Tag: Regional Conflicts

One Step Closer?

The news from Ukraine is not looking too damn positive…..

Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops into eastern Ukraine early Tuesday local time—hours after he declared that Moscow was recognizing two breakaway territories in the country’s east as independent states. Putin ordered Russia’s defense ministry to send troops to Luhansk and Donetsk for “peacekeeping operations,” the Guardian reports. It’s not clear when Russian troops will enter the two territories, which declared themselves “people’s republics” in 2014 but were not recognized by any country until Putin’s move Monday, reports the AP.

It’s also unclear whether the Russian troops will remain in areas held by Russian-backed separatists or whether they will move into parts of the territories claimed by rebels but still under the control of the Ukrainian government, the New York Times reports. In a speech recognizing the two republics, Putin said Ukraine is a historic part of Russia that “never had a tradition of genuine statehood,” Al Jazeera reports. “Modern-day Ukraine was in full and in whole created by Russia, Bolshevik, Communist Russia,” he said.

In his speech, Putin slammed the US and NATO for trying to “blackmail” his country. “Russia has every right to take retaliatory measures to ensure its own security,” he said. “That is exactly what we will do.” After Putin announced the recognition of the two breakaway regions, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said President Biden plans to introduce new sanctions related to the territories, which will be separate from the sanctions to come in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, reports Reuters.

Then the tit for tat from the US……

The US stands with Ukraine in condemning Russia’s recognition of two breakaway territories in eastern Ukraine as independent states, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday after a day of fast-moving—and alarming—developments in the crisis. The Kremlin’s “recognition of the so-called ‘Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics’ as “independent” requires a swift and firm response, and we will take appropriate steps in coordination with partners,” Blinken tweeted. He said Vladimir Putin’s move was a “complete rejection of Russia’s commitments” under the Minsk accords that were intended to end the separatist conflict, the Washington Post reports.

“States have an obligation not to recognize a new ‘state’ created through the threat or use of force, as well as an obligation not to disrupt another state’s borders,” Blinken said. “Russia’s decision is yet another example of President Putin’s flagrant disrespect for international law and norms.” Hours after he confirmed the recognition in a speech that described Ukraine as an American colony with no history as a real country, Putin signed a decree to send Russian troops to the two territories as “peacekeepers.” In a statement, the White House said President Biden had spoken to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to “reaffirm the commitment of the United States to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Biden told Zelensky that the US would “respond swiftly and decisively, in lock-step with its Allies and partners, to further Russian aggression against Ukraine,” the statement said. The White House said Biden had spoken to French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to discuss a coordinated response. In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson described the recognition of the breakaway as a “very dark sign,” the BBC reports. Liz Truss, the UK’s foreign secretary, said Britain will coordinate with the EU to “deliver swift sanctions against Putin’s regime and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Ukraine.”

Now is the time for some calmer heads to prevail……

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China Versus Taiwan

Let me say from the onset that I am by no means an expert in Chinese affairs…..but this is something that has been boiling for 5 decades or longer.

For over 50 years there have been two Chinas…Mainland and the island of Taiwan….and in all that time they have been at the others throat.

But why have they been hating each other all that time?

Let me make this situation as simple as possible.

Now that you know why the hatred is there and simmering just below the surface of geopolitics….

In the first week of 2019, as China grabbed headlines for landing a spacecraft on the far side of the moon, a New Year’s Day editorial in the nation’s official military newspaper told its readers that “war preparations” should be a top priority for the year. The following day, President Xi Jinping offered a forceful reminder of what Beijing considers its most likely focus of conflict to be: Taiwan.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apps-taiwan-commentary/commentary-will-china-go-to-war-over-taiwan-idUSKCN1P11IT

And to help with the understanding of this situation….a short video may help…..

Taiwan is an ally of the US and if push came to shove with China I think the US would side with Taiwan and act accordingly….even if it meant going to war.

