The most important is proxy conflict, which can spiral out of control when more than one external power backs local actors, drawing them into confrontation. Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains And on Boxing Day, Peter Capaldi bade farewell as the twelfth and second-best Doctor Who (David Tennant bears the crown), and we said hello to the first female Doctor, with a brief but chirpy Yorkshire “Aw, brilliant!” sign-on from Jodie Whittaker. Our parliamentarians then insisted on dragging the whole sorry business out for a fortnight whilst they passed the legislation through both Houses of Parliament in an agonizingly ponderous pantomime of emotion, self-righteousness and grandstanding. The reason for this change might partly be the new, tougher line on Pakistan adopted by the Trump administration, or a policy shift by the civilian administration in Islamabad. For other posts on world politics in In That Howling Infinite, including several articles by David Kilcullen, see: Political World – thoughts and themes. Each is seeking to improve its military position against the other: the Chinese navy has ramped up activity in the South China Sea, for example, while US forces mounted more incursions into the area in the past three months than in all of last year. Reference was made to the Soviet Union’s destructive, demoralizing and ultimately debilitating invasion and nine year occupation (some 15,000 Soviet soldiers died, and 35,000 were wounded whilst about two million Afghan civilians were killed) which left the land in the tyrannical thrall of competing warlords; and to America’s own Vietnam quagmire. Language policing on social media has not only pushed accelerationist groups underground; it has created a whole new language. The strategy’s other key benefit is its low cost and ability to preserve (or, in this case, restore) strategic freedom of action. He is the author of Blood Year: Islamic State and the Failures of the War on Terror (Black Inc). So, time will tell, but at this point, colour me sceptical but not entirely cynical about prospects for peace in Afghanistan. Negotiations for the divorce settlement stutter on, gridlocked by the humongous cost, the fate of Europeans in Britain and Brits abroad, and the matter of the Irish border, which portends a return to “the troubles” – that quintessentially Irish term for the communal bloodletting that dominated the latter half of the last century. No coalition partner would be fighting in Afghanistan without Washington, and none can win or lose the war on its own. The folk who brought you the disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan are back, and are keen to attend to unfinished business: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/donald-trump-100-days-in-office-foreign-policy-war-air-strikes-syria-afghanistan-north-korea-a7707946.html, David Kilcullen. In the same region, a US exit from Syria (a key element of a balancing approach) would remove deterrents on Turkey’s ability to attack Kurdish groups, heightening conflict risk between Ankara and the Kurds. Vladimir Lenin once remarked that “there are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen”. From a wider strategic standpoint, the other key audiences for the Shayrat strike were Chinese leader Xi Jinping (who was dining with Trump as the strike went in) and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. and here are Those were the years that were : read our past reviews here:  2016   2015. Memes from television (“Winter is Coming”, “Cowabunga”) are popular, as are meme-based references such as “Spicy Time” or acronyms such as BAMN (“by any means necessary”) and BFYTW (“because f..k you, that’s why”). Co-operation between Saudi and Israeli forces (even tacit) would be highly controversial within Saudi Arabia and could prompt sharply increased internal unrest. But its reach has extended to the streets of Western Europe – dominating headlines and filling social media with colourful profile pictures and “I am (insert latest outrage)” slogans. Whilst in Sydney, we made two visits to the cinema (tow more than average) to enjoy the big-screen experience of the prequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien and the long-awaited sequel to our all-time favourite film Blade Runner. For its part, given this week’s series of strikes and the ongoing air campaign, Israel appears to be posturing for imminent war against Hezbollah and Iranian-backed forces in Syria, and possibly Lebanon too. For much of the year, as the last, we have been engaged in combat with the Forestry Corporation of New South Wales as it continues to lay waste to the state forest that surrounds us. There is no public evidence of any relationship between Nazzaro and Russian intelligence, though his presence in