Egypt has proposed the formation of a joint military force to counter the growing threat of terrorism in Africa and protect the states of the continent. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said the force would be essential for the preservation of peace and security across the continent.

Sisi: Egypt Is Ready To Host A Summit On Creating A Pan-African Force

Speaking February 9 during the 33rd African summit in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, Sisi added that his country would be ready to host an African summit on the proposed military force.

“This proposal derives from Egypt’s responsibility towards the continent,” said Sisi—whose country held the rotating presidency of the African Union in 2019. “It derives from Egypt’s belief in the importance of forming this force for peace and security in Africa,” he added.

During his tenure as president of the African Union, Sisi worked hard to settle conflicts on the continent. Egypt hosted several meetings on Libya, mediated talks between military rivals in South Sudan and offered backing to African Union efforts to settle the political crisis in Sudan, following the ousting of longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir in April of last year.

Egypt Clearly Alarmed Over Terrorist Surge In Africa’s Sahel Region

The proposed military force is by far the clearest expression of the worries Egypt harbors as the terrorist threat grows more dangerous in Africa day after day. Some of the countries of the continent are turning into hotspots for terrorist activity. From Nigeria, to Somalia and from Libya to Mali, terrorist groups are gaining more ground every day, opening the door for the potential collapse of nation states and creating unprecedented population displacements.

Egypt’s fear is that some of the terrorist groups active in West Africa as well as the Sahel and Sahara region could merge into others active in North Africa, which could prove enormously destructive to the region and to Europe.

This is probably why Egypt hosted a meeting of the chiefs of staff of the armies of the Sahel and Sahara states between February 9 and 11. During the meeting, Cairo proposed to train militaries of the countries of the region with the aim of making them capable of standing against the security threats facing them.

Force Would Be Overseen By The African Union

Addressing the 33rd African summit, Sisi noted that the Peace and Security Council of the African Union, the decision-making body of the pan-African organization, would oversee the proposed military force. He invited African leaders to speed up consultations on the force and attend the proposed summit in Cairo with the aim of turning it into a reality. The view in Cairo is that the proposed force will be instrumental in eradicating terrorism in Africa and helping the states of the continent be up to the security challenges they are facing.

“Such a force will be able to put an end to terrorism in the continent,” Egyptian lawmaker Saeed Hasasien said. “It can be the nucleus of an international military force against terrorism.”

As president of the African Union, Sisi proposed a continental initiative for ending military disputes and conflicts in Africa. Called “Silencing the Guns”, the initiative aspires to end all these conflicts by the end of 2020.

Questions About The Force Still Remain

However, it is not clear how the proposed military force for Africa will operate, where it will be based, where its funding will come from and which country will be responsible for its command. In June 2018, Egypt opened a command center for counterterrorism operations in the Sahel and Sahara region. Constructed in Egypt’s sprawling new capital outside Cairo, the command center is anticipated to become a focal point for drafting counterterrorism strategies in Africa as a whole.

When he came to Egypt’s helm in mid-2014, Sisi proposed a similar military force for Arab countries. This was a time when the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria had just declared its self-styled caliphate in Iraq and Syria and drew up plans for occupying most of the Arab world. However, the force had not materialized as an idea, apparently because of rifts among Arab states.

Nevertheless, the proposed force for Africa will be more practical, given the urgency of the presence of such a force for protecting the states of the continent from the threats facing them, analysts said.

“This is about time African leaders realized the importance of military unity among their countries,” said Abdel Hamid al-Hawari, a senior official of Nation’s Future Party, the majority party in the Egyptian parliament.

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China made news by releasing footage of their new missile the DF26 with an intermediate range of about 3000 km (about 2000 miles).  Significantly, this missile has the range to reach US territories in the Pacific like Guam, and it’s a hypersonic missile which makes it more difficult to track and destroy. Some analysts say there are currently no counters for missiles like this which makes it increasingly important to consider what this missile means for the US, potential US counter defenses and to how it fits in larger contexts like Chinese and US strategy.

The missiles can be armed with conventional or nuclear missiles, have solid fuel, and can be stored in underground bunkers and launched from wheeled launch vehicles. All of which make it harder to hit in a first strike (if armed with nuclear warheads) or harder to counter conventional missiles.  This helps form some of the most dangerous parts of China’s proposed strategy. While claiming they are simply defensive weapons, China has fought preemptive, offensive wars with every one of its neighbors so it’s a real concern.

