ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

By Finian Cunningham The best way to understand the seemingly reckless, recurring threat of nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula is this: the East Asian region is being run like a Mafia protection racket. And the criminal Mafia is the US. The conflict emanates from Washington and is perpetuated by Washington. Why? To justify what would otherwise be seen as simply outrageous US militarism in the Asia Pacific hemisphere, and in particular a criminally aggressive agenda towards the main geopolitical targets of Washington - China and Russia. Korea’s conflict is not primarily about North and South “enemy states”. It is, as it has been for the past 68 years since the end of World War II, about Washington using military force to criminally assert its hegemony on the global stage. But you wouldn’t know this from a casual reading of the Western news media. No, we are told over and over again that the US is “protecting” South Korea and its other Asian allies. The military presence of the US is “...

Afghan policemen count bags containing heroin as they are presented to the media at a police station in Jalalabad on September 19, 2013. (AFP Photo / Noorullah Shirzada) Download video (26.89 MB) Finding a solution to the thriving heroin production in Afghanistan has been on the back burner ever since the Americans occupied the country. The new Afghan president who will be elected next weekend will have to battle record opium harvests. Since the US came down on the Taliban and occupied Afghanistan in 2001, heroin production in the country has surged almost 40-fold. One year ago the estimated number of heroin addicts dying due to Afghan heroin in the preceding decade surpassed well over one million deaths worldwide. Last year, Afghanistan harvested a record quantity of opium. The annual report of the International Narcotics Control Board maintains that Afghan poppy fields now occupy a record 209,000 hectares, a 36 percent increase from 2013. Today more than half of the provinces ...

New Details on What Secrets Israel Asked Pollard to Steal CIA Withholding Overturned on Appeal by National Security Archive National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 407 Edited by Jeffrey T. Richelson Washington, DC, December 14, 2012 – When Naval Investigative Service analyst Jonathan Pollard spied for Israel in 1984 and 1985, his Israeli handlers asked primarily for nuclear, military and technical information on the Arab states, Pakistan, and the Soviet Union – not on the United States – according to the newly-declassified CIA 1987 damage assessment of the Pollard case, published today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University ( www.nsarchive.org ). The damage assessment includes new details on the specific subjects and documents sought by Pollard's Israeli handlers (pages 36-43), such as Syrian drones and central communications, Egyptian missile programs, and Soviet air defenses. The Israelis specifically asked for a signals intelligence manu...

On March 1, the Islamabad government cut a deal with the Taliban. And since then, all hell has been breaking loose in neighboring Afghanistan. In the last month, the Taliban has killed dozens of people in a string of attacks timed to destabilize Afghanistan ahead of the presidential elections on Saturday. Most recently, a suicide bomber breached the heavy security at the Interior Ministry building and blew himself up, killing six police officers. And that may be just a preview, if local Taliban commanders are to be believed. “We told Afghans not to vote,” said Haji Shakor, a Taliban commander in central Afghanistan. “If we found out you voted, you won’t take your five fingers home.” But the real accelerators of this violence aren’t Shakor and his fellow Afghanistan-based militants, local intelligence and security officials tell The Daily Beast. Instead, it’s Taliban insurgents streaming over the border from Pakistan that have enabled the group’s recent killing spree in Kabul. And they ...

In a new doc, the former defense secretary says he never meant to imply that Saddam was behind 9/11—despite the implications that the Iraqi dictator and al Qaeda were in cahoots. In The Unknown Known , Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris (The Fog of War) turns his infamous interrotron on former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He was one of the key architects of the U.S. response to the attacks of September 11th under President George W. Bush, which included wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The title of Morris’ documentary, out April 4, is taken from a controversial response Rumsfeld gave in February 2002 when, as Secretary of Defense, he was prodded about the lack of evidence concerning “reports” propagated by the Bush administration that Iraq was supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups: “Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. Ther...

Summary Lt.-Gen. Gu Junshan, the former deputy chief of the People's Liberation Army's logistics department, was formally charged March 31 with a series of "economic crimes." The decision to levy corruption charges against a senior military officer has surprised some observers because they largely have been spared from the Communist Party of China's anti-corruption campaign. The expansion of that campaign to the People's Liberation Army signals Beijing's determination to pursue public, high-profile shows of discipline. Until now, the Chinese military had considered itself exempt from prosecution, despite reports of widespread corruption. Any attempt by the Chinese leadership to purge the military must be carefully balanced with the need to reshape the relationship between the Party and the armed forces. Gu's arrest comes at time when China is actively seeking to transform its military into a fighting force capable of protecting Chinese global interes...

By Scott Stewart Over the past few weeks I've had the opportunity to teach a couple of classes on situational awareness to different audiences. One of the assertions I make during these training classes is that criminals follow a process very much like the terrorist attack cycle while planning a crime. As I was teaching a class last week, it occurred to me that I have hinted at this fact in past analyses but that I've never written about the topic and fully explained the criminal planning cycle. Understanding the criminal planning cycle is important, because that understanding can then be used by potential victims and law enforcement officers to look for the various aspects of the cycle as it progresses and then take action to thwart crimes before the criminals' plans can be executed. The Terrorist Attack Cycle and the Criminal Planning Cycle Click to Enlarge When one spends some time thoughtfully examining what we have long referred to as the "terrorist attack cy...

The Naval Update Map shows the approximate current locations of U.S. Carrier Strike Groups and Amphibious Ready Groups, based on available open-source information. No classified or operationally sensitive information is included in this weekly update. CSGs and ARGs are the keys to U.S. dominance of the world's oceans. A CSG is centered on an aircraft carrier, which projects U.S. naval and air power and supports a Carrier Air Wing, or CVW. The CSG includes significant offensive strike capability. An ARG is centered on three amphibious warfare ships, with a Marine Expeditionary Unit embarked. An MEU is built around a heavily reinforced and mobile battalion of Marines. Carrier Strike Groups The USS Harry S. Truman CSG with CVW 3 embarked is underway in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of responsibility. The USS George H.W. Bush CSG with CVW 8 embarked is underway for a deployment in the U.S. 5th and 6th Fleet AORs supporting maritime security operations and conducting theater security coope...