Russia triggered speculation in the media and within The Base itself. The Western narrative on Assad — reinforced just this week by presidential spokesman Sean Spicer — has been that his regime is uniquely evil, uses chemical weapons simply because it can, hates its own people and just wants to burn the country to the ground. For the Afghan government, another key stakeholder, our imaginary cynic might say that the main goal is to maintain the benefits of international presence including military aid, funding, donor engagement and reconstruction effort. But for my money, the most plausible explanation has to do with Pakistan’s major ally, China. FBI agents targeted The Base after its members allegedly sought to ­attack a massive pro-gun rally outside the Virginia State Capitol building in Richmond in January. There are, he says, “already hundreds militias of varying political complexions across the country. US bases in Saudi Arabia, in particular, created intense grievances that led in part to the 9/11 attacks. This maximalist approach had obvious ad­verse consequences in terms of lives lost, funds wasted, credibility eroded and loss of freedom of ­action (particularly after 9/11, as the US became bogged down in self-inflicted wars of ­occupation). ; a fiftieth anniversary tribute to Liverpool poets Roger McGough, Adrian Henri and Brian Patten, Recalling the Mersey Poets; and musical settings to two of our poems, the aforementioned Oh, Jerusalem, and E Lucevan Le Stelle. The rise of militias and armed protesters across the US is sometimes seen as a fringe right-wing issue, but it is much broader. In other words, I traveled by air. The decision to dump the deal is far from the only indicator. Pakistani decision-makers have long been extraordinarily open about this. This Syrian mother and her child were rescued by the Greek Coast Guard. The 2014 stand-off ended in a bloodless militia victory, but almost two years later Bundy’s son Ammon led an armed occupation of the headquarters of a federal wildlife refuge in southeastern Oregon. In the Middle East the carnage continues. Kilcullen describes the "pillars" of a stable society, while Eizenstat addresses the "gaps" that form cracks in societal stability. This comes in the wake of hugely expensive and largely unsuccessful efforts by the US to dominate a region directly through direct military intervention – and subsequent entanglement that left it ‘neck deep in the big muddy’ to quote political activist and balladeer Pete Seeger. Containing the Taliban as a remote, rural threat, grave enough to stop the international community abandoning Afghanistan yet able to be gradually overcome as a long-term national project (with international money and help) would be ideal. The pandemic has seen a surge in gun purchases, with background checks spiking to their highest number. There is no doubt that the US President’s decision reflected animus toward his predecessor’s signature achievement in foreign policy. When Americans think of modern warfare, what comes to mind is the US army skirmishing with terrorists and insurgents in the mountains of Afghanistan. For most Syrians I’ve spoken to, the idea that anyone engaged in the uprising since 2011 would sit down again under Assad is ludicrous, and many have told me the biggest winner so far isn’t Islamic State but al-Qa’ida, through its Nusra affiliate. 08.01.2021 - DENVER and WASHINGTON, Jan. 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - David Kilcullen, CEO of Cordillera and one of the leading figures in the field … The US has no national firearms register, so only estimates are possible, but analysts believe around 100 million firearms are in private hands in the US, and hundreds of billions of rounds of ammunition. Given his generally mercurial approach to foreign policy and the fact that he has indeed ordered strikes in Syria and raids in Yemen and Africa, this threat is probably credible enough to give the Taliban pause — and, more importantly, reassure some in Kabul. The US President — who campaigned on getting out of Afghanistan as part of a broader policy of extricating America from its Middle Eastern wars of occupation — has been remarkably consistent in fulfilling his campaign promises. But again, the key question is why Assad’s forces felt the need to use the nerve agent in the first place. Realising a new approach to Beijing following the Integrated Review will require policymakers to acknowledge the significant historical baggage that comes with policy design in this area. To succeed, the offshore power does not need to control a region itself, merely to prevent a rival doing so. Many of these are first-time buyers from the ­pro­gressive end of politics, who traditionally shun firearms and have little knowledge of weapon safety. One mob’s