News Analysis: Russian Buildup Focuses Concerns Around The Black Sea
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News Analysis: Russian Buildup Focuses Concerns Around The Black Sea by support@pangea-cms.com (Robert Coalson)
For the last decade, Russia has systematically bolstered its position in the Black Sea region, redrawing international borders and pouring billions of dollars into military equipment to give Moscow the ability to project power from the Caucasus to the Mediterranean.Now that policy has brought it to the brink of open conflict with NATO power Turkey.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has warned that Washington is considering a "Plan B" to deal with Syria if Damascus and Moscow are not serious about negotiating a political transition.
A partial truce in Syria capped something of a foreign policy trifecta for President Vladimir V. Putin, but his goals are uncertain for all three.
Nations are moving to block migrants, dashing the hopes of countless families seeking sanctuary in Europe.
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Daily Mail |
FBI director James Comely pens open letter to Apple over San Bernardino iPhone
Daily Mail The American people should expect nothing less from the FBI. The particular legal issue is actually quite narrow. The relief we seek is limited and its value increasingly obsolete because the technology continues to evolve. We simply want the chance ... and more » |
SAN BERNARDINO SHOOTING: FBI chief defends legal action against Apple
Press-Enterprise In the ongoing battle between the FBI and Apple over gaining access to the iPhone of San Bernardino mass killer Syed Rizwan Farook, FBI Director James Comey released a letter Sunday night, Feb. 21, defending the FBI's action. It reads as follows: The ... and more » |
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Washington Post |
He was fired from the CIA and jailed for a leak. Now he's trying to hang on.
Washington Post Locked away in federal prison, Jeffrey Sterling is struggling to keep his demons at bay. The former CIA officer whose case came to signify the Obama administration's crackdown on leakers spends his days reading, tutoring fellow inmates and finishing a ... CIA leaker: Clinton 'given a pass' for emailsThe Hill all 6 news articles » |
Russian President Vladimir Putin has thrust a much-modernized air force into the civil war in Syria, but the U.S. military says his bombers still drop mostly gravity "dumb" bombs as the West accuses Moscow of indiscriminately killing rebels and civilians alike around strategic cities such as Aleppo.
"This is not ...
VIENNA (AP) - The head of the U.N. nuclear agency warned Monday of the dangers of nuclear material falling into the hands of terrorists and urged world nations to apply an agreement meant to minimize such dangers.
Two-thirds of the 89 countries agreeing with the Amendment to the Convention on ...
Cuban President Raul Castro announced Monday that he is dispatching 9,000 soldiers to help keep the Zika virus out of Cuba, calling on the entire country to fight the mosquito that carries the disease.
9 to 5 Mac |
Former NSA and CIA chief says Apple is right on the bigger issue of encryption back door
9 to 5 Mac Retired General Michael Hayden, former head of both the NSA and CIA, told USA Today that while he “trends toward the government” on the 'master key' approach to the San Bernardino case, he thinks Apple is right that there should never be a back door to ... Former NSA and CIA director on Apple, Trump and HillaryUSA TODAY Evaluating Michael Hayden's Defense of CIA Drone StrikesCouncil on Foreign Relations (blog) Ex NSA, CIA chief says no to smartphone backdoorskgw.com CBS News all 19 news articles » |
NBCNews.com |
Trump Needs His 'Own Damn Bucket' to Waterboard: Ex-CIA Chief
NBCNews.com If Donald Trump is serious about wanting to waterboard terrorists, he'd better bring his own bucket, former CIA director Michael Hayden says, because the CIA isn't going down that road again. Hayden's pithy line, which he first uttered in a Showtime ... Fmr. CIA Chief: If Trump Wants To Waterboard, He Should Use His 'Own Damn Bucket'Breitbart News A former CIA and NSA director says the US is a 'safer, more secure' nation without back doorsAppAdvice Evaluating Michael Hayden's Defense of CIA Drone StrikesCouncil on Foreign Relations (blog) UPI.com-CNBC-USA TODAY all 92 news articles » |
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Dems Oppose Obama’s OT Rules by Bill McMorris
Two Congressional Democrats joined the chorus of lawmakers opposed to the Obama administration’s wide-ranging overtime regulations that could cut jobs.
Rep. Brad Ashford (D., Neb.) and Rep. Collin Peterson (D., Minn.) joined more than 100 Republican lawmakers to sign a letter opposing the stringent new rules.
In its July proposed rule, the DOL called for updating the Fair Labor Standards Act by more than doubling the minimum salary for overtime exemption to $50,440 per year from $23,660.Ashford and Peterson are two of 15 members of the House Blue Dog Coalition, a conservative wing of the Democratic party.Lawmakers said in the letter to Perez that the regulation would “adversely impact all affected employers, especially small businesses,” and wind up having negative consequences for workers. “We urgently ask you to reconsider moving forward with this rule as drafted,” the letter concluded.
