New Delhi ready to join talks with Taliban for Afghan peace

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New Delhi is also worried that the Afghan conflict has been caught up in the current tensions between Russia and the United States.

New Delhi: India on Thursday said it would participate in “all formats of talks” on discussing a solution for peace in Afghanistan, setting off speculation that New Delhi could formally share the table with the Taliban in talks among all stakeholders in future. New Delhi also said it hoped the Afghan presidential elections would be held as per schedule.

“We will participate in all formats of talks (on Afghanistan)”, the MEA spokesperson said.

India’s Afghanistan policy: What needs to be done

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Sudeep Kumar

According to the reports, the US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban negotiator Maulana Abdul Ghani Baradar negotiated a deal in Doha for the withdrawal of foreign troops from war-ravaged Afghanistan within 18 months. 

This week, the US Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, warned about the possibility of an increase in the attacks by Taliban, Daesh/IS, TTP, and Al-Qaeda on the Afghan state and foreign forces.

At this moment, nobody is certain about the future of political uncertainty and peace process in Afghanistan. However, it seems that US President Donald Trump is quite right in his analysis of the Af-Pak policy. The US has given more than $33.4 billion to Pakistani army for the war on terror in Afghanistan. 

On the contrary, the Pakistani army facilitated the safe passage of Osama bin Laden from Tora Bora mountains, Afghanistan to a residential army colony in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

U.S. and Taliban Agree in Principle to Peace Framework, Envoy Says

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By Mujib Mashal

KABUL, Afghanistan — American and Taliban officials have agreed in principle to the framework of a deal in which the insurgents would guarantee Afghan territory is never used by terrorists, which could lead to a full pullout of American troops in return for larger concessions from the Taliban, the chief United States negotiator said on Monday.

The negotiator, Zalmay Khalilzad, said those concessions must include the Taliban’s agreement to a cease-fire and to talk directly with the Afghan government, which the insurgents have persistently opposed in the past.

“We have a draft of the framework that has to be fleshed out before it becomes an agreement,” Mr. Khalilzad said in an interview with The New York Times in Kabul. “The Taliban have committed, to our satisfaction, to do what is necessary that would prevent Afghanistan from ever becoming a platform for international terrorist groups or individuals.”

Interpreting the U.S. Talks with the Taliban

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Talks with the Taliban in the Qatari capital Doha have raised hopes that the U.S. could end its involvement in Afghanistan’s war. Our Asia Program Director Laurel Miller and Afghanistan analysts Borhan Osman and Graeme Smith break down what was achieved and what remains unresolved.

How significant were the U.S.-Taliban talks?

Last week’s six-day talks between the U.S. and Taliban were the clearest sign yet that the U.S. is intent on withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan, and that the Taliban and its regional allies perceive that intent as an opportunity. It is early to draw conclusions but the signals from Doha inspire optimism about ending America’s longest war. A U.S. and NATO troop withdrawal has long been the Taliban’s top demand and the driving rationale for the insurgency. The Doha talks also were the first time that the U.S. has publicly acceded to the Taliban’s insistence that bilateral negotiations on terms for a troop withdrawal precede any peace negotiations involving other Afghans. The Taliban have made no evident concessions, but hints are emerging of some consensus on key issues. Ultimately, the significance of the talks depends on what happens next: if the framework of a deal reportedly sketched out in Doha leads to substantive negotiations among a wider array of stakeholders on future political and security arrangements, then these talks will have produced an important breakthrough.

The return of a Taliban government? Afghanistan talks raise once-unthinkable question.

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By Pamela Constable

KABUL — There is nothing on paper, only the vague outline of an agreement between American and Taliban negotiators in Qatar that could lead to U.S. troops withdrawing. There are more talks to come, and U.S. officials have said any final deal with the Islamist insurgents must include a “dialogue” among Afghans. 

But as news of the tentative accord spread Tuesday, the same question was worrying many ­Kabul residents — middle-aged women who remembered being forced to wear burqas, day laborers who fled rural fighting, college students who have grown up wearing jeans and surfing the Net. 

What if the Taliban comes back to power? 

