In a room not far from King George IV's extraordinarily opulent Music Room (picture) at Brighton's Royal Pavilion is a small picture gallery of photographs of Indian soldiers in World War I. The Pavilion had been converted into a military hospital for the injured men of the British Indian army and well over 4,000 Indians who had served on the Western Front were treated here and in other local hospitals. Over a million and half men from the subcontinent joined the war and more than 75,000 died either from injuries or on the battlefield. One wonders what critically injured Sikh soldiers made of the enormous lotus-shaped chandeliers and walls emblazoned with a fairly grotesque rendering of Chinoiserie-style blazing dragons and over-worked pagodas. Or what they felt, resting in the grounds of the former royal recreation space. Initially an 18th-century seaside resort for the Prince of Wales (later George IV), the Pavilion is a true example of the Orientalist vision in architecture, where details and style were conflated, added and reimagined in a tantalizing aesthetic mélange.
Hybrid War is not new but became the preferred option with estimates of a decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan costing the US some $6 trillion and the combined figure of 57,694 killed and wounded Americans. Such conflict is raging in Ukraine, West Asia, Middle East and is taking a sinister turn in the Af-Pak. Fresh- trained Free Syrian Army recruits entering Syria from Jordan and Islamic State cadres fleeing to Jordan due to Russian air strikes indicate the chaos that prevails in such circumstances.
Lodhi is known to be close to the Army and ISI. Her inputs and brief were obviously not prepared by the civilian government in Islamabad.
On Tuesday, the destroyer USS Lassen sailed within twelve nautical miles of China’s man-made “islands” in the South China Sea. The transit, referred to by the U.S. Navy as a “freedom of navigation operation,” had been rumored for months and, according to press reports, resisted by senior officials at the White House for fear of antagonizing China. As predicted, China vigorously protested the operation and summoned the U.S. ambassador to China for a particularly angry harangue.
The US strategic rebalancing has a “China engagement” emphasis with a lesser “China hedging” element. US engagement seeks to stabilize the liberal international order on the basis of a great power partnership—what some may call a “G-2”—with a rising China. Meanwhile, the US maintains hedging diplomacy (e.g., keeps existing alliances alive) to guard against the risk that China will reject US overtures and challenge fundamental US interests. The US has optimistically discounted this risk and has maintained an emphasis on engagement.
The departures mean that the region itself has become markedly less violent recently with fewer bombings and shootings. And the returning fighters have either landed in jail or been kept under close police surveillance. But there are long-term concerns that the presence of radical Muslims trained in IS warfare could lead to greater instability and violence.
Sports exercises done to the Islamic State mantra, maths books asking how many heroes the Islamic State has and cartoon children with guns - welcome to the new extremist education system in Mosul.
As multilateral talks begin in Vienna to search for a possible resolution of the Syrian civil war, we should realize that even when a foreign government is not being entirely above board in explaining what it is up to, it still may be honest in identifying part of what motivates it. The principal government in question regarding the Syrian situation is that of Russia, which has said a lot about beating back the so-called Islamic State or ISIS but whose military operations so far in Syria seem to be saying something else. Russian military strikes directed against other opposition groups in Syria may actually be helping ISIS insofar as they bring ISIS closer to becoming, or at least appearing to be, the only viable alternative to the Assad regime.
The Obama administration has received much attention for its policy of rebalancing to the Asia-Pacific region. The rebalance has been described as President Obama’s signature foreign policy initiative. Launched in 2009, it has received much attention from academics, practitioners, think tanks, and the media. In reality, the rebalance to the Asia-Pacific has been more evolutionary than revolutionary; a U.S. shift in focus and grand strategy began well before President Obama’s inauguration in January 2009.
Two Tupolev Tu-142 aircraft flew within one nautical mile of the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan,prompting the dispatch of four F/A-18 Super Hornets from the Reagan to intercept the Russian warplanes, AFPreports. The Reagan was sailing off the Korean Peninsula at the time of the incident.
