Once again civilization survives barbarism: Timbuktu’s ancient literary treasures were not destroyed after all. In a classic example of how the uncertainty of war can make bad reporters of us all, local accounts apparently vastly exaggerated the damage done to the city’s legendary library. Not only was the place not burned to the ground—as the city’s mayor claimed—but the manuscripts themselves were removed from the library by Malians last year.
Damascus could take "a surprise decision to respond to the aggression of the Israeli warplanes", Syrian ambassador to Lebanon Ali Abdul-Karim Ali said a day after Israel struck against Syria.
"Syria is engaged in defending its sovereignty and its land," Ali told a website of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
North Korea has been placed under martial law and Kim Jong-un has told his front-line troops to "be ready for a war," according to South Korean media reports.
"My overall world view has never changed: that America has and must maintain the strongest military in the world."
Once we reduce our sights to just being stronger than our enemies rather than far ahead, we risk being unable to keep allies in our camp. Lose allies and our combined power declines, which then feeds on itself as even loyal allies are forced to recalculate the balance of power.
And even being equal in power compared to a potential foe does not mean balance. Consider what it would mean if America and China were equally balanced in power. In theory, that would mean that in a battle fought in the middle of the Pacific, the outcome would be in balance. Fight closer to our shores, and we'd have more power since we'd be closer to our bases and reinforcements.
But fighting closer to China would give China the advantage. And you know what is closer to China? Our allies who give us a collective power advantage over China. If we lack the power to fight China in the western Pacific, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Australia would all have to reconsider which camp they align themselves with.
If that happens, more alliance power is peeled away as states adopt neutral policies. Or worse, power is added to our potential foe if these former allies side with China.
Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan all have the wealth and expertise to become nuclear to deter Chinese aggression, but so far they have not — only because of their reliance on a previously engaged and militarily omnipotent United States.
The global financial crisis has forced many NATO allies into drastic measures to reduce their budget deficits, leading to sometimes sharp cuts in defense spending.
Only a handful of the 28 NATO allies - the United States, Britain and Greece - last year spent more on defense than the two percent of Gross Domestic Product target set by NATO.
Some could look to make further cuts once the NATO-led force ends combat operations in Afghanistan at the end of 2014.
Rasmussen will say in the report that NATO remains the world's most important military power, with NATO countries still accounting for more than half of global defense spending.
America’s post-Cold War embargo on Cuba is a clear example of failed international interventionism. Making sanctions work, Henry Kissinger wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “depends on the ability to define an achievable objective.” Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States has not had such an objective in its policy toward Cuba. Our policy, intended to isolate Cuba, has isolated the United States.
Marine Gen. John Allen told The Associated Press that the main job over the next two years for the International Assistance Force — as the NATO-led troops in Afghanistan are called — will be to advise, train and build the capabilities needed for Afghan forces to go it completely alone.
They will face their first test when the fighting season gets under way in the late spring and summer. During the harsh Afghan winter, snow often blocks roads and fighting dies down.
The Hsiung-feng 3 is being installed on destroyers and frigates and now the new 500 ton stealth corvettes. For these ships the designers are being asked to get as many of the large (for a 500 ton ship) Hsiung-feng 3s on it as possible (up to eight). In addition there will be eight of the smaller Hsiung-feng 2. These new corvettes are the continuation of a trend in the Taiwanese Navy, which sees small ships carrying lots of anti-ship missiles as the key to success against the Chinese navy.
The Senate on Tuesday easily confirmed one of its own—Democrat John Kerry of Massachusetts—to be the next secretary of state, ending a largely noncontroversial process and kicking off what is expected to be a hotly contested special election for the seat Kerry has held since 1985.
Thick, off-the-scale smog shrouded eastern China for the second time in about two weeks Tuesday, forcing airlines to cancel flights because of poor visibility and prompting Beijing to temporarily shut factories and curtail fleets of government cars.
The capital was a colorless scene. Street lamps and the outlines of buildings receded into a white haze as pedestrians donned face masks to guard against the caustic air. The flight cancellations stranded passengers during the first week of the country's peak, six-week period for travel surrounding the Chinese New Year on Feb. 10.
