Afghanistan: President Karzai's spokesman said Wednesday that Afghanistan has suspended Bilateral Security Agreement talks with the US and that Afghanistan will not pursue peace talks with the Taliban unless the United States steps out of the negotiations.
The spokesman explained President Karzai took the action because of a contradiction between what the US says and does.
Comment: The Afghan government judges it has been betrayed by the US in agreeing to talks with the Islamic Emirate. Afghanistan said no such entity exists. It was told the Doha office was only for negotiations.
Qatar said the Taliban betrayed their promise to open only a political office of the Taliban. Qatari authorities were persuaded to force the Taliban to take down their flag and their Islamic Emirate plaque. The US said the Afghan government had been kept fully informed.
1.1 Adds contribution “An API for NATO” from Innovation Hub participant laukner, and adds Open Source Everything (OSE) graphic that most of us agree is the necessary technical transformation that must take place for the UN, EU, NATO, BRICS, and others to be effective at M4IS2 and creating a prosperous world at peace, a world that works for all.
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This post addresses five questions in the context of the NATO Members and NATO Commander's mission intent — one excellent and still useful reference is Charles Barry, “Transforming NATO Command and Control for Future Missions,” World Security Network, 15 October 2003, see especially the section on the Allied Transformation Command that emphasized transformation lessons learned, guidelines, benchmarks, concepts, and doctrine; funding priorities for design and implementation of transformational or alternative C3 (consultation, command, and control) among NATO members and external non-NATO elements essential to mission success.
01 Who are the customers of an alternative command and control schema, and how do we involve them?
Russian Advanced Weapons for Syria: Unrevealed Secrets of Vladimir Putinās Recent Visit to London
[Editors Note: We had reported earlier that when the Israelis used an American made mini-nuke bunker buster in the Damascus attack that they had crossed Russia ‘quiet red line' of using a tactical nuke against an non attacking opponent.
This not only forced them to move Syrian air space defenses to block additional Israeli attacks, but also get fully deployed when the calls from the Israeli Lobby shills like John ‘McQaeda' McCain and Lindsy Graham for a no fly zone which none of our military thinks is a smart idea, the wrong fight, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
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With the Russian navy back in the Mediterranean and the Israelis threatening to attack their air defense weapons in transit, this gave the Russians no choice but to deploy all of their top line weapons systems to protect their defensive deployment. Unsaid has been that any pre-emptive attack on the Russians would be dealt with in a full response so that the attacking party could then explain to it's citizen once again why Syria was worth the devastation.
NATO is a hollow shell that could not fight its way out of a paper bag. America is expected to do most everything and of course pay for it. And if someone on our side makes an aggressive move I expect to see a quick response. We would do the same. But no one is threatening us.
We and our proxies are the threatening parties here, taking us to war inch by inch thinking they will be able to pull some incident out of the hat to make it all look like we were attacked and then responded. No one will believe that…because it will not be true. And if the Saudis and Gulf States think they are going to move armor into Syria and not pay a price for it I suspect they will be getting an education the hard way…Jim W. Dean]
The following report comes to us from intelligence sources that have been able to confirm some of the ālegendā behind the story.Ā If this is true, and we have confirmed that the S 300 missile defense system has been, for some weeks now, in the hands of the Syrian military despite denials by the āpop culture press,ā Putin has made an interesting and very necessary move.
1.0 out of 5 starsExcellent Guide to Morons in Power, June 19, 2013
This is the single best book for understanding what morons in power think when they pretend to think but are actually pursuing ideological and financial objectives far removed from the public interest.
The authors, who demonstrate how far one could get in the Cold War military without reading or thinking, call this a military assessment. It is not. It is a one-track discourse on why we need to use our heavy metal military to wipe out Syria and Iran and intimidate Libya and Pakistan. It avoids discussing Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Central Asia, Muslim Africa, and Muslim Pacifica. This is not analysis, this is flim-flam.
