This Drone Notion Is Starting to Get Serious

It was only two days ago that Battleland posted a photo of the Navy’s X-47B Unmanned Combat Aircraft System demonstrator “landing” gently on the flight deck of the USS Harry S Truman – with help from a crane.

Meanwhile, back on land, this video of a second Northrop Grumman aircraft shows its first-ever catapult launch Thursday at the Navy test center at Pax River, Md. That’s a steam-powered kick-in-the-pants to power a warplane off a relatively short carrier deck.

It’s something drones will have to do if they’re ever to play a key role in naval aviation (the new Ford class of carriers is planning to use electromagnetic power instead of steam to deliver the kick).

Unlike most earlier drones, with their piddling engines and propellers, the jet-powered X-47B looks – and sounds, thanks to its Pratt & Whitney F-16 engine – like a real warplane. More

 

 

 

For the First Time, Obama Official Sketches Out End to War on Terror

Neither the George W. Bush nor Barack Obama White House ever laid out a vision for what an end to the war on terrorism would actually look like. But as Obama prepares for his second term in office, one of his top defense officials is arguing that there is an end in sight, and laying out conditions for when the U.S. will reach it.

Jeh Johnson

“On the present course, there will come a tipping point,” Jeh Johnson, the Pentagon’s top lawyer, told the Oxford Union in the U.K. on Friday, “a tipping point at which so many of the leaders and operatives of al-Qaida and its affiliates have been killed or captured, and the group is no longer able to attempt or launch a strategic attack against the United States, such that al-Qaida as we know it, the organization that our Congress authorized the military to pursue in 2001, has been effectively destroyed.” At that point, “our efforts should no longer be considered an armed conflict.”

Johnson’s description of the endgame raises more questions than answers. But under his formulation, the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), which the Obama administration has cited as the foundation of its wartime powers, would expire. That would mean any detainee at Guantanamo Bay who hasn’t been charged with a crime would be free to go, although Johnson says that wouldn’t necessarily happen immediately. It would also raise questions about whether the U.S. would possess residual legal authorities for its lethal drone program — which Johnson defended to the BBC on Thursday — including the legal basis for any “postwar” drone strike the CIA might perform.

In Johnson’s view, once al-Qaida’s ability to launch a strategic attack is gone, so too is the war. What will remain is a “counterterrorism effort” against the “individuals who are the scattered remnants” of the organization or even unaffiliated terrorists. “The law enforcement and intelligence resources of our government are principally responsible” for dealing with them, Johnson said, according to the text of his speech, with “military assets in reserve” for an imminent threat.

Johnson, considered one of the more liberal voices on Obama’s senior national security team, notably did not say when the U.S. will reach his tipping point. And his vague argument is more likely to provoke debate than settle any legal or strategic questions about the war. But it comes at an auspicious time: just before Obama’s second term, when there are visible stirrings in Congress to finally close Guantanamo Bay and accelerate an end to the Afghanistan war. Johnson, according to Foreign Policy’s Kevin Baron, is also under consideration to become attorney general, a post from which he’d have greater influence to conclude the war. It’s also notable that Johnson’s current boss, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, recently backed away from his earlier rhetoric that the war is abating and heralded its spread to new battlefields in Africa.

Johnson’s not a commander. He’s the Pentagon’s general counsel, meaning his most direct involvement in the war on terrorism surrounds the military’s ability to detain suspected terrorists during the conflict. In his view, once the conflict ends, Guantanamo Bays doors have to swing open. Just maybe not immediately.

“In general, the military’s authority to detain ends with the ‘cessation of active hostilities’,” Johnson said. But he pointedly noted that both the U.S. and U.K. governments “delayed the release of some Nazi German prisoners of war” after World War II ended. Still, that would mean the vast majority of Guantanamo’s 166 detainees, those who haven’t been charged with any crime, would be ultimately free to go — a position almost guaranteed to spark controversy.

Murkier still is what it would mean for intelligence and law enforcement to target the “scattered remnants” of al-Qaida. Most significantly, once the AUMF expires, big questions would immediately arise about the legal framework for the apparatus of drone strikes and commando raids that President Obama hasexpanded and institutionalized for the long haul. The CIA in particular is a question mark: since the legal rationale for its drone program has never been disclosed, its dependency on the AUMF or its typical “Title 50″ authorities is unclear. More

 

Pakistan's struggle for LNG

The marginal increase in the GDP between 2009-2010 was not due to any real increase in economic activity rather it reflected the impact of substantial increases in the international price of Pakistan’s largest export item, textiles. Otherwise the impact of the economic crisis is clear and economic growth may continue to nose dive and may not stabilize unless a lasting solution to the energy crisis is found for the country’s 180 million residents.

Apart from its impact upon Pakistan’s economy, the energy crisis has destabilized the routine of every day life for the vast majority of Pakistanis. It affects their behavior and psychology due to their inability to carry out essential daily activities ranging from cooking to commuting to work.

This situation cannot be left unattended. Fuel availability must be expedited, particularly natural gas, in order to arrest the free fall of Pakistan’s economy and to bring solace to its people. The indigenous production of natural gas cannot be increased overnight and the teetering economy coupled with an unstable regional geopolitical situation does not bode well for the success of cross border gas pipelines. Therefore, Pakistan must go for imports of LNG and on a fast track. If Pakistan is unable to bring LNG into the country over the next 3 to 4 years, the whole economic structure built around the natural gas industry will fall into ruins.