In his opening speech of 2019, and his first ever on the subject of Taiwan, the Chinese president Xi Jinping was characteristically uncompromising. Forty years after Beijing agreed to stop its daily shelling of the Taiwanese islands of Quemoy and Matsu, and launched a policy of commercial seduction, relations have coarsened. Addressing an audience of military and party officials and his country’s wider public on 2 January, China’s nationalist president-for-life signalled his impatience with the status quo, refused to rule out the use of military force and warned “foreign powers” against intervening in what Beijing regards as a domestic matter. For any Taiwanese viewer, it was a chilling moment.

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/observations/2019/01/china-and-taiwan-s-dangerous-face

With that said there has been a study that does not think the US could win a state vs state war with China……

One of the first things one learns as an infantry platoon leader is that he who tries to secure everything with his soldiers on the battlefield usually ends up securing nothing. Unfortunately for U.S. national security, this old maxim appears to have been forgotten at the strategic and political level by some of America’s brightest minds in the defense community as evidenced in a recent report.

The November 2018 study Providing for the Common Defense, issued by the National Defense Strategy Commission, a congressionally-mandated blue-ribbon panel led by former U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman and retired U.S. Navy Admiral Gary Roughead, recommends that the United States should spend more on its armed forces and reinforce its global military presence lest Washington be confronted by a national security emergency at a period when the nation is at a “greater risk than at any time in decades.”

https://thediplomat.com/2018/12/would-the-us-really-lose-a-war-with-china-and-russia/

I know that everyone thinks the US is the bees knees but is it possible that we could not win a state vs state war with China?

2017 CrisisWatch #1

There are blogs here on the internet that give breakdowns….on markets, business, politics, etc……but there are very few that watch armed conflicts.

As a person who has studied conflict management and resolution I am always reading reports and papers on the different international conflicts.

I thought IST might be a good place for me to give a crisis report every month….

The International Crisis Group is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict and they publish a watch list for people that need more info about conflicts.

Amid global geopolitical uncertainties, fighting intensified in Libya over oil installations and in the capital Tripoli, where clashes could flare up in April, while in Yemen an assault on Hodeida city by the Saudi-led coalition and allied Yemeni forces looks imminent. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), violence spiked in Kasai Central province and uncertainty grew over talks to establish interim governing arrangements. Ethnic fighting worsened in Kenya driven partly by drought. Macedonia and Paraguay witnessed heightened political tensions, while Venezuela’s political standoff took another dangerous turn.

Source: CrisisWatch | Crisis Group

As an analyst and teacher I am always looking for reference materials…I hope others who are interested in the world’s conflict they to will find this a good source of information.

Trouble Brewing Across The Border?

Thanx to Trump you would assume that I am referring to our Southern border with Mexico, right?

Well you would be mistaken…..you see there is a problem brewing on our Northern border…..you know the one with Canada…….

It appears the the US and Canada are standing off about ………lobsters.

This might be news to Americans who don’t make their living catching lobsters, but the US and Canada have been arguing for decades now over who owns two islands in the Atlantic between Maine and New Brunswick. They’re called Machias Seal and North Rock, and the islands themselves aren’t of much use to any creatures other than puffins, explains Maclean’s. The problem is that the water around them, called the “gray zone,” is flush with lobsters, and tensions are rising between lobstermen from the two countries. It’s been especially bad lately because lobster prices are rising. “Somebody is going to get killed,” says the chair of the Maine Lobster Zone Council. “We’ve had bad years in the past and got lucky, but this is the worst year I’ve ever seen.”

Both Maclean’s and the CBC explain that locals on both sides of the border have mostly kept things under control for years. (In one high-profile exception, an American lost his thumb in equipment eight years ago while “jostling” with a Canadian over territory, notes Maclean’s.) This year, however, outsiders from Nova Scotia have moved in to fish the waters, too, and they’re reportedly ignoring long-held rules about who gets to work when. “When you’ve got Canadian guys feuding with other Canadian guys, on top of us—that’s a flare-up, too,” a Maine lobsterman tells the CBC. Both governments claim sovereignty, and neither seems willing to budge.

Could this turn into a Blood Diamond sort of thing?  Will our fave luxury become known as “conflict lobsters”?

This could dispel the old saying that Canadians are too polite for their own good?