By way of context in my specific criticism of this book, let me just note that the bibliography does not reflect any appreciation for strategy, e.g. Colin Gray's “Modern Strategy”, or Col Dr. Max Manwaring and Ambassadors Corr and Dorff's “The Search for Security”, or Willard Matthias “America's Strategic Blunders” or Adda Bozeman's “Strategic Intelligence & Statecraft” or Jonathan Schell's “Unconquerable World.” I looked in vain for any sign the authors might comprehend the strategic context in which their specific beliefs and recommendations can only be seen as ill-advised. For example, a reference to Shultz, Godson, and Quester (at least one of whom is a neo-conservative), “Security Studies for the 21st Century”, or Robert McNamara and James Blight “Wilson's Ghost”, or Dean Jeffrey Garten's “The Politics of Fortune”, or Republican and conservative Clyde Prestowitz's “Rogue Nation”, or Ambassador Mark Palmer's “Breaking the Real Axis of Evil”. No cognizance of Kissinger, even.
Patrick Cockburn has written a very important essay on Syria in the London Review of Books (attached below). Ā The essay is aptly titled but has only a few oblique, albeit important, references to Sykes – Picot Agreement, a document some readers may not familiar with. Ā Let's begin with a little background.
The Sykes-Picot agreement (it was a secret agreement concocted by two bureaucrats) is one of the most cynical documents in the creation of the modern Middle East.
The Encylopaedia Britannica describes it accurately as follows:
It was a … “secret convention made during World War I (1916) between Great Britain and France, with the assent of imperial Russia, for the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. The agreement led to the division of Turkish-held Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine into various French- and British-administered areas. The agreement took its name from its negotiators, Sir Mark Sykes
First, Syria has been spilling refugees all over the region. Jordan is poor, Iraq is fragile and even their smaller contingent is causing trouble. Lebanon experiences a fragile balance of ethnic and sectarian tensions. The 420,000 new residents upset that balance and threaten to tip the country into chaos like it had in the 1980s.
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Second, the Kurds were mostly at peace with Turkey until Syria fell into disorder. The Syrian government withdrew from Kurdish turf to reduce their interest in the fighting, then it is possible both Syria and Iran had a hand in setting the Kurdish PKKās insurgency back in motion against Turkey. Neither Iran nor Syria wants any trouble with the Kurds in their territory, both want to preserve the Shia arc from Iran to Syria, Sunni majority Turkey has been trending more Islamist in its thinking, and has chosen to back the Sunni majority rebellion in Syria.
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The Turkish choice to focus on the Sunni aspect of the rebellion rather than an inclusive government that would respect the Alawite, Druze, and Christian minorities is a sticking point for the U.S. If things go badly Syria may become a bigger, badder, bloodier version of what Lebanon was like thirty years ago.
MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla., June 3, 2013 ā About 100 people are hard at work at the U.S. Special Operations Command headquarters here on a new plan that will operationalize the way the command provides manpower and capability in support of the new defense strategic guidance.
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The plan, due to the Joint Staff in late August, is part of the Special Operations Command 2020 vision Navy Adm. William H. McRaven introduced shortly after taking the helm as Socom commander in 2011.The building of a global network of special operations forces, as well as U.S. government partners and partner nations, is a major component of Socom 2020, McRaven explained during the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference in Tampa, Fla., earlier this month.
McRavenās Socom 2020 vision calls for a globally networked force of special operations forces, interagency representatives, allies and partners, with aligned structures processes and authorities to enable its operations. Globally networked forces, he said, will provide geographic combatant commanders and chiefs of mission with an unprecedented unity of effort and an enhance ability to respond to regional contingencies and threats to stability.
McRaven noted his own experience working with the Joint Special Operations Command in Afghanistan. āIt has been interesting to work in a network like that, and we do that very, very well on the direct action side,ā he said. āWe need to figure out — and it is part of the Socom plan — how do we take that network, and be able to extend that out to the theater special operations commands,ā down to special operations forward elements and forces assigned to them.