It seems unthinkable, after 17 years of elected government, burgeoning malls and apartment complexes, ubiquitous cellphones and ATMs, that this capital of 6 million could again become a cowed, deserted city patrolled by turbaned religious enforcers with whips. 

Who Is Taliban's New Chief Negotiator?

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Ayesha Tanzeem

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN — As peace talks between the United States and Afghan Taliban enter a crucial stage, the Taliban leadership has announced a new chief negotiator, a man named Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.

According to a statement issued Thursday night by Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid, the action is intended to "strengthen and properly handle" the ongoing dialogue.

The change has signaled to many that the negotiations have progressed beyond any contact between the two sides in the past. Here is a look at why.

Who is Mullah Baradar?

Baradar, also known as Mullah Baradar Akhund, is one of the founding members of the Taliban movement. He was present in its first meeting headed by Taliban chief Mullah Omar in the autumn of 1994, in a village in Maiwand district of Kandahar province.

Are Indonesia and Malaysia Ready to Stand up for China’s Muslims?

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By Nithin Coca

By now, the scale of the crisis is clear. There are up to 3 million Turkic Muslims – primarily Uyghurs but also ethnic Kazakhs and Kyrgyz – in a vast network of concentration camps in China’s far western region of Xinjiang. The result is the 21st century’s greatest human rights crisis: Empty Uyghur neighborhoods. Students, musicians, athletes, and peaceful academicsjailed. “Graduates” of these camps are being put into forced labor factories, churning out goods that are even reaching the United States.

It’s clear that what began as a movement to clamp down on terrorism has become an attempt to eradicate an entire ethnic group and their religion – Islam, which is being seen as a mental illness and incompatible with Chinese-style socialism. Yet, so far, the world’s reaction has been muted – including in the Islamic world, in the same countries where, in the past years, there have been widespread protests and public statements in support of the human rights of Palestinian and Rohingya Muslims.

The deforestation risks of China’s Belt and Road Initiative

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Environmental risks vary both among and within different economic corridors of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s initiative to strengthen regional cooperation through infrastructure and investment. Identifying the most environmentally sensitive areas during the planning of transport routes can help avoid environmental damage while availing of economic benefits that come from the improved infrastructure. This blog, based on a new working paper, provides a simple framework and illustrations of how one environmental risk from the overland (“belt”) part of the BRI might be assessed.

A cursory evaluation of the distribution of forest cover change within these corridors has provided a preliminary indication of areas most vulnerable to one of the most consequential environmental risks: deforestation. Because satellite data of forest cover are not that difficult to obtain, forest cover loss (deforestation) is commonly used as a proxy for a range of environmental impacts on biodiversity, carbon storage, water provision, and other eco-services. Map 1, created by our colleague Andrew Jacobson, shows the forest cover in the BRI’s geographic realm.

Will US Indictments Against Huawei Hurt US-China Trade Talks?

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By Charlotte Gao

At least for now, signals show that China is still striving for a trade deal with the United States despite the row over Huawei.

On January 29, China’s state news agency Xinhuamade public that Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, China’s top negotiator in the U.S.-China trade dispute, had arrived in Washington D.C. together with his team members on the afternoon of January 28 — hours after the United States announced indictments against Chinese telecommunications conglomerate Huawei, its former CFO Meng Wanzhou, and Huawei’s affiliate companies.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, a total of 23 charges are laid against the company.

Countering China’s Expanding Global Access

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By Mike Gallagher

As part of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress required the Secretary of Defense, in concert with the Secretary of State, to “assess the foreign military and non-military activities of the People’s Republic of China that could affect the regional and global national security and defense interests of the United States.” Last month, the Pentagon responded by releasing their “Assessment on U.S. Defense Implications of China’s Expanding Global Access.” The document deserves serious scrutiny, as it involves the fate of the free world.

As the report details, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has a clear global vision to “displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, expand the reaches of its state-driven economic model, and reorder the region in its favor as the preeminent power.” These goals may sound too abstract to be instructive, but the report highlights many concrete ways in which the CCP is building and wielding its military and non-military power. Three things, in particular, stand out.