crisis was always some other mob’s opportunity – I’m talking in the Aussie vernacular here, by the way, a ‘mob’ is a bunch of folks, or livestock, sheep or roos, mainly – and not necessarily a Pythonesque “wabble of wowdy webels ”  – although the featured photograph would suggest this this might indeed be so. And if you have ever wondered how this blog got its title, here is Why :In That Howling Infinite”? A week later demonstrators, some carrying AK-47 rifles, swarmed into the state ­capital in Lansing, Michigan, to confront politicians. New national security adviser John Bolton is from the neo-conservative tradition that led directly to the post-9/11 wars of occupation and to the invasion of Iraq, and he will have to modify his views to be able to support this kind of strategy. He studied counterinsurgency as a cadet at Royal Military College in Duntroon, the Australian Army's officer training establishment. Join Our Network. Last month marked the 25th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in US history. The failure to act after Ghouta so appalled some members of Obama’s cabinet that Democratic “Syria hawks” (including former secretary of state John Kerry) came out in support of last week’s Shayrat strike. Fred Kaplan of Slate penned a piece that was typical of the mainstream media reaction, arguing that Trump withdrew “because of spite, ignorance, or both”. https://howlinginfinite.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/51-days-at-waco.pdf, Between the idea The Ghouta attack was not an act of unthinking evil but one of calculated desperation, and strikes against regime positions could have not only punished Assad for his use of gas, but enabled a rebel advance into Damascus that would have opened a path to negotiations. Our continuing forest fight saw us return to Tolkien’s Tarkeeth, focusing this time around on fires that recalled Robert Plant’s lyrics in Ramble On: In the darkest depths of Mordor. All this put Trump’s punitive strike in the political mainstream, making him look positively, well, Clintonian. Even if it were morally and politically possible to work with his regime for the greater goal of destroying Islamic State, the man simply can’t do the job. So he started Caerus Associates, which is “two-thirds tech, one-third social science, with a dash of special operations.” It resulted in the death of LaVoy Finicum, a charismatic Arizona rancher whose killing, captured on government aerial-camera footage that appears to show him with hands raised in surrender before being shot, made him a martyr. Meanwhile, Africa will continue to bleed, with ongoing wars across the Sahel, from West and Central Africa through to South Sudan,  ethnic tensions in the fragile nations of the Rift Valley, and further unrest in newly ‘liberated’ Zimbabwe as its people realize that the military coup is yet another case what The Who called “meet the old boss, same as the new boss”. Professor Kilcullen said we might may be dealing with adversaries who have a much broader definition of war than we do. Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Blood Year: The Unraveling of Western Counterterrorism at Amazon.com. Decisive action, combining the measured use of force with a strong diplomatic push, could have forced Assad — given the dire pressure he was under — into genuine peace talks. To celebrate a triumphant return, our festive present to ourselves were tee-shirts proclaiming: “‘ave a merry f@#kin’ Christmas by order of the Peaky Blinders”. And the reality Yet, whilst Marine Le Pen and Gert Wilders came up short in the French and Dutch elections, and centrists Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel hold the moderate middle, atavistic, autocratic and proto-fascist parties have risen to prominence and influence in formerly unfree Eastern Europe, driven by fear of a non-existent flood of refugees from the Middle East and Africa (these are headed for the more pleasant economic climes of Germany, Britain and Scandinavia), and perhaps, their historically authoritarian DNA. David Kilcullen is a former lieutenant-colonel in the Australian Army and was a senior adviser to US general David Petraeus in 2007-08, when he helped to design the Iraq war coalition troop surge. But his change of policy after the Khan Sheikhoun attack — perhaps prompted by the presence in his inner circle of experienced strategists such as Secretary of Defence James Mattis and National Security Adviser HR McMaster — shows he’s at least capable of learning and adapting. Trump doesn’t seem to care much about the first issue, and his answer to the second is that if an attack took place, he would order massive retaliation. Whether it spreads will depend on level-headed political leadership – and today’s hyper-partisan coronavirus debate offers little