Arvind Subramanian seen to be a reformist at heart

Published: October 18, 2014 

Varghese K George, Puja Mehra

PTIIn this October 16, 2014 photo, Arvind Subramanian speaks to the media after taking charge as Chief Economic Adviser at North Block.

His approach is in sync with the Centre’s intentions of liberalisation, transparent regulation

Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian’s free-market convictions dominate his academic work and do not conform to the nationalist and protectionist streak among the leadership of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mentor of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. But his academic views are unlikely to dictate his policy prescriptions, top government sources told The Hindu.

“Academic studies guide policy formulations, but policies are not dictated by it. The final policy decisions will always be made by the political executive with inputs and advice from the CEA,” one source said.

The senior government functionary explained that Dr. Subramanian’s appointment indicated a trend of internationally acclaimed experts of Indian origin offering to work in India. “Dr. Subramanian’s track record is extraordinary,” he pointed out. Raghuram Rajan, former CEA and now Reserve Bank Governor, also left his position of Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund to work in the Indian government. Both were colleagues at the IMF.

Dr. Subramanian is a reformist at heart and stands for open, liberal but transparently regulated markets, economist Rajiv Kumar told The Hindu. He will bring to the job emphasis on de-bottlenecking of the supply side and since he favours free trade he will most likely push for increasing India’s exports and for the domestic sector to be less clogged with regulation.

Though few CEAs have traditionally majorly influenced policy-making, Dr. Subramanian has the advantage of being more than a pure academician having worked in the IMF and World Bank systems due to which “he is likely to be a more successful CEA in the midst of the government system and not at the margins of it, marginalised by the bureaucracy,” said Dr. Kumar. Though how much this influence will be will depend on his rapport with the Finance Minister and the Prime Minister. Dr. Subramanian’s approach is thus in sync with the core of the Modi government’s stated intentions of liberalisation and transparent regulation.

CEAs typically define their roles within the government framework which is constrained among other imperatives by political compulsions and Dr. Subramanian is not likely to be different.

ENSURING THAT TRUST ISN’T FRITTERED AWAY

http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/edit/ensuring-that-trust-isnt-frittered-away.html

Wednesday, 15 October 2014 | Ashok K Mehta | 

Prime Minister Modi has given a massive push to India-Nepal relations with his successful visit to the neighbouring country. Now it is for the political leadership in Nepal to build on that momentum

One country in the neighbourhood where the Modi magic has worked dramatically is Nepal. With his marvel of oratory and a few symbolically-choreographed acts in Kathmandu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi conquered the hearts and minds of most Nepalis. This near-miracle was reflected late last month by a number of Nepalis I met in Nepalgunj, Dang-Ghorai and Kathmandu.

Nepalgunj was the venue of the Nepal-Bharat Awadh Maitri Samaj conference organised to highlight the problems confronted by residents living astride the India-Nepal open border, against the uptick in relations catalysed by Mr Modi. Reacting to Mr Modi’s Kathmandu visit, Ran Bahadur Shah (Goteh Babu), a veteran of the first revolution in 1950 who helped capture Dang, says, “Seventy five per cent of Nepal’s problems with India are over...the rest will settle...” Laxman Thapa a social activist from Ghorai, living in Kathmandu is completely bowled over Mr Modi. “After Nehru he is India’s tallest leader”. There is no one I met who was not a Modi fan. For someone visiting remote areas of Nepal since 1959, I found the Modi wave unprecedented. Does this mean the long-nurtured anti-India sentiment has evaporated? Not quite — that is why the 75 per cent quantification!

Indian Ambassador Ranjit Rae fanned a euphoria at the conference, calling the post-Modi era a period of transformation. He added, “What could not be done in 60 years has been achieved in four months”. He was referring to the Power Trade Agreement, the Power Development Agreement on Upper Karnali bagged by GMR following a global tender involving 11 companies, and the PDA for Pancheswor Dam signed during Mr Modi’s visit. These events and the upswing in India Nepal relations were endorsed by former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, who shrewdly acknowledged the fruits of border connectivity: The help given by BJP MP from Balrampur, Ajay Misra, who was present at the conference, in facilitating his election victory.

Mr Rae echoed the point I have always made: That of Nepal’s strategic centrality to the security of the Indian sub-continent; hence its great importance for India. Nepalis have to be frequently reminded of their own country’s geo-strategic primacy due to geography, history, open borders and their sons sacrificing their blood for protection of India’s sovereignty. No other relationship is remotely comparable to what is called in the borderland as roti, beti and khoon ka rishta. Still, there was one sceptic, a seasoned Nepal-watcher at the conference who must go unnamed, who confided: “Six months and the Modi tamasha will be over”. But another expert noted that these dramatic mood-changes and quick gains must be preserved and the momentum of the new-found faith in India backed by commitments turning into reality.

Imagined panic

http://www.asianage.com/columnists/imagined-panic-862

Oct 18, 2014

Rod Liddle

Got Ebola yet? Early symptoms are very difficult to distinguish from either winter flu or, indeed, a particularly bad hangover. Bit feverish, aches and pains, sore throat and so on. Only when you start to bleed from the eyeballs should you worry a bit: that’s never happened before with Jack Daniels. It was the African bloke huddled up on the tube, I would reckon, the one who kept coughing. I knew I shouldn’t have sat near an African.

One or two clinical experts have been likening the Ebola virus to HIV. They seem to me similar more in a sociological sense. I remember those days when people avoided being in close proximity to homosexuals for reasons other than their appalling taste in music, or their moustaches. The mid-1980s were a time of frit panic and a concomitant nastiness directed towards a community which could genuinely, back then, be described by that now ubiquitous and debased word “vulnerable”. We are experiencing the same sort of panic right now and much of the same nastiness. If you doubt this, check out the reader comments on every story the Daily Mail runs about Ebola. Ban them all from coming anywhere near the country! Horrible, bat-munching savages. If they’re here, kick them out! And so on, ad infinitum.

