Bharat Rakshak

Over the past weekend, major global media outlets revealed that the heads of intelligence of about two dozen countries held a (formerly) secret meeting in Singapore and had in fact been held annually for several years. The venue for the talks was the Shangri-La Hotel, also the meeting place for a large, widely known conference called the Shangri-La Dialogue, involving about 600 representatives from around the world.

Among the roughly 24 intelligence chiefs at the informal meeting were the heads of U.S. and Chinese intelligence. India’s top intelligence chief was also present, as were chiefs from the Five Eyes network (the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand), but no other attendees were identified. It was noted that Russia was not represented – whether by its choice or by the organizers’ exclusion is unclear.

Equally interesting is that the meeting of two dozen heads of intelligence could have been kept secret. A meeting of such people requires several weeks of logistical planning, security preparations, and exchange of proposed agendas and position papers. Heads of intelligence need to know what they will be dealing with, at least generally. Intelligence chiefs know secrets that their governments don’t want blurted out, and they aren’t casual about this. Their briefings on official positions and authorized threats that might be made require weeks of preparation for the chief and some staff. The American head of intelligence can’t be casually chatting with the Chinese. Obviously, preparations for the Shangri-La Dialogue mostly would have covered the smaller conference. But it is hard to believe that 24 national intelligence heads, plus other officials in each country who had to know of the preparations, could for years fail to leak a conference such as this.

The focus on security might seem less important than the reasons for the leak, but in this case, they are closely linked. The cover of the meeting was blown simultaneously by five sources. The loss of secrecy will raise public concern in at least some countries as to why the meetings were held, why they were kept secret, and what was discussed and agreed to. In democratic countries like the United States, intelligence agencies are already distrusted by many.

After the meeting, it was revealed that India is shifting away from its relationship with Russia, long a major supplier of weapons for India, and toward the United States. Since India has been fighting China along their shared border, this agreement, like other agreements reached in the Pacific, places China in a difficult military position. It is locked out of the Pacific and facing an increasingly powerful India to its southwest.

It is, of course, not clear how long this U.S. relationship with India will last, but for the moment, added to the decline of Russia as an ally and the aggressive actions the U.S. has taken to form alliances in the Western Pacific, China is in a difficult position. I have long argued that China could not risk a war in the Pacific. Now, in my view, China must take steps to deescalate the tension. A meeting involving China’s head of intelligence and his counterparts from the U.S., India, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand – and not Russia – suggests Beijing understands the position it is in and that it had to shift. The leaders seemed very careful to make the balance of power public.

Secret meetings of intelligence heads are dangerous. They can trigger distrust at home, particularly in the United States. But the fact that someone wanted the world to know that the meetings had been going on for a long time and who was involved in them indicates that the leakers came from countries that did well at the gathering. The other 20 or so retained their anonymity. This is a major event in the shifting balance of power.

A starting point for making sense of the U.S.-China rivalry’s unusual features is recognizing that our world is experiencing an epochal transformation. In a recently published RAND Corporation report, I present evidence that the international community entered a new epoch, which I call “neomedievalism,” beginning around 2000. This new period is characterized by the attenuation or regression of the political, social, and economic dimensions of the modern era.


Politically, the centralized nation-state is in steep decline. Although what might succeed it remains intensely disputed. The decline of the nation-state has already spurred severe political crises in many countries, and the problems of a weakened state will persist even following the consolidation of new sources of legitimacy. The relatively high level of social solidarity that predominated in nation-states has atrophied, and competing sets of identities have grown more salient. Economically, neomedieval states are experiencing slowing and imbalanced growth, primarily benefiting a small minority. Neomedieval economies are also experiencing disparate growth rates, the return of entrenched inequalities, and expanding illicit economies. The nature of security threats has undergone significant change as well. Reversing trends that predominated in the past two centuries, non-military dangers such as natural disasters, pandemics, and violent non-state actors rival or outpace traditional state militaries as principal security concerns. While many of these risks are not new, they are especially menacing due to neomedieval states' weakened legitimacy and capacity. Warfare in the neomedieval age has experienced a revival of pre-industrial practices, including the privatization of militaries, the prevalence of siege warfare, the prominence of intrastate war, and the formation of informal coalitions consisting of diverse state and non-state actors.

Consequently, U.S. decisionmakers and planners should be wary of resorting to strategies and methods drawn from industrial age wars with which contemporary militaries bear a superficial resemblance. The U.S. military, in particular, will face the temptation to prescribe industrial nation-state solutions for neomedieval problems. Focusing on conventional military challenges both validates the importance of such forces and frames issues in terms that existing interests find comfortable. But policymakers should resist this temptation.

