Blog Archives - CounterStrikeMedia

LIMITS TO JAPAN'S CRUISE MISSILES & THE CHARACTER OF CHINESE SOFT POWER

1/31/2018

The Limits of Japan’s Cruise Missile Plan
By Rowan Allport, The Strategist (ASPI): “Japan’s plans to acquire cruise missiles for its combat aircraft are a step forward in its ability to provide for its own defence. But these weapons won’t give the country the capacity to pre-emptively destroy North Korea’s ballistic missiles because of the major weaknesses in Japan’s ability to locate mobile targets.”

China’s ‘Soft Power’ in Central Asia Both More and Less than It Appears
By Paul Goble, Eurasia Daily Monitor: “From one perspective, China has enormous “soft power” in Central Asia, the ability, as Joseph Nye defined it (Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power, New York, 1990), “to persuade others to do what it wants without force or coercion.””

IRAN: THE HOLLOW HEGEMON

1/29/2018

REMEMBER THE VILLAGE PEOPLE?
Iran, the Hollow Hegemon
By Shlomo Ben-Ami, The Strategist (ASPI): “Israeli and Arab leaders have spent years warning of the rise of an Iranian-led Shia empire covering much of the Middle East. With Iran now linked to the Mediterranean through a land corridor that extends through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, ”

EXAMINING THE CHANGING CHARACTER OF WAR

1/29/2018

Networking to Learn: Learning to Fight
By Frank Hoffman, Strategy Bridge: “Serious historians realize war is a cruel arbiter that grades how well states and their military institutions have anticipated the character of future conflict. But the ultimate test of military organizations and their readiness does not end once a war begins.”

U.S. National Defence Strategy: A Wake-up Call for Australia
By Paul Dibb, The Strategist: “As for reform of the department, there are lots of meaningless modern management words used about the need to ‘drive budget discipline and affordability to achieve solvency’ and ‘streamline rapid, iterative approaches from development to fielding’. But the fact remains that the Pentagon has for decades resisted introducing a culture of performance in which results and accountability really matter.”

Strategic Innovation and Great Power Competition
By Elsa B. Kania, Strategy Bridge: “At this time of disruptive transitions, the new U.S. National Defense Strategy rightly recognizes that the character of warfare is changing due to the advent of a range of disruptive technologies.”

Want to Understand the Future of War? Talk to Chuck Krulak // Tobias Naegele
As Marine commandant, Krulak bucked Pentagon wisdom and rebuilt the Corps for small, messy conflicts. Now his ideas run through the National Defense Strategy, urban-ops doctrine, and Jim Mattis' head.

THE F22 RAPTOR GOES GLOBAL & HYPER VELOCITY MISSILE DEFENSE

1/29/2018

Air Force Revs up 'Rapid Raptor' Program to Rush F-22s to War
By Kris Osborn, Warrior Maven: “The Air Force is strengthening its “Rapid Raptor” program designed to fast-track four F-22s to war - anywhere in the
world - within 24 hours, on a moments notice.”

Is the F-22 Loosing Its Stealth?
By Daniel Cebul, C4ISRNET: “Some of the military's most advanced aircraft could be tracked by adversaries, with greater precision than radar, if security flaws in the latest signal technology aren't addressed.”

With the A-10 Marines Call in the Heat on the Taliban
By Shawn Snow, Marine Corps Times: “Two sorties of A-10C Thunderbolt II aircraft struck Taliban militants in Helmand province, Afghanistan, on Jan. 24. It's the first series of strikes by the aircraft since its return to Afghanistan on Jan. 19."

Hyper Velocity Missile Defense
By Sydney Freedberg, Breaking Defense: “The Pentagon's Strategic Capabilities Office will test-fire a radical new missile defense system in less than a year. The Hyper Velocity Projectile, a supersonic artillery round, is fired from ordinary cannon at 5,600 miles per hour and can kill incoming threats for a mere $86,000 a shot.”

