position:secretary of defense

Pendant la visite de Trump à la base navale de Yokosuka, consigne était passée de faire disparaitre toute mention du nom de l’USS John McCain. Non à cause de la collision d’il y a presque 2 ans, mais du fait de la haine personnelle de Trump à l’égard du sénateur John McCain III, aviateur de la marine dont le nom,après son décès, a été ajouté à ceux de John McCain I et II, père et grand-père et tous deux amiraux de l’US Navy comme référence au nom de baptême du navire…

Le nom a été recouvert d’une bâche, les toiles habillant les coupées ont été retirées, les marins mis en congé,…

Mais Trump n’y est, évidemment, pour rien !

Trump says he was not told of request to move USS John McCain ’out of sight’ - Reuters
▻https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-navy/trump-says-he-was-not-told-of-request-to-move-uss-john-mccain-out-of-sight-

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he was unaware of any effort to move the USS John S. McCain that was stationed near the site of his recent speech in Japan.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed to Reuters that an initial request had been made to keep the John McCain out of sight during Trump’s speech but was scrapped by senior Navy officials.
[…]
The USS John S. McCain was initially named for the late senator’s father and grandfather, who were both Navy admirals. In 2018, the Navy added Senator McCain to the official namesake of the guided missile destroyer.

Trump wrote on Twitter: “I was not informed about anything having to do with the Navy Ship USS John S. McCain during my recent visit to Japan.” The White House declined to comment.

The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news, said the White House wanted the U.S. Navy to move the ship “out of sight.” It cited an email between U.S. military officials.

The email to Navy and Air Force officials had a number of directives, including: “USS John McCain needs to be out of sight,” and asking officials to “please confirm” that directive “will be satisfied.”

The newspaper said a tarpaulin was hung over the ship’s name ahead of Trump’s trip and sailors were directed to remove coverings from the destroyer that bore its name.

It also said sailors assigned to the ship, who generally wear caps bearing its name, were given the day off during Trump’s visit to the nearby USS Wasp. However, the U.S. official said sailors on the ship were given the day off because of Memorial Day.

Navy Bid to Retire Truman Stirs Debate Over Aircraft Carriers - Bloomberg
▻https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-21/navy-bid-to-retire-truman-stirs-debate-over-aircraft-carriers

https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/idgXYWbjQ5dM/v2/1000x-1.jpg

Visiting the USS Gerald R. Ford two years ago, U.S. President Donald Trump extolled the importance of an enlarged naval force featuring a dozen aircraft carriers—including the Ford, the most expensive ship ever built.

Having 12 of these behemoths—sometimes accompanied by a half-dozen other ships—would send an international signal of U.S. resolve and restore the fleet to its post-Cold War size during the 1990s.

The Pentagon’s latest budget proposal, however, seems to do the opposite.

The Defense Department is seeking to—at least for now—shrink the carrier fleet, proposing that the USS Harry Truman be effectively decommissioned in 2024. This would mean that a multibillion-dollar, nuclear-powered super-carrier deployed in 2000 would be mothballed two decades before the end of its service life. 

The Pentagon plan would skip the vessel’s $6.5 billion midlife nuclear refueling and overhaul to save funds for other military priorities. The Ford alone costs $13 billion.

The proposal—which already faces congressional headwinds—would for a time leave the Navy with 10 carriers, one fewer than the congressionally mandated fleet size. Senator James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, signaled last week that he opposes the plan. “I’m a little disturbed by the idea,” he said.

Patrick Shanahan, the acting U.S. secretary of defense, said the decision “represents some of the strategic choices we made in this year’s budget.”

Being forced to choose, however, may prompt Congress to simply find more money to rehabilitate the Truman and move forward with an existing deal to buy a second and third Ford-class carrier. A similar quandary during the Obama administration was resolved this way. Indeed, there’s some question as to whether the Truman proposal is simply a feint: The Navy’s new 30-year shipbuilding plan has a section called “Navy The Nation Needs,” which includes 12 carriers as part of a desired 355-vessel fleet.

https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/ihwoAs4YWiMc/v1/-1x-1.png

Warren’s foreign policy shows she’s missing why Trump was elected | William M Arkin | Opinion | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/11/elizabeth-warren-foreign-policy-trump-war

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/c49e1ba106bb0e52107c2e224b32a8328f9ecb58/0_84_5000_2999/master/5000.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctb3BpbmlvbnMucG5n&s=2cdd8e8ff027a145516366b81dcb8cf9

The United States, Warren says, has embarked on “a series of seemingly endless wars, engaging in conflicts with mistaken or uncertain objectives and no obvious path to completion”. It’s fine rhetoric but the obvious path to completion is merely to end the wars. And yet the Bush White House couldn’t or didn’t want to. And Obama vacillated and expanded to the point where bombing and killing was being pursued in almost a dozen countries when he left office. And as for Trump? He’s done little and he’s been publicly admonished by his own secretary of defense when he decided he wanted to end just one of those conflicts.

