Adani Bribery Scandal Originated in a Dubious Solar Power Auction That Modi Government Scripte

Nitin Sethi & Shreegireesh Jalihal

Source Link

The Union government designed a solar power auction that discouraged competition and paved the way for Adani Group to secure contracts for assured purchase of its expensive power for thousands of crores of rupees over the next 25 years.

The extraordinary auction conditions and a series of exemptions brought in by the Union ministries of power, the renewable energy and its arm the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) in 2019 ensured that Adani Group was the dominant player in the competition with just two others in the ring--Azure Power India Limited and Navayuga Engineering Company Limited.

Even the sparse competition turned out to be embarrassingly empty as Navayuga Engineering bid the highest permitted tariff and lost. The exit came immediately after it signed a deal worth thousands of crore of rupees with Adani Group to sell its port in Andhra Pradesh, negotiations for which were going on while the two competed for the solar contract.

The other competitor, Azure Power, by now has become well known, with the US authorities accusing it of colluding with Adani Group to pay bribes of more than Rs 2,000 crore to state government officials to buy the expensive solar power that they sold to SECI, an intermediary that buys and sells power.

China-Pakistan’s ‘All Weather Friendship’ Gets Rebuff From Taliban

Shanthie Mariet D’Souza

Source Link

On November 26, a six-member Chinese delegation headed by Yue Xiaoyong, the country’s special representative for Afghanistan affairs, travelled to Kandahar, where the Taliban’s reclusive head Hibatullah Akhundzada lives. One of the items on the agenda was to discuss Pakistan’s concerns regarding the Taliban sheltering the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in Afghanistan.

The Taliban chief, however, refused to pander to Chinese demands and made himself unavailable. Instead, meetings were held with the governor of Kandahar, Mawlawi Shirin, and Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid. Islamabad’s attempt to put pressure on the Taliban via the Chinese was unsuccessful. The Chinese, meanwhile, have been left to introspect about the gap between the leverage they think they have over the Taliban and the leverage they actually have.

A week earlier, on November 18, Yue was in Islamabad, holding discussions with Pakistani Foreign Secretary Amna Baloch and other officials. During the meeting, Pakistan shared fresh evidence of the TTP’s use of Afghan territory for cross-border attacks. Pakistani officials reportedly told the Chinese envoy that it was time to take a collective stance against the Afghan Taliban to persuade them to meet the promises they made to the international community. Islamabad has tried to project the TTP as a common enemy and is trying to convince Beijing to act in the face of the Afghan Taliban’s dismissals of Pakistan’s repeated pleas.

Myanmar Insurgents Call Ceasefire After Chinese Pressure For Peace

Source Link

A Myanmar rebel army has declared a ceasefire in its war against the military, the second insurgent force in days to cite pressure from neighboring China for its willingness to talk peace.

The Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, or MNDAA, which has been fighting for years for autonomy for the Kokang region on northeastern Myanmar’s border with China, said it would send a delegation to talks with the military to resolve differences through political means.

“From today onwards, our troops will cease fire immediately and will not launch an offensive against military council troops,” the MNDAA said in a statement released on Tuesday.

“We hope that related issues, including Lashio, can be resolved by way of discussion under mediation efforts through China,” the group said, referring to the main town in northern Shan state, which the MNDAA has controlled since driving out junta forces in early August.

The group cited military airstrikes against civilians as contributing to its decision to talk, adding it would defend its territory, suggesting it was intent on self-determination.

To defend Taiwan tomorrow, we must prepare to sanction China today

Max Meizlish and Elaine Dezenski

Source Link

Taiwan is reportedly considering a $15 billion military package as an overture to President-elect Donald Trump. This comes just as the island nation agreed to spend over $2 billion in American weapons purchases next year. While such agreements may serve to warm relations with an incoming Trump administration and strengthen Taiwan’s military against an increasingly belligerent China, they will do little to address Beijing’s biggest vulnerability in a potential conflict with Taiwan — its “soft economic underbelly.”