Navy Pursuing Anti-Air Defense Missile for the F-35
By Joseph Trevithick & Tyler Rogoway, The WarZone: “The U.S. Navy has hired Orbital ATK, now part of Northrop Grumman, to begin formal development of a new missile that can suppress and destroy enemy air defense emitters, known as the the Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile-Extended Range, or AARGM-ER.”

F-35: A Key Missile Defense Sensor
By Dan Goure, The National Interest: “The F-35’s combination of stealth, maneuverability, its Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar, passive sensors and battle management software makes it ideal as both a strike platform and a forward operating sensor.”

Pentagon ‘Can't Afford the Sustainment Costs‘ on F-35
By Aaron Mehta, Defense News: “Sustainment costs on the F-35 are poised to become unaffordable, and that’s a big challenge for Ellen Lord, the Pentagon’s newly christened undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment.”

RUSSIAN SEA TACTICS & TWO CONCEPTS OF NUCLEAR SHARING

1/24/2018

Two Concepts of Nuclear Sharing
By Rod Lyon, The Strategist (ASPI): “U.S. allies around the world that benefit from U.S. extended nuclear assurance participate in a range of supportive activities intended to strengthen the credibility of that assurance and to share the risks associated with nuclear deterrence.”

Russian ‘Hybrid War’ Tactics at Sea
By Ihor Kabanenko, Eurasia Daily Monitor: “In the last five years, Russia has increased its underwater activity four to five times. Thirteen new Russian nuclear and conventional submarines have been commissioned since 2014.”

THUCYDIDES TRAP ANALYZED & WHY HERODOTUS MATTERS

1/24/2018

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Destined for Competition: An Analysis of Graham Allison’s Thucydides Trap
By Declan Sullivan, Strategy Bridge: “Will these tensions lead to war? It will depend on how aggressively China asserts expansionary aspirations. Military annexations of Taiwan or the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands are likely war triggers, but both are also unlikely.”

JUSTICE AND SORROW
By EPPC Fellow Algis Valiunas
The Weekly Standard
Last year or perhaps the year before marked the 2,500th anniversary of Herodotus’s birth. We can be grateful still to have his work after all these years, but his bleak teaching does not suit our time and place, which is averse to the tragic sense of life. Read More

CHINA'S THUCYDIDES TRAP WITH INDIA:
China will not fall into the ‘Thucydides Trap’ with India
BY PEPE ESCOBAR
President Xi Jinping projects China as a 'benevolent power' but at the Raisina Dialogue in Delhi the 'Quad' nations lined up against him

GERMANY FRACTURES POLITICALLY

1/24/2018

German political left goes under
BY ASIA TIMES STAFF
Grand coalition leaders are more powerless than ever, says Der Spiegel

TARGET RUSSIA: POLAND GETS AEGIS BASED MISSILES

1/23/2018

U.S., POLAND, RUSSIA: U.S. Military Tests New SM-3 IIA Missile for Poland
By Kris Osborn, Warrior Maven: “The Pentagon will soon fire its emerging SM-3 IIA interceptor missile from a land-based Aegis Ashore site for the first time as part of a broad-based, multi-year effort to help defend European allies from short and intermediate-range ballistic missile attacks from Russia, Iran or other potential adversaries.”

Revisionist Russia Is the Most Nuclearized Power in the World
By Pavel K. Baev, Eurasia Daily Monitor: “Some Russian commentators took pride in the fact that strategic competition driven by revisionist powers, rather than terrorism or other unconventional challenges, is now defined as the main source of threat to U.S. interests, seeing in this a recognition of Russia’s global role.”

WOMEN AS ACTIVE AGENTS

1/22/2018

Women as Active Agents in Violent Extremist Organizations
By Brandee Leon, Divergent Options: “Despite their continual portrayal as being exploited by violent extremist organizations, women have actually been active agents for decades.”