But “the United States”? Really? Other than Afghanistan after 9/11 – and that’s all – “the United States” didn’t embark on these wars. The national security community did. The government. Overtly, covertly, with high hopes or unwarranted self-confidence, they got their way.

Who is the real culprit then? It isn’t Warren’s “elites”, the corporation, or Trump. It is Washington and its ability, indeed even its self-appointed duty, to stand in the way of anything that it sees as not in its interest.

She may not think it, but Warren is merely genuflecting before this deep state, declaring her allegiance to a “muscular military” and calling for “strong yet pragmatic security policies”. She of course offers a laundry list of things that must be preserved or strengthened that’s non-military – from technological superiority to diplomacy to strong alliances. And she decries the military and civilian policymakers who “seem [in]capable of defining success”. But in her innocence as to why we are stuck in seemingly endless wars she also seems oblivious to the fact that she is already capitulating to the very forces that ensure that we can’t change anything.

#complexe_militaro_industriel #etats-unis #guerres

Trump Discussed Pulling U.S. From NATO, Aides Say Amid New Concerns Over Russia - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/politics/nato-president-trump.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/01/15/us/15dc-trumpnato-1/merlin_141156909_cfa4e9a4-a737-4809-aae5-718916f5b72c-facebookJumbo.jpg

There are few things that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia desires more than the weakening of NATO, the military alliance among the United States, Europe and Canada that has deterred Soviet and Russian aggression for 70 years.

Last year, President Trump suggested a move tantamount to destroying NATO: the withdrawal of the United States.

Senior administration officials told The New York Times that several times over the course of 2018, Mr. Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Current and former officials who support the alliance said they feared Mr. Trump could return to his threat as allied military spending continued to lag behind the goals the president had set.

In the days around a tumultuous NATO summit meeting last summer, they said, Mr. Trump told his top national security officials that he did not see the point of the military alliance, which he presented as a drain on the United States.

At the time, Mr. Trump’s national security team, including Jim Mattis, then the defense secretary, and John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, scrambled to keep American strategy on track without mention of a withdrawal that would drastically reduce Washington’s influence in Europe and could embolden Russia for decades.

Now, the president’s repeatedly stated desire to withdraw from NATO is raising new worries among national security officials amid growing concern about Mr. Trump’s efforts to keep his meetings with Mr. Putin secret from even his own aides, and an F.B.I. investigation into the administration’s Russia ties.

A move to withdraw from the alliance, in place since 1949, “would be one of the most damaging things that any president could do to U.S. interests,” said Michèle A. Flournoy, an under secretary of defense under President Barack Obama.

“It would destroy 70-plus years of painstaking work across multiple administrations, Republican and Democratic, to create perhaps the most powerful and advantageous alliance in history,” Ms. Flournoy said in an interview. “And it would be the wildest success that Vladimir Putin could dream of.”

Retired Adm. James G. Stavridis, the former supreme allied commander of NATO, said an American withdrawal from the alliance would be “a geopolitical mistake of epic proportion.”

“Even discussing the idea of leaving NATO — let alone actually doing so — would be the gift of the century for Putin,” Admiral Stavridis said.

Senior Trump administration officials discussed the internal and highly sensitive efforts to preserve the military alliance on condition of anonymity.

After the White House was asked for comment on Monday, a senior administration official pointed to Mr. Trump’s remarks in July when he called the United States’ commitment to NATO “very strong” and the alliance “very important.” The official declined to comment further.

American national security officials believe that Russia has largely focused on undermining solidarity between the United States and Europe after it annexed Crimea in 2014. Its goal was to upend NATO, which Moscow views as a threat.

Comme on le voit au début et à la fin de cet extrait, si les #USA quittent l’#Otan ce sera pas mal la faute de la #Russie de #"Poutine

Pushing for an Israeli victory is the only way to end the conflict with the Palestinians

Il faut lire ce point de vue d’un néoconservateur américain car il reflète une partie de la pensée de la droite pro-israélienne

Lieberman and Bennett failed to impose a new paradigm on how to deal with Hamas, but more and more people in Israel are recognizing that compromises and concessions have only led to more violence

Daniel Pipes SendSend me email alerts
Dec 02, 2018 4:04 PM
▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-an-israeli-victory-is-the-only-way-to-end-the-conflict-with-the-pa

From a practical political point of view, Avigdor Lieberman, Naftali Bennett, and their idea to take a tougher stand toward Hamas just went down to defeat, if not humiliation. 
That’s because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once again showed his political skills; the first is now ex-defense minister, the second failed to become defense minister.
>> ‘Get used to the rockets’: What Netanyahu should tell Israelis living near Gaza | Opinion
From a longer-term point of view, however, the duo raised an issue that for decades had not been part of the Israeli political discourse but, due to their efforts, promises to be an important factor in the future: that would be the concept of victory, of an Israeli victory over Hamas and, by extension, over the Palestinian Authority and Palestinians in general.
Victory – defined as imposing one’s will on the enemy so he gives up his war goals - has been the war goal of philosophers, strategists, and generals through human history. Aristotle wrote that “Victory is the end of generalship.” Karl von Clausewitz, the Prussian theorist, concurred: “The aim of war should be the defeat of the enemy.” Gen. James Mattis, the U.S. secretary of defense, finds that “No war is over until the enemy says it’s over.” 
Palestinians routinely speak of achieving victory over Israel, even when this is fantastical: to cite one example, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas called his Hamas counterpart, Ismail Haniyeh, after eight days of violence with Israel that left Gaza badly battered in November 2012 to “congratulate him on the victory and extend condolences to the families of martyrs.”