The threat to the average Brit of contracting Ebola is substantially less than the risk of being hit by lightning, and will remain so, I suspect. Incidentally, the clinical comparison with HIV is of interest: both viruses are easily capable of mutating so as to become more effective. Indeed the suspicion is that, like HIV, Ebola will become less and less lethal, eventually settling down at a death rate of around five per cent. The less lethal a virus, the more successful it is in its own terms of replicating.

There are already signs that the death rate in the current epidemic is coming down, even in those benighted West African countries which are singularly ill-equipped to deal with such an outbreak. Ebola, then, may eventually take its place in the pantheon of illnesses which are very scary in the abstract, but which we have little chance of catching and which can be treated with reasonable success. A disease which kills poor black people.

Road Parallel to the LAC in Arunachal Pradesh

By Lt Gen JS Bajwa

17 Oct , 2014

The announcement by the Government to construct an 1800 km long road running parallel to the LAC in Arunachal Pradesh (AP) is a purposive step but specious at best and is likely to remain a pipe-dream for a long time to come.

In 1997-98 there was a determined move by the then NDA government displaying a purposeful urgency in an effort to construct road axes right up to our Northern boundary. It was then planned to construct a total of eleven roads. Nine roads were in Arunachal Pradesh towards the LAC. One road was to be constructed in the then Uttar Pradesh and one in Ladakh.

The Army already has plans to build a lateral road from Kameng to Lohit half way up on the road axis from the plains leading to the LAC…

The Prospective Date of Completion (PDC) for the longest of these roads, from Along to Taksing running along the Subansari valley, and from Shyok to Daulet Beg Ouldi (DBO) was fixed for 2012. The Along-Taksing road has not yet reached the half way mark, while the Shyok-DBO road is being given a serious rethink due to the problems posed by its alignment crossing the Shyok River a number of times and because of the shifting water channels of the Shyok River in summer and may be abandoned altogether. The general apathy and the over-eagerness to put a spoke in every wheel by the Ministries of Environment and Forests resulted in inordinate delays.

The UPA government did not exempt a swathe of territory along the boundary from the requirement of complying by these norms, as has now been done by this government. Today the number of ‘strategic’ roads planned to be constructed is around 79. Most of these are in Arunachal Pradesh.

The geographical peculiarity of AP is that the river valleys and the mountain ranges in the State run more or less in a North-South alignment. Between the Kameng sector in the West and the lower Subansari, in the center, there is a vast swathe of land that is unassailable. The major rivers east of Kameng sector are Kameng, Kamla, Kurang, Subansari, Shyom, Siang, Dibang, and Lohit. These rivers have their source in the North in the glaciated regions along the watershed and some north of the watershed too. Geomorphologically, the rivers have a huge drainage basin and are fed by numerous turbulent tributaries. The volume of water and the current of these rivers, particularly in the monsoon season is awesome. As a consequence these rivers have created deep gorges along their course down to the plains.

The land belongs to the tribal people, so the government cannot acquire the land without the explicit consent of the people.

The Army already has plans to build a lateral road from Kameng to Lohit half way up on the road axis from the plains leading to the LAC, traversing up and down the valleys and the mountain ranges running on either side of the river valleys. That would, in rough terms, mean going up and down 16 mountain ranges and crossing eight major rivers. As such this proposal has not progressed beyond an expression of a ‘desire’. A similar lateral road alignment nearer the LAC would entail equally formidable engineering challenges. The additional ones being those that are posed by the altitude which would be greater, the river gorges encountered would be more numerous and requiring innovative solutions. Also, overall, the resources required would be enormous.

What ails the whole process of constructing of roads in these remote areas is the paucity of resources and multiplicity of agencies all operating insulated from the other with their own limited agendas. Just to list out some of these – Border Area Development Project which also includes roads, Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna, North East Council funding roads, state Government, Army with its General Staff Roads, Indo-Tibetan Border Police with its own set of requirements and Special Accelerated Road Development Programme of the North East Region and more. Agencies that construct and maintain these roads range from Border Road Organisation, National Highways Authority, CPWD, PWD and even private contractors. Who coordinates this effort is not known and if some coordination is taking place it is fortuitous and not planned. The Minister of State with independent charge of the North East would be the most suitable hub to coordinate funding and development of these roads.

Pakistani Taliban leaders pledge allegiance to Islamic State

By Tim Craig and Haq Nawaz Khan 

October 14 

Source Link

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — In another sign of the Middle East-based Islamic State’s expanding influence, the chief spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban and five regional commanders declared allegiance Tuesday to the group and its chief, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. 

The announcement marked the first instance of a major contingent of Taliban figures signaling a renouncement of fealty to the Afghan Taliban’s supreme leader, Mohammad Omar. If additional Taliban commanders follow suit, the changing loyalties could not only weaken the Afghan Taliban but also leave Pakistan and Afghanistan more vulnerable to the sort of brutal tactics employed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, analysts say. 

“This is very serious and dangerous trend from Afghanistan and Pakistan, as it is a more lethal and violent militant group than even al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban,” said Ijaz Khattak, chairman of the international relations department at the University of Peshawar in northwest Pakistan. 

In a message delivered last week, two factions of the Pakistani Taliban expressed support for the Islamic State. Later, however, the groups clarified that they were not abandoning their historical ties to Omar and the Afghan Taliban. Tuesday’s statement from the six commanders, however, left little doubt that they now view Baghdadi as their supreme leader. 

“I show allegiance to the commander of faithful, Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi Qureshi al Hussaini, and will listen and obey every order of you and will follow your orders regardless of what circumstances may be,” Shahidullah Shahid, the chief spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, said in the statement. 

Shahid was unavailable to comment. But one of his close aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the commanders will continue to be part of the Pakistani Taliban. “These commanders will remain with the organization, but will also represent ISIS in Pakistan,” the official said, using an acronym for the Islamic State. “The decision came after differences developed with the Afghan Taliban. I can’t say now what are the differences, but these commanders have changed their loyalties from Mullah Omar to ISIS chief Baghdadi.” 