The U.S. Embassy reported an hourly peak level of PM2.5 — tiny particulate matter that can penetrate deep into the lungs — at 526 micrograms per cubic meter, or "beyond index," and more than 20 times higher than World Health Organization safety levels over a 24-hour period.
Israeli forces attacked a convoy on the Syrian-Lebanese border overnight, a Western diplomat and regional security sources said on Wednesday, as concern has grown in the Jewish state over the fate of Syrian chemical and advanced conventional weapons.
The sources, four in total, all of whom declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue, had no further information about what the vehicles may have been carrying, what forces were used or where precisely the attack happened.
Militarily and politically, Hezbollah has much at stake in the Syrian conflict, but it is risking even more by attempting to save a pariah regime that may not be savable. The group has incurred hundreds of losses against Syrian rebels, including its valued special forces. Hezbollah cannot outmatch rebel manpower, and will need to commit its best fighters and most sophisticated equipment to cut rebel supply lines in the hopes of hindering a Damascus invasion force from gaining traction.
French troops took control on Wednesday of the airport of Mali's northeast town of Kidal, the last urban stronghold held by Islamist rebels, as they moved to wrap up the first phase of a military operation to wrest northern Mali from rebel hands.
A three-week ground and air offensive by French forces aimed at initially ending a 10-month Islamist rebel occupation of major towns is expected to eventually hand over to a larger African force.
The Africans' task will be rooting out insurgents hiding in the desert and mountains near Algeria's border.
"Now it's up to African countries to take over," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told Le Parisien newspaper. "We decided to put the means — in men and supplies — to make the mission succeed and hit hard. But the French aspect was never expected to be maintained. We will leave quickly."
Plans to base unarmed American surveillance drones in the African nation of Niger highlight the Obama administration's growing concern about extremist influences in the volatile region. They also raise tough questions about how to contain al-Qaida and other militant groups without committing U.S. ground forces in yet another war.
Mali's president offered Tuareg rebels talks on Thursday in a bid for national reconciliation after a French-led offensive drove their Islamist former allies into mountain hideaways.
The tanks and their crews, from Dragon Company of the 1st Battalion’s 72nd Armor Regiment (1-72 AR), are a small but lethal component of the U.S. Army's 2nd Infantry Division stationed close to the tense border separating North and South Korea.
In a report to clients, analysts at Goldman Sachs argue that the United States still has the world's strongest economy -- and will for years. There is a growing "awareness of the key economic, institutional, human capital and geopolitical advantages the U.S. enjoys over other economies," contend Goldman's analysts.
A lot of people in Washington apparently forgot how good Hillary Clinton is at not telling the truth.
Wednesday, in her testimony before the Senate and, later, the House, Clinton brilliantly fudged, dodged, and filibustered. Of course, she’s a pro. Clinton was slow-walking depositions, lawyering up, and shifting blame when many of her questioners were still civilians down on the farm.
Aided by a ridiculous format, she outfoxed most of the Republicans with ease.
Meanwhile, the Democrats, almost uniformly, seemed singularly interested in celebrating Mrs. Clinton as a global diva who somehow manages to carry the burden of her awesomeness with humility and grace. If smoking were still allowed in the Capitol, one could easily imagine her removing a cigarette from a gold case and tapping it nonchalantly on the witness table, and the entire Democratic caucus leaping over their desks for the chance to light it for her.
French Col. Thierry Burkhard, the chief military spokesman in Paris, said that there had been no combat with the Islamists who have ruled Timbuktu for nearly 10 months, but that the forces did not yet control the town as of Monday afternoon.
The French said Mali's weak military must finish the job of securing Timbuktu. But they have generally fared poorly in combat, often retreating in panic in the face of well-armed and battle-hardened Islamists.
The French-led military operation against the Islamists, who seized the northern half of Mali last year, began 17 days ago when the insurgents encroached further toward the south.
It has scored several successes, but hard questions remain about how the Mali government will hold the cities that have been wrested from the Islamists, and whether there is the will and the ability to chase them into the Sahara which is home to many of these desert fighters.