Today’s unenviable situation was not created overnight rather it is the cumulative effect of inconsistent and inept energy policies pursued for decades. Successive governments kept on discarding the policies of their predecessors on the basis of political expediency. On this account numerous promising projects have been shelved without looking into their merits. Two examples may suffice to help understand the impact that political rivalries have had on the economic development of the country. The government of the Pakistan (GoP) Muslim League led by Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif initiated the privatization of public sector companies including gas and electricity utilities in the early 1990s which was halted by the succeeding government of Benazir Bhutto’s led Pakistan People Party.

One of the surprising initiatives taken by the Bhutto government was the introduction of Independent Power Producers (IPPs) in 1993 to overcome electricity shortages. This was surprising because the Buhtto government was largely skeptical of the role of the private sector yet she recognized the need for IPPs to fill Pakistan's electricity gap. Though the projects could not be thrown out unilaterally by the succeeding government of Nawaz Sharif due to internationally binding contracts he left no stone untouched to scare off future investors by making life difficult for the IPPs. They were dragged in the courts on the allegation that these power generation projects were unduly favorable to IPPs due to the corruption and favoritism of the outgoing government. (Of note is the fact that the GoP did not have sufficient evidence to prove corruption in the project agreements.)

One of the main reasons behind today’s electricity crisis in Pakistan is the then hounding of the IPPs. Every martial law regime has brought its own economic vision of the country totally discarding the policies of the toppled civilian regimes. Throughout the 65 year history of Pakistan there have been military takeovers of the government four times in total. One of the common allegations against the toppled civilian government in each of the military takeovers has been the pursuit of failed and rather dangerous economic policies. Thus the first step of every martial law regime has been to discard all of the economic policies of the previous government and to introduce its own economic cycle afresh.

There has been no clear direction for increasing resource availability, and the efficient utilization of available resources. Myopic vision has kept policy makers blind of the creeping gap between the country’s energy supply and demand profile. Pakistan’s energy supply mix remains dominated by oil and gas with little contributions from hydroelectricity, coal, and nuclear energy while alternate fuel sources like wind, bio-gas and solar energy are glaringly absent. The composition of Pakistan’s primary energy supply for 2010-11 is given in Table 2 below. More

 

Salafist Movements Threaten World Cultural Heritage By: Hedieh Mirahmadi

The face of radical Islamism has rocked headlines in recent months, demonstrating to the world the threat it poses to Islam’s own cultural heritage.

Many were shocked when spiritual leader Said Efandi al-Chirkawi was killed in a suicide bombing in the tiny Russian Republic of Dagestan by a woman pretending to be one of his students. Nearly 100,000 mourners attended the funeral of the revered cleric, who had been working to bring peace between warring Islamic factions. This was the second such spiritual leader in this remote region to have been killed by radical Islamists in the past year alone.

Elsewhere, in Libya, Mali, Pakistan and Egypt, attacks are also on the rise. Militants around the world are leading a two-pronged assault by targeting outspoken Muslim leaders who denounce violence and by destroying ancient shrines and cultural sites that are respected by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. In recent years, the Taliban’s systematic assassination of moderate Afghan clerics, and their destruction of the sixth-century Buddha statues in 2001, are classic examples of how radical Islamists use terror tactics to solidify their power. This blatant disregard for diverse faith and cultural traditions has grave implications for global security.

When pluralistic social norms are eliminated, it paves the way for hardline forces to rise. Nowhere is this trend more apparent than across Africa, where militants are fueling sectarian and community conflict. Earlier this year in Mali, Islamists of the Ansar Dine organization initiated a campaign to systematically obliterate cultural sites in Timbuktu, including 16 mausoleums of ancient Muslim saints. Many of those cultural sites had recently been put on a list of endangered World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. In late August 2012, armed Salafis in Libya attacked the tomb of Abdel Salam al-Asmar, a 15th-century Muslim scholar who was highly regarded by locals. Nearby in the city, militants also set fire to a historic library, burning centuries of rare academic and religious resources to the ground.

These crimes of intolerance extend to non-Muslim monuments, traditions and places of burial. In March 2012, the Somali terrorist organization al Shabaab desecrated a Christian cross and grave in a cemetery. That same month, former Libyan rebels in Benghazi smashed the headstones and crucifixes of more than 150 British servicemen killed in North Africa. As these broad campaigns continue, local villagers, community activists and everyday citizens watch in horror, thinking of what this destruction means for the future of their respective nations. Most tragically, they feel powerless to stop it.

Unfortunately, the preservation of history and culture is of little value to Salafis, who use violence to implement their own power structures based on extreme interpretations of Islamic law. In an ongoing effort to Islamicize their countries, they cause severe fissures in the countries' social fabric. The most striking example of this is the rise of the Taliban in Pakistan’s northwest frontier area.

When the Taliban swept into the area, traditional Muslim communities faced unprecedented persecution. During their reign of terror, the Taliban razed hundreds of schools in an effort to curb “westernization” and launched attacks on dozens of mosques and mausoleums. In numerous cases the bodies of revered saints and religious figures were disinterred and publically desecrated. While some communities banded together to form peace committees, others joined local militias in an effort to protect their communities from the extremist onslaught. To date, the conflict has killed hundreds of Pakistanis and displaced millions of people, and the Pakistani military has spent billions of US tax dollars to contain the Taliban threat. Still, the region is considered a stronghold of terrorist groups.