Chinese Influence, American Interests

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By Mercy A. Kuo

Trans-Pacific View author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into U.S. Asia policy. This conversation with Dr. Larry Diamond – Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University is the 173rd in “The Trans-Pacific View Insight Series.” Diamond was co-editor of “Chinese Influence & American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance,” a report by the Hoover Institution and Asia Society issued in November 2018.

Describe the impetus behind the report “Chinese Influence & American Interests.”

The impetus for the report was the growing evidence that China is projecting (as Russia has been doing, but in different ways) a new form of “sharp power” that seeks to penetrate, sway, and in some respects undermine the integrity of democracies around the world, including the United States. Rather than seeking to persuade and attract other societies through transparent engagement, as democratic powers do, sharp power, to quote former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, uses methods that are “covert, coercive, or corrupting.”

Islamic State 2019: An Assessment

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Joseph V. Micalle

It was roughly a year ago that the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the defeat of the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq by declaring that, "our heroic armed forces have now secured the entire length of the Iraq-Syria border." U.S. officials, while more circumspect, echoed similar sentiments. Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, declared, "we sit here today at the end of 2017, the caliphate is on the run, we're breaking them."

A year later, despite continued progress in rolling back the last remnants of the territorial domain of Islamic State, the final defeat of IS seems less certain. Despite statements from the Trump White House that the Islamic State has been "obliterated," and is in in "its final throes," IS continues to show remarkable resiliency.

The Growing Russia-China Threat to America

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Appearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday, Daniel Coats, the Director of National Intelligence, stated that China and Russia “are more aligned than at any point since the mid-1950s.” His warning confirms the importance of the cover story by Graham Allison and Dimitri K. Simes in the January-February issue of the National Interest titled “New Best Friends?” that contains essays by each author carefully examining the growing ties between Beijing and Moscow.

Their new piece in the Wall Street Journal today titled “A Sino-Russian Entente Against Threatens America” is based on those essays. Allison, the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard University, and Simes, President and CEO of the Center for the National Interest, explain that American foreign policy is inadvertently prompting the two great powers to collaborate more closely. According to Allison and Simes, “this grand alignment of the aggrieved has been moving from the realm of the hypothetical toward what could soon be a geostrategic fact. Beijing and Moscow are drawing closer together to meet what each sees as the `American threat.’” In conclusion, Allison and Simes state, “a sound U.S. global strategy would combine greater realism in recognizing the threat of a Beijing-Moscow alliance, and greater imagination in creating a coalition of nations to meet it.” Their full essay in the Wall Street Journal can be read here.

How South America Ceded the Field in Venezuela

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By Oliver Stuenkel

Last week, the young Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared himself interim president, claiming that the country’s current president, Nicolás Maduro, had forfeited his right to rule by rigging elections in May 2018. Soon after, the United States, Brazil, and most other South American governments (with the exception of Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname, and Uruguay) recognized Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate president.

The decision by the majority of South American governments to back Guaidó was hailed by many as a crucial step forward in confronting Maduro’s authoritarianism. Yet in fact, South America no longer plays any significant role in the Venezuelan crisis. Maduro and his youthful challenger both know that although the armed forces will be the decisive domestic player, the only external actors that really matter are the United States and China and, to a lesser extent, Cuba and Russia.

Understanding Nigeria's Other Security Crises

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How has Nigeria responded to a resurgent Biafran separatist movement, and how is it dealing with its other security challenges? 

Fifty years after the Biafran war, a new separatist movement has taken shape in the Nigerian province. In response, the Nigerian government has used a repressive approach to snuff out the movement, arresting activists en masse. The movement’s self-declared leader, Nnmadi Kanu, was at home when Nigerian soldiers stormed his compound. More than 20 people were either killed during the attack or disappeared after it. Kanu himself has not been seen or heard from since. And despite extensive evidence to the contrary, the army maintains that the incident never occurred. 

Though tensions go back at least as far as the devastating Biafran/Nigerian Civil War, which lasted from 1967 to 1970 and resulted in more than 1 million deaths, they have escalated sharply since Kanu ramped up calls for this southeastern corner of the country to form a breakaway nation dominated by members of the Igbo ethnic group.