Contrarily, in Israel, the notion of victory has been sidelined since at least the Oslo Accords of 1993, after which its leaders instead focused on such concepts as compromise, conciliation, confidence-building, flexibility, goodwill, mediation, and restraint. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert immemorially articulated this attitude in 2007 when he stated that "Peace is achieved through concessions.”
Keep updated: Sign up to our newsletter
Email* Sign up

>> Israel is incomparably stronger than Hamas – but it will never win: Interview with Hamas leader in Gaza
his perverse understanding of how wars end led Israel to make extraordinary blunders in the 15 years after Oslo, for which it was punished by unremitting campaigns of delegitimization and violence, symbolized, respectively, by the Durban conference of 2001 and the Passover Massacre of 2002. 
Such nonsense ended during Netanyahu’s near-decade-long term as prime minister, but it has not yet been replaced by a sturdy vision of victory. Rather, Netanyahu has put out brush fires as they arose in Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, Syria, and Lebanon. While agreeing with the concept of an Israeli victory when personally briefed, he has not spoken publicly about it.
Meanwhile, other leading figures in Israel have adopted this outlook. Former deputy chief of staff Uzi Dayan called on the army “to return the path of victory.” Former education and interior minister Gideon Sa’ar has stated that “The ‘victory paradigm,’ like Jabotinsky’s ‘Iron Wall’ concept, assumes that an agreement may be possible in the future, but only after a clear and decisive Israeli victory ... The transition to the ‘victory paradigm’ is contingent upon abandoning the Oslo concept.”
In this context, the statements by Lieberman and Bennett point to a change in thinking. Lieberman quit his position as defense minister out of frustration that a barrage by Hamas of 460 rockets and missiles against Israel was met with a ceasefire; he called instead for “a state of despair” to be imposed on the enemies of Israel. Complaining that “Israel stopped winning,” Bennett demanded that the IDF “start winning again,” and added that “When Israel wants to win, we can win.” On rescinding his demand for the defense portfolio, Bennett emphasized that he stands by Netanyahu “in the monumental task of ensuring that Israel is victorious again.”
>> Netanyahu’s vision for the Middle East has come true | Analysis
Opponents of this paradigm then amusingly testified to the power of this idea of victory. Ma’ariv columnist Revital Amiran wrote that the victory the Israeli public most wants lies in such arenas as larger allocations for the elderly and unbearable traffic jams. Meretz leader Tamar Zandberg, replied to Bennett that for her, a victorious Israel means winning Emmy and Oscar nominations, guaranteeing equal health services, and spending more on education.
That victory and defeat have newly become a topic for debate in Israel constitutes a major development. Thus does the push for an Israeli victory move forward.
Daniel Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum think tank, which promotes Israel Victory, a project to steer U.S. policy toward backing an Israeli victory to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians. Follow him on Twitter @DanielPipes

Venezuela : arrivée à La Guaira du navire hôpital chinois Hé Píng Fāng Zhōu (ou Arche de la Paix)

Buque Chino llegó a Venezuela para «iniciar operación estratégica»
▻http://www.el-nacional.com/noticias/politica/buque-chino-llego-venezuela-para-iniciar-operacion-estrategica_252868

http://en-cdnmed.agilecontent.com//resources/jpg/5/4/1537633194845.jpg

Este sábado arribó al Puerto de La Guaira, estado Vargas, el Buque Hospital chino «Arca de la Paz».

“Bienvenidos. Sigamos estrechando nuestros lazos de amistad y cooperación, para la paz”, escribió Vladimir Padrino López, ministro de Defensa, en su Twitter.

El ministro detalló que el “Arca de la Paz” atenderá a personas de todas las nacionalidades, incluyendo a 1.200 colombianos.

“La visita de este buque hospital también se inscribe en una operación defensiva estratégica. Va a ser muy satisfactorio tener este buque en Venezuela”, precisó.

El Ministerio de Comunicación e Información detalló que el buque tiene 500 camas, 35 unidades de ciudados intensivos y 12 quirófanos.

«Sus equipos permiten atender problemas cardiovasculares, ginecología, odontología, oftalmología, pediatría y medicina interna, entre otros», informó el Ministerio en su página web.