Civil-society activists lament that they suffer from a severe lack of funding and resources to organize a nonviolent counter movement. The US government and the international community have a vested interest in protecting and supporting moderate voices as well as the world’s cultural and historical legacies. Whether helping communities develop a neighborhood watch, teaching them how to respond to threats with nonviolent social-mobilization techniques or engaging communities in media and other social campaigns to raise awareness, the strategy of bolstering these groups should be a vital part of a robust program to counter violent extremism. At the same time, it is essential to apply diplomatic pressure on local government and law-enforcement officials who are often accused by their citizens of a lackluster response to the destruction. More

 

Millennials on the next nuclear generation

In the 42 years since the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) came into force, much has changed in the world -- the Cold War has ended, the global number of nuclear weapons has decreased, yet the number of nuclear-armed states has increased. What do the next four decades hold in store for nonproliferation and disarmament? For the Millennial Generation, this is no theoretical question -- in about 2054 they will be completing their careers and settling into retirement. Below, Maryam Javan Shahraki of Iran, Selim Can Sazak of Turkey, and Beenish Pervaiz of Pakistan respond to this topic: Forty-two years after the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty went into force, where will the world be in another 42 years? How many states will be nuclear-armed? How many nuclear weapons will exist? And will the NPT survive?

Blueprint for avoiding the crisis by Maryam Javan Shahraki

Forty-two years ago, amid the Cold War, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) came into force. The treaty's original purpose was, among other things, to prevent countries like Italy, West Germany, and Japan from building nuclear weapons. But since the end of the Cold War, the goal has evolved into maintaining the global nuclear order. Today, the NPT has 189 signatories and is the arms control treaty with the greatest international acceptance. But the treaty's success in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons is debatable, and serious questions surround the NPT's credibility and effectiveness as the world's central mechanism against further proliferation.

When considering these issues, it is useful to keep in mind just how dangerous a nuclear crisis can be. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear catastrophe. The world survived -- but there is no guarantee it would survive a similar crisis in the future. Indeed, the key lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis is the importance of preventing a crisis through diplomatic and political efforts before the brink of nuclear war is reached. No matter how imperfect the NPT might be, the treaty still represents a crucial diplomatic tool for anticipating and preventing nuclear crises.

Credibility challenge. Few people dispute that the treaty is necessary; instead, the crucial challenges that it faces involve its effectiveness and credibility. The treaty need not be changed or replaced but, if it is to meet its global objectives, it must be implemented fairly.

One crucial issue related to fairness involves the nuclear weapon states' responsibility to pursue disarmament as defined in the NPT: Each nuclear weapon state commits to taking good-faith steps toward disarmament, a key element of the treaty's central bargain. But this is far from being fully implemented. The United States and Russia control a vast majority of the planet's nuclear weapons and are capable of destroying the world several times over. Since the end of the Cold War, nuclear strategies have changed in many countries, including in the five nuclear weapon states recognized under the treaty. But the central security attitude of the Cold War -- that the more nuclear weapons you have, the more powerful you are -- remains strong.

A similar problem is that the treaty's principles are applied differently to different non-nuclear weapon states. In a glaring example, India in 2008 concluded a nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States, and also received a waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers Group allowing it to engage in nuclear trade with few restrictions. But India is one of only three states, along with Pakistan and Israel, never to have acceded to the NPT (as for the other two nuclear-armed states, North Korea ratified the treaty, but later withdrew, and South Africa joined the treaty after surrendering its nuclear arsenal); nor have these countries, with the exception of South Africa, ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (though Israel has signed it). It is a mistake to ignore these countries' nonproliferation responsibilities just because they might enjoy good relations with the United States, especially when a treaty signatory like Iran faces international pressure while pursuing its inalienable right to a peaceful nuclear energy program. (Meanwhile, every nuclear-armed state is a potential proliferator, but this fact receives little attention.)

Uneven application of standards could force some countries' nuclear programs underground. But even more important, the treaty's credibility and effectiveness are weakened when different states' obligations and rights are treated unevenly.

Problems and solutions. For the treaty to have survived for 42 years is a great success. But the NPT suffers from serious shortcomings -- both inside and outside the regime. Several steps could be taken to address these shortcomings. First, the world should recommit itself to eliminating nuclear weapons, instead of focusing on nonproliferation to the exclusion of disarmament. Nuclear weapons are exceedingly dangerous no matter who possesses them, and all states -- large or small, treaty signatories or not -- should accept shared responsibility for eliminating them.

Second, variable standards and unjust rules must be avoided. Prioritizing one nation's political interests over global security could bring about the treaty's ultimate failure. The point of the NPT regime is to make the world a safer place, with fewer nuclear bombs. Therefore, the very idea of the treaty is undermined by using the NPT to prevent State X from exercising its legitimate rights while supporting State Y as it exercises the very same rights.

Third, the tendency to turn nuclear issues into security issues -- to remove them from the diplomatic realm and from the context of the treaty -- should be resisted. Indeed, to declare a nuclear dispute an existential threat to the global community, instead of seeking political and diplomatic solutions discredits the treaty itself and also risks turning disputes into crises. As the world should have learned from the Cuban Missile Crisis, last-minute crisis management must not be depended upon. More

 

The four guilty parties behind Israel’s attack

The inciting cause of the latest confrontation between Israel and Hamas has little to do with the firing of rockets, whether by Hamas or the other Palestinian factions. The conflict predates the rockets – and even the creation of Hamas – by decades. It is the legacy of Israel’s dispossession of Palestinians in 1948, forcing many of them from their homes in what is now Israel into the tiny Gaza Strip. That original injustice has been compounded by the occupation Israel has not only failed to end but has actually intensified in recent years with its relentless siege of the small strip of territory.

Why Gaza must suffer again 18 November 2012

The four guilty parties behind Israel’s attack

Israeli Occupation Archive – 18 November 2012

A short interview broadcast by CNN late last week featuring two participants – a Palestinian in Gaza and an Israeli within range of the rocket attacks – did not follow the usual script.