Relatively small forces are contesting a very large area. Under those circumstances, standing on defense to hold so many fixed locations will use up available forces. Both sides need to go on offense to keep the enemy reacting and unable to hit those fixed locations.
A third town in Mali's vast desert north, Kidal, had remained in Islamist militant hands. But Malian Tuareg MNLA rebels, who are seeking autonomy for their northern region, said on Monday they had taken charge in Kidal after Islamist fighters abandoned it. ...
The MNLA Tuareg rebels who say they now hold Kidal have offered to help the French-led offensive against the al Qaeda-affiliated Islamists. It was not clear, however, whether the French and Malians would steer their offensive further towards Kidal, or hold negotiations with the MNLA.
A man was shot dead on Monday in a fifth day of violence in Egypt that has killed 50 people and prompted the Islamist president to declare a state of emergency in an attempt to end a wave of unrest sweeping the Arab world's biggest nation.
Emergency rule announced by President Mohamed Mursi on Sunday covers the cities of Port Said, Ismailia and Suez. The army has already been deployed in two of those cities and cabinet approved a measure to let soldiers arrest civilians.
Egypt's Arab Spring revolution abounds with destructive ambitions and cruel ironies. But to label Egypt's revolution a failure, just two short years into a process involving drastic political change, is an act of extraordinary haste.
Karl Marx summed up Communism as “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” This is a good, pithy saying, which, in practice, has succeeded in bringing, upon those under its sway, misery, poverty, rape, torture, slavery, and death.
News out of North Korean in notorious unreliable, but food shortages in the country have gotten so bad and people so desperate that there are now reports of men murdering their own children for food. These startling reports were compiled by independent reporters commissioned by Asia Press, a independent press agency focusing on Asia, and were published by the Sunday Times.
Explanations of the events at the Information Ministry differ wildly, but “whatever you believed happened, this has been a significant development,” says Tronvoll. “This is huge defiance of Isaias’ power, a message that went around the world instantly, a great boost for the diaspora, and a clear signal that divisions are emerging in the military, the power of Afewerki is withering and it is one step closer to his downfall.” At least, that’s what the exiles, dissidents and victims of the regime are hoping.
The United States can step back from international conflicts, but that won’t make them disappear.
Fortunately, there is another power that shares America’s economic and political values, that possesses sophisticated military technology and is also very interested in stopping the progress of fanatical movements, especially in North Africa and the Middle East. That power is Europe.
Don’t laugh! I realize that even a year ago, that statement would have seemed absurd.
NATO says the first of six missile defense batteries sent to Turkey to intercept possible rockets fired from Syria is operational.
The alliance says the Patriot missile battery went "under command and control" in the southern city of Adana Saturday. The first battery was a Dutch unit.
The Indian Army wants $3.5 billion in order to create three more brigades (two infantry and one armored) to defend the Chinese border. Actually, this new force is in addition to the new mountain corps (of 80,000 troops) nearing approval (at a cost of $11.5 billion). The mountain corps is to be complete in four years. The three proposed brigades would be ready in 4-5 years. By the end of the decade India will have spent nearly five billion dollars on new roads, rail lines and air fields near the 4,057 kilometer long Chinese border.
China tested emerging military technology aimed at destroying missiles in mid-air after an initial test in 2010, state media said on Sunday, in a move that will unnerve its neighbors.
A brief report by the official Xinhua news agency said the military carried out a "land-based mid-course missile interception test within its territory".
"The test has reached the pre-set goal," the report quoted an unnamed Defence Ministry official as saying. "The test is defensive in nature and targets no other country."
The scale of the ongoing demonstrations reveals the widespread sense of alienation that Sunnis feel in the new Iraq. Prior to 2003, Sunnis rarely identified as members of a religious sect and instead called themselves Iraqi or Arab nationalists. It was the country's Shia population that claimed to be victims, on account of their persecution by Saddam Hussein.
Today, the roles are reversed. Shia Islamists consolidated power in Baghdad after the toppling of Saddam's regime, and some -- particularly those who were exiled during Baathist rule -- now view all Sunnis with suspicion. In turn, many Sunnis take issue with the new political system, which was largely shaped by Shia and Kurdish parties. Today, the Sunni population is mobilizing against the status quo and making sect-specific demands, such as the release of Sunni detainees, an end to the torture of Sunni suspects, and humane treatment of Sunni women in jails. Moreover, demonstrators are calling for the overthrow of the regime, using slogans made popular during the Arab Spring.