Pentagon Moves to Support War in the “Grey Zone” – Federation Of American Scientists
▻https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2018/08/dod-grey-zone

The Department of Defense issued a directive this month based on new authority granted by Congress last year to engage in “low-visibility, irregular warfare” operations.

In the FY2018 defense authorization act (PL 115-91, sect. 1202) Congress specifically authorized the Secretary of Defense “to provide support to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals engaged in supporting or facilitating ongoing irregular warfare operations by U.S. Special Operations Forces (#SOF).”

The new authority was needed, Congress said, in order to fill a perceived gap in the US military’s ability to fight in conflicts that are below the threshold of war.

#Pentagone #etats-unis

Egypt: The White House and the Strongman - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/sunday-review/obama-egypt-coup-trump.html

President Trump boasts that he has reversed American policies across the Middle East. Where his predecessor hoped to win hearts and minds, Mr. Trump champions the axiom that brute force is the only response to extremism — whether in Iran, Syria, Yemen or the Palestinian territories. He has embraced the hawks of the region, in Israel and the Persian Gulf, as his chief guides and allies.

But in many ways, this hard-line approach began to take hold under President Barack Obama, when those same regional allies backed the 2013 military ouster of Egypt’s first elected president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood.

That coup was a watershed moment for the region, snuffing out dreams of democracy while emboldening both autocrats and jihadists. And American policy pivoted, too, empowering those inside the administration “who say you just have to crush these guys,” said Andrew Miller, who oversaw Egypt for the National Security Council under Mr. Obama, and who is now with the Project on Middle East Democracy. Some of the coup’s most vocal American advocates went on to top roles in the Trump administration, including Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Michael Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser.
Image
In July 2013, supporters of the ousted Mr. Morsi protested in Cairo against the killing of 50 demonstrators a day before. A much bigger massacre came in August.CreditNarciso Contreras for The New York Times
I was The New York Times Cairo bureau chief at the time of the coup, and I returned to the events years later in part to better understand Washington’s role. I learned that the Obama administration’s support for the Arab Spring uprisings had been hobbled from the start by internal disagreements over the same issues that now define Trump policy — about the nature of the threat from political Islam, about fidelity to autocratic allies like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and about the difficulty of achieving democratic change in Egypt and the region.

Trump’s sending troops to the border to take on 200 kids and parents

According to President Donald Trump, the mightiest, richest country in the world is under a threat so huge and scary that it will require the deployment of military forces — as many as 2,000 to 4.000, Trump said Thursday — along its 2,000-mile southern border. The danger consists of a ragtag caravan formed by several hundred impoverished people, many of them children from tiny Central American nations. Yes, the time has come to protect America from marauding youngsters and their parents.

▻https://edition.cnn.com/2018/04/05/opinions/trump-has-no-shame-on-immigration-fernandez-kelly-opinion/index.html?sr=twCNN040518trump-has-no-shame-on-immigration-fernandez-ke
#Trump #frontières #armée #militarisation_des_frontières #USA #Etats-Unis

James Mattis Is an Ancient Roman Action Hero – Foreign Policy
▻http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/27/james-mattis-is-an-ancient-roman-action-hero

Since the 2016 election, comparisons between the United States and ancient Rome abound, motivated as much by President Donald Trump-Emperor Nero analogies as anything. Commentators have dwelled on the traits of theatricality, brutality, solipsism, narcissism, cruelty, and cowardice these men seem to share.

There’s a problem, however, with these comparisons: their source material. Most have turned to the work of Suetonius as their Nero-knowledge arsenal. Author of The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Suetonius was antiquity’s Michael Wolff: a gossipy and glib chronicler of fear and loathing in imperial Rome. His account of Caligula planning to make a horse one of his consuls and Nero singing while Rome burned makes for sensational and spellbinding reading, just as does Wolff’s portrait of Trump eating cheeseburgers in bed and warning the maid not to touch his toothbrush in his book Fire and Fury. Whether they are actually true is another, less promising, matter.
[…]
In contrast, Tacitus would find a different and more effective fighter in the person of Secretary of Defense Mattis. By now, many of us know that the retired general kept a copy of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations by his side during his tour of duty in Iraq. But since joining the Trump administration, Mattis seems to have plucked an edition of Tacitus’s works from his sizable personal library. Like Agricola, he embodies an ethos of service — one that is civic as well as military — which the United States desperately needs.

#Néron #Suétone #La_Vie_des_Douze_Césars
#Marc_Aurèle #Pensées_pour_Moi-même

Now Mattis Admits There Was No Evidence Assad Used Poison Gas on His People
▻http://www.newsweek.com/now-mattis-admits-there-was-no-evidence-assad-using-poison-gas-his-people-

Lost in the hyper-politicized hullabaloo surrounding the Nunes Memorandum and the Steele Dossier was the striking statement by Secretary of Defense James Mattis that the U.S. has “no evidence” that the Syrian government used the banned nerve agent Sarin against its own people.

This assertion flies in the face of the White House (NSC) Memorandum which was rapidly produced and declassified to justify an American Tomahawk missile strike against the Shayrat airbase in Syria.