For once, a media outlet dropped its role as gatekeeper, there to mediate and therefore impair our understanding of what is taking place between Israel and the Palestinians, and inadvertently became a simple window on real events.

The usual aim of such “balance” interviews relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is twofold: to reassure the audience that both sides of the story are being presented fairly; and to dissipate potential outrage at the deaths of Palestinian civilians by giving equal time to the suffering of Israelis.

But the deeper function of such coverage in relation to Gaza, given the media’s assumption that Israeli bombs are simply a reaction to Hamas terror, is to redirect the audience’s anger exclusively towards Hamas. In this way, Hamas is made implicitly responsible for the suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians.

The dramatic conclusion to CNN’s interview appears, however, to have otherwise trumped normal journalistic considerations.

The pre-recorded interview via Skype opened with Mohammed Sulaiman in Gaza. From what looked like a cramped room, presumably serving as a bomb shelter, he spoke of how he was too afraid to step outside his home. Throughout the interview, we could hear the muffled sound of bombs exploding in the near-distance. Mohammed occasionally glanced nervously to his side.

The other interviewee, Nissim Nahoom, an Israeli official in Ashkelon, also spoke of his family’s terror, arguing that it was no different from that of Gazans. Except in one respect, he hastened to add: things were worse for Israelis because they had to live with the knowledge that Hamas rockets were intended to harm civilians, unlike the precision missiles and bombs Israel dropped on Gaza.

The interview returned to Mohammed. As he started to speak, the bombing grew much louder. He pressed on, saying he would not be silenced by what was taking place outside. The interviewer, Isha Sesay, interrupted – seemingly unsure of what she was hearing – to inquire about the noise.

Then, with an irony that Mohammed could not have appreciated as he spoke, he began to say he refused to be drawn into a comparison about whose suffering was worse when an enormous explosion threw him from his chair and severed the internet connection. Switching back to the studio, Sesay reassured viewers that Mohammed had not been hurt.

The bombs, however, spoke more eloquently than either Mohammed or Nissim. More

 

Dust Bowl Revisited - Earth Policy Institute

On October 18, 2012, the Associated Press reported that “a massive dust storm swirling reddish-brown clouds over northern Oklahoma triggered a multi-vehicle accident along a major interstate…forcing police to shut down the heavily traveled roadway amid near blackout conditions.”

Dust Storm Shrouds Phoenix

Farmers in the region had recently plowed fields to plant winter wheat. The bare soil—desiccated by the relentless drought that smothered nearly two-thirds of the continental United States during the summer and still persists over the Great Plains—was easily lifted by the passing strong winds, darkening skies from southern Nebraska, through Kansas, and into Oklahoma.

Observers could not help but harken back to the 1930s Dust Bowl that ultimately covered 100 million acres in western Kansas, the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles, northeastern New Mexico, and southeastern Colorado. Yet when asked if that was the direction the region was headed, Oklahoma’s Secretary of Agriculture Jim Reese was unequivocal: “That will never happen again.”

In the early decades of the twentieth century, earnest settlers of the semi-arid Plains, along with opportunistic “suitcase farmers” out to make a quick dollar, plowed under millions of acres of native prairie grass. Assured that “rain follows the plow,” and lured by government incentives, railroad promises, and hopes of carving out a place for their families, these farmers embraced the newly available tractors, powerful plows, and mechanized harvesters to turn over the sod that had long sustained Native American tribes and millions of bison.

The plowing began during years of rain, and early harvests were good. High wheat prices, buoyed by demand and government guarantees during the First World War, encouraged ever more land to be turned over. But then the Great Depression hit. The price of wheat collapsed and fields were abandoned. When the drought arrived in the early 1930s, the soils blew, their fertility stolen by the relentless wind. Stripped of its living carpet, freed from the intricate matrix of perennial prairie grass roots, the earth took flight.

Clouds as tall as mountains and black as night rolled over the land. Regular dust storms pummeled the homesteaders; the big ones drew notice when they clouded the sun in New York City and Washington, DC, even sullying ships hundreds of miles out in the Atlantic. Dunes formed and spread, burying railroad tracks, fences, and cars. “Dust pneumonia” claimed lives, often those of children. People fled the land in droves.

In The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan describes the topsoil loss, how a “rich cover that had taken several thousand years to develop was disappearing day by day.” The sodbusters had quickly illuminated the dangerous hubris in the 1909 Bureau of Soils proclamation: “The soil is the one indestructible, immutable asset that the nation possesses. It is the one resource that cannot be exhausted; that cannot be used up.” The rechristened Great Plains looked like it would revert back to its original name: the Great American Desert. More

Don't miss Ken Burns's two-part documentary The Dust Bowl, premiering this Sunday and Monday, November 18 and 19, on PBS. Check your local listings.

*Photo credits: Arthur Rothstein, Library of Congress, Dan L. Perlman, Eco Library

 

The November 2012 IAEA Report on Iran and Its Implications

The new quarterly report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Iran’s nuclear program, which is now in circulation, finds that Tehran has continued to install more centrifuges for uranium enrichment at its underground complex at Fordow.

IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano, left,
with Iran’s Ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh,
in May 2012 (photo credit: Adel Pazzyar/IRNA/AP)

The November 16 IAEA report says that Iran has installed an additional 644 centrifuges at Fordow and 991 at Natanz, both of which are regularly inspected by the Agency.

However, the total number of operating centrifuges at Fordow (696) has not yet increased, according to the Agency. The IAEA report also notes that while Iran continues to experiment with advanced and more efficient types of centrifuges, it is not yet using them for production-scale operations.

