA is the ultimate consumer of intelligence, not its producer. If the NSA inadvertently becomes the man responsible for the product, then he ends up being its salesman, however shoddy the product. Instead, he should be looking for the finished product and customizing his requirements.

US Deputy Defense Secretary Lynn lists aerospace, cyber-age challenges

SOURCE: http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123186689

1/21/2010 - WASHINGTON (AFNS) -- Current and potential U.S. adversaries seek to employ asymmetrical weapons, such as improvised explosive devices and cyber warfare, as a means to confront U.S. military superiority in conventional conflict, Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III said here Jan. 21.

"Our dominance in conventional warfare has led adversaries to seek new avenues to challenge us," Mr. Lynn told military and civilian attendees at the 38th Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis-Fletcher Conference on National Security Strategy and Policy.

The nature of armed conflict, Mr. Lynn said, has changed since the Cold War era, when military doctrine was developed to deal with an envisioned clash of massed conventional air and land forces on European battlefields.

Today, insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq employ low-tech improvised explosive devices "that penetrate even the most heavily defended armor," he said, while terrorists and rogue nations seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

However, the U.S. military is employing new methods and technology to meet asymmetrical challenges, he said, pointing to the increased use of unmanned aircraft in those theaters of operation.

For example, UAs fitted with cameras can identify and track insurgent activities, such as the placing of roadside bombs. And, UAs also can employ missiles to attack the enemy, while space-based satellites provide added intelligence information.

"Because of a significant investment in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (capabilities), commanders receive actionable intelligence in minutes rather than in hours," Mr. Lynn said. "Unmanned aircraft now combine surveillance with attack abilities."

The rapid development and fielding of unmanned aerial systems to combat zones, he said, exemplifies "one of many shifts we have taken across the department to focus our resources on the wars we are fighting and the new threats that we face."

Yet, Mr. Lynn said, the U.S. military also must be prepared to confront a potential enemy that fights a conventional conflict, as well as adversaries who may choose to wage both asymmetrical and conventional war.

In view of the changing nature of warfare, Mr. Lynn offered four overriding space and aerospace imperatives the U.S. military must follow in the early 21st century:

-- Continue redirecting resources to defeat unconventional threats, while retaining the ability to fight conventional wars.

-- Maintain U.S. military air superiority by investing in new-generation tactical aircraft such as the F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighter.

-- Develop a next-generation, long-range strike capability.

-- Ensure access to space and use of U.S. space-based assets.

"Space, much like cyber-space, is no longer a domain left uncontested by potential adversaries," Mr. Lynn said. "So, to protect our technological advantage in space-based platforms, we must reduce their vulnerability to attack and to disruption."

Additionally, Mr. Lynn said, the cyber-warfare threat is a major national security issue that has captured his attention.

"If we don't maintain our capabilities to defend our networks in the face of an attack," he said, "the consequences for our military -- and indeed, for our whole national security -- could be dire."

Mr. Lynn cited a 1998 cyber attack launched by two California teenagers and an overseas accomplice who targeted U.S. military computer networks.

"The attacks were coordinated and aimed at crucial military (computer) systems," Mr. Lynn said. "The threat was so serious that the president was briefed."

Investigators, he said, traced the origins of the attack and the instigators were apprehended and tried on charges of computer assault.

Yet, that 1998 computer attack "was child's play," Mr. Lynn said, noting the frequency and sophistication of attacks have increased exponentially during the past decade.

"Cyber (warfare) is an especially asymmetric technology; the low cost of computing devices means that our adversaries don't have to build an expensive weapons system like a fifth-generation fighter to pose a disproportional threat," Mr. Lynn explained.

Consequently, he said, many militaries are building offensive cyber capabilities.

The Defense Department today operates 15,000 computer networks across 4,000 military installations in 88 countries, Mr. Lynn said, noting the department spends billions of dollars each year to administer, monitor and defend those networks.

Because of the seriousness of the cyber threat, he said, the Defense Department has over the past 10 years built layered and robust cyber defenses.

And, in June 2009, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates directed the establishment of U.S. Cyber Command, a military sub-command focused on cyber security, Mr. Lynn noted. Cyber Command is in the process of being stood up and is to be based at Fort Meade, Md.

"Cyber Command will bring together more than a half a dozen intelligence and military organizations in support of three overlapping categories of cyber operations," he said.