Mattis offered no temporal qualifications, which means that both the 2017 event in Khan Sheikhoun and the 2013 tragedy in Ghouta are unsolved cases in the eyes of the Defense Department and Defense Intelligence Agency.

US has no evidence of Syrian use of sarin gas, Mattis says
►https://apnews.com/bd533182b7f244a4b771c73a0b601ec5

The U.S. has no evidence to confirm reports from aid groups and others that the Syrian government has used the deadly chemical sarin on its citizens, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Friday.

“We have other reports from the battlefield from people who claim it’s been used,” Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon. “We do not have evidence of it.”

He said he was not rebutting the reports.

“We’re looking for evidence of it, since clearly we are dealing with the Assad regime that has used denial and deceit to hide their outlaw actions,” Mattis said.

#allons_bon

Trump’s Environmental Policies Are a Disaster for U.S. Foreign Policy | Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/02/trumps-environmental-policies-are-a-disaster-for-u-s-foreign-policy

The Trump administration’s approach to science generally and to climate change in particular has the makings of a foreign-policy disaster. Environmental policy is one of the areas where domestic and foreign policy converge — not just because the policies we institute at home have direct impact on citizens of other countries, in addition to our own present and future economy and health. And not just because the Pentagon — including Secretary of Defense James Mattis — regards climate change as a security threat. It’s also because climate change is an example, par excellence, of an international collective-action problem that can only be effectively addressed through multinational and, likely, multilateral cooperation. And when U.S. credibility to lead the world in solving problems that demand cooperation — and cannot be solved by the kind of episodic transactions (or deal-making) that Trump fancies himself good at — is damaged, America loses.
[…]
As an approach to mitigating the threat that climate change poses to our homeland, if “America First” means pulling out of Paris, then is actually “America Last.” If America First is nothing but facile unilateralism, then it put us in a prisoners’ dilemma: we can’t reduce the risk to climate change unless we coordinate with others. We are the richest country in the world in total wealth; thus we have more to lose if the economic consequences of climate change are not mitigated. We play a unique role in the world, and we have more to lose in terms of blood and treasure if we see an uptick of new wars for old reasons, as the humanitarian consequences of climate change foment instability and conflict.

Special Report : Aircraft carriers, championed by Trump, are vulnerable to attack | Reuters
▻http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-carriers-specialreport-idUSKBN16G1CZ

Entre autres nombreuses et violentes critiques de tous ordres sur la concentration des moyens sur les porte-avions…

“Beyond a shadow of a doubt, a carrier is just a target,” says defense analyst Pierre Sprey, who worked for the U.S. Secretary of Defense’s office from 1966 to 1986 and is a longtime critic of U.S. weapons procurement.
[…]
“There is no competition to this ship,” declared Trump, who called the Gerald R. Ford American craftsmanship “at its biggest, at its best, at its finest.”

Trump did not mention that the ship’s builder, Huntington Ingalls Industries, launched the Ford more than three years ago, but the Navy has yet to commission it and put it into service because of severe flaws. Many of its new high tech systems failed to work, including such basic ones as the “arresting gear” that catches and stops landing jets.

The Navy says the ship will be commissioned sometime this year. But the criticism has continued.

In a written statement in July, John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, noted the cost overruns and cited a list of crucial malfunctioning systems that remained unfixed. “The Ford-class program is a case study in why our acquisition system must be reformed,” McCain wrote.

Ray Mabus, who in January stepped down as secretary of the Navy, said in an interview that the Gerald R. Ford “is a poster child for how not to build a ship.” He added: “Everything that could have been done wrong was done wrong.”

Are U.S. Immigration Centers the Next #Abu_Ghraib?

By all accounts, Gen. John Kelly was a fine Marine. He served with Gen. James Mattis, now the secretary of defense, and was seen as being in the Mattis mold — a low-key, prudent, rigorous thinker. So it is with surprise that I see Mr. Kelly, in his new role as secretary of Homeland Security, presiding over a ham-handed crackdown on immigrants.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/02/27/opinion/28ricks/28ricks-master768.jpg

Ignore the Tough Talk – Trump’s Iran Policy Will Be Much Like Obama’s
▻http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2017/02/14/ignore-the-tough-talk-trumps-iran-policy-will-be-much-like-obamas

It is true that the possibility of a much more aggressive military policy from the Trump administration cannot be completely ruled out, but any policy proposal involving the threat or use of force would have to be approved by the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and that is very unlikely to happen.

The last time the US contemplated a military confrontation with Iran was in the George W Bush administration. In 2007 Vice-President Dick Cheney proposed that the US attack bases in Iran within the context of the Iranian involvement in the Iraq war against US troops. But the secretary of defense, Robert M Gates, supported by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, headed off the effort by insisting that Cheney explain how the process of escalation would end.