This provides Trump a historic opportunity to not just support Taiwan militarily, but to capitalize on the deepening cracks in China’s economy that make it vulnerable to powerful, proactively developed American economic statecraft.

Slow growth, an unraveling real estate market, significant youth unemployment and plummeting foreign direct investment reveal deep vulnerabilities that threaten the Chinese Communist Party. These economic fissures give the United States and its allies a strategic opportunity: by publicly outlining the severe sanctions, export controls and investment restrictions China would face if it invades Taiwan, we can slow the pace of Chinese hostilities toward Taiwan — or even prevent them altogether. However, to ensure this approach succeeds, we must learn from recent history and act before it’s too late.

Myanmar’s Elections Will Be A China-Sponsored Fraud – Analysis

Alexis Turek

Source Link

The State Administration Council (SAC) junta in Myanmar is in its worst position since the beginning of the civil war in February 2021. Operation 1027, a joint assault in October 2023 by three ethnic armed organisations in northern Shan state, has catalysed rebel victories across the country. The ethnic armed organisations and other rebel People’s Defence Forces have been making significant territorial gains, targeting border areas, junta bases and industry centres.

The SAC has resorted to mandating military service for all men and women, including forcibly recruiting Rohingya into service under threat of arrest. Following the new conscription law, reports have emerged of abductions and illegal detention, with large numbers of young people fleeing to Thailand to escape conscription.

The SAC has faced significant territorial losses, impacting its ability to extract vital resources. While the conflict is unlikely to stop soon, rebel forces now stand a better chance of victory than they have at any other point in the conflict.

China's Digital Strategy – Cyber Espionage ...

Carlo J.V. Caro

Source Link

Cyber-Espionage Through IoT Standardization in Agriculture

China's infiltration into agricultural IoT (Internet of Things) networks represents a critical yet underexplored dimension of its global technological strategy. Through key players such as Huawei and Alibaba Cloud, Beijing has embedded IoT technologies into agricultural systems in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. These initiatives, often framed as development partnerships aimed at improving food production and supply chain resilience, concurrently enable the collection of extensive agricultural and environmental data with profound strategic and geopolitical implications.

Agricultural IoT systems are revolutionizing farming practices by collecting real-time, high-resolution data on variables such as soil moisture, nutrient levels, weather conditions, pest infestations, irrigation patterns, crop growth rates, and logistical movements. Chinese companies like Huawei and Alibaba are at the forefront of this technological advancement, designing platforms that support precision agriculture through the integration of advanced sensors, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence to optimize farm management.

In Kenya, Huawei has actively collaborated with local partners and the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization to implement smart farming solutions aimed at enhancing agricultural productivity and sustainability. By deploying IoT sensors that monitor critical agricultural parameters and transmitting this data to cloud platforms where AI algorithms provide actionable insights, farmers have reportedly increased crop yields. These initiatives not only boost local agricultural productivity but also strengthen China's presence in the region's agricultural sector.

Senators Warn the Pentagon: Get a Handle on China’s Telecom Hacking

Lily Hay Newman

Source Link

US intelligence and law enforcement agencies are scrambling to contain the fallout from a far-reaching Chinese espionage campaign into US telecoms. That includes the Department of Defense; in a letter to the DOD inspector general on Wednesday, senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Eric Schmitt of Missouri are calling on the Pentagon to investigate its own “failure to secure its unclassified telephone communications from foreign espionage.”

The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency confirmed publicly on November 13 that the China-linked hacking group known as Salt Typhoon has been embedded in major United States telecom companies for more than a year, running a sophisticated espionage operation that has reportedly targeted high-profile targets like president-elect Donald Trump and his campaign officials as well as subjects of interest on the US Justice Department’s “lawful intercept” wiretap list. Target companies include Verizon and AT&T along with a slew of other domestic and international telecoms; US officials have been investigating the situation since the spring.

CISA and FBI officials told reporters on Tuesday that telecom companies are still working to expel Salt Typhoon hackers from their networks and that the US government is actively helping victims clean house while also assisting them in hardening their defenses to prevent new compromise. But government departments like the DOD are also customers of those telecoms—and were themselves exposed.