TOP 10 BATTLES THAT SHAPED RUSSIA & HOW MOSCOW ASSISTS CHINA EVADE U.S. LED NORTH KOREAN SANCTIONS

1/19/2018

10 Battles That Shaped Russia
By Brandon Christensen, RealClearHistory: “From 1283 to the present-day, Russia has slowly, steadily expanded its initial territory centered at Moscow east, west, north, and south. In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville saw in Russia an alternative to the American democratic model that he observed firsthand in the conclusion of Volume 1 of his magnificent, two-volume book Democracy in America.

The method of North Korea's madness
Nicholas Eberstadt | Commentary Magazine

"President Trump Calls Out Russia for Helping North Korean Sanctions Evasion," Boris Zilberman and Mathew Ha; FDD Policy Brief

Six Chinese ships covertly aided North Korea. The U.S. was watching

Satellite photographs and other intelligence gathered by U.S. officials provide what they say is detailed evidence of at least six Chinese-owned or -operated cargo ships violating United Nations sanctions against North Korea. - Wall Street Journal

President Trump seemed to directly implicate China in the smuggling, writing on Twitter that it had been “caught RED HANDED” allowing illicit oil deliveries to North Korea. Tracing the Winmore’s ownership and its contraband oil underscores the difficulty of identifying who is complicit, despite what the president’s jab suggested. - New York Times

US STRATEGY FOR CHINA REVEALED

1/18/2018

Secretary of Defense Mattis’s Trip to Southeast Asia
By Joshua Kurlantzick, CFR: “The trip was designed in part to highlight the administration’s commitment to freedom of navigation in the Pacific, and particularly in the South China Sea.”

The status of US Navy readiness: Too small, too old, and too tired
Thomas Donnelly | Strategika

The Rise of the Revisionists:
What to Do About Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran?
By Alex Gallo, Modern War Institute: “The United States should continue to build out our intelligence picture, regional missile defense, and our capabilities to hunt and destroy such conventional systems in these regions. But we should also contemplate new forms of deterrence against “below-threshold” approaches of such regional actors.”

China has significantly enhanced its force projection in East Asia, where it has staked claim to disputed islands and territorial waters as a means of expanding its sovereignty and procuring additional resources.

China’s emphasis on upgrading its navy represents a worrying trend for the U.S. and its regional allies, as it threatens their territorial integrity and may ultimately enable China to challenge U.S. naval supremacy in the region.

China's enhanced ability to project maritime power in East Asia at the expense of U.S. strategic interests and the territorial integrity of U.S. regional allies. Through its naval might, China has laid claim to various disputed outposts in the North, East, and South China Seas, and threatens the freedom of navigation in these contested waterways.
The U.S. government has worked to craft a strategy in response, which involves enhancing its own naval capabilities, augmenting regional force posture, reaffirming commitments to allies, and ensuring the freedom of navigation in East Asia.

Read the full brief,

HOW TET OFFENSIVE UNDERMINED U.S. WAR IN VIETNAM & HOOVER INSTITUTION STRATEGIKA ISSUE ON NAVAL READINESS

1/16/2018

Tet In Retrospect
by Mark Moyar via Military History in the News
This week marks the 50th anniversary of the Tet Offensive. During the Tet holiday ceasefire, Vietnamese Communist forces attacked all of South Vietnam’s towns and cities in order to smash South Vietnamese government forces and incite popular uprisings. Many of the government’s soldiers and policemen were off duty during the holiday, enabling the Communists to infiltrate the towns and cities undetected and strike the first blows. But government forces rallied quickly, and everywhere the population rejected Communist appeals to take part in the uprising.