The letter further warned controversial Labor Secretary Tom Perez that the regulations went beyond the original scope of labor regulations, ignores the “geographic diversity” of the dollar’s value on a state-to-state basis, and could hinder employment.
“With the implementation of the rule, nearly 5 million employees would suddenly become eligible for overtime pay. This 113 percent increase in the salary threshold would place a large burden on business owners and their workers, and is a major departure from previous DOL policy,” the letter says.
“The belief that this rule change will increase millions of workers’ paychecks is simply shortsighted. Unfortunately, a change of this magnitude is likely to have unintended consequences regarding how an employer compensates its employees which would negatively affect workers. Many small businesses…simply cannot afford to increase their workers’ salaries to the new salary threshold that has been proposed.”
The congressional letter can be read in full at Bloomberg BNA.
The post Dems Oppose Obama’s OT Rules appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
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Press TV |
US leaving CIA-trained militants at Russia's mercy: Ex-Obama aide
Press TV Separately, the CIA has also been running a similar program aimed at pressuring Assad to step down. Those groups are now allegedly being targeted by Russian airstrikes in the Arab country, which began September last year upon a request from Damascus. and more » |
The Pentagon’s Inspector General has launched an investigation into the response by American troops to allegations that Afghan military and police officials were involved in the sexual abuse of children.
Reuters |
Obama: China knows it cannot sustain export-driven growth model
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Suicide and brain injury have long been linked by scientists, but just how many people who have had a brain injury end up committing suicide? A new study has a grim answer: It found that the longterm risk of suicide increases three-fold among adults who have had concussions.
AppAdvice |
A former CIA and NSA director says the US is a 'safer, more secure' nation without back doors
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A ceasefire in Syria, which appeared possible if not probable in early February, has again turned out to be unreachable. And in hindsight, it is rather obvious that it never had a chance. The deal that was negotiated on the side lines of the Munich security conference between United States Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was the high point of the high-level event. Though the Munich conference also registered a warning from Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev about the risk of a “third world war” (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, February 15). Medvedev’s “New Cold War” address was generally discouraging, but the deal on Syria generated some positive expectations, despite the fact that it was not really a deal but rather a “memorandum of understanding” (Rbc.ru, February 12). No mechanism was created for enforcing the ceasefire and no real commitments were made, but many in the West were inclined to believe that, moving into its fifth month of risky intervention, Russia understood the futility of pursuing a military victory on the ground.
Moscow, however, had no intention of checking its offensive against Aleppo, whose fleeing inhabitants have added to the exodus of refugees flowing toward Europe. Russia sees the capture of the ruins of this major city as a possible turning point in the deadlocked civil war (Rbc.ru, February 8). The Russian high command hopes for a resonant victory, and in order to deflect accusations of heavy civilian casualties, it deployed to the Latakia airbase the most modern Tu-214R electronic surveillance plane, which should improve targeting (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, February 20). This operation perfectly complements Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s intention to continue the war until the complete victory over all rebels. Yet, Moscow has sought to distance itself from such an inflexible position (Polit.ru, February 17). It is far more beneficial for the Russian leadership to combine the relentless airstrikes with diplomatic maneuvering aimed at securing a major and, essentially, a deliberately disruptive role in any negotiations on the Syrian catastrophe (Novaya Gazeta, February 17).
The space for such maneuvering is created by the discord in the US-led coalition, which cannot reconcile the military goal of defeating the so-called Islamic State with the political goal of removing the al-Assad regime from power. This discord has escalated in the course of the battle for Aleppo, as Turkey had bombarded the forces of the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) to the north of this city, and then was hit by terrorist attacks. Turkey is now coming quite close to making a decision on when to start a ground offensive across the border (Forbes.ru, February 19). Russia knows perfectly well that the US administration is caught between upholding the alliance with Turkey and supporting the YPG. Therefore, Moscow sought to exaggerate this dilemma by proposing a United Nations Security Council resolution that would preventively condemn Turkish intervention (Kommersant, February 20). The move was duly blocked, but as Turkey finds support in Saudi Arabia for more direct pressure on al-Assad, Syrian Kurds are working closer with al-Assad’s government troops—and spreading stories about a possible “big war” alongside Russia in the region (Newsru.com, February 19).