For weeks, there have been signs that the Islamic State could gain a foothold in Pakistan, already home to more than two dozen terrorist groups. Last month, a 12-page manifesto was distributed in parts of Peshawar, inviting people to join the group. 

Some Pakistanis have also traveled to Syria to fight with the Islamic State. But Pakistani military and political leaders have played down suggestions that the group could expand in their country. 

Tuesday’s announcement could help the Pakistani military’s campaign against the Taliban, because it signaled the latest in a series of public divisions in the militant organization. But Khattak warned that those rifts could also make it easier for the Islamic State to recruit in Pakistan. 

Khan reported from Peshawar. 

Tim Craig is The Post’s bureau chief in Pakistan. He has also covered conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and within the District of Columbia government.

Pakistan, US appear once again to be cooperating on drone strikes

By Tom Hussain

McClatchy Foreign Staff (MCT)

October 14, 2014

Source Link

People shout slogans during a protest rally against U.S. drone strikes in central Pakistan's Multan on Jan. 8, 2013.

Two suspected U.S. drone strikes killed at least five militants in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region where the military has been fighting insurgents since June, Pakistani intelligence officials said Thursday. 

ISLAMABAD — A series of CIA drone strikes launched last week against Taliban insurgents in Pakistan’s northwest tribal areas provide the clearest demonstration yet that the U.S. intelligence agency and Pakistani security forces are once again cooperating on defeating the insurgents.

The drone strikes — nine in all, launched daily with a day off on Friday — targeted Taliban fighters as they retreated from the country’s advancing military, which has launched an offensive in the North Waziristan tribal area. Pakistani authorities have billed the campaign as the decisive battle of a seven-year war against Pakistan Taliban insurgents.

The pattern of the attacks fits the description of American acquiescence to a behind-the-scenes request for help from the Pakistani military, but nobody in Islamabad or Washington is saying so. The U.S. government rarely comments on drone strikes as a matter of policy, and Pakistan’s only acknowledgment of the strikes has been to dust off an aging diplomatic draft feigning protest at unauthorized incursions into its airspace.

The Pakistani news media made no mention of the strikes until Monday, a day after the last of the recent attacks, when Dawn, the country’s top English daily newspaper, drew attention to what it said was minimally Pakistan’s “tacit acceptance” of the U.S. airstrikes.

“Relative silence can be interpreted as, at the very least, tacit acceptance and, possibly, active cooperation between the countries. From the general location of the strikes … it would appear active cooperation is taking place — for surely neither the U.S. nor Pakistan could want an errant U.S.-fired missile hitting a Pakistani military target,” Dawn said in an editorial.

That comment alluded to the November 2011 clash between U.S. and Pakistani forces positioned on either side of the border with Afghanistan in which 24 Pakistani troops died. Pakistan responded by suspending cooperation with U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan, including the closure of two supply routes running through its territory.

Relations have slowly improved since, because U.S. officials have adopted a more politically sensitive approach in dealings with their Pakistani counterparts, who are deeply averse to public criticism.

The sticking point was the U.S. demand, since 2009, that Pakistan launch a military offensive in North Waziristan. After successful operations in other tribal areas, it had become the last safe haven in Pakistan for al-Qaida fugitives plotting attacks on Western soil, and a home away from home for the Haqqani network, an Afghan militant faction notorious for audacious attacks on government and NATO installations in Afghanistan.

Occasional drone strikes resumed in June, shortly before Pakistani forces launched the current offensive, but a pattern suggesting active cooperation did not emerge until last week.

A ‘Homeland’ We Pakistanis Don’t Recognize

Bina Shah

OCT. 15, 2014

Source Link

KARACHI, Pakistan — When I heard that the fourth season of Showtime’s “Homeland” would be set in Pakistanand Afghanistan, I awaited its season premiere with anticipation and trepidation. A major American television show would be portraying events set in my country, but I knew those events would be linked to the only thing that seems to interest the world’s eye: terrorism and how Islamist extremism affects Americans and the West.

As advertising for the season premiere was heating up, a short essay by an American writer and activist, Laura Durkay, appeared on The Washington Post’s website under the headline “Homeland Is the Most Bigoted Show on Television.” Ms. Durkay wrote, “The entire structure of ‘Homeland’ is built on mashing together every manifestation of political Islam, Arabs, Muslims and the whole Middle East into a Frankenstein-monster global terrorist threat that simply doesn’t exist.”

The show’s reputation along those lines had kept me away, even as I longed to examine Claire Danes’s portrayal of Carrie Mathison as a conflicted C.I.A. agent immersed in a male-dominated world, and engaging with Middle Eastern and Muslim characters. How could the show’s creators have dreamed up such a complex protagonist, while depicting the sociopolitical milieu in which so many of its characters exist with so little nuance?

Yes, Hollywood isn’t known for historical accuracy or impartial portrayals of any fictionalized “other.” But I still couldn’t resist trying to see what Pakistan, my homeland, looked like through its eyes. I’m a writer of fiction, so I know about imagined worlds. You look not for complete truthfulness, but for verisimilitude — the “appearance of being true” — so it can give your art authenticity, credibility, believability. And we in Pakistan long to be seen with a vision that at least approaches the truth.

Pakistan has long been said to have an image problem, a kind way to say that the world sees us one-dimensionally — as a country of terrorists and extremists, conservatives who enslave women and stone them to death, and tricky scoundrels who hate Americans and lie pathologically to our supposed allies. In Pakistan, we’ve long attributed the ubiquity of these images to what we believe is biased journalism, originating among mainstream American journalists who care little for depth and accuracy. By the time these tropes filter down into popular culture, and have morphed into the imaginings of showbiz writers, we’ve gone from an image problem to the realm of Jungian archetypes and haunting traumatized psyches.