The IAEA also reports that Iran has continued enriching uranium to the 20% level at the previously reported rate and that its stockpile of 20% material has increased moderately—by 43 kg. According to the IAEA’s November report, Iran has produced 232 kg of 20% material, of which 96 kg was converted or slated for conversion to uranium oxide powder, ostensibly for the production of fuel plates for its Tehran Research Reactor. This leaves a stockpile of 134.9 kg of 20% enriched uranium in hexafluoride form. In August, the IAEA reported that Iran had produced 189.4 kg of 20% enriched uranium, of which 91 kg was stockpiled as hexafluoride.

Iran would need to produce approximately 220-250kg of 20% material and enrich it further to 90% U-235, to have enough bomb-grade material for one nuclear bomb. More

 

Are They Mad? Village Destruction? US Guilty of War Crimes

Broadwell Defended Petraeus’ Village Destruction Policy

Petraeus

WASHINGTON, Nov 15 2012 (IPS) - Paula Broadwell, whose affair with Gen. David Petraeus brought his career to a sudden end last week, had sought to help defend his decision in 2010 to allow village destruction in Afghanistan that not only violated his own previous guidance but the international laws of war.


The new Petraeus policy guidance allowed the destruction of villages in three districts of Kandahar province if the population did not tell U.S. forces where homemade bombs were hidden.But her efforts had the opposite effect.

In early January 2010, Broadwell went to visit the Combined Task Force I-320th in Kandahar to write a story justifying the decision to destroy the village of Tarok Kaloche and much of three other villages in its area of operations.

Ironically, it was Broadwell who introduced the complete razing of the village of Tarok Kalache in in Kandahar’s Arghandab Valley in October 2010 to the blogosphere. Dramatic photographs of the village before and after it was razed, which she had obtained from U.S. military sources, were published with her article in the military blog Best Defense Jan. 13, 2011.

The pictures and her article brought a highly critical response from blogger Joshua Foust, who is a specialist on Afghanistan.

Tarok Kalache was only one of many villages destroyed or nearly destroyed in an October 2010 offensive by U.S. forces in three districts of Kandahar Province, because the heavy concentrations of IEDs had made clearing the village by conventional forces too costly.

In the late summer and early fall, commanders in those districts had been ordered to clear the villages of Taliban presence, but they had taken heavy casualties from IEDs planted in and around the villages.

As commander of Combined Task Force I-320th, Lt. Col. David Flynn was responsible for several villages in the Arghandab valley, including Tarok Kalache.

Flynn told Spencer Ackerman of the Danger Room blog in early February 2011 that, once he felt he had the necessary intelligence on IEDs in Tarok Kalache, he had adopted a plan to destroy the village, first with mine clearing charges, which destroyed everything within a swath 100 yards long and wide enough for a tank, then with aerial bombing. More

 

The Paradox of Nonlethal Weapons by Fritz Allhof

Not all weapons are designed to kill; some are just meant to cause injury. Yet under the rules of war—a somewhat haphazard collection of ethical and legal directives—we are sometimes allowed to use lethal weapons even when certain nonlethal weapons are disallowed.




In short, the lethal weapons are more permissible on the battlefield. As Donald Rumsfeld once complained “in many instances, our forces are allowed to shoot somebody and kill them, but they’re not allowed to use a nonlethal riot-control agent.” This is the paradox of nonlethal weapons, and it has been around for some time. Yet as military technology becomes increasingly capable of halting an enemy without killing him, it is a situation that international law must reconsider. Isn’t less deadly better?

Restrictions on weapons come from a range of sources. The most basic, though, stems from Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions (§35), which holds, “Parties to a conflict and members of their armed forces do not have an unlimited choice of methods and means of warfare.” There are two general reasons for this, each of which tracks a different school of moral thought.




The first is that we must avoid, in the words of the International Committee of the Red Cross, “means and methods of warfare which … cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering” (Rule 70). The thinking here is largely consequentialist: Superfluous injury and unnecessary suffering are inherently wasteful. The stock examples are things like serrated bayonets or exploding bullets. Conventional bayonets and bullets are enough to remove opponents from the battlefield. Their more destructive complements cause substantial internal damage, leading to complicated surgeries, higher mortality, and so on. Since they arguably serve no legitimate military objective, they are prohibited. More


 

 

General David Petraeus's fatal flaw: not the affair, but his Afghanistan surge

More than three years ago, I sat in an overflow room in Washington, DC's Willard Hotel listening to General David Petraeus explain (pdf) how the only solution for the failing war in Afghanistan was a "comprehensive counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy", modeled after the one that had allegedly achieved so much success in Iraq.

Petraeus handing over to Allen

Petraeus's speech came at the annual meeting of the Center for New American Security, a DC-based thinktank that had become a locus of COIN thinking in DC. And Petraeus was at the peak of his power and acclaim – heralded by both Democrats and Republicans as the man responsible for saving the Iraq war.

The four-star general's in-depth powerpoint presentation (pdf), with its discussion of securing and serving the population, "understanding local circumstances" separating irreconcilables from reconcilables and living "among the people" was the apogee of COIN thinking, which dominated national security debates in Washington in 2008 and 2009. But, like Petraeus's career, COIN and its usefulness as a tool for US militaryplanners now lies in tatters.

With last week's revelations that Petraeus was having an affair as director of the CIA with his biographer Paula Broadwell, this tawdry story is likely to become the most glaring black mark on Petraeus's career. But while his behavior was reckless, arrogant and, frankly, just plain stupid, it's ironic that Petraeus is likely to be remembered more for that one personal act rather than his most grave professional mistake – namely, that same counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan for which he was one of Washington's most influential proponents.