Moscow almost certainly has no intention of starting such a war and, in fact, has no capacity for expanding its Syrian intervention and few good options for minimizing the accumulating damage to Russia’s international status from its actions (Politcom.ru, February 19). Yet, President Vladimir Putin exploits every opportunity to push the coalition partners further apart, promising the king of Saudi Arabia not to increase Russian oil exports and impressing upon the concerned Europeans that only Russian interference makes possible the delivery of humanitarian aid to besieged Syrian cities (Rbc.ru, February 19). The most important of these connections is with the United States: and while President Barack Obama is deeply frustrated with Putin’s games, he is still compelled to call him again and again (Slon.ru, February 15). Obama is right on target, stating—to much irritation in the Kremlin—that Russia is stuck in the Syrian quagmire (Vedomosti, February 17). Yet, Washington still has to communicate to the Russian top brass the exact locations of US special forces operating in Syria in order to prevent casualties from the consistently erratic Russian air strikes (Rossiiskaya Gazeta, February 18).
The goal of Moscow’s multi-channel communications appears to be to create a situation where no external party (with the obvious exception of Iran) would be able to intervene pro-actively in the Syrian war. Some Russian experts argue that this dissuasion is perfectly in line with US interests because Washington has no inclination to do anything in this disaster zone (Gazeta.ru, February 19). Obvious similarities can be perceived in this Russian use of negotiations as a tool of manipulating conflicts in Syria and in Ukraine (Kommersant, February 16). The so-called “Minsk process” that produced an agreement one year ago did not stop the Debaltseve battle but pushed Germany and France to commit to a political format that was patently unworkable (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, February 16). None of the parties to the conflict had any expectations of a full implementation of the deal; yet, all sides are in agreement that there is no alternative to this arrangement. Meanwhile, the ceasefire is violated by 50–70 gunfights every day.
Undoubtedly, Russia is in dire economic straits, and Putin is firm set on a course that is driving the country deeper into this disaster. He is aware that Russians are becoming less and less interested in the Syrian adventure; a possible victory in Aleppo is unlikely to change this attitude. At the same time, the massive “patriotic” mobilization achieved with the annexation of Crimea is dissipating faster than would otherwise have been the case because domestic concerns about shrinking incomes deafen people to the drumbeat of propaganda. Putin cannot wait for his sky-high approval ratings to slip and needs to find another target for applying military force—increasingly the only reliable instrument of his survival policy. Talks with Western “partners” are not merely a means of camouflaging Russia’s next proactive move, but also levers for widening the cracks in the transatlantic camp and tools for compromising US leadership. Containment is a costly and often unpopular strategy, and the Western allies’ periodic shortcuts for opting out are legitimated by quite reasonable suggestions for “understanding” Putin’s rationales. He counts on this Western timidity dressed as political realism.
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Chechnya is gearing up to establish control over its oil-extracting business. The procedure for handing over the Rosneft affiliate Chechenneftekhimprom to the Chechen authorities is expected to be completed in March. For the first time in many years, Grozny is close to acquiring full control over the oil business in the republic. Chechnya’s governor, Ramzan Kadyrov, appears to have outsmarted the giant Russian state oil company Rosneft and its head, Igor Sechin, who is reportedly a close associate of President Vladimir Putin. The Chechen authorities accused Rosneft of failing to invest in oil extraction and refining and vow to revive the republic’s oil sector (Onkavkaz.com, February 18).
Sources close to the Chechen leadership have said Kadyrov intends to force Sechin to rid Rosneft of all its remaining assets in the republic. Low oil prices and the existence of prospective oil fields in Siberia make doing so quite profitable for Rosneft. Oil extraction in Chechnya started long ago and many of its oil fields have been exhausted, while deeper oil fields require greater investment to exploit—something Rosneft apparently did not want to do. Oil extraction in Chechnya was a small fraction—0.23 percent—of Rosneft’s total. Despite the impracticality of controlling oil extraction in Chechnya, the political symbolism of handing over the assets to the republic is quite significant. The republic’s oil business was one of the main flashpoints in Russian-Chechen relations during the past 25 years. The Chechen quest for independence from Russia in the 1990s was partly based on its oil reserves and oil refineries. Prior to the second Russian-Chechen war of 1999–2000, the republic’s three oil refineries could jointly process 20 million tons of oil per year. Chechnya’s oil-processing enterprises accounted for 6 percent of Russian gasoline and up to 90 percent of the oil products for the country’s aviation industry. After Russian forces levelled the Chechen oil industry and established control over the republic, Moscow started investing in the oil industry in Chechnya in an effort to rebuild its war-torn economy (Meduza.io, February 16). Now, the Chechen authorities are set to take control over what is left of the oil industry once again, this time with the approval of Moscow.