A Last Chance to Prevent Nuclear Anarchy

Lewis A. Dunn

Source Link

As Donald Trump prepares to begin his second term as U.S. president, he is faced with a world sliding into nuclear anarchy. Brinkmanship among major nuclear powers is rising: China is relentlessly expanding its nuclear forces but rejecting serious engagement with the United States on arms control; U.S.-Russian cooperation on nuclear matters, already in a dire state, has deteriorated further with President Vladimir Putin’s repeated nuclear threats in the course of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Recent reports based on information from senior U.S. officials indicate that the United States, too, could modify its posture and expand its arsenal to strengthen deterrence of coordinated Russian, Chinese, and North Korean nuclear adventurism. All these developments have eroded critical pillars of the nuclear order and raised the risk of nuclear warfare. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which was signed in 1968, is the only remaining major, legally binding mechanism to uphold that order. But the actions of nuclear weapons states that are party to the treaty, the disillusionment of many nonnuclear parties, and the consideration by other countries to build their own nuclear programs have placed the NPT’s future in doubt.

Responding to this continuing breakdown in a recent Foreign Affairs article, Doreen Horschig and Heather Williams called for the United States to “uphold existing nuclear norms” by establishing closer relationships with countries in the global South, fortifying partnerships with allies, and creating regional engagement between nuclear and nonnuclear countries. But such efforts are insufficient on their own. At this point, the United States must instead try again to directly engage China and Russia not only as nuclear adversaries to be deterred but also as potential collaborators in a final attempt to head off nuclear anarchy.

The Wagner Group’s Use of Chinese Space Intelligence

Pawel Bernat

Source Link

Editor’s note: This article is part of Project Air & Space Power, which explores and advocates for the totality of air, aviation, and space power in irregular, hybrid, and gray-zone environments. We invite you to contribute to the discussion, explore the difficult questions, and help influence the future of air and space power. Please contact us if you would like to propose an article, podcast, or event.

The war in Ukraine has shattered expectations about how modern conflicts unfold. It has emerged as a technological patchwork—a theater where Cold War relics like the T-54 tank operate alongside modern systems like the British Challenger 2s. Soviet-era PM M1910 machine guns share the battlefield with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), while 1940s artillery coexists with advanced air defense systems. Amid this blend of old and new, the Wagner Group—a shadowy Russian mercenary organization—represents the unexpected convergence of antiquated weaponry and cutting-edge satellite intelligence.

Wagner’s ability to leverage Chinese-sourced satellite data highlights a disturbing reality: even non-state actors now possess access to space-based intelligence once available only to powerful nations. This democratization of space technology has expanded the capabilities of rogue actors, raising profound implications for global security. It also puts the space domain at the forefront of contemporary warfare and the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Russia-Iran-Assad ‘axis of the vulnerable’ cracking in Syria

Scott Lucas

Source Link

The so-called “axis of the vulnerable” is breaking in Syria. Starting in 2016, Russia and Iran, propping up the regime of Bashar al-Assad, needed more than a year of bombing, ground assaults and siege to break the rebel opposition in the east of Syria’s largest city, Aleppo.

Now, in 2024, the rebels needed less than four days to liberate the city and most of Aleppo province. They also regained territory in neighboring Idlib province and moved south into northern Hama before the Assad regime established defensive lines.

Russian forces remained in their bases on the Mediterranean. And Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah were caught by the rebel advance in their positions in north-west Syria. They abandoned them, but not before at least two commanders were slain.

Since 2020, after Russia and Iran helped his forces roll back the opposition in much of Syria, Assad has presided in name over part of a fractured country.

He and his allies held most of the largest cities, including Aleppo and the capital Damascus, while Turkish-backed opposition groups controlled most of north-west Syria and US-backed Kurdish factions had autonomy in the north-east.

Is World War III Already Here?