Russia’s Special Envoy in Pakistan to Discuss Afghan Peace

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Ayaz Gul

ISLAMABAD — A top Russian diplomat is in Pakistan to discuss efforts to promote direct peace talks between warring sides in neighboring Afghanistan.

Russian presidential envoy for Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov is visiting Islamabad after last week’s marathon talks between U.S. special representative for Afghan reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad and the Taliban in Qatar. Pakistan says it has arranged the ongoing direct peace dialogue between U.S. and Taliban envoys.

“Regional countries have genuine stakes and concerns and would continue to exchange views on the evolving Afghan situation,” a senior Pakistani official told VOA when asked about issues they expected to come under discussions in meetings with Kabulov.

The Russian envoy will begin official meetings with Pakistani foreign ministry counterparts on Tuesday, said the official, requesting anonymity.

Infographic Of The Day: Mapped - Every Power Plant In The United States

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Every year, the United States generates 4,000 million MWh of electricity from utility-scale sources.

While the majority comes from fossil fuels like natural gas (32.1%) and coal (29.9%), there are also many other minor sources that feed into the grid, ranging from biomass to geothermal.

Do you know where your electricity comes from?

The Big Picture View

Today’s series of maps come from Weber State University, and they use information from the EPA’s eGRID databases to show every utility-scale power plant in the country.

Use the white slider in the middle below to see how things have changed between 2007 and 2016:

The biggest difference between the two maps is the reduced role of coal, which is no longer the most dominant energy source in the country. You can also see many smaller-scale wind and solar dots appear throughout the appropriate regions.

Here’s a similar look at how the energy mix has changed in the United States over the last 70 years:

Up until the 21st century, power almost always came from fossil fuels, nuclear, or hydro sources. More recently, we can see different streams of renewables making a dent in the mix.

As US Withdraws, Iran's Influence Swells

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Jamsheed Choksy and Carol E.B. Choksy

BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA: Soon after announcing US withdrawal from Syria, the Trump administration crowed about Iran’s retreat. In reality, within Syria and across the region, Iran has gained ground. Against this backdrop of retreating American power and growing Iranian influence, traditional US allies hunt for alternate support. “Every part of the Middle East and other places that was under attack was under attack because of Iran,” President Donald Trump claimed at a January 2 cabinet meeting. “Iran is pulling people out of Syria…pulling people out of Yemen…we are hitting them very hard.” On January 10, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo added: “Nations are rallying to our side to confront the [Iranian] regime like never before.”

Could Trump, of All People, Bring Down Maduro and the Chavista Regime?

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Judah Grunstein

If Donald Trump ends up being the catalyst that leads to the fall of the Chavista regime in Venezuela, it would be further proof that history has a sense of humor, if a dark one. 

Over the past week, the Trump administration has ratcheted up the pressure on Nicolas Maduro’s government, recognizing the opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s legitimate president, imposing sanctions on Venezuela’s state oil company and its assets, and turning over control of the country’s U.S. bank accounts to Guaido. Through it all, the administration has refused to rule out a military intervention, repeating its refrain that “all options are on the table.” ...

The Trump Doctrine

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By Ross Douthat

Two years into his presidency Donald Trump has no clear legislative strategy, no policy agenda, no plan for remedying his persistent unpopularity and a path to re-election sufficiently bleak that he’s trying to bait a political naïf, the Starbucks billionaire Howard Schultz, into running as a third-party spoiler. Also, he might be impeached.

Yet at the same time, amid all the domestic chaos and incompetence and political malpractice, this administration continues to act in foreign policy — not tweet obnoxiously, not rage behind the scenes, but act — as though it’s following a serious grand strategy, one sufficiently coherent and plausible and forward-looking that future presidents might reasonably imitate it.

2018 BEST UNIVERSITIES IN THE WORLD REVEALED

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BY JAMES HETHERINGTON 

Being accepted into one of the best universities in the world is a dream shared by thousands of high school students.