Handing over the oil industry in Chechnya to the regional authorities is not merely an economic question, but also a major political one. The Russian opposition has accused the Chechen leadership of masterminding the murder of prominent Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, in Moscow, in February 2015. Since then, Kadyrov has made a number of controversial statements that put him at odds with large parts of Russian society, which may dislike the Russian opposition, but tends to dislike ethnic non-Russians even more. Some Russian analysts see a struggle going on between the Russian security services and Kadyrov, with the former having appealed to Putin to let them remove Kadyrov from power, to no avail (Newrezume.org, February 17). Instead of removing Kadyrov from power, or at least somehow undermining his authority, the Kremlin announced that it is handing over critical assets to the Chechen government. Is it a sign of devolution of power from the center to the periphery in Russia or a local victory for Kadyrov?
Russia’s economic downturn is evidently taking a toll on Moscow’s centralizing efforts in the country. The central government has already had to rewrite the budget for 2016, because it was drafted based on the assumption that the average oil price would be $50 dollars per barrel—$35 per barrel as the worst scenario. However, oil prices have dropped to $30 and lower since the beginning of 2016 (Vedomosti, January 11).
Moscow will soon have no money to send to Chechnya or the rest of the North Caucasus, meaning that it will have to drastically reduce government subsidies. Hence, the Kremlin may be trying other ways of sustaining the region in an effort to keep the local elites happy. This particularly applies to the Chechen Republic, which on the one hand still lacks the necessary tools to sustain itself but on the other hand has substantial armed forces that have to be provided for in order to ensure they remain under control. Handing over the oil industry to Grozny appears to be a way to appease the republican elites and is simultaneously a sign of approval for Ramzan Kadyrov. As the next step, Moscow will likely have to expand its accommodations for Kadyrov’s government. Perhaps more important is the significance of this move for the other North Caucasus republics, particularly its implications for neighboring Dagestan. Dagestan reportedly has substantial oil and gas deposits that its officials are not allowed to touch without Moscow’s approval. The devolution of power is likely to accelerate further if the leadership of Russia changes. But even with Putin in charge, it seems that regionalization of the country is slowly taking place; and the possibility that Chechnya could regain control over its energy resources has enormous implications for the rest of the North Caucasus.
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The steady build-up of Italy’s long-term economic partnership with Azerbaijan is adding an important geopolitical dimension to Rome’s foreign policy. Sitting on the fence, Russia is monitoring the current trade and infrastructure dynamics between Baku, Rome and the European Union. The Kremlin is always sensitive to Western maneuvering in its post-Soviet “near-abroad,” but thus far, at least, the Italian-Azerbaijani relationship is apparently not being perceived as a zero-sum game by the Russian authorities.
Italy recently intensified its cooperation with Azerbaijan by focusing on opportunities in the latter’s energy export–dominated economy and by putting aside objections to Baku’s poor human rights record. On February 5, Italian energy and engineering group Maire Tecnimont concluded a deal with the Azerbaijani state oil company SOCAR to construct a high-density polyethylene factory in Baku (Socar.az, February 5). And just a few days later, on February 11, KT-Kinetics Technology, a process engineering contractor and a subsidiary of Maire Tecnimont, signed an agreement with SOCAR to rebuild the Heydar Aliyev Baku Oil Refinery (Socar.az, February 11).
Italy has been Azerbaijan’s largest trade partner over the past seven years. In 2014, Italian- Azerbaijani commercial turnover was worth some $5.1 billion, twice the size of Azerbaijan’s combined trade with Russia, according to the Azerbaijani State Statistical Committee (Stat.gov.az, July 8, 2015). At the core of the Italian-Azerbaijani economic partnership lies energy policy. Azerbaijan was Italy’s biggest oil provider in 2013 and 2014. In the first eleven months of 2015, the South Caucasus republic ranked second, covering 17.9 percent of Italian crude needs, slightly behind Iraq (18.2 percent) and significantly ahead of Russia (13.3 percent), Italy’s Oil Union reports (Unionepetrolifera.it, January 13).
The Italian state-owned energy producer ENI holds a 5 percent stake in the consortium that developed and now manages the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline—the BTC runs from the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea to the Turkish Mediterranean coast, passing through Georgia (Bp.com, accessed February 22). At its initial stage, ENI was also part of the project to develop Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz offshore gas field; but in 2004, it sold its 5 percent share to Russia’s energy firm Lukoil, its partner in the venture (Lukoil.com, June 30, 2004). Additionally, the Italian oil and gas services group Saipem, which is controlled by ENI, currently manages underwater services in the Azerbaijani offshore area on behalf of both Azerbaijan International Operating Co. and British Petroleum Exploration (Caspian Sea) Ltd. (Saipem.com, November 3, 2010; April 30, 2014).