In a standoff over disputed islands or in seeking to seize territory in the South China Sea China’s strategy calls for immense number of missiles from multiple weapon systems to deny access and deny American abilities to operate in the area. (This is often called Anti Access Area Denial  or A2AD by analysts.)  The Chinese wouldn’t seek to necessarily win in a firefight but display enough danger to prevent American forces from operating in the region while they completed their seizure of islands.

The DF26 would be a nuclear deterrent in peacetime, but in the above scenario it would be part of the conventional strikes that could hit American air and naval bases across the region or strike important communications and logistical support like refuelling or intelligence gathering planes. American forces would be overwhelmed with missiles within minutes, knocking out ships, planes, and infrastructure in a Pearl Harbor style attack.

Adding a fast and deadly missile to that strategy sounds scary but America hasn’t been sitting on its hands. Even though hypersonic missiles take a different course than conventional ballistic missiles and travel faster the US can try to detect and destroy launch sites before the missiles are launched. This would be especially difficult if China launches as a preemptive strike since the US would either be reacting to missiles thousands of miles from Chinese territory, or they would end up having to essentially launch their own preemptive attack on Chinese territory.

Adding to the difficulty, US doctrine calls for destroying anti-aircraft (AA) batteries and radar stations first so they can achieve air superiority, so the strikes would either be more dangerous or delayed depending if they target the missile launchers or AA defenses first. But if hostilities had already started the mobile nature of the launch sites means that warplanes would have to be very close.  Analysts say the F35 and drones don’t have the range to do this. But the F35 can network with a variety of versatile fighters including the F15E which is an exceptional ground attack aircraft.

The same weapon systems, the F35 or networked fighters, can also target the missile in their boost phase. This is the slowest phase of the launch and the F35 has specialized sensors that can detect hypersonic missiles. In addition to using traditional counter missile technology, the F15 (sooner) and F35 (later) are being tested with portable mounted lasers to destroy them. Traditionally lasers have required large amounts of power to produce and sustain a beam significant enough to destroy missiles, and a long cool-down period which made it difficult to use in the expected missile storms in combat but advances in technology have reduced both of those technologies.  Even then, the technology still has limitations. The effective range of these laser weapons is relatively short. It can only engage one target, most likely a missile, at a time. And it must sustain the laser on the target for a certain amount of time in order to damage, destroy, or confuse its sensors. But it would have unlimited ammunition and can be used in conjunction with other American defenses.

That leads to the final point that puts this in a larger picture. Even though lasers are limited, they are part of a multi-layered defense against missiles. This system has been developed, tested, and upgraded since World War II. Even as potential adversaries like Russia and China promise new, faster, and deadlier missiles the US also fields new upgrades to its defenses that offer better ways to destroy them. This includes every layer of defense from the combat air patrol of the F35 to lasers to the rail guns and close-in weapon systems of ships.

Every new weapon system should be assessed and accounted for in military planning. But we shouldn’t give in to fear-mongering. Especially when the weapon system in question is simply a newer version of technology that has existed since Hitler launched V rockets against London. It has concerning specifications but remains to be seen if it will be a game-changer.

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“With my signature today, you are witnessing the birth of the Space Force, and it is now officially the sixth branch of the United States Armed Forces,” said Trump at the Andrews Air Force base near Washington. Space was the newest military area of ​​operations.

And indeed, with President Trump’s signature under the 2020 defense budget, the path is clear for the creation of a new military unit, the first one since 1947. It is a significant success for Trump, who had campaigned for the formation of his Space Force. 

Trump has repeatedly called for space forces to be created. In August, he established a Spacecom military command for space. To found the actual Space Force, however, he needed Congress’ approval.

This month, amid all the impeachment shenanigans, Republicans and Democrats agreed in Congress to introduce Space Force by rebranding the existing Air Force Space Command.

Unlike the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, and the Marines or the Coast Guard, Space Force, just as the name indicates, will operate in a rather different area, i.e., space. The primary goal is to maintain the US’ hegemony in space, also because, according to Trump, it will become a new war front in the future. 