Aspiring lawyers flock to Harvard, engineers to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, all filled with hope and excitement for the years ahead. For many, having the right university on your resume can be the difference between a high-paying job in New York and cutting your teeth in a rural town.

QS University Rankings has revealed the top 50 universities in the world in its 2019 report. The United States earned the top four spots, followed by five and six from the United Kingdom. The University of Chicago finished eighth, giving the U.S. half of the top 10.

The U.K. had another two in the top 10—both London-based—and Switzerland had one to round out the leading pack. 

Intel Chiefs Testify on Global Threats, Cybersecurity and Elections By Steve Stransky Wednesday, January 30, 2019, 5:09 PM

By Steve Stransky

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On Jan. 29, the heads of six agencies in the U.S. intelligence community deliveredannual testimony in front of the Senate intelligence committee about global threats to U.S. national security. As could be expected, the nature and scope of contemporary cyber threats and electoral security was of significant interest at the hearing, which included the director of national intelligence, the CIA director, and the FBI director. The DNI is scheduled to provide similar testimony in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Feb. 6.

The annual worldwide threats briefing provides the public with insight into the usually secret world of U.S. intelligence. The majority of intelligence products, assessments, and reports are classified and (excluding leaks) rarely made available to the public. Intelligence briefings to Congress are often conducted in a closed setting to allow for the protection of sensitive and classified information. Even funding of the intelligence community is mostly classified: The public knows the total budget appropriated to the intelligence agencies in a given fiscal year—approximately $81.5 billion in Fiscal 2018—how this budget is allocated among particular programs and activities is classified.

Globalisation has faltered

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Large and sustained increases in the cross-border flow of goods, money, ideas and people have been the most important factor in world affairs for the past three decades. They have reshaped relations between states both large and small, and have increasingly come to affect internal politics, too. From iPhones to France’s gilets jaunes, globalisation and its discontents have remade the world.

Recently, though, the character and tempo of globalisation have changed. The pace of economic integration around the world has slowed by many—though not all—measures. “Slowbalisation”, a term used since 2015 by Adjiedj Bakas, a Dutch trend-watcher, describes the reaction against globalisation. How severe will it become? How much will a trade war launched by America’s president, Donald Trump, exacerbate it? What will global commerce look like in the aftermath?

GOOGLE TAKES ITS FIRST STEPS TOWARD KILLING THE URL

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IN SEPTEMBER, MEMBERS of Google's Chrome security team put forth a radical proposal: Kill off URLs as we know them. The researchers aren't actually advocating a change to the web's underlying infrastructure. They do, though, want to rework how browsers convey what website you're looking at, so that you don't have to contend with increasingly long and unintelligible URLs—and the fraud that has sprung uparound them. In a talk at the Bay Area Enigma security conference on Tuesday, Chrome usable security lead Emily Stark is wading into the controversy, detailing Google's first steps toward more robust website identity.

Dear Google, please help your country defend itself

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Last summer a close friend gave me a tour of Google’s X lab in Mountain View, California. I was dumbstruck by the displays of innovation and invention in just the foyer. Here people were designing balloons that provided high-speed internet access, self-driving cars, and drones that took off vertically and flew horizontally. They were solving the same logistical and communication problems we face in the military. But when I signed into the building, he quipped that I should pretend I was a civilian. A joke for sure, but the message was clear. My kind wasn’t welcome there. But why?

Inside these doors were the same bright and idealistic people I had gone to school with only a few years earlier. They probably chose to work for Google for many of the same reasons my peers and I joined the Marines — we were impressed with the organization’s values and we wanted to make the world a better place.

Artificial Intelligence: China’s High-Tech Ambitions

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China aims to become the world’s premier artificial intelligence innovation center by 2030. But does Beijing have the innovation capacity and strategy in place to achieve this goal? In this article, Sophie-Charlotte Fischer responds. She contends that while the US is still the global leader in AI, China’s ambitions should not be underestimated. Further, this is not just because of the state support behind Beijing’s plans but as Washington lacks an AI strategy of its own.

China aims to become a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) by 2030. This goal is linked to Beijing’s efforts to make its economy more innovative, modernize its military, and gain influence globally. While the US currently retains an edge in AI, China’s ambitions are likely to set off a new technology race. 