The command, he said, will protect defense computer networks, coordinate all defense computer operations and provide full-spectrum support for all military and counterterrorism missions, and stand by to support civil authorities and industry partners on an as-needed basis.

"Combining offensive and defensive capabilities under a single roof and bringing those together with the intelligence we need to anticipate attacks will make our cyber operations more effective," Mr. Lynn said.

Partnership between Turkey, Russia...

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

DÖNDÜ SARIIŞIK

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

Turkey and Russia are getting closer and strengthening economic ties. It is not a 'strategic partnership' but a result of 'common interests,' Ambassador Vladimir Ivanovskiy outlines.

Ambassador Vladimir Ivanovskiy

Although Turkey and Russia are fostering closer relations and economic ties, the developments are not due to a “strategic partnership” but “common interests,” according to Russian Ambassador Vladimir Ivanovskiy.

The term “strategic partnership” has been echoed in diplomatic circles, especially after U.S. President Barack Obama’s use of the term during a visit to Ankara last year. The United States has traditionally considered Turkey a vital ally in maintaining its influence in a region where rival Russia is strongest.

“It was part of the Cold War era,” said Ivanovskiy, speaking about the changing balance during a Tuesday interview with the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review.

“Looking at the real interests that are common in the Black Sea, Middle East and Central Asia, Turkey and Russia are becoming good partners, especially in the field of energy,” the ambassador said.

“There is no political motivation behind boosting energy cooperation but bilateral economic interests,” he added. “I don’t like the term ‘strategic partnership.’”

Russia feels no jealousy toward the U.S.-Turkey strategic partnership, said Ivanovskiy, adding: “Moscow and Ankara have been tailoring their own cooperation. I believe Russia and Turkey will be two key economic actors on the global stage as strong partners.”

Retired ambassador Murat Bilhan, the deputy head of the Turkish-Asian Center for Strategic Studies, or TASAM, also believes cooperation does not mean a strategic partnership.

“Though bilateral relations have been boosted, Russia has a fixed policy when it comes to Yerevan, which is Moscow’s closest ally in the southern Caucasus. It does not want to lose it and that’s what lies behind the pro-Armenia remarks,” Bilhan told the Daily News.

Returning from Moscow last week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan claimed his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, had agreed on the urgent need for a solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute. According to Erdoğan, Armenia should withdraw from the seven occupied Azerbaijani provinces in a show of sincerity.

Putin, however, had earlier said, “It is unwise from both a tactical and a strategic point of view to package these problems together,” directly contradicting Erdoğan.

Many analysts find Erdoğan too optimistic about any emerging strategic partnership and believe existing frozen conflicts serve Russia’s interests in the Caspian energy fields.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also urged Turkey to expedite the ratification of the normalization protocols during his visit to Yerevan. “To try and artificially link those two issues is not correct,” he told reporters Jan. 14.

“We have been playing honestly since the beginning. What Lavrov said in Yerevan is the same as what Putin and Medvedev told Erdoğan in Moscow,” Ivanovskiy said.

Russia will not put pressure on Armenia to withdraw from the occupied territories, the ambassador added. “As the Turkish side already knows, we will not take part at the side of any party. We will not put pressure on anybody in order to solve the problem,” he said. “Such pressure may result negatively.”

According to the ambassador, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Obama have expressed similar views as well. The Minsk Group co-chaired by Russia, the U.S. and France has, however, thus far failed to find a solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute.

Diplomatic sources said Moscow agrees on Ankara’s policy, but cannot officially affirm it due to its position in the region. “Did you ever think why the Minsk Group has recently intensified its efforts? No disappointment exists on our side,” a source told the Daily News.

Foreign ministers Ahmet Davutoğlu and Lavrov held a phone conversation Jan. 15.

“We have progressed considerably. A total solution to all frozen conflicts in the southern Caucasus will be a relief for everyone. Putting pressure on Turkey to ratify the normalization protocols before a specific deadline will not pave the way for a solution, but will bypass a permanent settlement,” Davutoğlu warned Lavrov, according to a source close to the issue.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian President Serge Sarkisyan will meet in Moscow next month as part of the Minsk peace process.