First, the reality of weakening states will likely be a defining feature of the U.S.-China rivalry. Nation-states are experiencing a decline in political legitimacy and governance capacity. This weakness afflicts both the United States and China, as well as virtually all countries around the world. As economic growth decelerates, the debilitation of modern states will likely worsen over time, and efforts to fully reverse the trends are unlikely to work. This does not mean strengthening state capacity is futile.

Second, conventional war between the United States and China is improbable owing to their political, economic, and societal weaknesses. Moreover, war requires the rapid depletion of scarce military resources that will be difficult and costly to replace. This is an especially important consideration given the competing fiscal demands of the welfare state. That said, some sort of conflict cannot be ruled out. Should the U.S.-China rivalry escalate to hostilities, the two sides might instead fight through proxy conflicts or by provoking political unrest in the rival’s homeland. do we know of a likely proxy that shares a border with china, and could be tempted into being a representative in such conflicts? seems far-fetched.

Amid such friction, the two may find their contest frequently interrupted by the imperative to reallocate scarce resources to address various domestic and transnational threats, resulting in a chronic low-intensity conflict. Under such conditions, conventional combat between U.S.-China forces, if it occurs at all, could consist of sporadic clashes between relatively modest-sized formations in different parts of the world. As ambitions of total victory over the adversary prove infeasible, political goals may instead focus on securing minor gains through temporary settlements while leaving broader issues unresolved.

Third, controlling domestic and transnational threats is becoming a higher priority than deterring conventional military attacks. Compared to the modern industrial period, states are more secure from external threats and more vulnerable to internal threats. They are more secure in the sense that weakened rivals generally lack the political will and resource base to subjugate other countries. Thus, most countries continue to face a lower threat of invasion and conquest. However, the perpetually fragile public legitimacy for governments will leave domestic politics volatile.

Paradoxically, China’s more limited experience with modernity may prove a valuable asset. Beijing might grasp neomedieval trends more intuitively than Western countries, whose principal point of reference rests in a recent past in which they predominated. Yet there are compelling reasons to believe America can adjust effectively. The most important one is the country’s innate dynamism and innovation.

Vips wrote:...

“I’m more political" than the elder Soros, Alex Soros, 37, told the newspaper. He added that he was concerned about Donald Trump’s potential White House run. “As much as I would love to get money out of politics, as long as the other side is doing it, we will have to do it, too."(Clear admission of using money to bring in pre-selected people to power who can then be manipulated)

Alex Soros met recently with Biden administration officials, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to push for issues related to the family foundation, the Journal reported. (Leftist, Woke cabal)
...

hanumadu wrote:In recent days I have seen immigration advertisements from Germany, Canada and New Zealand encouraging immigration to their countries. Sometimes they sound desperate.

hanumadu wrote:Pretty much the entire west sees immigration as an instrument of growth. The USA is the foremost. USA's net immigration is 1 million per year. The only difference is everybody wants to go to the USA and not so much to these other countries, so USA doesn't have to do things other countries do.

His name is Lukashenko, He is the president of Belarus since 1994

In 2020-21, George Soros tried a regime change operation in Belarus using his same NGO, Activist, Media method that he now using in India (they now also transfer huge moneys to political parties in India to bribe the voters, like in KAR)

But Lukashenko crushed that protest. Belarus police gave a severe thrashing to protesters

Western media and sold out opposition parties used the same technique

Constitution is in danger
Media is in danger
Minorities in danger
Poor ranking in global index

But he didn't give a damn about them.

He says I have been elected by people of Belarus and I don't care what western media says about me

Faced with the challenge of the Soviet Union and the risk that a Eurasian hegemon would be able to dominate the industrial centers of Western Europe and East Asia and control the resource endowments of the Middle East and Africa, the US government, after World War II, was forced to address the question as to the extent to which the United States would need to extend its geographic zone of activity and responsibility in order to ensure American security.


Beyond the defense of Western Europe and East Asia, the United States had to be able to act in Latin America, the Middle East, and South Asia, and in Africa to safeguard strategic resources, secure key lines of communication, and prevent geographic vulnerabilities from being exploited by the Soviet Union. It was not enough, as Glenn Snyder argued, for the United States to rely on its nuclear arsenal to deter the USSR to secure its position, for threatening a nuclear response to “minor ventures” on the part of the Soviet Union would not be credible. Instead, the United States had to show it could operate effectively in every region of the world. In turn, the so-called “stability-instability paradox”—where Moscow and Washington had to avoid head-on clashes that might lead to nuclear war— meant, as Michael Krepon articulated, that the Cold War would be characterized by superpowers “jockeying for advantage in a myriad of ways, including proxy wars and a succession of crises that became surrogates for direct conflict.” George Kennan described these “myriad of ways” under the rubric of “political warfare”—including alliances, economic aid, security cooperation, and information operations.