Jay Solomon

Source Link

If it feels like the world is on fire right now, that’s because it is. From Ukraine to Syria to the Korean Peninsula, a widening array of conflicts is raising questions among defense experts: Is it 1914 again? 1939? Has World War III already started and we’re just now figuring it out?

For retired Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, who served as Donald Trump’s second national security adviser from 2017–2018, the answer is clear.

“I think we’re on the cusp of a world war,” McMaster told The Free Press. “There’s an economic war going on. There are real wars going on in Europe and across the Middle East, and there’s a looming war in the Pacific. And I think the only way to prevent these wars from cascading further is to convince these adversaries they can’t accomplish their objectives through the use of force.”

Aleppo’s sudden fall reveals stark realities in Syria - Opinion

Max Boot

Source Link

The Syrian civil war began in 2011 and never really ended. The fighting has claimed about half a million lives and forcibly displaced more than half of Syria’s inhabitants. But, following a ceasefire agreement negotiated in 2020 by Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, combat subsided and Syria fell off the front pages. Bashar al-Assad, the Russian- and Iranian-backed strongman, was left in control of all of the major cities and roughly 70 percent of the country. A variety of opposition groups ran the rest — including Kurdish forces in the northeast assisted by the U.S. military.

In recent years, moderate Arab regimes, with quiet Israeli and U.S. support, have been trying to bring Assad back into the fold — to “normalize” him as just another Arab despot and thereby to try to wean him away from his Iranian sponsors. This fall, the Biden administration reportedly had been discussing, with the encouragement of the United Arab Emirates, the possibility of not renewing the toughest U.S. sanctions on Syria when they expire on Dec. 20.

Now the geopolitical landscape has shifted dramatically following the news that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an Islamist rebel group, has captured Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, which Assad had reclaimed in 2016. The Syrian government is desperately trying, along with its backers in Tehran and Moscow, to stanch the rebel onslaught. The front lines have already shifted south of Aleppo. The Syrian regime is now in a battle to hold onto the city of Hama (site of a notorious massacre carried out by Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, in 1982).

The Horn Of Africa States: The Need For Change Leadership – OpEd

Dr. Suleiman Walhad

Source Link

The Horn of Africa States region is a resource rich region but is devoid of visionary leadership. Many of the region’s leadership have, indeed, failed themselves and their countries and peoples. Some have overstayed, well versed in Africa’s overstaying born again leadership styles. Some are in the third, fourth and fifth and even more administrations in power and others seem to be copying those who came before them. In effect, they have created kingdoms without calling themselves kings – they call themselves presidents and/or prime ministers.

The issue is not the overstaying or dictatorial tendencies they show. This is part of human nature to keep what one acquires legally or illegally. It is the inability of these leaders to put in the wealth they earn back into the country, at least, to leave some legacy that can be witnessed and seen by those who may come after them or even centuries later like what the pharaohs did in ancient Egypt – they left the pyramids at which we wonder or the Great wall of China, which we also admire or even the Great Zimbabwe in Zimbabwe or the Stonehenge of the UK and many others. This would, at least, have left a trace of their deeds for leaders, scientists and tourists of the days to come to visit and admire.

It is very strange when one compares them to the other dictators on the other side of the same seas they overlook, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, where the long staying emirs and kings have developed their countries so well to make them the envy of the world. Taking Dubai, for example, one knows that it was a small village even some forty to fifty years ago, with barely a few hundred thousand people living there and most of them foreigners who came for work opportunities.

The Israel-Hezbollah Ceasefire Doesn’t Mean An End To Conflict In The Region

Seth J. Frantzman

Source Link

On December 3, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz went to northern Israel to meet with IDF troops and inspect the frontier. His presence came in the wake of a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon on November 27 that was designed to end Israel-Hezbollah fighting. Israel estimates that it eliminated around 2,500 Hezbollah members in two months of intense fighting that began on September 23, 2024. The end of this round of fighting leaves many other Iranian-backed fronts against Israel at a crossroads. The end of the fighting in southern Lebanon, which may be temporary, also coincided with an offensive by a Syrian opposition group that captured Aleppo from the Assad regime, illustrating the region’s interconnected security dynamics.