Whenever a Western movie contains a connection to Pakistan, we watch it in a sadomasochistic way, eager and nervous to see how the West observes us. We look to see if we come across to you as monsters, and then to see what our new, monstrous face looks like. Again and again, we see a refracted, distorted image of our homeland staring back at us. We know we have monsters among us, but this isn’t what we look like to ourselves.

How Pakistan Fails Its Children

By MOSHARRAF ZAIDI

OCT. 14, 2014

Source Link

When confronted by photographic evidence of the savagery imposed by the Taliban on the people of Swat Valley, you can't help but ask: ... 

Jean Boling 20 hours ago

Yes, the physical condition of the schools is deplorable, though not especially different from their homes. Yes, the teachers are well-paid... 

Girish Kotwal 20 hours ago

You are what you choose to be. The Founder of Pakistan envisioned what he wanted Pakistan to be, an Islamic state with a strong regional... 

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — TO truly understand Malala Yousafzai, the youngest person ever to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, we need to understand the place she comes from.

Ms. Yousafzai is from Pakistan. The day Taliban terrorists shot her in the head she was on her way to school. Pakistan’s schools, its teachers and its education system are in such a desperate state of rot that the mere act of making one’s way to school, especially for young girls, is an extraordinary act of courage and faith.

Pakistan has a population of nearly 200 million people, of whom roughly one-fourth, or 52 million, are between the ages of 5 and 16. Pakistan’s Constitution guarantees all of these children a free and compulsory education. While statistics for this age group are difficult to come by, the number of Pakistani children between 5 and 16 who are not attending school is close to 25 million; most of them are girls.

While Ms. Yousafzai’s ordeal has brought global attention to the crisis of girls’ education in Pakistan, her admirable efforts are unlikely to succeed in improving the quality of schools across the country. That’s because the barriers to quality education in Pakistan are far greater than a few chauvinist Taliban extremists.

While we should all be disgusted by the violence, misogyny and extremism of Ms. Yousafzai’s attackers, that outrage must not prevent us from recognizing the true villains.

After all, it wasn’t the Taliban that laced the school curriculum with material that suffocates numeracy and reason — and with them the prospects for pluralism in the country. It wasn’t the Taliban that built schools without walls, without running water and without bathrooms. These are a legacy of a corrupt bureaucracy and patronage politics — during both democratic and military regimes.

And it wasn’t the Taliban that hired thousands of unqualified teachers. That is a legacy of the en masse distribution of political favors by political parties.

The Taliban did shoot Ms. Yousafzai, but there was enormous state failure before that shot was fired.

POWER TRANSITION IN AFGHANISTAN: CHALLENGES AHEAD – ANALYSIS

By Abdul Basit

By RSIS

Afghanistan's Mohammad Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai. Photo by S.K. Vemmer (U.S. Department of State). 

The recent democratic power transfer in Kabul is a major milestone in Afghanistan’s constitutional development. However, escalating Taliban attacks, slowing economic growth and weak Afghan security forces are some of the major challenges that the new Ghani-Abdullah administration has to overcome.

THE INAUGURATION of Dr Ashraf Ghani as Afghanistan’s President on 29 September 2014 marked the first democratic transfer of power in Kabul. Ghani will share power with his political rival Abdullah Abdullah who was sworn in as the country’s first Chief Executive. This is a post created after a US-brokered power-sharing agreement between Ghani and Abdullah which ended the six-month long political crisis over claims of election fraud. The peaceful transition of power is a historic milestone in Afghanistan’s evolving constitutional development.

Ghani’s background as an international development expert who worked for the World Bank and a former Afghan finance minister makes him the most qualified man to lead Afghanistan at this critical juncture. However Ghani has inherited a weak state apparatus from his predecessor Hamid Karzai. From the outset he is facing daunting challenges on many fronts.

Building a strong team

Ghani’s immediate challenge is to build a strong team of capable and honest men selected on merit to ensure good governance and implement economic reforms. His position as President in a unity government is much weaker than that of an independent President. He has come to power not on the strength of a popular vote but as a result of a deal.

He will have less independence to appoint his trusted people in key government positions and will have to share power with Abdullah and accommodate his interests and priorities in future plans. Even if Ghani and Abdullah cooperate with each other, the influential powerbrokers like Ata Noor Muhammad in Abdullah’s camp and Uzbek warlord General Rashid Dostum (now the Vice President) in Ghani’s camp will hinder their efforts. Such powerbrokers will ask for their share of the pie by seeking powerful positions in the government.

Weak economy

Economic well-being is critical for the future stability of Afghanistan. Since 2011, Afghanistan has been facing a looming fiscal crisis visible through worsening domestic revenues. Reviving the shrinking Afghan economy and putting it on a path of stability and self-sustenance is Ghani’s biggest challenge.

Afghanistan lacks the funds needed to deal with problems of bad governance, unemployment and endemic corruption. Currently 90 percent of Afghanistan’s budget depends on foreign aid and funding from international donor agencies. In 2013, 95 percent of Afghanistan’s annual GDP came from international aid and military spending. After 2014 this spending will decrease quite considerably. The expected pull out of NATO/ISAF troops from Afghanistan is already taking its toll on Afghanistan’s economic growth, slowing it to 3.6 percent in 2013 from more than 14 percent in 2012.

UK About to Begin Redeploying REAPER Drones From Afghanistan to Iraq

Agence France-Presse

October 16, 2014

Britain to re-deploy drones from Afghanistan to Iraq

Britain will shortly begin re-deploying its unmanned armed drones from Afghanistan to counter Islamic State jihadists in Iraq, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told parliament on Thursday.

The remotely-piloted Reaper aircraft will provide surveillance, reconnaissance and intelligence support to the Iraqi troops and international coalition forces taking on the IS group in northern Iraq.

The drones can also launch bombs and missiles.

It will be the first time Britain has deployed Reapers outside Afghanistan, where Britain is completing a pull-out of combat troops this year.