The event at CNAS was the quintessential example of the blinders and hubris that were so pervasive among COIN boosters and, in particular, Petraeus. They were convinced that the surge in Iraq and the use of counterinsurgency tactics there had turned the tide. But as we know now – and should have even been aware then – the reality was far more complicated. More

 

Perkovich On “The Non-Unitary Model And Deterrence Stability In South Asia”

Stimson is releasing today an essay by George Perkovich on "The Non-Unitary Model and Deterrence Stability in South Asia." Perkovich is the Vice President for Studies and Director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Perkovich argues that classical deterrence models derived from the Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union are too simplistic to apply to South Asia. Pakistan may not be a unitary rational actor in the traditional sense, because violent, extremist groups on its territory that engage in sub-conventional warfare can provoke crises and armed conflict on the subcontinent. These groups may or may not be an extension of Pakistan's military and intelligence services, which may themselves be riven with factions. Consequently, deterrence stability in South Asia presents unique analytical, political, and diplomatic challenges.

The author assesses the threat of India-Pakistan war as more likely than the threat of nuclear terrorism. Perkovich argues that the United States can most effectively pursue its broader nuclear interests and goals through a framework of deterrence stability. The pursuit of deterrence stability would make India and Pakistan "more inclined to engage in dialogue and Confidence-Building Measures... than they are when the agenda seems to reflect other U.S. priorities, such as countering nuclear terrorism or strengthening the nuclear nonproliferation regime." Moreover, "highlighting the need to prevent Indo-Pakistan conflict and stabilize deterrence between the two countries acknowledges that Pakistan, like India, possesses a nuclear deterrent, and that the United States is not seeking to eliminate it, but rather to encourage the two states to manage it stably."

Perkovich argues that disunity in the chain of command, whether perceived or actual, "produces dangerous confusion and ambiguity that interfere in the management of deterrence.... Pakistan illustrates the unity problem and its implications for rationality more acutely than any other nuclear-armed state." Consequently, "The risks that subconventional uses of force could escalate to conventional and perhaps nuclear war creates a clear interest for Pakistanis, Indians, and the international community to treat the uncertain quality of Pakistani state sovereignty as a fundamental strategic problem."

Thus far, the people of South Asia have been spared the potential consequences of deterrence instability because Indian leaders have not retaliated violently to terrorist attacks on iconic targets. India's neo-Gandhian forbearance runs counter to prescripts of deterrence and cannot be expected to persist as new leaders emerge in New Delhi. More

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Analysis: Obama faces bumps with Russia policy

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama once assured Russian leaders that he'd have more flexibility to deal with missile defense during a second term in office. But now that he has been re-elected, there's little expectation of progress on that or other contentious issues that divide the two countries.

Tensions between the United States and Russia have been rising. The countries have been at odds over Syria's civil war, Iran's nuclear program and Russia's crackdown on domestic opposition. U.S. officials are uneasy about what they see as a more assertive foreign policy by Vladimir Putin, who returned to the Russian presidency in May.

Gone is the talk of a "reset" — Obama's policy of improving relations with Moscow after they deteriorated during George W. Bush's presidency. In the few areas where Obama is seeking closer ties, such as trade, he's running into opposition from a deeply divided Congress.

Moscow is undoubtedly pleased that Obama defeated Republican Mitt Romney, who had called Russia the No. 1 foe of the United States. A Russian official said Thursday that its government expected Obama to meet his commitment to be more flexible on missile defense.

But it's hard to imagine that happening now.

"Since Putin's return to the presidency, things have become more complicated," said Cliff Kupchan, a Russia analyst with the Eurasia group, who described the current state of relations as functional, but strained.

The reset undoubtedly improved cooperation between Washington and Moscow during the early years of the Obama administration and both sides saw dividends, such as the signing of a nuclear arms control treaty and the U.S. agreeing to Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization.

During that time, tensions over missile defense had receded following Obama's early move to replace a Bush administration plan for missile defense in eastern Europe. Moscow, which had angrily charged that the Bush era plan could undermine its ability to use long-range nuclear missiles to deter attacks initially, welcomed the change. But more recently, the Kremlin has ramped up its criticism, arguing that the later stages of the Obama plan could also threaten its missiles. More

 

The Real David Petraeus Scandal

When, in the fall of 2011, David Petraeus moved from commanding the Afghanistan war effort to commanding the CIA, it was a disturbingly natural transition.

I say "natural" because the CIA conducts drone strikes in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region and is involved in other military operations there, so Petraeus, in his new role, was continuing to fight the Afghanistan war. I say "disturbingly" because this overlap of Pentagon and CIA missions is the result of a creeping militarization of the CIA that may be undermining America's national security.

This trend was clear during the Bush administration, but it accelerated under President Obama, who greatly expanded drone strikes, and it reached a kind of symbolic culmination when Obama nominated this four-star general to run things at Langley. That would have been the perfect time to reflect on the wisdom of the convergence of the CIA's and Pentagon's jobs. But, instead, the network of journalists, think tankers, public officials and others who constitute the foreign policy establishment preserved their nearly unblemished record of not focusing on the biggest questions.

There were exceptions, notably in the Washington Post. Its reporters raised the militarization issue shortlyafter Petraeus was nominated for the CIA post and then, the week before he took office, raised it again. Discussing the ongoing "expansion of the paramilitary mission of the CIA," Greg Miller and Judie Tate wrote:

The shift has been gradual enough that its magnitude can be difficult to grasp. Drone strikes that once seemed impossibly futuristic are so routine that they rarely attract public attention unless a high-ranking al-Qaeda figure is killed... The drone program has killed more than 2,000 militants and civilians since 2001, a staggering figure for an agency that has a long history of supporting proxy forces in bloody conflicts but rarely pulled the trigger on its own.