Rather than dismantling its foreign policy apparatus and returning the United States to its pre-World War II expeditionary nature, the United States pursued what Josef Joffe has described as a “hub and spokes” approach, where each region of the world connected to the American center and where the United States would play the principal role in creating a regional security architecture. The United States emerged as the leading provider of international security—especially in dealing with the challenges of terrorism, weak and failing states, and rogue regimes—and other states would defer to US leadership for setting the overall global agenda. US security guarantees to traditional power centers in Europe and Asia would usher in a new era of globalization that would produce economic growth, which in turn would strengthen the processes of democratization.

First, the United States should act as a regional protector, by providing security to those potential rivals—Japan, China, Western Europe—who would otherwise have to produce security on their own by converting economic strength into military assets. Historically, the accumulation of such assets has fed conflicts and ambitions, and the latter would surely be turned against the reigning primary power, the United States. In short, US foreign policy was defined by precluding the emergence of adversaries and hostile coalitions by building on the US strategy from the Cold War: through alliances, extended deterrence, and favorable trade terms.



After 2007, Russia under Vladimir Putin, particularly after his Munich Security Conference speech where he decried the Soviet collapse, the country began to embark on a more confrontational approach to the United States—but did so beyond the bureaucratic “box” of Europe. Whether joint military drills with China and Iran, recultivating closer relationships in Africa and Latin America, and then engaging in active military interventions—in Georgia, Ukraine, and then in Syria—Moscow demonstrated its capacity, even if limited, to act beyond the permutations of a single region. Yet in looking at the disjointed US response to Russian activities along its southern peripheries, geostrategic analyst George Friedman zeroed in on the US “conceptual division of the region into distinct theaters” as a major cause.

Cyrano wrote:We should help Sorrows get actively involved in the Khalistan movement so that he too can get a raw deal.

Aditya_V wrote:Soros was a Jew who joined Nazis in WW2 in stealing and killing other Jews, he does not have any moral values

It was not enough, as Glenn Snyder argued, for the United States to rely on its nuclear arsenal to deter the USSR to secure its position, for threatening a nuclear response to “minor ventures” on the part of the Soviet Union would not be credible. Instead, the United States had to show it could operate effectively in every region of the world. In turn, the so-called “stability-instability paradox”—where Moscow and Washington had to avoid head-on clashes that might lead to nuclear war— meant, as Michael Krepon articulated, that the Cold War would be characterized by superpowers “jockeying for advantage in a myriad of ways, including proxy wars and a succession of crises that became surrogates for direct conflict.” George Kennan described these “myriad of ways” under the rubric of “political warfare”—including alliances, economic aid, security cooperation, and information operations.


What Jonsson reveals is that Russia's conception of the very nature of war is now changing, as Russian elites see information warfare and political subversion as the most important ways to conduct contemporary war. Since information warfare and political subversion are below the traditional threshold of armed violence, this has blurred the boundaries between war and peace. Jonsson also finds that Russian leaders have, particularly since 2011-12, considered themselves to be at war with the United States and its allies, albeit with non-violent means This book provides much-needed context and analysis to be able to understand recent Russian interventions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, how to deter Russia on the eastern borders of NATO, and how the West must also learn to avoid inadvertent escalation.

Pratyush wrote: ↑05 Jul 2023 20:03 I have been trying to figure out how gallium is produced.

The most common method appears to be from the bauxite smelting process.

That being said, if it's that simple. Then this is yet another example of PRC shooting itself in the butt. In order to spit at the rest of the world.

In woods, playgrounds and stadiums across Syria, children and adults perform yoga routines. Their palms open in supplication, their arms flung back, they chant “Surya Namaskar “. It sounds like an Arabic blessing for Syria, but means “sun salutation” in Sanskrit. Instructors in Hindu monks’ robes preach the teachings of Shiva, an Indian god said to have founded the practice. “We are offering relief from the stress of real and economic wars,” says a Syrian tutor. Two decades ago a Syrian known as Mazen Isa returned from Rishikesh, a city in the Himalayan foothills known for its yoga studies, and opened a yoga practice in Syria. Scores of meditation centres now operate, free of charge, across the country. A key to their success is that President Bashar al-Assad backs them.

We can use insights generated from the “Newport School”—what has emerged from the fusion of the practitioner experiences and academic theorizing that occurs in the context of educating senior national security professionals at the US Naval War College. We examine international affairs and national security through a deep dive into critical issues, including economics, nuclear deterrence, transnational challenges, and the realities of strategic competition. Then we look at how the United States develops strategy and use it to develop more detailed concepts (of how to achieve those objectives) and think about the capabilities needed to implement the strategy. All of this occurs within the context of a large domestic policy system with competing organizations and influences. A fusion of understanding how the US government makes foreign policy decisions with an understanding of America’s role in the world establishes a foundation in strategic thinking.