Applying Irregular Warfare Principles to Cyber Warfare

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Download PDF

Commander Frank C. Sanchez, USN, is an Action Officer on the Joint Staff J32, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Operations. Major Weilun Lin, USAF, is Chief of the Central and South Asia Branch, Joint Cyberspace Center, U.S. Central Command. Lieutenant Colonel Kent Korunka, USA, is a Joint Intelligence Planner, Joint Planning Support Element, Joint Enabling Capabilities Command, U.S. Transportation Command.

The cyberspace threat exists in a realm that does not conform to the physical limits of land, sea, air, and space. Unlike these traditional domains, cyberspace fosters an unpredictable threat that can adjust, morph, and reproduce without a national identity or face.1 The challenge of the military is to posture its approach to cyberspace and cyberspace threats that are initiated by faceless, borderless, and sometimes nationless enemies. These enemies manifest in a domain neither confined nor governed by the traditional norms and rules of war, which the broader military has no experience undertaking. To ensure the United States maintains cyberspace dominance and can foresee, rapidly respond to, and counter cyberspace threats, the U.S. military’s strategy and approach to cyberspace must adapt and incorporate unconventional approaches and hybrid warfare into its operational capability.

The Rise of the Cyber-Mercenaries

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By Neri Zilber

The first text message showed up on Ahmed Mansoor’s phone at 9:38 on a sweltering August morning in 2016. “New secrets about torture of Emiratis in state prisons,” it read, somewhat cryptically, in Arabic. A hyperlink followed the words. Something about the number and the message, and a similar one he received the next day, seemed off to Mansoor, a well-known human rights activist in the United Arab Emirates. He resisted the impulse to click on the links.

Instead, Mansoor sent the notes to Citizen Lab, a research institute based at the University of Toronto specializing in human rights and internet security. Working backward, researchers there identified the hyperlinks as part of a sophisticated spyware program built specifically to target Mansoor. Had he clicked on the links, the program would have turned his phone into a “digital spy in his pocket,” Citizen Lab later wrote in a report—tracking his movements, monitoring his messages, and taking control of his camera and microphone.

M. Taylor Fravel on How the People's Liberation Army Does Military Strategy

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By Ankit Panda

How does China’s People’s Liberation Army think about military strategy? How and when has it made changes to its strategy through the past? To better understand these questions and more, The Diplomat’s Ankit Panda spoke to M. Taylor Fravel, the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Fravel is the author of a forthcoming book on Chinese military strategy.

The Diplomat: You have a new book on China’s military strategy slated for release later this year. In the course of your research, what factors have you found played the most important role in shaping and changing China’s military strategy?

Gen. Stanley McChrystal: 5 takeaways on leadership

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By: Todd South 

Retired Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, a former commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, has a new book out about what makes a leader, and what doesn’t.

He and his co-authors profile a wide range of leaders in his third book, “Leaders: Myth and Reality.”

“Leadership isn’t what we think it is, in fact it never was. But it still matters,” said McChrystal, who served nearly four decades in the Army. He started his career as a West Point graduate in 1976, becoming a weapons platoon leader with the 82nd Airborne Division before passing Special Forces selection, later commanding the 75th Ranger Regiment. He headed Joint Special Operations Command during the height of the Iraq War.

On Combat Creativity: Is Military Action Science or Art?

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Rich Stowell

Milan Vego of the Naval War College wrote a wonderful essay that appeared in Joint Forces Quarterly.

“On Military Creativity” explores the benefits and risks of thinking outside the box in a military context. It reminded me of a wonderful post I wrote for “My Public Affairs” several years ago.

My complaint, at the time, is reflected in Vego’s essay: military institutions are designed to prevent creativity, and instead promote group think. But military successes usually result from leaders who are courageous enough to challenge convention and think outside the box.

Of course, 95% of the time, the Army is very similar to any other major organization. It needs to finance its operations; hire, retain, and train its employees; acquire and maintain equipment; develop and execute strategies; plan ahead; and sell itself to the public.