There was a very good reason why the plan didn’t pass muster with the Pentagon and the JCS. The time when the US could attack Iran with impunity had already passed. In 2007, any attack on Iran would have risked the loss of much of the US fleet in the Gulf to Iranian anti-ship missiles.

Today, the cost to the US military would be far higher, because of the greater capability of Iran to retaliate with missiles and conventional payloads against US bases in Qatar and Bahrain.

In the end, the main contours of US policy toward Iran have always reflected the views and the interests of the permanent national security state far more than the ideas of the president. That fact has ensured unending US hostility toward Iran, but it also very likely means continuity rather than radical shifts in policy under Trump.

Why Congress Mandates Civilians Lead the Military - NBC News
▻http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/why-congress-mandates-civilians-lead-military-n691296

Before retired Marine Gen. James Mattis can get a confirmation hearing to become the nation’s next secretary of defense, he’ll have to get past a decades-old law meant to ensure a cornerstone of American democracy — civilian control of the military.

The reasons behind putting a civilian in charge of the Department of Defense are numerous. The secretary of defense has immense responsibilities as the only person aside from the president who can authorize military action and is an influential voice in the decision to launch a nuclear strike.

The National Security Act of 1947 states that a secretary of defense will be appointed “from civilian life” by the president. The law calls for a grace period of ten years before an active duty officer can hold the post, though Congress knocked down the waiting period to seven years in 2008.

“The provision is a law because of America’s nervousness of giving the military too much power,” said Charles Stevenson, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

“There is a concern that someone who has been a general all their adult lives doesn’t really understand civilian life,” Stevens added. “The secretary of defense has to deal with domestic businesses, has to recruit people from the civilian job sector. If he is just used to commanding he might not be used to commanding civilian society.”

Mattis would be just the second retired general to lead the military. Army Gen. George C. Marshall, a five-star general, served as President Harry Truman’s secretary of defense from 1950 to 1951 as he oversaw the Marshall Plan aimed at rebuilding Europe after World War II.

James Mattis, Possible Trump pick for defense post sees Israel turning into apartheid state
Retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, who was known as ’Mad Dog,’ also has said that the United States pays a ’price’ for its support of Israel.

JTA Nov 21, 2016
read more: ▻http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/news/1.754253

James Mattis, a former Marine General seen as one of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s leading candidates for Defense Secretary has said West Bank settlements are turning Israel into an apartheid state.
Retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, who was known as “Mad Dog,” also has said that the United States pays a price for its support of Israel, the Times of Israel reported.
Mattis met with Trump Saturday at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey
An unnamed official “familiar with the transition process” told CNN that Mattis can be considered a leading candidate for secretary of defense.
When Trump was asked by reporters whether Mattis is a candidate to lead the Defense Department, Trump said, “All I can say is he is the real deal. He is the real deal.”
Mattis ran U.S. Central Command in from August 2010 to March 2013. In that position he had command authority for all U.S. forces in the Middle East.

A New Fight Over Syria War Strategy - Antiwar.com Original by — Antiwar.com
▻http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2016/07/08/new-fight-syria-war-strategy

#Gareth_Porter

The long internal political struggle within the Obama administration over policy toward Syria has intensified following a proposal by President Barack Obama to cooperate with Russia in an air campaign against Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise.

The proposal, in response to an overture from Russia in May, would coordinate airstrikes against al-Nusra Front – the most powerful force in the war against Bashar al-Assad’s regime – in return for Russian agreement to constrain the Syrian regime from bombing non-jihadist forces willing to comply with the ceasefire.

If fully implemented, such a joint U.S.-Russian military campaign against Nusra could help hasten an end to the war by weakening the jihadist group cited by the Syrian regime as a major reason it has refused to make sufficient political concessions. In theory, such cooperation could strengthen both the regime and the so-called “moderate” rebels at the expense of the jihadists.

But Obama’s proposal is under attack by powerful elements of the national security bureaucracy. Even though the opponents have been unable to stop the proposal, they continue to press their case and it is not clear how committed the proponents are in pressuring their Syrian clients to comply with an agreement.

Last week, opponents of the proposal within the Obama administration leaked its existence to Washington Post columnist Josh #Rogin, whose sympathies clearly lie with the U.S. advocates of direct US war against the Assad regime.

Rogin’s story confirms that one major source of opposition to the proposal is Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and his staff. The article suggests, moreover, that the Pentagon opposition has less to do with Syria than with the Pentagon’s interest in preventing any softening of the new U.S.-Russia Cold War.

#Syrie #OTAN #Russie #Etats-Unis

Edward #Snowden: The #Media Isn’t Doing Its Job
▻http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/36818-focus-edward-snowden-the-media-isnt-doing-its-job

I believe very strongly that there’s no more important quality for a journalist than independence. That’s independence of perspective, and particularly skepticism of claims. The more powerful the institution, the more skeptical one should be. There’s an argument that was put forth by an earlier journalist, I.F. Stone: “All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.” In my experience, this is absolutely a fact. I’ve met with Daniel Ellsberg and spoken about this, and it comports with his experience as well. He would be briefing the Secretary of Defense on the airplane, and then when the Secretary of Defense would disembark right down the eight steps of the plane and shake hands with the press, he would say something that he knew was absolutely false and was completely contrary to what they had just said in the meeting [inside the place] because that was his role. That was his job, his duty, his responsibility as a member of that institution.