Katz is new to his job as defense minister. He took over from Yoav Gallant, who served as minister of defense since 2022. Gallant had advocated for a tougher line on Hezbollah since the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, when the Lebanese paramilitary began its “solidarity” strikes against Israel. This was part of what Israel has come to see as a seven-front war. Iran has backed an array of groups attacking Israel over the last year, including Hezbollah, the Houthis, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and also militias in Syria and Iraq.

Katz assumed control of Israel’s defense establishment as Israel marks over a year of warfare in Gaza and Lebanon. The IDF has not only severely weakened Hamas but also handed Hezbollah a series of crippling defeats. What remains of the Iranian-backed fronts is now Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and the West Bank.

OpenAI Is Working With Anduril to Supply the US Military With AI

Will Knight

Source Link

OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT and one of the most prominent artificial intelligence companies in the world, said today that it has entered a partnership with Anduril, a defense startup that makes missiles, drones, and software for the United States military. It marks the latest in a series of similar announcements made recently by major tech companies in Silicon Valley, which has warmed to forming closer ties with the defense industry.

“OpenAI builds AI to benefit as many people as possible, and supports US-led efforts to ensure the technology upholds democratic values," Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, said in a statement Wednesday.

OpenAI’s AI models will be used to improve systems used for air defense, said Brian Schimpf, cofounder and CEO of Anduril, in the statement. “Together, we are committed to developing responsible solutions that enable military and intelligence operators to make faster, more accurate decisions in high-pressure situations,” he said.

OpenAI’s technology will be used to “assess drone threats more quickly and accurately, giving operators the information they need to make better decisions while staying out of harm’s way,” says a former OpenAI employee who left the company earlier this year and spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their professional relationships.

If Trump’s tariffs start a trade war, it would be an economic disaster - Opinion

Mark Weisbrot

Source Link

“To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff, and it’s my favorite word,” said Donald Trump last month. Pundits, politicians and financial markets are trying to figure out why, since he announced a week ago that he would impose tariffs on the United States’s three biggest trading partners: 25% for Mexico and Canada, and 10% for China.

One theory is that tariffs can be a beautiful distraction. Trump, more than any previous US president, has fed on distractions for years, both to campaign and to govern. He can move seamlessly from one distraction to the next, like a magician preparing for the opportune moment to pull a coin from where it appears to have been hidden behind your ear.

Although he still has seven weeks before he takes office, he could use a distraction that can start sooner. He has run into problems with cabinet and other appointments that require Senate confirmation. Of course he could easily find people who would do his bidding and be acceptable to a Senate with a Republican majority. But that would defeat the main purpose of nominating people who seem indefensible: to force Republican senators to display the abject subservience that Trump needs to be public, in order to ensure his unwavering dominance within his party.

Rapid pace of modern conflict requires modern pace of training: Officers

Reuben Johnson

Source Link

One of the key advantages the US believes it has over its peer competitors is the sophistication and depth of the training that its members must pass through before they depart for their given missions. That belief has only been reinforced after more than two and a half years of the war in Ukraine, where reports emerged of Russian recruits having as few as two weeks of training before being sent to the front and suffering horrendously high casualty rates.

Speaking with the different firms and organizations present at this year’s Interservice/Industry Training Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC), it is clear the training and simulation community is trying to take lessons from real-world conflicts in order to keep training as relevant as possible for the modern warfighter.

New and rapidly-evolving elements on the battlefield of today are not so much turning training and simulation requirements upside down as they are adding new modules to the training syllabus, according to speakers at this year’s conference.

During the opening ceremonies here today, Vice CNO Adm. James W. Kirby and Lt. Gen. Benjamin T. Watson, the head of the USMC Training and Education Command, highlighted how critical the training function has become in a time when weapon systems are becoming increasingly complex and expensive.

Germany’s cybersecurity and infrastructure under attack by Russia, chancellor says

Nette Nöstlinger

Source Link

Cybersecurity and infrastructure in Germany are under “severe threat” by foreign adversaries such as Russia and China, said Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the Bundestag on Wednesday.