Space was a new war front, Trump said on Friday evening, making it clear that creating independent space forces was a big step. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper also said the Space Force’s mission is to defend US domination in space.

The United States Space Force will become an additional unit in the military alongside those mentioned above. However, it is directly linked to the Air Force and will be led by General Jay Raymond. 

“He will be the very first member of the Space Force,” said Trump. The commander – who reports to the head of the Air Force – has yet to be confirmed by the Senate. The current plan does not provide for additional soldiers for the “Space Force,” these will be recruited from the Air Force, altogether 16,000 soldiers and civilians. 

When Trump first communicated his plans for Space Force to the public last year, it was primarily ridiculed. Too expensive and irrelevant. A pure symbol. Even the Defense Department had reservations about the President’s plans.

However, it is now clear that space plays an essential role in defense and modern warfare, for example, through satellite-based technologies and weapon systems. Even NATO declared space an independent military area this year. While French President Macron even announced the establishment of a military space command in July.

The USA currently dominates space, but Russia and China are catching up and have already registered their claims. While the current plans for the US do not include science fiction scenarios of deploying soldiers into orbit, Space Force will protect US property in space, such as hundreds of satellites that are being utilized for communicating and for gathering intelligence.

The timing is no coincidence. US military experts have continued to warn about China’s and Russia’s advancements in what is called the military’s final frontier. 

Vice-President Pence even stated that Russia, as well as China, possessed airborne lasers and anti-satellite missiles that the US needed to counter. “The space environment has fundamentally changed in the last generation,” he said. “What was once peaceful and uncontested is now crowded and adversarial.”

All three states had tested weapons that have the capacity of destroying a satellite, according to research by the Secure World Foundation, which records military capabilities in space.

L'articolo The Final Frontier: President Trump Introduces Space Force proviene da InsideOver.

United States President Donald Trump made an 180-degree turn with his perspective of NATO during the annual NATO summit in London Dec. 3-4. As with many things involving US politics, transition from critic to fierce support lasted only briefly in what amounted to a series of chaotic, blundering events and statements involving European leaders and their American counterpart. By the time Air Force One landed in Washington, Trump was once again the NATO critic he has always been, this time with an added dose of loathing for certain world leaders.

A Different World

To properly understand why Trump’s views on NATO are so significant – and more importantly, why they were they made headlines last week – it is worth revisiting his previous statements on the alliance. On March 21, 2016, he visited The Washington Post for an unscripted meeting with its editorial board and CNN for a town hall segment. In both cases, the president stressed the unfair financial burden the US bears to support NATO.  He also lamented that the alliance was created for a different world, suggesting that perhaps the alliance is no longer fit for the 21st century. 

“NATO was set up at a different time. NATO was set up when we were a richer country. We’re not a rich country anymore,” Trump said at The Washington Post. “NATO is costing us a fortune and yes, we’re protecting Europe with NATO but we’re spending a lot of money. Number one, I think the distribution of costs has to be changed.” 

He went on to tell his town hall audience that the US should reconsider its participation in the alliance, again by citing the costs compared with other member states.  Less than a week later, he called it “obsolete” in a tweet and he maintained that position throughout the campaign and his presidency. While has kept Washington in the organization since winning the presidency, it is not for lack of trying to remove the US from the agreement. 

White House officials told The New York Times Trump made several attempts in 2018 to withdraw from the organization. In the Oval Office, his now-former advisors, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and National Security Advisor John Bolton, fought him behind the scenes to steer him off that path. The issue never took root as a legitimate policy issue, however, thanks to the combined efforts of White House staff and the demands of other affairs. 

Old, Fat, and Sloppy

This year, the alliance celebrated its 70th birthday, but what would have been an occasion for commemorating the strength of western democracies was overshadowed by Trump’s ego. Whether intentional or not French President Emmanuel Macron baited him into a public feud. 

“What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO,” Macron said in a Nov. 7 interview with The Economist. “You have no coordination whatsoever of strategic decision-making between the United States and its NATO allies. None.”

That was all it took for Trump to pivot on the alliance. Suddenly, he became its most ardent supporter.

“You just can’t go around making statements like that about NATO. It’s very disrespectful,” Trump said, responding to Macron while ignoring his comments three years ago that “NATO is obsolete, it’s old, it’s fat, it’s sloppy.” 