#médias

Pentagon Turns to #Silicon_Valley for Edge in Artificial Intelligence
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/12/technology/artificial-intelligence-as-the-pentagons-latest-weapon.html

On Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter made his fourth trip to the tech industry’s heartland since being named to his post last year. Before that, it had been 20 years since a defense secretary had visited the area, he noted in a speech at a Defense Department research facility near Google’s headquarters.

#Pentagone #IA

Carter Welcomes Saudi ’Boots on Ground’ Offer in anti-ISIL Campaign
▻http://www.almanar.com.lb/english/adetails.php?eid=253713&cid=18&fromval=1&frid=18&seccatid=56&s1=1

“That kind of news is very welcome. I look forward to discussing that with the Saudi defense minister next week - and other kinds of contributions that Saudi Arabia can make,” Secretary of Defense Ash Carter told reporters at at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada.En bon français, ça se traduit par "attendez, on va faire une commission pour étudier la chose". Et avec un peu de chance, on n’aura plus besoin d’en parler la semaine prochaine...

#syrie

Chuck Hagel, secrétaire à la Défense américain d’Obama de 2013 à 2015 critique vertement la politique suivie par la maison blanche en Syrie depuis le début - donc y compris durant les deux ans où il était en poste - dans un des salons de l’establishment US et de l’OTAN : l’Atlantic Council. Ses propos, derrière la critique d’une « rhétorique », sonnent en fait plutôt comme un réquisitoire contre les opérations de changement de régime :
US’ Syria Policy ’Paralyzed’ by Rhetoric that Assad Must Go, Says Hagel
▻http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/us-syria-policy-paralyzed-by-rhetoric-that-assad-must-go-says-hagel

Former Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, thinks that the Obama administration has become “paralyzed” by its rhetoric that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must step down, said budget cuts have pushed the United States “perilously close” to being unable to maintain its military dominance, equated the Republican presidential campaigns to an amateur talent contest, and had some advice for Donald Trump: “focus on uniting this country, not dividing it.”
“We have allowed ourselves to get caught and paralyzed on our Syrian policy by the statement that ‘Assad must go,’” Hagel said at the Atlantic Council on January 13. “Assad was never our enemy. A brutal dictator? Yes.”
But, he added, important lessons should have been learned from the ouster of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. Following Hussein’s execution in December of 2006, former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s divisive policies deepened the sectarian divide in the country and contributed to the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). In Libya, the toppling of Gadhafi by rebels aided by a Western military campaign in 2011 plunged the country into a downward spiral of chaos from which it has yet to recover.
“You can take a brutal dictator out, but you better understand what you may get in return,” Hagel said. “We never asked that question: What is coming after Assad?”
Assad will eventually have to go, but “that should not hold us captive,” he added.
While the United States and Saudi Arabia have taken the position Assad must go, Russia and Iran hold the opposite view. This has been a key sticking point to finding a solution to Syria’s war, which is now in its fifth year.
It will take a collaborative effort involving the United States, Russia, Iran, and the Gulf Arab states to create a “platform of stability” in the Middle East, Hagel said.

L’article rappelle de plus qu’il s’en était déjà pris, après son départ, dans une interview à Foreign Policy, aux choix faits par Obama sur les dossiers syrien et ukrainien, et qu’il s’est opposé à l’influence de Susan Rice (liberal interventionnist). Un élément supplémentaire, manifestement, à l’appui de la thèse de Hersh sur une fronde sourde des hommes de la défense Vs les courants influents à la Maison blanche et Obama jusqu’en 2014 :

In an interview with Foreign Policy in December, Hagel was scathing in his criticism of the White House, which he accused of micromanaging the Pentagon and trying to “destroy” him. He also acknowledged serious policy differences with the White House on three main areas: Syria, Ukraine, and shutting down the military prison at Guantanamo Bay.
Hagel reiterated some of that criticism in his remarks at the Atlantic Council.
The former Defense Secretary, who has not refuted reports that he frequently clashed with National Security Advisor Susan Rice, accused the White House of micromanaging policy through the National Security Advisor and White House Chief of Staff. “Governing is not dominating. It is just the opposite,” Hagel said. “You need good people and you need to trust good people. If you don’t think they are good people and you don’t trust them you shouldn’t have asked them to come in to start with.”

Syria: US Boots on Ground risks Conflict with Turkey, not Russia
▻http://www.juancole.com/2015/10/ground-conflict-turkey.html

The conflict these US actions generate is with Turkey, a NATO ally of the US which lies just north of Syria. Turkey is deeply afraid of the Syrian Kurds’ YPG militia, which Ankara sees as a branch of the radical PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) guerrilla group with which the Turkish government has been fighting since the 1970s, considering it a separatist terrorist group.