"We are in the process of re-deploying some of our Reaper remotely-piloted aircraft from Afghanistan to the Middle East," Hammond said.

Britain already has eight Royal Air Force (RAF) Tornado fighter jets conducting bombing raids on Islamic State targets in Iraq.

"Approximately 20-30 percent of Iraq’s populated territory could be under ISIL control. Liberating this territory from ISIL is a medium term challenge, to be measured in months and years, not days and weeks," Hammond said.

Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said: “The surveillance capability of Reaper will see it provide vital situational awareness, making it an invaluable asset to the Iraqi government and the coalition allies.

"If strike operations are required then Reaper has the ability to complement the sorties RAF Tornados have already completed."

The US-made Reapers are normally armed with two Paveway laser-guided bombs and four Hellfire missiles for precision strikes.

The Ministry of Defence also said a small group of British infantry have completed a week training the Kurdish forces fighting extremists in using the heavy machine guns Britain gave them last month.

A POTENT VECTOR: ASSESSING CHINESE CRUISE MISSILE DEVELOPMENTS – ANALYSIS

By Dennis M. Gormley, Andrew S. Erickson and Jingdong Yuan

OCTOBER 16, 2014 

The numerous, increasingly advanced cruise missiles being developed and deployed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have largely flown under the public’s radar. This article surveys PRC cruise missile programs and assesses their implications for broader People’s Liberation Army (PLA) capabilities, especially in a Taiwan scenario.

This article draws on findings from a multi-year comprehensive study of Chinese cruise missiles based exclusively on open sources. More than 1,000 discrete Chinese-language sources were considered; several hundred have been incorporated in some form. In descending level of demonstrated authority, these Chinese sources include PLA doctrinal publications (for example, Science of Campaigns) describing how cruise missiles might be used in operational scenarios; specialized technical analyses (Winged Missiles Journal) from civilian and military institutes detailing many specific aspects of such weapons and their supporting infrastructure; didactic PLA discussions (Modern Navy and People’s Navy); generalist deliberations on the development trajectory and operational use of cruise missiles (Naval and Merchant Ships and Modern Ships); and unattributed speculation on a variety of Web sites. To be accessible to a general audience, this article includes only a fraction of the several hundred citations found in the full study, together with several related sources.

These Chinese sources were supplemented with a wide variety of English-language sources, including—in descending level of demonstrated authority—U.S. Government reports, analyses by scholars and think tanks, and online databases. The authors drew on their combined technical, arms control, and Chinese analysis experience to compare and assess information for reliability.

The result is a study whose details must be treated with caution, but whose larger findings are likely to hold.

Overview

China’s military modernization is focused on building modern ground, naval, air, and missile forces capable of fighting and winning local wars under “informatized conditions.” The principal planning scenario has been a military campaign against Taiwan, which would require the PLA to deter or defeat U.S. intervention. Beijing is now broadening this focus to its Near Seas (Yellow, East, and South China seas) more generally.

The PLA has sought to acquire asymmetric “assassin’s mace” technologies and systems to overcome a superior adversary and couple them to the command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems necessary for swift and precise execution of short-duration, high-intensity wars.

A key element of the PLA’s investment in antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities is the development and deployment of large numbers of highly accurate antiship cruise missiles (ASCMs) and land-attack cruise missiles (LACMs) on a range of ground, naval, and air platforms. China’s growing arsenal of cruise missiles and the delivery platforms and C4ISR systems necessary to employ them pose new defense and nonproliferation challenges for the United States and its regional partners.

Military Value

Chinese writers rightly recognize cruise missiles’ numerous advantages. Cruise missiles are versatile military tools due to their potential use for precision conventional strike missions and wide range of employment options. Although China appears heavily focused on precision conventional delivery, cruise missiles could also be employed to deliver nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. Due to their superior aerodynamic flight stability compared to ballistic missiles, cruise missiles—by conservative estimates—enlarge the lethal area for biological attacks by a factor of 10.

FBI warns industry of Chinese cyber campaign

By Ellen Nakashima and Ashkan Soltani 

October 15 

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A Chinese People's Liberation Army soldier stands guard in front of 'Unit 61398' in the outskirts of Shanghai. The unit is believed to be behind a series of hacking attacks, a U.S. computer security company said, prompting a strong denial by China and accusations that it was in fact the victim of U.S. hacking. (CARLOS BARRIA/REUTERS)

The FBI on Wednesday issued a private warning to industry that a group of highly skilled Chinese government hackers was in the midst of a long-running campaign to steal valuable data from U.S. companies and government agencies. 

“These state-sponsored hackers are exceedingly stealthy and agile by comparison with the People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398 . . . whose activity was publicly disclosed and attributed by security researchers in February 2013,” said the FBI in its alert, which referred to a Chinese military hacker unit exposed in a widely publicized report by the security firm Mandiant. 

Indeed, U.S. officials say privately, the activities of this group are just as significant — if not more so — than those of Unit 61398. 

The U.S. government has publicly called on the Chinese government to halt its widespread cybertheft of corporate secrets, but Beijing has denied such activities. When the Justice Department in May announced the indictments of five PLA officials on charges of commercial cyberespionage, the government responded by pulling out of talks to resolve differences between the two nations over cyberspace issues. 

The FBI’s alert, obtained by The Washington Post, coincided with the release of a preliminary report on the same hackers by a coalition of security firms, which have dubbed the group Axiom. “The Axiom threat group is a well-resourced and sophisticated cyber espionage group that has been operating unfettered for at least four years, and most likely more,” said the report, issued by Novetta Solutions, a Northern Virginia cybersecurity firm that heads the coalition. 

The cyberspying campaign is in support of China’s strategic national interests, the report said. Specifically, Axiom targets organizations that have strategic financial and economic interest, influence energy and environmental policy and develop high-tech equipment such as microprocessors, the report said. 

The group’s sophistication is demonstrated less in how it gains access to targets’ computers and more in how it moves “laterally’’ once inside the system, disguising its behavior to look normal so it goes undetected, said Peter B. LaMontagne, Novetta Solutions chief executive officer. 