Working from the North American base, the United States engages the international system as a continent-spanning superpower that removed great power rivals in its immediate neighborhood, where the two immediate oceanic basins—the Atlantic and the Pacific—provide a degree of security but also, in Alfred Thayer Mahan’s formulation, act as bridges for the extension of American commercial power and political influence to the rest of the world. From North America, the United States engages other regions of the world and connects the world back to our national security core through people, trade, security, and values.

The United States seeks markets abroad for exports and ways to obtain necessary and needed inputs for its economy at home through trade and immigration. A great source of US influence in the world has come from the economic and technological dynamism that attracts allies and partners (who want to take part in the US market and benefit from our technological advances). This approach has been to knit together coalitions on easy terms of partnership and to connect these coalitions to each other. In turn, the United States expects that these coalitions can pool together resources and common efforts to deal with problems that are too great for any single nation to tackle on its own, such as climate and environmental challenges.

At the global level and through different regions of the world, the United States since World War II has worked to create sustainable coalitions that are designed to promote collective security and contain and/or balance challengers and competitors. It is not accidental that, with the exception of China, most of America’s leading trading partners are also its treaty allies or strategic partners. The United States seeks to embed its actions in the world within a larger theoretical and aspirational understanding of power wielded to achieve specific purposes and ends. This is reflected in a series of national security strategies as well as the development of regional and theater strategies that lay out desired end states for US power. As we move into the mid-twenty-first-century, America’s challenge is to knit together, as Michael Reynolds argues, an “alliance that ties the European and East Asian rimlands together with the North American continent.” This security arrangement can then foster the economic and technological partnerships across this belt of states that Ash Jain and Matthew Kroenig describe within the context of their proposal for a Democratic Trade and Economic Partnership.

Yet, to take this notion of a set of trans-oceanic, cross-regional relationships and transform this into reality, it is necessary not to simply make a compelling strategic argument but to recognize political and bureaucratic realities. To further this understanding, the Newport School relies on two perspectives—that of “palace politics” and “sub-bureaucratic politics.” They point to ways in which a more responsive national security system can emerge in the absence of major organizational surgery by rethinking our thinking. Palace politics highlights how a president can apply counter-bureaucratic solutions by having trusted associates (members of his staff, special envoys, family members, etc.) be empowered to coordinate policy and set agendas that transcend existing bureaucratic stovepipes. Sub-bureaucratic politics track how issue-coalitions emerge that cross-cut across organizational lines and allow for coordination and pooling of authorities and resources. Given, as Evan Munsing and Christopher J. Lamb have pointed out, national security challenges are increasingly “whole of government” problems that require coordination across geographic, functional, and organizational lines, these two perspectives offer a way forward that could allow for the emergence of trans-oceanic regional teams that pool together relevant components from across the US government: with national leadership providing the necessary empowerment for the creation of such coalitions, and facilitating the emergence of the sub-bureaucratic, cross-organizational coalitions to create the necessary smorgasbord of authorities, capacities, capabilities, and funding.

We are all creatures of bureaucracies where law and culture underlie our organizational behavior. But as the United States sets out in a new national security era defined by strategic competition, we are mindful of power, geography, and bureaucratic authorities. Neither centralizing control in Washington nor decentralizing control through regionally-based viceroys is plausible. Instead, harmonizing existing organizations through a trans-regional lens is a way to reconcile global challenges and geographically situated countries. This means viewing connections created through oceans since most international trade moves by sea, the global Internet is connected by undersea cables, and Chinese expansionism is through the seas. Most human activity takes place in close proximity to maritime regions and the major ocean basins define critical economic and security linkages.

To wit, we can conceptualize national security along three lines: trans-Atlantic, trans-Pacific, and trans-Indian regions. All are defined by oceans, but recognize that all of the oceans are connected. For those with a military orientation, trans-Atlantic encompasses US Northern Command, Southern Command, European Command, and West US Africa Command. The trans-Pacific is largely US Indo-Pacific Command, but includes West US Northern Command and West United States Southern Command. A trans-Indian Ocean lens encompasses West US Indo-Pacific Command, Central Command, and East US Africa Command. Those with a Department of State orientation could find similar pairings with a trans-Indian lens including the Bureaus of South and Central Asian Affairs and East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Reducing the number of conceptual boundaries to just three from the existing eleven combatant commands in the Defense Department or eight bureaus in the State Department will surely generate new maps and new seams, but this ocean view should reduce the temptation for rigid boundaries and serve as a reminder that great powers become great through the seas that connect us.

The new map for United States national security thus moves us away from rigid, separated geographic boxes in favor of trans-oceanic patchworks that more accurately reflect current realities.

ramana wrote: ↑11 Jul 2023 09:11 ricky_v read this oped also.

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