The Syrian Kurds’ YPG has been so effective against ISIL that US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter is clearly in love with them and wants to support them with a couple of special ops platoons and better air support.

But on Friday, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that Turkey had bombed the Kurdish YPG fighters twice. He said that they had tried to move west of Kobane in a quest to unite the three Kurdish enclaves of northern Syria along the Turkish border, which, Davutoglu said, would not be allowed.

It is possible that the public announcement that US troops would embed with the YPG was in part intended to warn Turkey against further bombing of latter.

[…]

The US troops will be substantially east of Kobane, but in any case the only external power involved in Syria that might inadvertently bomb US troops is Turkey, not Russia.

U.S. Special Forces Expand Training to Allies With Histories of Abuse

(The Intercept, 9 septembre 2015)

Since 9/11, Special Ops forces have expanded in almost every conceivable way — from budget to personnel to overseas missions. Many were conducted with security forces implicated in human rights violations.

▻https://theintercept.com/2015/09/09/u-s-special-forces-expand-training-allies-histories-abuse

https://firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2015/09/specialops_chart-021-1000x588.png

While the U.S. military is barred by law from providing aid to foreign security forces that violate human rights, JCETs [Joint Combined Exchange Training] have been repeatedly conducted in Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Chad and many other nations regularly cited for abuses by the Department of State. Under the so-called “Leahy Law,” a vetting process is meant to weed out foreign troops or units implicated in “gross human rights violations” — including extrajudicial killing, forced disappearances, and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. But the State Department office responsible for the vetting process receives only a tiny fraction of funding compared to the projects it oversees, and a spokesperson noted that “State does not track cases in a way that is easily quantifiable.” SOCOM, for its part, was evasive about whether the military command was aware of individuals or units disqualified by Leahy vetting. “If you have questions about who has been barred, I recommend you contact the State Department,” SOCOM’s McGraw wrote in an email.

Reports on the training of Special Operations forces, submitted to Congress and obtained through the Freedom of Information Act from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs, show that the U.S.’s most elite troops trained in 77 foreign nations alongside nearly 25,000 foreign troops under the JCET program in just 2012 and 2013. Both the number of planned missions and foreign nations involved in JCETs are forecast to rise next year, according to a separate set of documents publicly available from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller).

#US #Forces_spéciales #armée #coopération_militaire #droits_humains #dictatures #régimes_autoritaires #dip

Decoding the current war in Syria : The WikiLeaks Files - Robert Naiman
▻http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2219-decoding-the-current-war-in-syria-the-wikileaks-files

By 2014, the sectarian Sunni-Shia character of the civil war in Syria was bemoaned in the United States as an unfortunate development. But in December 2006, the man heading the US embassy in Syria advocated in a cable to the Secretary of State and the White House that the US government collaborate with Saudi Arabia and Egypt to promote sectarian conflict in Syria between Sunni and Shia as a means of destabilizing the Syrian government. At that time, no one in the US government could credibly have claimed innocence of the possible implications of such a policy. This cable was written at the height of the sectarian Sunni-Shia civil war in Iraq, which the US military was unsuccessfully trying to contain. US public disgust with the sectarian civil war in Iraq unleashed by the US invasion had just cost Republicans control of Congress in the November 2006 election. The election result immediately precipitated the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense. No one working for the US government on foreign policy at the time could have been unaware of the implications of promoting Sunni-Shia sectarianism.

L’auteur évoque le plan de déstabilisation proposé dans le cable 06DAMASCUS5399_a (note : il faut absolument lire ce câble) :
▻https://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06DAMASCUS5399_a.html

–- Vulnerability:

–- THE ALLIANCE WITH TEHRAN: Bashar is walking a fine line in his increasingly strong relations with Iran, seeking necessary support while not completely alienating Syria’s moderate Sunni Arab neighbors by being perceived as aiding Persian and fundamentalist Shia interests. Bashar’s decision to not attend the Talabani ) Ahmadinejad summit in Tehran following FM Moallem’s trip to Iraq can be seen as a manifestation of Bashar’s sensitivity to the Arab optic on his Iranian alliance.

–- Possible action:

–- PLAY ON SUNNI FEARS OF IRANIAN INFLUENCE: There are fears in Syria that the Iranians are active in both Shia proselytizing and conversion of, mostly poor, Sunnis. Though often exaggerated, such fears reflect an element of the Sunni community in Syria that is increasingly upset by and focused on the spread of Iranian influence in their country through activities ranging from mosque construction to business. Both the local Egyptian and Saudi missions here, (as well as prominent Syrian Sunni religious leaders), are giving increasing attention to the matter and we should coordinate more closely with their governments on ways to better publicize and focus regional attention on the issue.

#cablegate #wikileaks

Note : câble référencé ici en septembre 2013 :
▻http://seenthis.net/messages/177610