hope of that. Some call the urban guerrilla aspect of the Boogaloo “Minecrafting”: Twitter threads seeming to discuss the game may actually refer to the coming conflict — context is everything. A few months later, Antifa convened an “anti-colonial anti-fascist community defence gathering” near Flagstaff, Arizona, that included weapons training and coaching in anti-police tactics. More worrying, on left and right, are underground groups including so-called “accelerationists”. Kilcullen grew up on Sydney's north shore, the son of academics. Khan Sheikhoun now sits at the base of a rebel salient that stretches from Idlib south into the outskirts of Hama city, and west into al-Ghab. External actors, including the Cold War superpowers, also interfered. Seeing Through the Eyes of the Other publishes a column by indomitable ninety-four year old Israeli writer and activist Uri Avnery, a reminder that the world looks different from the other side of the wire. The deadly “Unite the Right” rally in the normally sleepy university town of Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 brought the danger home to many Americans, but the trend was longstanding. A war which has caused over 31,000 civilian deaths due to war-related violence and 29,900 wounded (over 111,000 Afghans, including civilians, soldiers and militants, are estimated to have been killed) has staggered to a bloody stalemate. But while he seems entirely serious about settling (as he calls it) with the Taliban, his attitude is sharply at odds with that of the US foreign policy establishment, the Defense Department (where secretary James Mattis resigned in protest over the Afghan and Syrian withdrawals), the Democratic opposition, and even his own Republican Party in congress, which passed a bipartisan resolution calling on him to maintain forces in Afghanistan and Syria. Remember, 2013 was before Islamic State emerged, before its blitzkrieg dramatically changed the game in Iraq, before the declaration of the caliphate prompted a spike in world terrorism, before Turkey’s military incursions into Iraq and Syria, and before the Eur­opean immigration crisis. He contends that war today often resides in liminal strategies, or strategies that “Ride the edge of detection in order to achieve political and military goals without triggering a response.” From 2005 to 2006, he was Chief Strategist in the Office of the Coordinator for … Chinese business and political influence in Afghanistan have been growing significantly in recent years through investments in mining and infrastructure, aid money, diplomatic activity and a limited military presence (with troops often disguised as security contractors working for Chinese companies in country). Kosovo 1999 it was not. Despite his surface volatility, Trump consistently follows certain patterns of strategic behaviour. Barnett discusses the relationship of the country with the outside world, and Cordesman focuses on the specifics of providing security. Others asked what were the long term goals, and what was the exit strategy. But the focus on hate is a misunderstanding of what drives violence in internal conflicts … the worst atrocities are driven not by hate but by fear. Despite media portrayals of its leaders as racially motivated, in fact the sovereign citizen ideology is neither left nor right in a traditional sense — it might better be described as a form of militant libertarianism with roots in the self-reliant cowboy culture of the old west. Spencer Ackerman, in yesterday’s Washington Independent, claims I told him the Iraq war was “f*cking stupid”. Its disadvantage is that interventions, when they do occur, can be extremely costly. A second factor is also preying on Taliban minds — the rise of Islamic State-Khorasan, the Afghan branch of Abubakar al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State terrorist group. All this indicates that the regime is again under serious pressure, that its position is far shakier than its propaganda narrative after the recapture of Aleppo might suggest, and that firm pressure now might bring renewed progress toward peace talks. He asks: “What’s different now? Our history posts reprised our old favourite, A Brief History of the Rise and Fall of the West, whilst we examined the nature of civil wars in A House Divided. The job market, strong until mid-March, has fallen off a cliff. Australia has suffered 41 fatalities, with more than half killed in 2010 and 2011 at the peak of our commitment. While any loss of life is a horrendous tragedy, in the harsh logic of defense planners the US casualty rate is sustainable. One reason for the overemphasis on right-wing extremism, I believe, is that analysts often mis­characterise armed actors as “hate groups”. 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