A Requiem for Vietnam
By Andrew J. Bacevich, The American Conservative: “A friend recently called my attention to a symposium on “The Meaning of Vietnam” that appeared in the June 12, 1975 issue of the New York Review of Books. Just weeks before, Saigon had fallen and the Republic of Vietnam had passed out of existence. The editors of the NYRB considered the moment opportune for some of the paper’s regular contributors—leading lights of the East Coast intelligentsia—to assess the war’s significance and implications. ”

STRATEGIKA ISSUE NO. 47

BACKGROUND ESSAY
War Games On The Korean Peninsula
by Michael Auslin

FEATURED COMMENTARY
A Brutal, But Reasonable, Response To North Korea
by Thomas Donnelly

Reasonable Conventional Options In A Second Korean War
by Miles Maochun Yu

RELATED COMMENTARY
Is North Korea’s Threat Unacceptable?
by Angelo Codevilla

Deterring Kim Jong-un’s North Korea
by Peter Mansoor

Annihilate the North Korea Threat: Possible Options
by Miles Maochun Yu

Tale Of The Tape: North Korea VS. Joint US-ROK Force
by Thomas Henriksen

How to Approach the North Korean Threat
by Josef Joffe

North Korea: Diplomacy or Military Solution?
by Barry Strauss

The Need For Missile Defense
by Victor Davis Hanson

How the Tet Offensive Undermined American Faith in Government // Julian E. Zelizer
Fifty years ago, the January 1968 battle laid bare the way U.S. leaders had misled the public about the war in Vietnam.

Lessons and Echoes from the War in Vietnam
By Joseph J. Collins, Small Wars Journal: “I wanted the Burns epic to conclude with a discussion of strategic lessons, but alas, Burns and Novick left that to the viewers, bombarding them with different perspectives and personal vignettes. The series tried to spread understanding, but we are all prisoners of our own experiences and worldviews. It left some of us in the national security community yearning for something more concrete. ”

OUR NUCLEAR FUTURE: RIVALS & DANGEROUS REDUNDANCIES

1/15/2018

Politicizing proliferation policy
John R. Bolton | Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

The Pentagon is planning to develop two new sea-based nuclear weapons to respond to Russia and China’s growing military capabilities, according to a sweeping Defense Department review of nuclear strategy. - Wall Street Journal

ASIA TIMES: U.S. NEEDS A RESET IN EURASIA TO COMBAT ISLAMISM

With the world focused on the nuclear crisis in Iran, it is tempting to think that addressing this case, North Korea, and the problem of nuclear terrorism is all that matters and is what matters most.

Perhaps, but if states become more willing to use their nuclear weapons to achieve military advantage, the problem of proliferation will become much more unwieldy. In this case, U.S. security will be hostage not just to North Korea, Iran, or terrorists, but to nuclear proliferation more generally, diplomatic miscalculations, and wars between a much larger number of possible players.

This, in a nutshell, is the premise of Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future, which explores what nuclear futures we may face over the next 3 decades and how we currently think about this future. Will nuclear weapons spread in the next 20 years to more nations than just North Korea and possibly Iran? How great will the consequences be? What can be done? ssi.armywarcollege.edu

THE GEOGRAPHIC CHALLENGES OF ARGENTINA

1/14/2018

STRATFOR

THE RISKS OF BOMBING NORTH KOREA: KISSINGER & SHULTZ

1/11/2018

The risk bombing North Korea holds for US interests in Asia
STEPHEN BRYEN
There are two kinetic proposals currently being floating in Washington’s top policy circles about what to do with North Korea. The more extreme one, proposed independently by Ed Luttwak in Foreign Policy Magazine, is for the United States to “use well-aimed conventional weapons to deny nuclear weapons” to North Korea. The other proposal, supposedly under study by the Pentagon (with some support reportedly from the National Security Council), is to give North Korea a “bloody...

The U.S. Air Force is going ahead with two long-planned flight tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles next month despite efforts to damp tensions over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and encourage fragile talks with South Korea. - Bloomberg

The Navy is taking a serious look at its Surface Warfare Officer candidate training, with the hopes of creating more proficient officers before assigning them to ship crews, the commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command said on thursday. - USNI

Lockheed Martin Corp said on Thursday it had connected key components of its new long-range discrimination radar (LRDR) with its Aegis Ashore missile-defense system to enhance Aegis’s capabilities. - Reuters

Assessing a U.S.-China Diplomatic Solution to North Korea
By Michael Martinez, RealClearDefense: “While rhetoric may seem that war on the Peninsula is unavoidable, there are still ways to engage the Kim Jong-un Regime while keeping the peace among Asian allies.”