When the two leaders met in London, they held a joint press conference, which led to some visibly uncomfortable moments between them. After Trump said a majority of ISIS prisoners are from Europe – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom in particular – Macron took a harsher tone and corrected him. Only 2,000 of 10,000 detained insurgents in Syria are from nations outside Iraq and Syria, and only 800 of those are from Europe. 

Mockery

Shortly after Trump and Macron trading barbs, footage leaked of Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte making fun of Trump’s impromptu solo press conference which ran nearly an hour. After seeing the video, Trump called Trudeau “two-faced” and then joked about calling him that. 

Despite Trump proving capable of brushing off the comments, he decided to leave the NATO summit early, cancelling planned closing remarks. On a related note, the US ambassador to Denmark prohibited a US-NATO expert from delivering a speech at a conference in Copenhagen Tuesday. The event was organized by the American embassy and a Danish policy organization, which invited Stanley Sloan to give the keynote speech. 

Sloan has been critical of Trump in the past, but his experience as a former analyst for the US Central Intelligence Agency and visiting scholar at Middlebury College in Vermont has made his observations on NATO relevant to the international community. Ambassador Carla Sands compelled the Danish Atlantic Council to withdraw Sloan’s invitation. The entire conference was consequently cancelled. 

Trump’s views on NATO, whether changed or not, are simply another area of International affairs that his administration is struggling to find its footing in. Macron’s criticism of the lack of US leadership and coordination was arguably justified after Trump gave Turkey the green light to take control of parts of northern Syria. Turkey, while not a NATO member, was an ally and the move was perceived by European NATO members as a betrayal.

L'articolo Trump Can’t Make Up His Mind on NATO proviene da InsideOver.

Amid reports on the increase of violence in Iran’s recent protests and Iran’s meddling in Iraq, Syria and other regional countries, the United States is considering sending more troops to the Middle East to deter potential Iranian aggression, US defense officials said last week.

On Thursday, December 5, US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy John Rood told senators that Defense Secretary Mark Esper “intends to make some changes” to the number of troops the United States currently deploys in the Middle East.

That same day, US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said President Trump was open to sending more troops to the Middle East.

“If the troops are needed to deter Iran, we have the capacity to move them into the region – although I don’t think that’s happening right now,” O’Brien told Fox News that day.

On Wednesday, a day earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported that the United States may send 14,000 additional troops to the Middle East. The Pentagon’s press secretary, Alyssa Farah, soon refuted the Journal’s reports.

“This reporting by the @WSJ is wrong,” she tweeted. “The US is not sending 14,000 troops to the Middle East to confront Iran.”

But her tweet appeared to discuss the number of troops to be sent to the Middle East, rather than if the United States will do so.

Since last spring, the United States deployed some 14,000 troops to the Middle East, after the series of maritime attacks on oil tankers near Iran and the bombings of Saudi Arabia oil sites, for which Tehran was blamed.

Other government officials said the Pentagon’s options under consideration could send between 5,000 and 7,000 new troops to the Middle East to face potential attacks by Iran.

US officials provided no details to back up why an increase in the number of troops was necessary, but many said the United States was concerned about recent intelligence indications suggesting a possible aggression from Iran.

“We also continue to see indications, and for obvious reasons I won’t go into the details, that potential Iranian aggression could occur,” John Rood also said.

The Pentagon’s deliberations also came after the United States accused Iran of killing more than 1,000 civilians during the country’s recent protests.

Iran caught in economic difficulty due to US sanctions in part, accused foreign interference in its recent anti-government protests and threatened regional countries involved in them.

Brian Hook, the United States’ special representative for Iran, said at the State Department that the United States had received and reviewed exclusive footage Iran’s fatal crackdown on the protests there.

One video, he said, showed the Revolutionary Guards mowing down more than 100 civilians with machine-gun fire in the Iranian city of Mahshahr.

“In this incident alone the regime murdered as many as 100 Iranians and possibly more,” he told reporters at the State Department.

Hook also said that the United States received more than 32,000 submissions, after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on Iranians last month to submit evidence of Iran’s atrocities.

There was no known public video that supported Hook’s allegation of the Mahshahr massacre. Nor was there acceptable claim that the protests’ death toll reached more than 1,000 civilians. Tehran disputed those figures but has refused to give nationwide statistics of the casualties.