The militarization of the CIA raises various questions. For example, if the CIA is psychologically invested in a particular form of warfare--and derives part of its budget from that kind of warfare--can it be trusted to impartially assess the consequences, both positive and negative, direct and indirect?

And then there's the transparency question. That Post piece noted concerns among some activists that "the CIA now functions as a military force beyond the accountability that the United States has historically demanded of its armed services. The CIA doesn't officially acknowledge the drone program, let alone provide public explanation about who shoots and who dies, and by what rules." Indeed, only a few months ago, in compliance with the War Powers Resolution, the Obama administration reported (vaguely) on targeted killings in Somalia and Yemen that had been conducted by the military, but not on those conducted by the CIA.

What's wrong with this opaqueness? For starters, you'd think that in a democracy the people would be entitled to know how exactly their tax dollars are being used to kill people--especially people in countries we're not at war with. But there's also a more pragmatic reason to want more transparency.

These drone strikes are a radical departure from America's traditional use of violence in pursuit of national security. In contrast to things like invading or bombing a country as part of some well-defined and plausibly finite campaign, our drone strike program is diffuse and, by all appearances, endless. Every month, God knows how many people are killed in the name of the US in any of several countries, and God knows how many of these people were actually militants, or how many of the actual militants were actual threats to the US, or how much hatred the strikes are generating or how much of that hatred will eventually morph into anti-American terrorism. It might behoove us, before we accept this nauseating spectacle as a permanent feature of life, to fill in as many of these blanks as possible. You can't do that in the dark.

That Post piece reported that the chief of the CIA's (burgeoning) Counterterrorism Center had told a colleague, "We are killing these sons of bitches faster than they can grow them now." This kind of claim seems to neglect the possibility that the drone strikes, especially given their intermittent killing of innocents, could in the long run generate so much hatred of America that they increase the rate at which terrorists are created. Coming from the guy who heads the part of the CIA that operates the drones, this simplistic language is not reassuring. If an opaque drone program means trusting people like this to do the smart thing, the case for transparency is strong. More

Thankfully we have Wikeleaks to highlight what states are trying to hide. Editor

 

Reactor reuses nuclear waste

Two Massachusetts Institute of Technology doctoral candidates are designing a nuclear power plant that would convert nuclear waste from conventional reactors into electricity — a plant you could walk away from, they said, without the risk of a radioactive leak like the meltdown last year that crippled parts of Japan.

Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie, co-founders of Transatomic Power, have developed the WAMSR, or Waste-Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor, a 400- to 500-megawatt plant that would convert high-level nuclear waste into electric power, at a price competitive with fossil fuels.

“About two years ago, we got really excited about nuclear power because we saw so much potential in the industry to improve the design of reactors and stretch the limits of the technology,” said Dewan, 27.

The two researched different designs and settled on a molten salt reactor, Massie said, because other types of reactors have not been economically viable.

They estimate the WAMSR could convert the waste produced by conventional nuclear reactors each year into $7.1 trillion worth of electricity, at 10 cents per kilowatt-hour.

At full deployment, the two said, their reactors could use existing stockpiles of nuclear waste to satisfy the world’s electricity needs through 2083, all the while reducing the majority of the waste’s radioactive lifetime from hundreds of thousands of years to hundreds of years, thereby decreasing the need for permanent repositories such as Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

Most importantly, they said, the WAMSR would differ from conventional reactors like the Fukushima I nuclear power plant — which melted down after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan — in that it would not require electric power or water to cool it in the event of an accident. More

 

Climate change "new normal," lessons from Sandy: U.N. chief

(Reuters) - Extreme weather sparked by climate change is "the new normal" and Superstorm Sandy that ravaged the U.S. Northeast is a lesson the world must pursue more environmentally friendly policies, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Friday.

The United Nations headquarters closed for three days when former hurricane Sandy slammed the Northeast on October 29 as a rare hybrid superstorm, killing at least 121 people, swamping seaside towns and leaving millions without power.

"We all know the difficulties in attributing any single storm to climate change. But we also know this: extreme weather due to climate change is the new normal," Ban told the 193-member U.N. General Assembly.

"This may be an uncomfortable truth, but it is one we ignore at our peril. The world's best scientists have been sounding the alarm for many years," he said. "There can be no looking away, no persisting with business as usual ... This should be one of the main lessons of Hurricane Sandy."

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg endorsed President Barack Obama for a second term after Sandy struck, citing Obama's record on climate change and saying he believed the Democrat would adopt more policies to curb greenhouse gases in a second term. Obama won re-election on Tuesday.

The head of U.N. security, Gregory Starr, said last week that U.N. headquarters sustained severe damage when Sandy produced heavy flooding in basement levels of the world body's Manhattan complex along the East River. �� Flood damage forced the relocation of a U.N. Security Council meeting on Somalia last week from its normal chambers to a temporary building inside the U.N. campus.

U.N. delegations sharply criticized the United Nations' management on Monday for an almost "total breakdown in communications" with the world body's member states after superstorm Sandy struck.

"Our global services were provided without interruption," said Ban. "However, it is clear that in focusing so much on operations and infrastructure, we fell short when it came to communications." More

 

Indian monsoons may fail more often due to climate change - study

(Reuters) - The Indian monsoon is likely to fail more often in the next 200 years threatening food supplies, unless governments agree how to limit climate change, a study showed on Tuesday.

The monsoon rains could collapse about every fifth year between 2150 and 2200 with continued global warming, blamed mainly on human burning of fossil fuels, and related shifts in tropical air flows, it said.