“As we all know, the main causes of attacks of this kind that affect our cybersecurity come from Russia,” Scholz said in the Bundestag. “And of course, they also come from China from time to time. And that should not be concealed.”

The United States said Tuesday night a major Chinese hack of global telecom providers is "ongoing." There has also been disruption following damage to two undersea fiber-optic cables in the Baltic Sea which sparked suspicions of sabotage.

In a separate incident, the crew of a Russian ship allegedly shot at a Bundeswehr helicopter on the Baltic Sea with signal ammunition, according to a report by German news agency DPA.

Barnier downfall threatens to set a pattern for what lies ahead

Hugh Schofield

Source Link

France’s political crisis is worse than normal political crises.

Normally when a democratic country passes through turbulence, there is some prospect of the turbulence coming to an end.

Not today in Paris. If anything, the downfall of Michel Barnier – toppled in parliament by a no-confidence motion – threatens to set a pattern for what lies ahead.

For if Barnier – a moderate of the centre-right with a reputation for courtesy and compromise – was unable to pass a budget, then who else can?

The original cause of the crisis has not gone away. It is the division since July of the National Assembly into three roughly equal blocs, none of which is prepared to deal with another.

As a result the two blocs that make up the opposition will always be able to unseat the one bloc that forms a government.

Add to that a mood of near-insurrection on some opposition benches – plus an ideological push for ever more generous spending pledges, despite stark warnings about the national debt – and the idea of a return to serene central politics seems very distant.

Trump Must Rebalance America’s AI Strategy

Bill Drexel and Ruby Scanlon

Source Link

Imagine if the U.S. Federal Reserve based its monetary policy on cryptocurrency’s speculative hype—or the Defense Department bet its manufacturing future on the overexcitement for 3D printing in the 2010s that never panned out. As detailed in a memorandum on artificial intelligence released on Oct. 24, President Joe Biden’s administration was beginning to run a similar risk by staking the lion’s share of the United States’ AI strategy on uncertain projections about the progress of large-scale frontier models, like those that power ChatGPT.

As President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming tech czars craft a new AI agenda, they have the opportunity to be both more ambitious and more risk averse: turbocharging the progress of frontier models and accelerating alternative uses of the technology, specifically for national security, in equal measure. Such a diversified approach would better account for the inherent uncertainty in AI development. It would also put the United States on firmer footing to expand its lead over China in the most transformative technology in a generation.

‘The process is broken’: Major oil producing countries kill UN plastics treaty over cap on production

Joseph Winters

Source Link

What was supposed to be the final round of United Nations negotiations for a global plastics treaty ended without an agreement on Sunday, as delegates failed to reconcile opposing views on whether to impose a cap on plastic production.

Another negotiating session — dubbed INC-5.2 after this week’s INC-5 — will be held in 2025, but it’s unclear how countries will make further progress without a change in the treaty’s consensus-based decision-making process. As it stands, any delegation can essentially veto a proposal they don’t like, even if they’re opposed by most of the rest of the world.

“If it wasn’t for Saudi and Russia we would have reached an agreement here,” one European negotiator told the Financial Times. Those two countries, along with other oil producers like Iran and Kuwait, want the plastics treaty to leave production untouched and focus only on downstream measures: boosting the plastics recycling rate, for example, and cleaning up existing plastic pollution.

Russia and the west are entering the ‘grey zone’ of warfare – and the oceans are a key battleground

Basil Germond

Source Link

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has claimed that Russia now has the right to target assets of nations that supply Ukraine with tactical missiles, after the US authorised the use of such weapons against targets deep into Russian territory.

So far Putin’s warning feel like a rhetorical escalation, which might not yet result in a direct military confrontation. But short of a “real” war, Moscow can destabilize western economies and societies with operations in what is called the “grey zone”.