Ten Fascinating Facts About China's President Xi Jinping

Elizabeth C. Economy

October 15, 2014 

Source Link 

A friend recently dropped off a hot-off-the-press copy of Xi Jinping: The Goverance of China. It is a compilation of speeches, main points of speeches, pictures, interviews, and a biographical sketch of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Several different parts of the Chinese government bureaucracy participated in producing the book, which runs more than 500 pages. While I can’t do justice to all the material presented, here are some things I learned from reading through Xi’s musings and the musings of others about him.

Xi loves the classics:

Although many of Xi’s speeches suffer from the same tedious socialist rhetoric that characterized those of his predecessors, Xi often enlivens his remarks with sayings from Chinese philosophers. When discussing the development of Chinese youth, for example, he reflects, “Learning is the bow, while competence is the arrow” and “Virtue uplifts, while vice debases” (55-57). Indeed, in a speech before professors and students at Peking University, Xi relates at least forty different quotations from ancient Chinese thinkers (185-199). No one says it better than an ancient Chinese philosopher.

Xi is a true believer—but only in the Communist Party:

Indeed, the Chinese president has no kind words for officials who “worship Buddha”; seek “god’s advice for solving their problems”; “perform their duties in a muddle-headed manner”; “yearn for Western social systems and values”; “lose their confidence in the future of socialism”; or “adopt an equivocal attitude towards political provocations against the leadership of the CPC” (463-464). He may have a revelation later in life, but for now there is no room at the Inn.

Xi never lets you see him sweat:

Xi does not whine. Although he states that he spends all his private time on his work, he doesn’t complain. Instead he simply says: “Since the people have put me in the position of head of state, I must put them above everything else, bear in mind my responsibilities that are as weighty as Mount Tai, always worry about the people’s security and well-being, and work conscientiously day and night; share the same feelings with the people, share both good and bad times with them, and work in concerted efforts with them” (114). Xi’s life in pictures similarly suggests someone who is calm, in control, and generally enjoying serving as president. Either he is constitutionally better suited to being president of a large power than most recent U.S. presidents or he just has a better public relations team.

Xi plays to win:

Xi has the soul of a competitor. In discussing his desire for China to become an innovation nation, Xi clearly is unhappy with China’s second-tier status, stating: “We cannot always decorate our tomorrow with others’ yesterdays. We cannot always rely on others’ scientific and technological achievements for our own progress.” The answer for him rests overwhelmingly in indigenous innovation: “Most importantly, we should unswervingly follow an independent innovation path featuring Chinese characteristics…. Only by holding key technology in our own hands can we really take the initiative in competition and development, and ensure our economic security, national security, and security in other areas.” He concludes: “Scientific and technological competition is like short-track speed skating. When we speed up, so will others. Those who can skate faster and maintain a high speed longer will win the title” (135-136).

How did I get here anyway?:

While Xi may enjoy being president of China, he may not quite understand how he got there, claiming “Since the people have put me in the position of head of state…” (114).

A POTENT VECTOR: ASSESSING CHINESE CRUISE MISSILE DEVELOPMENTS – ANALYSIS

By Dennis M. Gormley, Andrew S. Erickson and Jingdong Yuan
OCTOBER 16, 2014 By NDU Press

The numerous, increasingly advanced cruise missiles being developed and deployed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have largely flown under the public’s radar. This article surveys PRC cruise missile programs and assesses their implications for broader People’s Liberation Army (PLA) capabilities, especially in a Taiwan scenario.

This article draws on findings from a multi-year comprehensive study of Chinese cruise missiles based exclusively on open sources. More than 1,000 discrete Chinese-language sources were considered; several hundred have been incorporated in some form. In descending level of demonstrated authority, these Chinese sources include PLA doctrinal publications (for example, Science of Campaigns) describing how cruise missiles might be used in operational scenarios; specialized technical analyses (Winged Missiles Journal) from civilian and military institutes detailing many specific aspects of such weapons and their supporting infrastructure; didactic PLA discussions (Modern Navy and People’s Navy); generalist deliberations on the development trajectory and operational use of cruise missiles (Naval and Merchant Ships and Modern Ships); and unattributed speculation on a variety of Web sites. To be accessible to a general audience, this article includes only a fraction of the several hundred citations found in the full study, together with several related sources.

These Chinese sources were supplemented with a wide variety of English-language sources, including—in descending level of demonstrated authority—U.S. Government reports, analyses by scholars and think tanks, and online databases. The authors drew on their combined technical, arms control, and Chinese analysis experience to compare and assess information for reliability.

The result is a study whose details must be treated with caution, but whose larger findings are likely to hold.

Overview

China’s military modernization is focused on building modern ground, naval, air, and missile forces capable of fighting and winning local wars under “informatized conditions.” The principal planning scenario has been a military campaign against Taiwan, which would require the PLA to deter or defeat U.S. intervention. Beijing is now broadening this focus to its Near Seas (Yellow, East, and South China seas) more generally.

The PLA has sought to acquire asymmetric “assassin’s mace” technologies and systems to overcome a superior adversary and couple them to the command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems necessary for swift and precise execution of short-duration, high-intensity wars.

A key element of the PLA’s investment in antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities is the development and deployment of large numbers of highly accurate antiship cruise missiles (ASCMs) and land-attack cruise missiles (LACMs) on a range of ground, naval, and air platforms. China’s growing arsenal of cruise missiles and the delivery platforms and C4ISR systems necessary to employ them pose new defense and nonproliferation challenges for the United States and its regional partners.

Military Value

Chinese writers rightly recognize cruise missiles’ numerous advantages. Cruise missiles are versatile military tools due to their potential use for precision conventional strike missions and wide range of employment options. Although China appears heavily focused on precision conventional delivery, cruise missiles could also be employed to deliver nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. Due to their superior aerodynamic flight stability compared to ballistic missiles, cruise missiles—by conservative estimates—enlarge the lethal area for biological attacks by a factor of 10.

