02 Diplomacy – Page 10 – Public Intelligence Blog

2013/08/252013/08/25

General and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry on the Persistent Failure of US Understanding in Afghanistan

02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, Lessons, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

使用谷歌翻译在下一列的顶部。

गूगल अगले स्तंभ के शीर्ष पर अनुवाद का प्रयोग करें.

Google sonraki sütunun üstünde Çevir kullanın.

Используйте Google Translate на вершине соседней колонке.

گوگل اگلے کالم میں سب سے اوپر ترجمہ کا استعمال کریں.

Emphasis below added by Milt Bearden, former CIA chief in Pakistan also responsible for the field aspects of the CIA's covert support against Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

Foreign Affairs, September/October 2013

ESSAY

The Limits of Counterinsurgency Doctrine in Afghanistan
The Other Side of the COIN

Karl W. Eikenberry

Eikenberry, Obama, and General Stanley McChrystal in Afghanistan, March 2010. (Pete Souza / White House)

KARL W. EIKENBERRY is William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He served as Commanding General of the Combined Forces Command–Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007 and as U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2011.

Since 9/11, two consecutive U.S. administrations have labored mightily to help Afghanistan create a state inhospitable to terrorist organizations with transnational aspirations and capabilities. The goal has been clear enough, but its attainment has proved vexing. Officials have struggled to define the necessary attributes of a stable post-Taliban Afghan state and to agree on the best means for achieving them. This is not surprising. The U.S. intervention required improvisation in a distant, mountainous land with de jure, but not de facto, sovereignty; a traumatized and divided population; and staggering political, economic, and social problems. Achieving even minimal strategic objectives in such a context was never going to be quick, easy, or cheap.

Of the various strategies that the United States has employed in Afghanistan over the past dozen years, the 2009 troop surge was by far the most ambitious and expensive. Counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine was at the heart of the Afghan surge. Rediscovered by the U.S. military during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, counterinsurgency was updated and codified in 2006 in Field Manual 3-24, jointly published by the U.S. Army and the Marines. The revised
doctrine placed high confidence in the infallibility of military leadership at all levels of engagement (from privates to generals) with the indigenous population throughout the conflict zone. Military doctrine provides guidelines that inform how armed forces contribute to campaigns, operations, and battles. Contingent on context, military doctrine is
meant to be suggestive, not prescriptive.

Broadly stated, modern COIN doctrine stresses the need to protect civilian populations, eliminate insurgent leaders and infrastructure, and help establish a legitimate and accountable host-nation government able to deliver essential human services. Field Manual 3-24 also makes clear the extensive length and expense of COIN campaigns: “Insurgencies are protracted by nature. Thus, COIN operations always demand considerable expenditures of time and resources.”

Continue reading “General and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry on the Persistent Failure of US Understanding in Afghanistan”

2013/08/192013/08/19

Kevin Barrett: US ‘Aid’ Destroys Egypt’s Economy, Democracy

02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Peace Intelligence

US ‘Aid’ Destroys Egypt’s Economy, Democracy

American President Obama says he deplores the Egyptian junta’s decision to massacre peaceful protesters and declare martial law.

If he deplores it so much, why is he paying for it?

It is no secret that Egyptian strongman el-Sisi and the soldiers he is sending to slaughter protesters are on the US payroll.

According to official estimates, US taxpayers give the Egyptian military 1.3 billion dollars per year in direct military aid. When various forms of indirect aid are taken into account, including money from US puppet states in the Persian Gulf, the real annual total is in the billions.

This lavish US funding has allowed Egypt’s military to balloon into a monster that controls between one-quarter and one-third of the Egyptian economy. That is why Egypt is economically moribund.

Military spending kills economies, as shown by Dr. Robert Reuschlein of RealEconomy.com. Money wasted on militaries, which are non-productive organizations, is stolen from the productive sector. In societies with large militaries, the best scientists, engineers, and other experts stop producing valuable goods and services, and spend their lives figuring out how to destroy things and kill people. And poorer people, instead of becoming productive citizens, are trained to mindlessly obey orders and kill on command. Many of them suffer severe psychological damage that renders them non-productive.

In Egypt, the military’s economic hegemony creates even more problems.

Egypt has inherited a millennia-old authoritarian bureaucratic tradition. Pharaohs, emirs, presidents-for-life, and generals serve as dictators, and their bureaucratic lackeys have the high-status, high-paying jobs. Productive people are considered mere peasants and tradesmen, inferior in status to the bureaucrats.

British colonialism, which imposed a new layer of foreign bureaucracy, worsened the problem. Bright young Egyptians were trained to believe they were owed government jobs when they graduated from college. Widespread belief that “the government owes me a high-paying non-productive job” persists in Egypt. And the military officers and their cronies are the biggest and most bloated parasites.

Continue reading “Kevin Barrett: US ‘Aid’ Destroys Egypt’s Economy, Democracy”

2013/08/192013/08/19

SchwartzReport: South America Rising + New World Order II Meta-RECAP

01 Brazil, 02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 07 Health, 07 Venezuela, 08 Immigration, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

The America media, like a long chain of administrations, never really seems to understand the South American psyché, in all of its national complexity, nor what is going on there. So there is very little coverage or attention, and what there is trades in stereotypes and shallow commentary. In contrast I think the nations of our Southern Hemisphere, are undergoing an extraordinary transition, which constitutes one of the most interesting geopolitical developments going on. As you read this keep in mind Uruguay's recent legalization of marijuana.