“Monsoon failure becomes much more frequent” as temperatures rise, Anders Levermann, a professor of dynamics of the climate system and one of the authors at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told Reuters.

India’s monsoon, which lasts from June to September, is vital for India’s 1.2 billion people to grow crops such as rice, wheat and corn. India last faced a severe widespread drought in 2009 and had to import sugar, pushing global prices to 30-year highs.

The researchers defined monsoon “failure” as a fall in rainfall of between 40 and 70 percent below normal levels. Such a drastic decline has not happened any year in records dating back to 1870 by the India Meteorological Department, they said.

CATASTROPHE

“In the past century the Indian monsoon has been very stable. It is already a catastrophe with 10 percent less rain than the average,” Levermann told Reuters.

The study, in the journal Environmental Research Letters, projected a temperature rise of 4.6 degrees C (8.3 F) over pre-industrial times by 2200. U.N. scenarios indicate a gain of between 1.1 and 6.4 degrees C (2.9-11.5F) by 2100. More

 

The Dogs of War Are Barking - The Urge to Bomb Iran

It’s the consensus among the pundits: foreign policy doesn’t matter in this presidential election. They point to the ways Republican candidate Mitt Romney has more or less parroted President Barack Obama on just about everything other than military spending and tough talk about another “American century.”

The consensus is wrong. There is an issue that matters: Iran.

Don’t be fooled. It’s not just campaign season braggadocio when Romney claims that he would be far tougher on Iran than the president by threatening “a credible military option.” He certainly is trying to appear tougher and stronger than Obama -- he of the drone wars, the “kill list,” and Bin Laden’s offing -- but it’s no hollow threat.

The Republican nominee has surrounded himself with advisors who are committed to military action and regime change against Iran, the same people who brought us the Global War on Terror and the Iraq War. Along with their colleagues in hawkish think tanks, they have spent years priming the public to believe that Iran has an ongoing nuclear weapons program, making ludicrous claims about “crazy” mullahs nuking Israel and the United States, pooh-poohing diplomacy -- and getting ever shriller each time credible officials and analysts disagree.

Unlike with Iraq in 2002 and 2003, they have it easier today. Then, they and their mentors had to go on a sales roadshow, painting pictures of phantom WMDs to build up support for an invasion. Today, a large majority of Americans already believe that Iran is building nuclear weapons.

President Obama has helped push that snowball up the hill with sanctions toundermine the regime, covert and cyber warfare, and a huge naval presence in the Persian Gulf. Iran has ratcheted up tensions via posturing militarymaneuvers, while we have held joint U.S.-Israeli exercises and "the largest-ever multinational minesweeping exercise" there. Our navies are facing off in a dangerous dance.

Obama has essentially loaded the gun and cocked it. But he has kept his finger off the trigger, pursuing diplomacy with the so-called P5+1 talks andrumored future direct talks with the Iranians. The problem is: Romney’s guyswant to shoot.

Unlike Iraq, Iran Would Be an Easy Sell

Remember those innocent days of 2002 and 2003, when the war in Afghanistan was still new and the Bush administration was trying to sell an invasion of Iraq? I do. I was a Republican then, but I never quite bought the pitch. I never felt the urgency, saw the al-Qaeda connection, or worried about phantom WMDs. It just didn’t feel right. But Iran today? If I were still a Republican hawk, it would be “game on,” and I’d know I was not alone for three reasons.

First, even armchair strategists know that Iran has a lot of oil that is largely closed off to us. It reputedly has the fourth largest reserves on the planet. It also has a long coastline on the Persian Gulf, and it has the ability to shut the Strait of Hormuz, which would pinch off one of the world’s major energy arteries.

Then there is the fact that Iran has a special place in American consciousness. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the mullahs who run it have been a cultural enemy ever since revolutionary students toppled our puppet regime there and stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979.1 The country is a theocracy run by angry-looking men with long beards and funny outfits. It has funded Hezbollah and Hamas. Its crowds call us the “Great Satan.” Its president denies the Holocaust and says stuff about wiping Israel off the map. Talk about a ready-made enemy.

Finally, well, nukes.

The public appears to be primed. A large majority of Americans believe that Iran has an ongoing nuclear weapons program, 71% in 2010 and 84% this March. Some surveys even indicate that a majority of Americans would support military action to stop Iran from developing nukes. More

Note: Iran has apparently been a 'cultrual enemy' of the United States and the United Kingdom since the 19th August 1953.

Mohammad Mosaddegh or Mosaddeq (Persian: مُحَمَد مُصَدِق, IPA: [mohæmˈmæd(-e) mosædˈdeɣ] ( listen)*), also Mossadegh, Mossadeq, Mosadeck, or Musaddiq (16 June 1882 – 5 March 1967), was the democratically appointed ^[1][2][3] Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953 when his government was overthrown in a coup d'état orchestrated by the British MI5 and the CIA.

Mohammad Mosaddegh

An author, administrator, lawyer, prominent parliamentarian, he became the prime minister of Iran in 1951. His administration introduced a wide range of progressive social and political reforms such as social security, rent control, and land reforms.^[4] His government's most notable policy, however, was the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry, which had been under British control since 1913 through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC/AIOC) (later British Petroleum or BP).^[5]

Mosaddegh was removed from power in a coup on 19 August 1953, organised and carried out by the CIA at the request of the British MI6 which chose Iranian General Fazlollah Zahedi to succeed Mosaddegh.^[6]

While the coup is commonly referred to as Operation Ajax^[7] after its CIA cryptonym, in Iran it is referred to as the 28 Mordad 1332 coup, after its date on the Iranian calendar.^[8] Mosaddegh was imprisoned for three years, then put under house arrest until his death. More