Can America afford yet another conflict it must fight?

The battlefield will contain a couple of bureaucrats from both having an old fashion slap fight…..but will it make the nightly news?

BBC intensifies its whitewashing of Israel | The Electronic Intifada

For years I have been bitching about the way western news media covers the Arab-Israeli conflict…..they leave out the part about the civilian deaths only that Israel had taken out a suspected terrorist……similar to the reports on the drones only twice as secretive….

I appears that we are still trying to make nice from our mistakes of the past and allowing too much go unreported…..

BBC intensifies its whitewashing of Israel | The Electronic Intifada.

A Proxy War?

My loyal readers know that I am concerned with the direction some politicians want the US to travel in the Middle East……..I believe that it is a fool’s errand to push too hard on support for the rebels…..since not many people can tell you who the rebels are other than they oppose Assad……..caution is needed…..

John McCain was just in Syria…..what a guy, what a guy……he has been a vocal proponent for the US to dive into the civil war with both feet……his idea along with a couple of his posse is to arm the rebels……now think about that……..(pause here for reflection)……we armed the rebels in Afghanistan and that was a disaster…..we armed the rebels in Libya and the country is awash with weapons and we lost an ambassador and these dipsticks want to add more arms to yet another conflict……..does anyone see the folly here?

The conflict has spilled over the borders of Syria……Syria into Turkey….then Syria into Lebanon and then Israel into Syria…..and it will only get worse……and the border violations will just get into the realm of a major international situation……Iran is arming the government…..Russia is in the pockets of Assad and then there is the US and EU who feel that throwing weapons at the conflict will somehow make all right in the Middle East…..and finally there is Iran who has given Assad its undying support…..weapons and I would not be surprised, people……

This is quickly becoming a proxy war being fought between world powers and emerging powers and those that want to be a world power…….this situation is leading nowhere good.

To illustrate the complexity of this situation……

Russia will not cancel plans to deliver an air-defence system to Syria despite Western opposition in order to help deter foreign intervention in the two-year-old conflict, according to the country’s deputy foreign minister.

Speaking in Moscow on Tuesday, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov also accused the EU of “throwing fuel on the fire” by letting its own arms embargo on Syria expire.

“We think this delivery is a stabilising factor and that such steps in many ways restrain some hotheads from exploring scenarios in which this conflict could be given an international character with participation of outside forces,” Ryabkov said.

The rebels are trying to exert their dominance in the area…….

The questions of the Syrian Civil War spilling over into its neighbors have long since been answered, but the situation in Lebanon looks to be escalating rapidly, with a pair of missiles, fired from Syrian rebel positions, pounding the outskirts of the capital city of Beirut today.

The attacks only wounded four in a residential area, but point to the rebels’ pledges of hitting Lebanon as retaliation for Hezbollah’s involvement in their war. Rebels had been saying that they were planning attacks on Lebanon for “several weeks,” and officials said the strike today was a “warning” to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to withdraw.

Turkey is thumbing it’s nose at Iran……..

Thanks to Turkey’s meteoric economic rise over the past decade, the second part of that vision has been, for the most part, fulfilled. Turkey today is the Middle East’s dominant economy; surpassing runners-up Iran and Saudi Arabia by a wide margin. Turkish businesses are rising in the Middle East, and Turkish cultural products, from television programs to schools, are in demand across the region.

But, Turkey’s plan to be a stand-alone power in the region is nowhere near fruition. The war in Syria has forced Ankara to revise this policy, and this has meant re-appraising the value of ties with the United States. Since 2011, Ankara has moved close to the United States, looking for shelter once again under the NATO umbrella.

Those are just the most recent example of how the situation in Syria is beginning to spin out of control…….regardless of what McCain and his bunch of lip flappers say, the US needs to tread carefully or we could be butt deep in another Iraq……..

The American people need to keep a vigilant eye on their clowns in Washington……I do not trust them….how about you?

Addendum:  After I wrote this draft news broke that the US will be sending arms into Syria….it seems that the government has crossed that invisible “red line”…..God bless us all!