Ecuador’s President Denounces Chevron As ‘Enemy of Our Country’
Agence France-Presse (France)

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: South America Rising + New World Order II Meta-RECAP”

2013/08/15

Esam Al-Amin: Egypt’s Shameful Day — Bloodbath on the Nile

02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Military

Esam Al-Amin is the author of The Arab Awakening Unveiled: Understanding Transformations and Revolutions in the Middle East. He can be contacted at alamin1919@gmail.com. follow him on Twitter: @al_arian1919.

COUNTERPUNCH

August 15, 2013

Egypt’s Shameful Day

Bloodbath on the Nile

In June 1967, it took Israeli forces only six hours to rout the Egyptian military and devastate its air force, inflicting the most humiliating defeat on the Arab world in the last half century. In the 1973 October war, the Egyptian army killed 2600 Israeli soldiers in 20 days of combat. Nearly forty years later, the Egyptian military turned its guns on its own citizens to much devastation: on August 14, it took the combined forces of Egypt’s army and police twelve hours to disperse tense of thousands of unarmed peaceful protesters in two sit-in camps in the eastern and western suburbs of Cairo. It was a determined effort by the July 3 coup leaders to not only defeat their political opponents, but also to strike a decisive blow to democracy and the rule of law in Egypt and across the Arab world.

Since June 28, Islamists led by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) have been camped out at these two sites, initially as a show of support to President Mohammad Morsi as he was being challenged by the opposition. But since he was deposed on July 3, the protesters have been demanding his return, the restoration of the suspended constitution, and the reinstatement of the dissolved parliament. For 48 days, the sit-ins and demonstrations across Egypt attracted millions of Morsi supporters as well as pro-democracy groups, who protested the coup’s nullification of their presidential and parliamentary votes and their ratification of the referendum on the new constitution.

An Obstinate Military Enabled by Liberal and Secular Forces and Western Powers

Continue reading “Esam Al-Amin: Egypt's Shameful Day — Bloodbath on the Nile”

2013/08/13

F. William Engdahl: The Stark Reality Behind Obama’s Russian ‘Statesmanship’

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 05 Iran, 06 Genocide, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Officers Call

The Stark Reality Behind Obama’s Russian ‘Statesmanship’

By F. William Engdahl

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant, author and lecturer. He is author of the best-selling book on oil and geopolitics, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order. It has been published as well in French, German, Chinese, Russian, Czech, Korean, Turkish, Croatian, Slovenian and Arabic. In 2010 he published Gods of Money: Wall Street and the Death of the American Century, and in 2011, Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, completing his trilogy on the power of oil, food and money control.

With a diplomatic attitude more reminiscent of a spoiled brat grabbing his toys and leaving the room, US President Obama has resorted to diplomatic snubs and childish criticisms of Russian behavior as if the Russian leaders were small children.

In a press conference Obama described the Russian President as having a “slouch…looking like that bored schoolboy in the back of the classroom.” Yet behind the childish form of the latest White House refusal to meet President Putin before the G-20 St. Petersburg Summit is a grim reality:

Washington is rapidly losing its way to impose its will in the world on multiple fronts and the Putin snub is an impotent reflection of that loss of power. The real issues in US-Russian relations go far deeper.

Read rest of long detailed article — strongly recommended.

2013/08/072013/08/07

Chuck Spinney: White House Blows Iran — Again….

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 08 Proliferation, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War

The Washington Jerkocracy Strikes Again

by Rami G. Khouri

Agence-Global, 07 Aug 2013

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon. You can follow him @ramikhouri.

BEIRUT — I would love to know who the jerk is who wrote the White House’s press statement on the occasion of the inauguration earlier this week of the new Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani. I say this is the work of a jerk, or a band of war-addicted zealots in Washington, D.C., because it seems designed to totally bury the opportunity that Rouhani represents to improve the wellbeing of Iranians and resolve Western-Iranian and Arab-Iranian tensions on a variety of important issues.

2013/08/062013/08/06

Mini-Me: Argentine President Opposes Security Council Veto, Deepens Latin American Rejection of NATO, OAS, and UN — Palestine and Malvinas Cited

02 Diplomacy, Ethics, Government

Huh?

Argentine president takes on Security Council veto

Associated Press, 6 August 2013

Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez used the opportunity of presiding over the U.N. Security Council for the first time Tuesday to take aim at the veto power of its five permanent members _ the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France.

Fernandez also criticized member states that don't implement U.N. resolutions, citing unheeded demands for a Palestinian state and Britain's refusal to engage in talks about the disputed Falkland Islands, which Argentina calls the Malvinas.

. . . . . . .

She said the veto was a safeguard during the Cold War to prevent “nuclear holocaust” _ but today the United States and Russia sit at the same table “and we can't deal with the problems in this new world with old instruments and old methods.”

Fernandez pointed to two Latin American organizations _ the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and the Union of South American Nations _ which take decisions on the basis of unanimity when there is a conflict. By contrast, she criticized the use of vetoes by the permanent members of the Security Council.

Russia and China have vetoed three Western-backed resolutions to pressure Syrian President Bashar Assad to end the 2 1/2 year conflict that has killed more than 100,000 people, and the United States, Israel's closest ally, has vetoed numerous resolutions over the years on the Palestinian conflict with Israel.

Fernandez strongly supported the Arab League's U.N. observer Ahmed Fathalla who said all 193 U.N. member states must implement U.N. resolutions

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Argentine President Opposes Security Council Veto, Deepens Latin American Rejection of NATO, OAS, and UN — Palestine and Malvinas Cited”