Former diplomats Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and Richard Armitage testified before the Senate Armed Services committee yesterday. The senior statesmen warned of the grave implications of the North Korean threat—beyond one of the sides "pressing the button."

Kissinger: "If North Korea still possesses some nuclear capability, other countries in the region are likely to come to the conclusion that it is safe to proceed with their own nuclear programs...Once that line is crossed, you are in a world in which we have no experience."
Shultz: "In the Reagan days, people had an appreciation for what a nuke could do...I fear people have lost that sense of dread."
Armitage on capability vs. intent: “Although China and Russia are the two most capable competitors we face at present, I do not believe that they presently possess that intent [to existentially threaten the United States]. Iran, North Korea and terrorist groups may desire to undermine our system, but they do not yet have the capability to threaten our way of life.”

All three agreed that nuclear war was not yet imminent, but they warned it should not be taken lightly.

Read more highlights

WAR ON THE ROCKS LOOKS TO THE WARRIOR OF THE FUTURE

1/10/2018

Blue Hair in the Gray Zone
By Jacquelyn Schneider, War on the Rocks: “What does the warrior of the future look like? What are the roles and missions the United States will need to prepare its people for? What are the technologies those warriors must master in order to succeed at their mission?”

LEADERSHIP IS ADAPTION & WHY NAPOLEON WAS THE BEST

1/4/2018

The World According to H.R. McMaster // Uri Friedman
Why is he so worried about North Korea?

Adaptive Leadership and the Warfighter
By Reed Bonadonna, Strategy Bridge: “Over the past twenty years, a significant contribution to leadership studies has come under the heading of Adaptive Leadership, pioneered by Ron Heifetz in the seminal work Leadership Without Easy Answers.”

Napoleon Was the Best General Ever, and the Math Proves It.
By Ethan Arsht, Medium: “Like Hannibal, I wanted to rank powerful leaders in the history of warfare. Unlike Hannibal, I sought to use data to determine a general’s abilities, rather than specific accounts of generals’ achievements. The result is a system for ranking every prominent commander in military history.”

Losing the Information War and How to Win
By Michael Anderson, Small Wars Journal: “In principle there is a new worldwide, existential ideological struggle, reminiscent of the Cold War of the 1950s-1990. This time the Western public is failing to acknowledge the degree of the struggle.”

Surface Forces Are Refocused
By Thomas S. Rowden, Proceedings Magazine: “Two essential processes are at work in today’s surface force: the production of readiness and the consumption of readiness. No matter where a ship is homeported, she is either generating readiness through maintenance, modernization, and training or she is consuming it with operations at sea.”

ANALYTICAL CRITERIAL FOR STRATEGIC JUDGEMENTS & A LIST OF FRANCE'S BEST WAR PHILOSOPHERS

1/3/2018

CSBA

Meet France’s War Philosophers
By Michael Shurkin, War on the Rocks: “To come to terms with being at war, the French have turned not just to the usual public intellectuals and commentators, but also to a relatively rare breed in France: what might be called national security pundits.”

Necessity and Proportionality Beyond the Nuclear Threshold
By Robbin Laird, Second Line of Defense: “Thinking on nuclear arms control evolved around the idea of reducing the likelihood that the nuclear threshold should ever be crossed, whether accidentally, or a “madman”, or the development of systems that destabilize “mutually assured destruction” such as ballistic missile defense.”