More importantly, in December of last year, Italian energy company SNAM, in which Italy’s treasury ministry has a controlling stake, bought from Norway’s Statoil a 20 percent share in the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) consortium, equal to the shares owned by SOCAR and BP. TAP will carry 10 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Azerbaijani offshore gas to Europe by 2020, with the possibility of doubling supplies in the future and reaching out to Southeastern Europe through the Ionian Adriatic Pipeline and the Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria (Trend.az, January 19).
TAP is the westernmost segment of the EU-backed Southern Gas Corridor (SGC) initiative, a network of conduits projected to connect the Shah Deniz Two offshore gas field with southern Italy via Georgia, Turkey, Greece and Albania. In addition to TAP, the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) and the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) will complete the SGC system. The SCP came online in 2006 and pipes Azerbaijani gas to the Georgian-Turkish border; TANAP is under construction and is expected to link the SCP and TAP at the Turkish-Greek border by 2018.
Though the SGC is one of the priority energy projects for the EU as the bloc tries to reduce its dependence on Russian natural resources, Azerbaijani leaders contend that their gas will not replace Russian supplies to Europe. Their argument is based on numbers, namely on Shah Deniz Two’s inability to match the 147 bcm of natural gas that Gazprom pumped into Europe in 2014 (Notizie Geopolitiche.it, October 30, 2015). Some Russian energy experts go further and claim that there is not enough gas in the Caspian Sea to fill up the SGC pipelines (Il Sole 24 Ore, November 7, 2015). In this sense, they raise Baku’s problems to meet Georgian demand for more gas supplies through the SCP (News.az, February 6).
Baku’s oft-repeated position is that security of gas supplies is more important than the volume; and energy security for Europe can be assured by the diversification of sources and suppliers, which ultimately is the stated goal of the EU’s energy policy (Trend.az, February 11).
The Azerbaijani leadership’s cautious stance toward Russia should not come as a surprise. Despite growing European-Azerbaijani engagement, relations between Baku and Moscow are still important. Both governments are carrying out plans to set up a north-south energy corridor for the export of electricity from Russia to Azerbaijan and onward to Iran (Trend.az, February 10). Furthermore, Baku strongly backs Russian moves with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to cut oil production and stabilize relative prices—Azerbaijan relies heavily on revenue from oil and natural gas exports, and its finances have been affected by the collapse in crude prices (Apa.az, February 2).
Russia remains Italy’s main supplier of natural gas, even though Russian energy exports to the Italian peninsula decreased considerably in the past two years, hit hard by the sanctions regime imposed by the EU and the United States on Moscow over its armed intervention in Ukraine. But as long as political cooperation between Rome and Moscow remains strong, the Italian partnership with Azerbaijan loses any anti-Russian significance. It becomes, in reality, a strategic tool to transform Italy into an energy hub in the Mediterranean Sea, so that Rome can regain some sort of centrality within the current German-centric EU. In this context, given the minimal supplies that Azerbaijan could directly provide to Europe’s energy needs, in conjunction with the state of the Russian-Azerbaijani relationship, the Rome-Baku economic axis may even be “tolerated” in Moscow.
Instead, the Russian government is more concerned about the EU Commission giving a green light to Gazprom’s plans to double the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea, which would allow the Kremlin to supply Western Europe by entirely circumventing Ukraine. Still, Russia’s attitude to the Italian-Azerbaijani entente, and so to the SGC venture, might dramatically change if natural gas from Iran, Turkmenistan and Iraq were to add to Azerbaijani supplies down the line, increasing the volumes at Europe’s disposal—a prospect that is not so unrealistic.
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Atlanta Journal Constitution |
FBI: Embezzled $20 million funded life of jets, mansions and gambling
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Amid a maelstrom of sectarianism and extremism, the Arab democrats represent the Middle East’s best hope. But they are often ignored these days in Washington.
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US Commander: China Seeking Control of East Asia
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said that it is illegal for President Obama to transfer terrorists from Guantanamo Bay into the United States Tuesday.
“[Obama’s] Attorney General recently confirmed that it is illegal–illegal–for the president to transfer any of these terrorists into the United States,” McConnell said in a speech on the Senate Floor.
Despite “the fact that it would be illegal … to transfer foreign terrorists” into the United States, the president has been focused on shutting down Guantanamo Bay for the length of his presidency, McConnell said.
“President Obama seems to remain captured on one matter by a campaign promise he made way back in 2008,” he said. “His ill-considered crusade to close the secure detention facility at Guantanamo.”
McConnell said that the Senate has acted “over and over and over again in a bipartisan way” against Obama’s proposal and that they would continue to stand firmly against it.