At the same time, Washington is ringing China with an array of bilateral alliances and partnerships, all of which are more or less anti-China. It is not paranoid for Chinese to view this as a policy of military containment. When pressed on the containment question, U.S. policy officials offer absurd responses like that from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in June of last year. According to Panetta, the pivot “is not about containment of China.” Rather, Panetta stated, "it is about the challenge of humanitarian assistance and needs; the challenge of dealing with weapons of mass destruction that are proliferating throughout the world; and dealing with narco-trafficking, and dealing with piracy; and dealing with issues that relate to trade and how do we improve trade and how do we improve lines of communication."
Would any American accept such a rationale for China deploying 60 percent of PLAN assets to the Western Hemisphere? Dealing with humanitarian assistance and needs, stifling nuclear proliferation, suppressing narco-traffickers, and dispatching pirates do not require more than half the U.S. Navy. Even Richard Armitage, former deputy secretary of state, knows this is nonsense: “When the administration says it’s not about China, it’s all about China. China knows this.” If the success of America’s Asia policy relies on Chinese elites believing our official rationale, the policy is in trouble.
The second major problem with the pivot is that instead of playing the role of offshore balancer, monitoring the balance in Asia and ensuring that no power militarily dominates the region, Washington insists on making China’s rise primarily about U.S.-China competition.
China, long a bystander to the conflict in Afghanistan, is stepping up its involvement as U.S.-led forces prepare to withdraw, attracted by the country's vast mineral resources but concerned that any post-2014 chaos could embolden Islamist insurgents in its own territory.
Cheered on by the U.S. and other Western governments, which see Asia's giant as a potentially stabilizing force, China could prove the ultimate winner in Afghanistan — having shed no blood and not much aid.
France's military intervention in Mali has revived trans-Atlantic tensions over security issues, this time involving a key counterterrorism battlefield, along with dismay from critics who see U.S. President Barack Obama as too reluctant to use military force.
According to interviews with officials from both sides, the French have privately complained about what they see as paltry and belated American military support for their troop deployment, aimed at stopping the advance of militants allied with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
The Americans question whether French President Francois Hollande's armed intervention, which is entering its third week, was coupled with a thought-through exit strategy.
U.S. support has been "minimal" in practice, one U.S. official acknowledged on condition of anonymity. Washington, this official said, gave France a "hard time" when they asked for increased support, and the French will "remember us for that."
Not wanting to repeat our experience in Vietnam, many speak of needing an "exit strategy" before committing troops. Such an approach seeks to minimize our losses under the assumption that we will at some point lose, so we had better know when to cut our losses and get out. It also assumes that the situation allows for an exit and that our enemy will allow it. The Iraqis desperately waned out of the war they initiated in 1980 but were locked by Iran in a death grip that allowed for no easy exit. While planning for a tough resilient enemy is prudent, we must never become paralyzed by concentrating on how that enemy can hurt us. We need to keep our focus on achieving victory.
WHEN IT COMES TO END-OF-LIFE DECISIONS, The State Does Not Love You.“First, socialist states invariably run out of money once they finally destroy their productive class; and second, the state has neither heart nor soul. To you, Patient X is your beloved mother, or brother, or child. To the state, Patient X is an unnecessary cost to an already strained system.”
Faced with the high cost of caring for smokers and overeaters, experts say society must grapple with a blunt question: Instead of trying to penalize them and change their ways, why not just let these health sinners die?
"The assumption that the Mediterranean would become a purely Western sphere of influence appears to have been premature," says Nikolas Gvosdev, professor of national security studies at the United States Naval War College in Rhode Island. ...
The U.S. had hoped it could pull back from the area, helping transfer military resources to the Pacific and South China Sea as part of a pivot to Asia aimed heavily at containing a rising China. But last year's Libya conflict provided stark warning that European states had distinctly limited capacity, and as the financial crisis bites defense budgets have been further cut.