Amnesty International said at least 208 people have been killed during the demonstrations and that the number could be higher.

Yet Hook’s numbers were matched with a figure put out on Wednesday by the Iranian exile group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq —a group which paid Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to deliver speeches at its events in the past.

Alireza Miryousefi, a spokesman for Iran’s mission at the United Nations, also disputed any foreign casualty figures as “purely speculative and highly inaccurate.”

The troops’ increase in number would be a reversal of Trump’s promise to withdraw US military from conflicts he had often called “endless wars”.

When asked about the increase in the number of troops, President Trump told reporters on Thursday, “We’ll announce whether we will or no. Certainly, there might be a threat. And if there is a threat, it will be met very strongly.”

Trump often insists on pulling back troops from the Middle East (the most recent case being the withdrawal from northeast Syria). In October, he said that the Middle East was now less stable and safe than it had been before the United States carried out military interventions there.

“The single greatest mistake our country made in its history was going into the quicksand of the Middle East,” he said.

Nearly all officials who have spoken about an increase in the number of troops deployed in the Middle East have said that no definite decision has been made yet.

L'articolo The US May Send More Troops to the Middle East proviene da InsideOver.

Donald Trump has been a consistent critic of NATO since his presidency began. At one point he even questioned whether the US should be a member of this alliance. During his first meeting with former British Prime Minister Theresa May, she managed to persuade the president that NATO still has many advantages and she left Washington in January 2017 claiming that Trump is ‘100 percent’ behind the alliance.

Though he may now support the principle behind NATO’s existence, before this week’s summit commemorating 70 years since the alliance was founded, Trump’s vision for the organisation has become clearer since his first meeting with May. He does not oppose US membership of NATO, but he believes that for too long, America has been carrying the burden of increasing its defence spending whilst its allies have failed to do so. This is a point both George W. Bush and Barack Obama once made, but Trump has drilled this point into NATO leaders more so than any of his predecessors.

In June 2018, Trump wrote sharply worded letters to the German, Norwegian and Canadian leaders taking them to task for spending too little on their defence and warning that the US is losing patience with their failure to meet their own security obligations. He felt that many of the NATO states are not fulfilling their commitments made at the 2014 Wales summit to increase their defence spending by two percent. According to Bloomberg, alliance members have upped their military spending by about $130 billion from 2016 to 2020. Though Trump’s NATO rhetoric may appear hostile, he has still accelerated new commitments of American troops and software to Europe. This is despite his argument that the US is carrying the alliance’s burden.

But this week’s summit proved that the president has become a passionate NATO advocate. He picked a public spat with French President Emmanuel Macron for his ‘dangerous’ and ‘nasty’ demands for NATO reform in front of reporters, disagreeing over Turkey’s membership in the alliance and whether Islamic State has really been defeated. He even celebrated the organisation’s existence with other world leaders on Tuesday.

Trump also clarified what he likes about the alliance. He awarded himself credit for NATO members increasing their military budgets. However, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that the President has been ‘successful’ in urging other nations to increase their military spending and stated that America cannot share the burden on its own. The President’s enthusiasm for the alliance left German Chancellor Angela Merkel feeling optimistic that the summit will not descend into a row.

Though he has always believed in more positive dialogue with Russia, Trump now realises that NATO is useful in countering both Moscow and Beijing, especially as the US warns against Chinese company Huawei building infrastructure in NATO countries. The French are wary of adopting a strong stance against China. This highlights that the problem with the alliance is that many countries disagree with the President’s unorthodox foreign policy.

Two positives have emerged from this week’s meeting; Trump’s support and vision of the alliance is clear, which should reassure many NATO states. Also, the President can return home knowing that many leaders like Rutte agree that he has made a positive case for alliance members to increase their military spending. Though it is clear not all of NATO’s leaders agree with the US’s outlook on issues like China and Iran, the alliance must be preserved as Russia and China continue to display a threat to the alliance’s vital interests. A disunited NATO will only work to Putin’s or Jinping’s advantage. It is refreshing to see politicians rejoice in celebrating the organisation’s 70th birthday.

L'articolo Is Donald Trump’s Vision of NATO Becoming Clearer? proviene da InsideOver.