“So we’ll review President Obama’s plan, but since it includes bringing dangerous terrorists to facilities in U.S. communities, he should know that the bipartisan will of Congress has already been expressed against that proposal,” McConnell said.
On Tuesday Obama released a report listing 13 potential U.S. sites for the transfer of terrorists from Guantanamo without listing any specific locations. The administration has emphasized that moving the terrorists from Guantanamo Bay would save the Pentagon between $65 million and $85 million a year.
The U.S. Naval base in Cuba currently holds 91 prisoners, one of whom is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 911 attacks. Obama is expected to transfer 35 prisoners out of Guantanamo by this summer.
The post McConnell: Obama’s Plan to Close Guantanamo Is ‘Illegal’ appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
Dealing With The Devil by fredslibrary
Title: Dealing With The Devil
Author: Dónal O’Sullivan
O’Sullivan, Donal (2010). Dealing With The Devil: Anglo-Soviet Intelligence Cooperation in The Second World War. New York: Peter Lang
LCCN: 2009018149
Subjects
- World War, 1939-1945–Military intelligence–Great Britain.
- World War, 1939-1945–Military intelligence–Soviet Union.
- Military intelligence–Great Britain–History–20th century.
- Military intelligence–Soviet Union–History.
- World War, 1939-1945–Secret service–Great Britain.
- World War, 1939-1945–Secret service–Soviet Union.
- Secret service–Great Britain–History–20th century.
- Secret service–Soviet Union–History.
- Great Britain–Military relations–Soviet Union.
- Soviet Union–Military relations–Great Britain.
Date Posted: February 23, 2016
Reviewed by Hayden Peake.[1]
More than 500 books have been published about the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) since the end of WWII. Very few have mentioned the joint Anglo-Soviet operations that sent NKVD agents behind German lines. Nigel West gives a brief account in Secret War but does not indicate the magnitude of the relationship, since few documents had been released before the book’s publication.[2] Using British and Russian documents released in 2008, Dónal O’Sullivan, an assistant professor at California State University, Northridge, has remedied that situation.
By the time Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, many of the NKVD and GRU networks operating in the West had been rounded up by the Germans. Others had been annihilated during the Soviet purges. Stalin wanted to reestablish contact with those agents remaining in Europe and set up viable new sources, but early in the war he didn’t have the capability to dispatch agents. Professor O’Sullivan explains how an arrangement was reached with the SOE for Soviet agents to be dropped into German-occupied territories. He also alludes to the less productive efforts at cooperation between the NKVD and the OSS.
After providing considerable background on the NKVD and SOE negotiations and planning, O’Sullivan describes selected operations and the agents that participated. More than two dozen agents were involved; all were communists and all were either from the areas into which they would be inserted or had worked there before. Some acted alone, others in teams; each team had a codename. Examples include the first Soviet agent, a woman, designated PICKAXE 1. She was landed by boat in—France-the French resistance was not informed —and linked up with colleagues in Paris, where she worked until arrested. She and other members of the network were executed. A Dutch father-and-son team was recruited and dropped into Holland. Neither was well qualified; they had just wanted to go home, and the Soviets needed agents. Both were caught. The father, Willy Kruyt, was one of the few agents to survive the war.
The most complicated agent arrangement involved Bhagat Ram, an Indian communist recruited by the NKVD and then declared to the SOE—the only known example of this arrangement—with a warning that he had very likely worked for German intelligence. Peter Fleming—Ian Fleming’s older brother—called him SILVER and ran him against the Germans in India. Ram’s fate remains unknown.
In the end, the Soviets gained little from cooperation with Britain. Chronic mutual distrust hampered all operations. And to make matters worse, the Germans caught most of the agents. In several cases, the agents were turned against their masters as part of what the Germans called a Funkspiel, or radio game.
Dealing With the Devil fills a historical gap in the intelligence history of WWII. Overall, the book is well documented, though O’Sullivan’s judgment that the Red Orchestra was a German myth is debatable.
Running agents behind enemy lines in several countries at the same time and from a distance is a difficult job, as this book makes crystal clear.
[1] Hayden Peake is a frequent reviewer of books on intelligence and this review appeared in The Intelligencer: Journal of U. S. Intelligence Studies (19, 1, Winter/Spring, 2013, pp. 113-114). Hayden Peake is the Curator of the CIA’s Historical Intelligence Collection. He has served in the Directorate of Science and Technology and the Di recto rate of Operations. Most of these reviews appeared in recent unclassified editions of CIA’s Studies in Intelligence. These and many other reviews and articles may be found on line at http://www.cia.gov.
[2] See for example, Nigel West (1992). Secret War: The Story of SOE, Britain’s Wartime Sabotage Organisation. London : Hodder & Stoughton, pp. 71-72; and Holt, Thaddeus (2004). The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War. New York: Scribner, pp. 309-310.