NATO's New Strategy: from Balkan Wars to Energy Wars

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation, Russia

16.01.2010

Pyotr ISKENDEROV

The implementation of the new NATO strategy, unveiled for internal debates by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in September, 2009, seems to have begun prior to its official approval. As in the 1990ies – the epoch marked with the demise of Yugoslavia – the novel scenario is being put to test at the Balkans, namely in Serbia's breakaway Kosovo province. In terms of the outward signs, the scenario amounts to a radical reduction of the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping contingent in the province. The actual objective behind the plan, though, is to concentrate the forces remaining in Kosovo to confront the Serbs who are now openly regarded as the main enemy, as well as to shift the forces to be withdrawn from the province to other zones of strategic interest. Decisions on the latter will be made by the US President unilaterally. While officially it is Afghanistan that features at the top of the the US military agenda, the list of such zones is expanded to include the new fronts of “energy wars”.

The Commander of the south wing of the Alliance Admiral Mark Fitzgerald, who paid a visit to Pristina recently, told that KFOR was at the final stage of radical downsizing – from 15,000 servicemen in the recent past to 10,000 by the end of this January. Brussels said the step was made possible by the stabilization in Kosovo and indicated that it regarded the Serbian parallel self-government institutions functioning in the predominantly Serbian northern part of the province as a threat. “UN SC Resolution 1244 doesn’t recognize parallel institutions. We regard every violation of the UN Resolution as a security threat and we are therefore concerned”, said Fitzgerald.

It is an open secret that the confrontation between Kosovo's Albanian and Serbian populations undermines the fragile peace in Kosovo as well as in a number of other Balkan regions. By April Pristina plans to set up a Northern Mitrovica municipality, which is an Albanian euphemism for the Serb-populated northern part of Kosovska Mitrovica. To this end, the Albanian administration subjected the borders of the Serbian communities to an overhaul without the Serbs' consent. There is information that the new institution is supposed to take charge in case Albanian extremists provoke a new round of conflicts between the Albanian and Serbian communities. In other words, the municipality will play a role similar to that the administration in Georgia gave to the puppet administration of D. Sanakoev in South Ossetia. By the way, the UN Court of International Justice is expected to pass its verdict on Kosovo also by April. Albanian separatists are convinced that the court will rule in their favor and thus enable them to suppress the Serbian resistance, of course with the help of NATO's KFOR.

The threat of a new escalation in the north of Kosovo is absolutely real, but it would be unfair to blame it on the Serbian parallel administrations. Fitzgerald's references to Resolution 1244 are in fact equally unfair - the Washington-backed unilateral declaration of Kosovo independence by Pristina constituted a clear breach of this very Resolution.

There is logic behind the developments: in Kosovo NATO is beginning to switch to a new approach to safeguarding its interests. As a departure from the strategy of abstract presence in conflict zones, it intends to a priori decide unequivocally which of the sides in a conflict (in which NATO steps in as a separating force in accord with an international mandate) is its enemy and focus on confronting it. It has already been declared that Serbs are NATO's enemies in Kosovo, as are Bosnian Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In Macedonia, the country's administration risks becoming NATO's enemy in case it dares to curb the surging appetites of the local Albanian community. The “point strategy” will help NATO spend less resources on sustaining control over the zones where the Brussels-style “order” has already been established and shift additional forces elsewhere.

Discussions in NATO Headquarters in Brussels provide further evidence that what looms on the horizon is a whole new strategy for the alliance. By the way, the group of 12 experts elaborating NATO's new Strategic Concept is headed by Former US Secretary of State M. Albright, a supporter of Albanian extremists who has been instrumental in inducing the demise o Yugoslavia. It has become known that the discussions far transcend the theme of the NATO members' own security which was at the center of the 1949 Atlantic Charter. Currently their focus is on the design of political and military methods of globally enforcing NATO interests, which are interpreted in a maximally broad sense. NATO documents invoke the task of maintaining efficient military potential across the entire spectrum of the alliance's missions without any geographic localization. Considering that the sphere of NATO's missions has already reached Afghanistan, there should be no doubts concerning the proportions of NATO's further “crisis management”.

Jamie Shea, who served as the NATO envoy at the time of the alliance's aggression against Yugoslavia, is to deliver a lecture on January 19 at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels indicatively titled “Energy security: is this a challenge for the markets or for the strategic community as well?”. The speaker intends to state from the name of NATO – for the first time with unprecedented clarity – that the growing might of such countries as China, India, and Russia compels NATO to face the question: “Is energy security something best left to market forces and to regulation or is it a strategic issue where an organisation like NATO can play a useful role?”. To take the role, NATO needs to suppress the remaining sources of resistance to the new world order in Kosovo and other Balkan regions.