The U.S. Navy is running out of money and is having a hard time avoiding the consequences. Thanks to all the new information systems added in the last two decades, the navy has been finding out quickly and in great detail how its current policies are running the ships and sailors ragged. The problem is that the navy has less money (because of budget cuts) and is unable to cope with high costs of replacing carriers and submarines that are dying of old age. The leadership has been unwilling to accept a small enough navy, especially one with fewer carriers, to match the current budgets. So ships are going to sea longer, with more broken or borderline equipment and crews that are fed up with all the time at sea. This problem has been growing for over a decade as more Cold War era ships got older and more difficult to maintain.
A BINDER FULL OF SPEECHES: Jon Favreau takes credit for Obama’s inaugural speech.
Iran considers any attack against Syria an attack on itself, an advisor to the Islamic Republic's supreme leader was quoted as saying Saturday, the strongest warning to date by a top Iranian official that Tehran will use any available means to keep the regime of President Bashar Assad in power.
Iran has declared that any country that attacks Syria is attacking Iran. That is an unusually frank admission of the relationship between Iran and Syria, but it will not have much impact. Iran has been at war with the rest of the world for decades. Because the Iranian military never recovered from its disastrous 1980s war with Iraq, Iran has used Islamic terrorism as their primary weapon. Their threat to fight would, at worst mean fewer restraints on Iranian sponsored Islamic terrorists.
Iran has successfully launched a live monkey into space, the state news agency IRNA said on Monday, touting it as an advance in a missile and space program that has alarmed the West and Israel.
The United States and the United Nations have little choice but to impose sanctions in response to North Korea’s actions, which clearly violate earlier sanction conditions. But it is hard to see how such sanctions can deter a determined and defiant North Korea, especially if the sanctions are not rigorously enforced. The best we can hope for is that the latest confrontation will finally bring all sides together – including both Koreas, the United States, China, Russia, and Japan – to solve this issue.
Diplomacy, not threats or sanctions – and certainly not military action – is the only viable path to resolution.
So let the talks drag on. I don't care. We can't let the North Koreans succeed in holding their own people hostage confident that we will care more for their welfare and so give in to save them.
In time, we will have missile defenses. In time, our Army won't be busy in Iraq. In time, even the South Koreans may start to worry about Pyongyang if the North rattles sabres to get our attention.
So when the Pillsbury Nuke Boy issues more threats, we and the Japanese should just smile and nod--and keep on talking. We have no business guaranteeing the survival of such a beastly regime as North Korea demands we do. If North Korea wants to survive, they need to start addressing our security worries.
In the end, starving people may well rise up because they'll have no fears of consequences. At worst, they will be too weak to be much of a threat to South Korea.
French forces in Mali have seized the airport and the bridge over the Niger River at the Islamist rebel-held stronghold of Gao, the French Defence Ministry said on Saturday.
French officials say French-backed Malian forces have recaptured the strategic city of Gao, an Islamist militant stronghold in the country's north.
The French defense ministry said Saturday that a contingent of troops from Nigeria and Chad was moving into the city to help maintain stability.
[In] Paris, a defense ministry official clarified that the city had not been fully liberated, and that the process of freeing Gao was continuing.
The French and Malians had not so far encountered any resistance from the rebels at Timbuktu.
The source said the advancing troops had paused outside to prepare a strategy for entering the town[.]
French and Malian troops were on Sunday restoring government control over the fabled Saharan trading town of Timbuktu, the latest gain in a fast-moving French-led offensive against al Qaeda-allied fighters occupying northern Mali.
Ground forces backed by French paratroopers and helicopters took control of Timbuktu's airport and the roads leading to the town in an overnight operation, a French military official said Monday. It marked the latest success in the two-week-old French mission to oust radical Islamists from the northern half of Mali, which they seized more than nine months ago.
French Col. Thierry Burkhard, the chief military spokesman in Paris, said Monday that the town's airport was taken without firing a shot.
"There was an operation on Timbuktu last night that allowed us to control access to the town," he said Monday. "It's up to Malian forces to retake the town."
"They torched all the important ancient manuscripts. The ancient books of geography and science. It is the history of Timbuktu, of its people."