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Donna Seymour, the chief information officer for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, announced her resignation on Monday, two days before she was scheduled to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about the massive data breach that affected more than 20 million federal employees and contractors.
"Leaving ...
Today is Defenders of the Fatherland Day in Russia, a public holiday and a celebration of all things military: triumphalism about the latest weapons, about operations in Syria, about the seizure of Crimea. Meanwhile, from the West we hear bloodcurdling warnings about the threat posed by the Kremlin’s war machine.
Perceptions matter, though: Arguably being thought to be dangerous is actually a more powerful geopolitical asset than actually being it. So long as the West believes Russia could surge into Ukraine, escalate in Syria, or even roll into the Baltic states, it inevitably feels a greater pressure to make concessions and invite Vladimir Putin to the table.
No one seems willing to question just how formidable Putin’s new military really is — and he seems to be counting on that.
Ever since he first strode into the Kremlin, at the end of 1999, Vladimir Putin has been pouring money into his military. But he was trying to modernize a military that was in a truly catastrophic state after not just years but decades of underfunding and neglect. It had performed abysmally in the first Chechen War. Draft dodging, embezzlement, and corruption were rife.
In order to send naval squadrons flying the flag across the globe, Moscow has to accompany them with tugs for when they break down
Certainly Russia’s military has lifted itself up from this pitiful state, but it’s still very much a work in progress.
Today, Russian military might as we know it is halfway between a fact and a psychological warfare operation.
Russian special forces seized Crimea in February 2014 with respectable precision and discipline, and looked the part of cutting-edge soldiers. But they were among the very best Moscow can muster, and faced no opposition.
Russia has been able to turn the tide in Syria — and the politics of that war — with its bombers. But in order to keep up the tempo of operations in Syria, Moscow has had to send its best pilots, and even buy old Turkish ships to supply them. Besides, bombing a disorganized rebel force with no meaningful air defense is hardly much of a test of the new Russian air force.
In Ukraine, where Russia has had units deployed since summer 2014, Moscow has had to send improvised "battalion tactical groups" patched together from the best companies of soldiers across the country. After all, almost half of Russia’s soldiers are conscripts serving just a single year. Russian officers speaking off the record admit that between their training and their final demobilization month, the majority are only usable for maybe three months of that year.
In order to send naval squadrons flying the flag across the globe, Moscow has not only to accompany them with tugs for when they break down, it then has to put the ships in dock for months after fixing them. And while Russia had great plans for new warships, the gas turbines most would have used came from Ukraine, and so it’s back to the drawing board.
In other words, so far, we have seen the very best of the Russian military in the ideal conditions but not the rest of the force, or how they would cope facing a real threat. It is a little bit like assuming you can judge all of US education by visiting Harvard, or its health care from the Mayo Clinic.
As a result, we mistake Russia’s still large but overstretched and only partly reformed armed forces for a terrifying threat to the West and to the global order as we know it — and we (over)react accordingly, giving the Kremlin far more leverage than it actually deserves.
So why is the West so worried? In part, this is the usual human habit of overcompensation. After Crimea and Syria showed unexpected Russian capabilities, assessments, once more measured, swung to the other extreme.
There are also vested interests at work. Industries talking up the Russian challenge as a way to justify more defense spending and new weapons systems. Front-line nations wanting to assert their pivotal role, their need for support. Military establishments, whose job is to think of worst-case scenarios and prepare accordingly.
This is all understandable. From Tallinn in Estonia, for example, it is hard to be sanguine about Moscow’s capabilities and intent, when Russian commandos have kidnapped one of your security officers across the border, when Russian bombers buzz your airspace, and when Russia stagessnap exercises clearly wargaming a potential invasion on your border.
But the problem is that this also plays into Putin’s hands. His calculation appears to be that the scarier he seems, the more political traction he has.
After all, on most objective grounds, Russia is hardly a great power. It has nuclear weapons, but ultimately these are of little practical value. Continued rearmament depends on money, and Russia’s economy is dependent on oil that is now selling for bargain-basement prices. Russia’s economy is the 13th largest in the world, just between Australia and Spain, about half the size of France’s, about a fourteenth of the USA’s. Even before the value of the ruble collapsed, Russian military spending was around one-seventh of America’s.
What the Kremlin does have is the will to take risks, ignore the rules, and hope that the other side is more sensible, more cautious, more willing to make concessions than it is to call Russia's bluff.
In the main, this has worked so far. But Putin’s bad-boy geopolitics and military postures are wasting assets already beginning to prove to be liabilities.