Modern cruise missiles offer land, sea, and air launch options, allowing a “two-stage” form of delivery that extends the already substantial range of the missiles themselves. They may also be placed in canisters for extended deployments in harsh environments. Because cruise missiles are compact and have limited support requirements, ground-based platforms can be highly mobile, contributing to prelaunch survivability. Moreover, cruise missiles need only rudimentary launch-pad stability, enabling shoot-and-scoot tactics.

ISIS Attempts to Capture Syrian Town of Kobani Have Stalled

ISIS Militants in Syrian Border Town Begin to Retreat After a Monthlong Battle

Kareem Fahim and Helene Cooper

New York Times, October 18, 2014

From the hills of Suruc, Turkey, Syrian Kurds can see the battle raging in their city, Kobani, besieged by the Islamic State. Credit Aris Messinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

SURUC, Turkey — The advance of Islamic State forces on the Syrian city of Kobani has stalled as the militants have been forced to retreat on several fronts, shifting the monthlong battle increasingly in favor of the Kurdish fighters defending the city, according to commanders and Kurdish and American officials.

Dozens of airstrikes this week by the American-led military coalition killed hundreds of Islamic State fighters, allowing Kurdish units to regain territory, said Gen. Lloyd J. Austin, head of the United States Central Command, who made a rare appearance before reporters at the Pentagon on Friday.

The Kurdish fighters, General Austin added, have done “yeoman’s work in terms of standing their ground.”

Over the last two days, the rapidly changing fortunes of the Kurdish fighters have produced a sense of palpable relief in Kobani, as well as in the refugee camps in neighboring Turkey that are filled with the city’s residents. The fierce clashes of previous weeks have given way to a tentative calm, broken on Friday only by the occasional crash of mortar rounds and some scattered sniper fire.

The battle in Kobani, Syria, has drawn international scrutiny in part because of an accident of geography: People can watch every turn from hills in nearby Turkey. Credit Tolga Bozoglu/European Pressphoto Agency

The spectators who have gathered daily on the Turkish hills overlooking Kobani turned their gaze away from the quieter city on Friday to a village several miles west, where a group of Islamic State fighters had taken up positions after pulling back.

“I hear there is movement,” said Idris Bakr, a 26-year-old refugee who has been living, along with 35 members of his family, in a garage in the Turkish border town of Suruc for about a month. “God willing, it will be O.K.,” he said. “Days, we hope.”

Land-Based Anti-Ship Missiles: A New Weapon for America and its Allies in Asia?

Jan K. GleimanHarry White

October 16, 2014 

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The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has developed an impressive array of land-based anti-ship missile systems, which are part of a robust sea-denial capability. That growing capability is forcing the United States (US) and Australia to rethink Pacific strategy. Some are now asking why the US, and Australia for that matter, have no land-based anti-ship missile systems in their inventory. After all, we want to be able to do sea denial in Asia as well. So, should we be developing our own?

Both the US and Australia have other anti-ship systems in their arsenal of air and sea-launched weapons. But there’s a real prospect that land-based systems would pay operational and strategic dividends. That’s a view that has also been recently expressed by members of the US Congress, think tanks, and scholars.

Some definitions are helpful here: sea denial is the ability to deny or prevent an adversary from operating in an area of the sea. On the other hand, sea control is the ability to operate freely in a maritime area while preventing adversaries from doing the same. Sea control requires that you have sea denial, but also that you can prevent an adversary from exercising effective sea denial over the same area. For years, sea control has required the integration of air and sea power. Though land-based systems alone can provide only sea denial and not sea control, the joint integration of land-, sea-, and air-based systems would be a powerful tool in gaining and maintaining sea control, especially in littoral regions.

The development of China’s maritime-denial missile capabilities puts enormous pressure on the US and its allies in the Western Pacific. Gone are the days of having the capability to impose sea control just about anywhere. Furthermore, China’s carrier, aircraft, and submarine programs suggest a desire in Beijing for some measure of sea control and power projection in the future—in the current context of strategic rivalry, which indicates a serious challenge to the US in the Asia-Pacific region. Whether this challenge manifests itself peacefully or violently will depend in part on how the US and its allies employ military power across all domains.

The three strongest arguments for land-based systems can be categorized as lower escalation risk, strategic flexibility, and mitigation of platform vulnerability.

Land-based systems, especially if they are mobile, deployable and of limited range, (like Japan’s type 88s) will provide leaders with a denial option that is less threatening and so less prone to escalation. That point is made effectively by naval strategists Toshi Yoshihara and James R. Holmes. Simply put, deploying a carrier group or air assets in response to actions involving territorial disputes may threaten the sovereign territory and vital interests of an adversary. Using anti-ship missiles to impose only sea-denial in a disputed area of operations is inherently defensive and less threatening, which gives leaders the option to demonstrate resolve in protecting economic exclusion zones and littoral regions without directly threatening undisputed sovereign territory. Choosing land-based anti-ship systems as a flexible deterrent option increases opportunities for peaceful resolution.

Deployable and non-deployable (fixed) land-based systems also would allow the US and Australia to maximize the power of their existing sea-control assets in a conflict by providing strategic and operational flexibility. By using deployable land-based systems in littoral regions and fixed systems at key choke points along sea lines of communication, allied leaders could then surge air and sea power to more critical and decisive regions.

Southeast Asia's Emerging Amphibious Forces

By Koh Swee Lean Collin

October 17, 2014

ASEAN navies are rapidly acquiring amphibious capabilities. Their intentions, however, remain unclear.

As a natural consequence of the maritime geography and complex array of security challenges within, naval modernization programs in Southeast Asia have always been characterized by the quest for a balanced set of capabilities. They not only reflect unique national requirements but also differing economic circumstances, which dictate the need for prioritization. In this equation, amphibious forces – often regarded as the less “glamorous” branch of navies – have long taken a backseat to other high-end assets such as missile-armed surface ships and submarines.