The grey zone is not defined geographically. It is a functional space between war and peace, where jurisdictions are blurred, contested or left unclear and where responsibilities and accountability are vague and deniable. It’s where hybrid warfare and below-the-threshold operations flourish, because it is more difficult to tell whether an attack has occured and who might be responsible.

Hybrid warfare comes in myriad different forms. It can be disinformation campaigns designed to create uncertainty or even panic in a population. Or cyberattacks against transport infrastructure intended to seriously disrupt a competitor or adversary.

From Hybrid to Conventional Warfare: Three Lessons for Taiwan from Ukraine

Tarik Solmaz

Source Link

Amid heightened geopolitical uncertainty, many defense analysts are questioning if a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is now closer than ever. There is little doubt that Beijing has long sought control of Taiwan. This desire has only become more tangible since the pro-independence Democratic Progress Party (DPP) returned to power in 2016. Since then, China has waged a prolonged and comprehensive hybrid warfare campaign against Taiwan. To put it briefly, this campaign has included isolating Taiwan diplomatically, spreading disinformation to undermine public trust, launching cyber-attacks on government systems, and exerting economic pressure to discourage public support for the Taiwanese government. Simultaneously, China has conducted frequent incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) and large-scale military drills, aiming to intimidate both the public and political leadership. Russia’s shift from a lengthy hybrid warfare campaign against Ukraine to a full-scale military invasion on February 24, 2022, highlights that hybrid warfare is not the sole approach available to revisionist states. This escalation suggests that Taiwan could face a similar escalation in the future. So, analyzing the factors behind Russia’s escalation in Ukraine is crucial to draw lessons that Taiwan and its allies might apply to prepare for potential threats. Three critical insights emerge from this analysis.

The 2022 Invasion of Ukraine: A Missed Opportunity

Tom Zaja

Source Link

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 by the Russian Armed Forces was an undertaking not seen in Europe since WWII. It proceeded from three directions, several axes, and created a frontline more than 1,000km long. The invasion failed to achieve most of its strategic goals, the principal of which was the capture of Kyiv and overthrow of the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. While much commentary has explicated the reasons for the failure of Russia’s northern incursion into Ukraine, there has been little discussion of the hypothetical alternatives that might have brought the Russians success.

The Battle of Kyiv, led by General Aleksandr Chaiko, attempted a coup de main fixed on the Ukrainian capital. The two main vectors proceeded from Gomel (Belarus) and Bryansk (Russia) toward the western and eastern outskirts of Kyiv, respectively. Russian forces from the Sumy axis joined the effort from the east.

Though succeeding with the element of surprise, Russian forces were soon hampered by unpreparedness, logistical breakdown, and poor motivation. After just 42 days, the Russians made a full retreat from northern Ukraine, ostensibly as a good-will gesture pursuant to the Istanbul Peace Initiative. President Putin would later say: “Russian troops were near Kyiv in March 2022 [however] …There was no political decision to storm the three-million-strong city; it was a coercive operation to establish peace.” Such a face-saving statement was a deflection from what was the intended goal of encircling Kyiv and placing it under siege.

Shadows Of Power: Navigating The Complexities Of Global Security – Analysis

Simon Hutagalung

Source Link

Global security is a multifaceted concept that involves preventing and mitigating a wide range of threats, including armed conflict, terrorism, cyberattacks, pandemics, and climate-induced disasters. In our increasingly interconnected world, where nations rely on one another for trade, technology, and resources, the scope and scale of these challenges have expanded. However, responses to these threats often fall short, hindered by geopolitical rivalries, fragmented international systems, and unequal resource distribution.

As global security challenges continue to evolve due to technological advancements and shifts in geopolitics, achieving stability demands innovative frameworks, multilateral cooperation, and a balance between national sovereignty and collective responsibility. This essay examines the current issues within global security and explores potential solutions supported by data and real-world examples, aiming to navigate the complexities that threaten international peace and stability.

The nature of global security threats has changed dramatically. Traditional threats such as military conflicts, terrorism, and nuclear proliferation remain significant. Armed conflicts continue in various regions, with the Russia-Ukraine war being one of the most critical confrontations in recent history.