The Russian defense budget as it stands is unsustainable. Already this year it has been cut by 5 percent, and a range of future projects are being quietly scaled down or pushed back.
Even with the cut, the defense budget is bleeding the Kremlin of resources needed for economic diversification and the public services needed to pacify an increasingly disgruntled population.
Russia has squandered its "soft power," its moral authority in the world, by which it once might have claimed to be an alternative to the Western-led order. It is now more unpopular than ever; only in Vietnam, Ghana, and China is it seen positively.
Precisely because Putin has been so successful at talking up his unpredictability and aggressive capabilities, NATO is now more united than it has been for a long time; defense and security spending in Europe, long neglected, is now beginning to be addressed, due to rise on average bymore than 8 percent this year.
Of course, NATO needs to take the Russian challenge seriously. But that also means not giving Putin more credibility and authority than he deserves.
We are giving Putin greater global clout than the leader of a declining, impoverished, underpopulated country deserves
Every time some new alarmist statement appears — such as when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey said "Russia presents the greatest threat to [US] national security" — not only does Moscow’s propaganda machine get a new headline, but Putin must feel a certain satisfaction.
Rightly or wrongly, as far as Putin is concerned, it is only fear that gets the West talking to him and paying attention to Russia’s interests. So far, we seem to be validating that view.
By our panics and hyperbole, not only are we in effect encouraging him to consider more adventures, we are giving him greater global clout than the leader of a declining, impoverished, underpopulated country stuck between a prosperous Europe and a rising China deserves. At present, the West is Putin’s PR team.
Were we to be more laid back, less inclined to jump every time he rattles his saber, in the short term it might infuriate him, encourage some new act of brinkmanship, although he has few safe options now and faces powerful states and alliances alert to his usual tricks. But in the long term, if he finds himself being treated not as a fearsome threat but an annoying (and sometimes even laughable) upstart, he may come to realize that his current antics are not a shortcut to great power status.
After all, even Putin is not a lunatic or a fanatic, and the people around him are in the main selfish pragmatists. Ultimately, not giving in to the hype, not letting Putin shape the geopolitical agenda with that saber, might be the most effective response to his tantrums.
Mark Galeotti is a professor of global affairs at New York University and a visiting fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations. He blogs at In Moscow’s Shadows and is on twitter as@MarkGaleotti.
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Don't buy the hype: Russia's military is much weaker than Putin wants us to think
Vox Russian President Vladimir Putin (C) reacts after a wreath laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by the Kremlin wall to mark the Defender of the Fatherland Day in Moscow on February 23, 2015. KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP/Getty Images. Despite Declining Economy, Russia Shows No Signs of Slowing Military SpendingUSNI News all 45 news articles » |
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President Obama botched the name of the Boston Marathon bomber on Tuesday while making a statement laying out his plan to close the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which holds enemy combatants considered extremely dangerous to American interests and security.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was convicted last spring of planting bombs with his brother, Tamerlan, at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, which resulted in the deaths of three people and wounded hundreds more in an act of terrorism on U.S. soil.
Obama mispronounced Tsarnaev’s first and last names, as can be seen in the above video, while making his pitch for the closing of Guantanamo, arguing that the Boston bomber and others were “all convicted in our Article Three courts and are now behind bars here in the United States” rather than being sent to the military prison.
The Tsarnaev brothers were reportedly motivated by extreme Islamist ideology to carry out the attack and harm civilians.
Obama made the flub while announcing his plan to Congress to close Guantanamo by moving many of the remaining detainees to foreign countries and transferring the rest of the suspected terrorists, who cannot be moved as they are considered too dangerous, to be relocated to a secure facility in the United States.
The president said keeping Guantanamo open goes against American values and serves as a recruiting tool for terrorists.
Gen. John Kelly, who recently retired as head of Southern Command and was responsible for running Guantanamo, told reporters earlier this year that detainees there receive the best possible treatment.
Critics of Obama’s plan argue there is little mention of Guantanamo in jihadist propaganda and that the facility is necessary to hold and get information from enemy combatants who are members of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
They also cite that the recidivism rate for those released to return to the battlefield is 30 percent, although some administration officials believe that number is too high.
While it is currently illegal to transfer the Guantanamo detainees to U.S. soil, the president is hoping Congress will enact legislation to change that so he can implement his plan.
The Pentagon is looking at the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado; the military prison in Leavenworth, Kansas; and the Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, South Carolina as possible facilities to house the detainees.
The post Obama Appears Not to Know the Name of Boston Marathon Bomber appeared first onWashington Free Beacon.
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Secretary of State John Kerry says he can't be sure the cease-fire agreement in Syria will work and lead to a political resolution in the war-ravaged country.
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