region:northeast asia

Lawmakers Want to Know if US Troops Are Ready for Arctic Warfare | Military.com
▻https://www.military.com/kitup/2018/07/30/lawmakers-want-know-if-us-troops-are-ready-arctic-warfare.html

https://images03.military.com/sites/default/files/media/news/service/2017/01/marines-patrol-norway-1500.jpg

The report should include:

– A description of current cold weather capabilities and training to support United States military operations in cold climates across the joint force;
– A description of anticipated requirements for United States military operations in cold and extreme cold weather in the Arctic, Northeast Asia, and Northern and Eastern Europe;
– A description of the current cold weather readiness of the joint force, the ability to increase cold weather training across the joint force, and any equipment, infrastructure, personnel, or resource limitations or gaps that may exist;
– An analysis of potential opportunities to expand cold weather training for the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Marine Corps and the resources or infrastructure required for such expansion;
– An analysis of potential partnerships with state, local, tribal, and private entities to maximize training potential and to utilize local expertise, including traditional indigenous knowledge.

If the proposal makes it to President Donald Trump for approval, it could lead to improvements in cold-weather equipment and training U.S. troops receive.

#arctique #guerre #etats-unis

Russian Ships Near Data Cables Are Too Close for U.S. Comfort - The New York Times
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/world/europe/russian-presence-near-undersea-cables-concerns-us.html

Russian submarines and spy ships are aggressively operating near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications, raising concerns among some American military and intelligence officials that the Russians might be planning to attack those lines in times of tension or conflict.

The issue goes beyond old worries during the Cold War that the Russians would tap into the cables — a task American intelligence agencies also mastered decades ago. The alarm today is deeper: The ultimate Russian hack on the United States could involve severing the fiber-optic cables at some of their hardest-to-access locations to halt the instant communications on which the West’s governments, economies and citizens have grown dependent.

While there is no evidence yet of any cable cutting, the concern is part of a growing wariness among senior American and allied military and intelligence officials over the accelerated activity by Russian armed forces around the globe. At the same time, the internal debate in Washington illustrates how the United States is increasingly viewing every Russian move through a lens of deep distrust, reminiscent of relations during the Cold War.
[…]
“I’m worried every day about what the Russians may be doing,” said Rear Adm. Frederick J. Roegge, commander of the Navy’s submarine fleet in the Pacific, who would not answer questions about possible Russian plans for cutting the undersea cables.
[…]
In private, however, commanders and intelligence officials are far more direct. They report that from the North Sea to Northeast Asia and even in waters closer to American shores, they are monitoring significantly increased Russian activity along the known routes of the cables, which carry the lifeblood of global electronic communications and commerce.

Just last month, the Russian spy ship Yantar, equipped with two self-propelled deep-sea submersible craft, cruised slowly off the East Coast of the United States on its way to Cuba — where one major cable lands near the American naval station at Guantánamo Bay. It was monitored constantly by American spy satellites, ships and planes. Navy officials said the Yantar and the submersible vehicles it can drop off its decks have the capability to cut cables miles down in the sea.

http://cdn.itar-tass.com/fit/816x458_7de8e174/tass/m2/en/uploads/i/20150726/1100866.jpg

#navire_océanographique !

The Madness of THAAD
▻http://original.antiwar.com/feffer/2015/05/20/the-madness-of-thaad

Instead of letting #Lockheed_Martin determine the security politics of Northeast Asia, it’s crucial to bring the diplomats back to the negotiating table to address the causes of insecurity and not just the symptoms.

#etats-unis

US ex-officials meet N. Korean nuclear chief amid standoff - Yahoo News
▻http://news.yahoo.com/us-ex-officials-meet-n-korean-nuclear-chief-054036957.html

U.S. academics and former senior officials met with North Korea’s chief nuclear negotiator in Singapore on Sunday to get a feel for each other’s positions amid a yearslong standoff over the North’s nuclear weapons buildup.

Leon Sigal, director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council, a U.S.-based nonprofit, told reporters that the meeting will cover the North’s nuclear missile programs. He said “it’s two ways of taking each other’s temperature.”

The U.S. and North Korea have no formal diplomatic ties, but former U.S. officials occasionally meet the North’s diplomats in a bid to settle the impasse over Pyongyang’s pursuit of a long-range nuclear-armed missile that could hit the U.S. mainland.

North Korea’s team was led by Ri Yong Ho, the chief negotiator for six-party denuclearization talks.

North Korea has indicated willingness to rejoin the long-stalled talks, but has balked at U.S. demands it first take concrete steps to show it remains committed to the denuclearization goal.

Earlier this month, North Korea told the United States that it is willing to impose a temporary moratorium on its nuclear tests if Washington scraps planned military drills with South Korea this year. Washington called the linking of the military drills with a possible nuclear test “an implicit threat,” but said it was open to dialogue with North Korea.
(…)
Asked whether the two sides would also discuss recent hacking attacks linked to the comedy flick “The Interview,” Sigal said: “I don’t think we will get into that very much.”

How to destroy the future | Noam Chomsky | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
▻http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/04/us-disaster-race-noam-chomsky

In Northeast Asia, it’s the same sort of thing. North Korea may be the craziest country in the world. It’s certainly a good competitor for that title. But it does make sense to try to figure out what’s in the minds of people when they’re acting in crazy ways. Why would they behave the way they do? Just imagine ourselves in their situation. Imagine what it meant in the Korean War years of the early 1950s for your country to be totally leveled, everything destroyed by a huge superpower, which furthermore was gloating about what it was doing. Imagine the imprint that would leave behind.

Bear in mind that the North Korean leadership is likely to have read the public military journals of this superpower at that time explaining that, since everything else in North Korea had been destroyed, the air force was sent to destroy North Korea’s dams, huge dams that controlled the water supply – a war crime, by the way, for which people were hanged in Nuremberg. And these official journals were talking excitedly about how wonderful it was to see the water pouring down, digging out the valleys, and the Asians scurrying around trying to survive. The journals were exulting in what this meant to those “Asians,” horrors beyond our imagination. It meant the destruction of their rice crop, which in turn meant starvation and death. How magnificent! It’s not in our memory, but it’s in their memory.

China’s dangerous brinkmanship in maritime Northeast Asia | The Strategist

▻http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/chinas-dangerous-brinkmanship-in-maritime-northeast-asia

China’s behaviour over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute with Japan is deeply worrisome. It not only displays a level of brinkmanship which could easily lead to war, it also seems to be part of a broader maritime ‘probing’ strategy designed to constantly test the resolve of Japan and its US ally. The result could be even greater instability in Northeast Asia.

At least twice in the past two weeks, Chinese forces directed a fire-control radar at a Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) vessel and helicopter. The key question is whether such dangerous crisis management reflects a deliberate strategy on the part of Beijing or if it was due to a lack of coordination among the key actors. According to media reports, the later seems closer to the truth. It seems that only now is China’s management of the dispute under direct command and coordination of a top-level task force led by General Secretary Xi Jinping.

#chine #japon #senkaku

Japan’s paradoxical shift to the right | Inside Story

►http://inside.org.au/japans-paradoxical-shift-to-the-right

29 October 2012

A nationalist troika forming in the run-up to next year’s Japanese election poses challenges for the region, writes Tessa Morris-Suzuki

THIS has proved to be a momentous year for the Asia-Pacific region, and particularly for Northeast Asia. North and South Korea and China are all undergoing or about to undergo important transitions in leadership – transitions attracting global media attention – but relatively little has been said about Japan, which is also in a state of political flux. Yet the implications of the changing configurations of Japanese politics are profound and potentially troubling.

#japon #politique #droitisation #nationalisme