Over the last decade, this has begun to change.

Six of the nine member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam – now possess varying-sized, specialized amphibious ground forces equivalent to the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) or Russian Naval Infantry. This is no coincidence given that, because these formations are distinct from the army ground forces, maintaining them can be expensive. Moreover, the ships designed to give these forces mobility – large amphibious landing vessels – are also costly even though they feature comparatively less complex combat systems than those installed on warfighting assets.

Regional Interest Tampered by Funding Constraints

In the early 1990s, Indonesia bought 12 former East German Frosch class landing ships at bargain prices. This prompted Malaysia to purchase the KD Sri Inderapura, an 8,450-ton ex-U.S. Navy Newport class landing platform dock (LPD), which is a large amphibious landing ship designed with a well-dock for smaller craft and fighting vehicles, as well as deck facilities for two or more medium-sized helicopters. As Indonesia and Malaysia acquired these amphibious vessels, Singapore replaced her vintage landing ships with four 8,500-ton locally-built Endurance class LPDs in the late 1990s. Since Southeast Asian amphibious fleets mainly comprise WWII or Soviet-era vessels of dubious operational status, these were significant acquisitions.

Still, shortfalls in amphibious capabilities left many ASEAN countries woefully unequipped to engage in disaster relief operations following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. It was only in the immediate years after that Indonesia and Thailand in particular went about procuring new LPDs. For its part, Indonesia purchased five 11,400-ton Makassar class LPDs (one of which was specially outfitted as a hospital ship) based on a South Korean design. Thailand introduced HTMS Ang Thong, a modified variant of the Singapore-designed Enduranceclass, which had performed well in the tsunami relief operations off Indonesia’s Banda Aceh.

Still, regional interest in new amphibious capabilities quickly stalled as lack of funding forced ASEAN navies to prioritize more immediate maritime security concerns. For example, despite the need to replace KD SriInderapura following a 2009 fire, budgetary reasons forced Malaysia to defer the Multi-Role Support Ship (MRSS) program from the Ninth Malaysia Plan (2006-2010) to the Tenth Malaysia Plan (2011-2015). Instead, Malaysia acquired sea control (corvettes and offshore patrol vessels) and sea denial platforms (submarines) in order to combat rising piracy in the Malacca Strait and, more recently, South China Sea tensions.

The Myth of Japanese Remilitarization

Brad GlossermanDavid C. Kang

October 15, 2014 

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"Japan’s defense policies are evolving to keep pace with a changing regional environment, but the idea that Tokyo will be able to threaten its neighbors is just not credible. There is no will, nor the capability to do so."

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is determined to end all doubts about Japan’s international ambitions and reassert Japan’s status as a “first-tier nation.” To that end, the Abe government has adopted an aggressive domestic-policy agenda that seeks first to reenergize the Japanese economy, which will then serve as the foundation of a higher-profile international role. Abe’s confidence and focus have sparked criticism of and concern about Japan’s “remilitarization,” as well as increasing concerns that Japan and China are leading an East Asian arms race with potentially dangerous implications. The prospect of a remilitarized Japan is fantasy, as are fears about impending war in East Asia, even though the risk of miscalculation or an accidental clash is real.

Make no mistake: Abe wants to change Japan’s regional-security role. His government has passed legislation—a secrecy law, established a National Security Council—that will allow it to function better in a crisis. It has produced a National Security Strategy. It has reinterpreted the pacifist Constitution to allow the country to exercise the right of collective self-defense. It has revived discussions on the acquisition of offensive strike capabilities. Most significantly, it wants to revive pride and patriotism among the Japanese people.

But the fetters remain. Reinterpretation of the Constitution is subject to very limiting conditions. The public remains fundamentally hostile toward an activist foreign policy and profoundly suspicious of any role for the military. (Remember, Japan only has “Self-Defense Forces”; that may be linguistic legerdemain, but it is a sign of the mental hurdles the country faces before it can “remilitarize.”) A majority of Japanese oppose Abe’s Yasukuni Shrine visits than support them; opinion polls consistently show that with the exception of environmental issues, few Japanese believe their country should play a regional role, and even fewer believe it should play a global role.

There are other, equally powerful, limits on Japan’s future defense capabilities. The first is the budget. The five-year plan put forth by Abe last year increased 2014 defense spending by 0.8 percent, and proposes annual 3 percent increases until 2018. The increases might total $9 billion if they are fully implemented—a 16 percent increase over today’s military budget. That hardly qualifies as remilitarization.

To put these proposed increases in context, Japanese defense expenditures rose just 30 percent over the past twenty-five years when adjusted for inflation. Japan actually decreasedits defense spending slightly in 2013 (-0.2 percent), and since 2009, the budget has decreased 0.5 percent. China, by comparison, spent $171 billion on defense in 2013, and has averaged 7 percent increases over the past decade. South Korea spends 50 percent more on defense (per capita) than does Japan. When put in perspective, Abe’s proposed defense increases are actually restrained.

This restraint is even more pronounced when looking at the types of weapons the Japanese military is purchasing. The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) is already a powerful defensive maritime force, and few analysts see the planned expansion as being a real attempt to create a blue-water navy that can project power. In October 2013, Admiral Katsutoshi Kawano, chief of staff at the JMSDF, emphasized capabilities such as minesweeping, anti-submarine warfare, anti-piracy operations, and modernization of command and control as future key priorities. There are also substantial limitations on what Japan could purchase in the future. As Philippe De Koning and Phillip Lipscy point out,Japan’s personnel costs are so great that, “Japan's focus has shifted from acquisition to preservation, and maintenance costs have skyrocketed: at the end of the Cold War, maintenance spending was roughly 45 percent the size of procurement expenditures; it is now 150 percent.” In short, while the Japanese military is powerful, and defense of its islands is a priority, this is a far cry from being able to project power beyond its own islands.