ISLAM & THE PUBLIC SQUARE

1/2/2018

CRISIS MAGAZINE: ISLAM & WESTERN CONCEPT OF NEUTRALITY IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE

GAME OF PORTS, THE RED SEA: HOW THE 'RED MED' WILL RULE IN 21ST CENTURY GEOGRAPHY

1/2/2018

Erdogan snares an ancient port on the Red Sea – with funds from Qatar?
BY SAMI MOUBAYED
Turkish president strikes a deal with Sudan to develop the historic port island of Suakin, raising suspicion that Qatari funds have been used to secure a base close to the port of Jeddah; Egypt is not happy about the deal either

Game of Ports in the Red Sea: Egypt vs Everybody. Gregory Copley, Defense & Foreign Affairs

"...The issues have vital implications for the security and strategic postures of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Yemen, Ethiopia, Iran, Djibouti, and Israel, as well as the US, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and Kenya. [Secondarily, Jordan is caught in the middle of the Egypt-Saudi dispute, and its economy has fallen in recent months due to the cuts in Saudi and the Gulf aid or investment, and by the continuing burden of the refugee crisis caused by the Saudi-Qatari-Turkish maintenance of the war against the Syrian Government.]

But a recent headline event which barely made the international media was the granting 30-year control of the Port of Berbera to the UAE company, Dubai World Ports (DW Ports). This ostensibly occurred — or was preliminarily agreed — in September 2016, but, in fact, was only concluded in early 2017. What has not gained attention was the reality that the deal gives control to the UAE not only of the highly-strategic port of Berbera — at the mouth of the Red Sea — to the UAE but also the large Berbera airport, with its 4,149m (13,582 ft.) paved runway, built by the USSR for military purposes in the mid-1970s. The UAE is deeply committed to the Saudi-led coalition war against Yemen, and sees the military use of the port and air-port at Berbera in this context. Significantly, the airport was fenced, and a new terminal built, with Kuwaiti money in 2015.

A Somaliland Ministerial delegation visited Addis Ababa in February 2017 to seek Ethi-opian approval for the separate UAE air base deal, but Ethiopian lawmakers were con-cerned when the Somalilanders refused to provide details or a copy of the accord signed with the UAE. [When the Somaliland delegation then met with Ethiopian Prime Minister Dessalegn Hailemariam, the subject of the port lease was not even brought up by the visitors.] It was known that the Berbera airport would be used, at least in part, by the UAE Air Force (and its allies), and it was assumed that the UAE’s Dubai Ports would also wish to maintain civilian airline traffic to the airfield, to support the civil side of the maritime port of Berbera. It was understood that a military section of the port would be created for the UAE Navy (and those states approved by the UAE).

Berbera is a significant alternate port for Ethiopia, which has mainly relied in recent years on Djibouti, since the loss of its former ports, now in Eritrea, of Assab and Mas-sawa. And yet the Government of Ethiopia has remained silent on the UAE Berbera port deal, which wrested away the prospect — long discussed in Ethiopia and Somaliland — of making Berbera a critical maritime element for Ethiopia.

CENTER FOR POLITICAL & MILITARY POWER

SUN TZU ISN'T WORKING FOR CHINA ANYMORE

SUN TZU ISN'T WORKING FOR CHINA
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THE QURAN & MORAL STRATEGY FOR THE LONG WAR

WHEN WAR WITHOUT END, FINALLY ENDS

WHEN WAR WITHOUT END, FINALLY ENDS
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THUCYDIDES & THE LONG WAR PROBLEM

HOW TO UNDERSTAND THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR

WHAT HAPPENED DURING PELOPONNESIAN WAR
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THUCYDIDES TRAP IS GREAT POWER COMPETITION

THUCYDIDES TRAP = GREAT POWER COMPETITION
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CENTER STRATEGIC, BUDGETARY ASSESSMENTS: U.S. GRAND STRATEGY

DAVID P. GOLDMAN COLUMN ASIA TIMES

HOW BEST TO UNDERSTAND U.S. - CHINA RELATIONS

STRATEGY BRIDGE

Winning World War IV David P. Goldman.pdf
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THE NEW ASIAN OBSERVER

Tweets by WilliamHolland

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