In 1993 comedian Bill Murray starred in a movie called “Groundhog Day” in which a man kept reliving the same bad day over and over. It was a funny movie. Not nearly so humorous is the very real “Groundhog Day” that afflicts American foreign policy. Over the past decade and a half, the United States’ most senior military and Administration officials – from both parties – have routinely applied a small set of military solutions in an attempt to solve highly complex foreign policy problems in the Middle East. And virtually all have failed.
On February 1, 1917, Germany launched unrestricted submarine warfare. Two days later the United States broke off diplomatic relations and began the slide toward war. On February 7, the British post office completed a study of what we would today call trans-Atlantic bandwidth to determine how much telegraph capacity would be available to an American Expeditionary Force that might be sent to France. In this era when the U.S. military blithely slings video-laden PowerPoint briefings back and forth across the NIPRNET (that’s the Internet to you and me), the numbers inthis work are startling.
Something similar is happening today! The Technology Revolution (or the Digital Revolution, if one may use that term) is creating a similar transformation in the way business is done today the world over. Every disruption brings with it new opportunities which help new entrants break the status-quo hitherto enjoyed by incumbents. It creates opportunities for faster turnaround times, delivery at lower operating costs, sales maximization and client delight through more relevant sales pitches using client profile/habits data, improve and maintain consistency in quality standards by using machine automation, etc. But while all this sounds nice, there is also the other side. Every new disruption also brings in new challenges to adapt to the changes, and there is always the threat of becoming irrelevant if one is slow to adapt. This is exactly what occurred during the Industrial Revolution. Moreover, this digital revolution is not something that is about to come. In fact, it has already come and engulfed several industries and sectors within its tide!
As Lara Seligman wrote in Defense News overnight, there’s a lot “we still don’t know” about the LRS-B, and as development moves forward, there’s a lot we still won’t know. Northrop’s just-up website features not even the shrouded plane of its Super Bowl advertisement, but just a zoomie with a buzzcut and aviator sunglasses. On his earnings call with investors, CEO Wes Bush said that the company was "ready to get to work,” but that he wouldn’t even be taking questions about the bomber. The Air Force has provided third-party estimates for the development and production costs, but not Northrop Grumman’s actual bids. So what do we know about the money, and how much confidence can we have in the figures? The USAF and industry together now have several decades of experience with designing, building, and buying stealth aircraft, but the economics of buying any complex weapons remain the same.
The M16A4 may soon retire. This week, the Marine Corps announced via internal memo that the M4 carbine will become the primary-issued rifle in infantry and security units, as well as replace the M16 rifle in supporting training schools by September 2016. Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Robert Neller approved the change, which was first proposed to the previous commandant, Gen. Robert Dunford, according to Marine Corps Times. This decision falls in line with the Army’s phased transitionaway from the M16 over the past few years. The M16A4 is on the outs simply because it is outdated, and here’s why:
The plight of the southern Philippines is a lesson in how not to undertake a peace process. It especially illuminates the pitfalls of negotiating without the wholehearted commitment of the stakeholders, especially the central government. Successive regimes in Manila have made feints at achieving a settlement in Mindanao, but the national leadership has been in turns half-hearted, dilatory and insincere. So the south remains in turmoil despite the best intentions and unflagging efforts of peace advocates. Whatever else, the so-called Mindanao problem has much to teach the international community about intractable warfare. Hard-won lessons in this southernmost and second largest island of the Philippines can undoubtedly contribute to understanding civil unrest and the challenges of peace-building in general.
Such polemics is certainly not new in Korean politics, where identity and legitimacy often override debates over policy in terms of voter behavior. The partisan divide over the textbook issue overlaps with larger divergent trajectories between the liberals and conservatives, an irreparable rift which at its core is a conflict over legitimacy.
I first read about the cancellation of a panel I was speaking on at the Ubud Writers and Readers festival in a news story. That day had been tense as panel organizers from the Herb Feith Foundation warned me that our panels could be cancelled due to police pressure on the festival. I was to host a panel of young activists writing on Bali and the legacy of the 1965 massacre.
“For the past three-years Jeff Babione has served as Lorraine's deputy. He has the skills and leadership necessary to continue the advancements we’re making in the F-35 program,” said Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, the Pentagon’s F-35 Program Executive Officer. “Our team looks forward to working with Jeff and his new deputy, Fred Ross, in their new roles.”