ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

by WILLIAM D. HARTUNG On Nov. 10 the White House forwarded a request to Congress for an additional $5.6 billion to fight the war against the Islamic State. This is pocket change by Pentagon standards. The president’s new war funding request equals only about 1 percent of the Pentagon’s $500 billion base budget, and just 10 percent of the $59.6 billion that is already in the administration’s proposal for war funding for 2015. With all this money at its disposal, why does the Pentagon need more funds now for the war against Islamic State? The short answer is, it doesn’t. It’s an open secret that the war budget – known in Washington-ese as the Overseas Contingency Operations account – has been used for years as the Pentagon’s personal piggy bank to pay for a whole array of projects that have nothing to do with any existing conflict. In fiscal year 2014, which ended Oct. 1, independent estimates suggest that as much as $30 billion of the $80 billion-plus OCO request was used for items unre

by MEL CARRIERE Last September 26 forty-three student protestors on their way to a protest rally were abducted in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico by the police, then handed over to a drug trafficking gang that most likely murdered them. Since that time widespread protests have erupted in Mexico over this outrage. Although the United States shares a border with this troubled nation and a significant percentage of our population is either Mexican or of Mexican ancestry, very few reports surrounding this atrocity have appeared in the American media. This begs the question of whether or not this information is being deliberately concealed from the American public and if so, why? Although my wife is Mexican and stays more attuned to what is going on in Mexico than I do via the Spanish language media, the first I heard about the abduction and massacre came from the cover of the Wall Street Journal, which I happened to glance at last Saturday. On the way home from work I expected to hear more about

Moscow has strongly warned Washington against providing Ukraine’s military with lethal arms in its operations against pro-Russia forces in the east. “We repeatedly heard confirmations from the (US) administration that only non-lethal weapons would be delivered to Ukraine. If there is a change in this policy, then this is a highly destabilizing factor that could seriously influence the balance of power in the region,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told a news conference in the capital, Moscow, on Thursday. “That (would be) a direct violation of agreements reached, including (agreements reached) with the participation of the United States,” the Russian official added. Lukashevich’s remarks came a day after Tony Blinken, the US deputy national security adviser, told a US Senate committee that Washington should consider strengthening Ukraine’s armed forces through supplying weaponry. “I believe that, given the serious Russian violations of the agreement that the

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will not leave the nuclear talks with the P5+1 in Vienna to come to Iran for consultations, a source in the Iranian negotiating team says. Earlier reports had suggested that Zarif, who is Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, may return to Tehran for consultations with “high-ranking officials.” Responding to a question about reports that US Secretary of State John Kerry has put proposals on the negotiating table, the Iranian source said the reports are not true, according to IRNA. “It’s been us who have offered various proposals since the Muscat talks up to now,” the source said, referring to the trilateral negotiations between Iran, the US and the EU held earlier in the Omani capital. The ideas raised in the talks have not yet reached a level to make it necessary for Zarif to take them to Tehran, the source said, adding that the negotiations will thus continue. Earlier, Zarif held fresh three-way talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry and EU

Finian CUNNINGHAM It’s long overdue but better late than never that Europe might just be back-pedalling on America’s aggressive agenda towards Russia. The business-like visit to Moscow this week by Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier suggests that Europe can come to its senses to seek a diplomatic resolution of the escalating tensions over the Ukraine crisis – tensions that could spark a wider continental war, or worse. Steinmeier met with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in which the pair stressed the need to find a political end to the violence in Ukraine. The German diplomat – the first high-level European envoy to Moscow in several months – also talked about normalising relations between his country and Russia and of finding a way to rescind the economic sanctions that Brussels has imposed on Moscow over recent months. EU ministers in Brussels balked at imposing a fourth round of sanctions earlier this week, showing a growing division over the policy among Europ

The Iraqi government has transferred USD 500 million to the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq as part of a deal hoped to end long-running domestic oil and budget disputes, Iraqi finance minister says. Hoshyar Zebari said in Baghdad on Wednesday that his ministry transferred the sum to the account of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) earlier in the day under the deal which requires Iraq to resume funding Kurdish civil servant salaries in return for a share of Kurdish oil exports. He said the KRG began supplying 150,000 barrels of crude oil per day to State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO) storage tanks in the Turkish port city of Ceyhan on Tuesday. "This mutual implementation means that the two sides are ready to resolve all the other issues and all the issues are up for discussion," Zebari stated. Iraqi Oil Minister Adil Abdul Mahdi has praised the deal between Baghdad and the KRG, saying it reduces friction "that threatens not only economic, secur

Screenshot from RT video To prevent European converts who listen to extremist preachers from fighting for ISIS, European governments should revoke their travel documents, defense consultant Moeen Raoof told RT. Jihadists released a video of the beheading of a foreign hostage, US aid worker Peter Kassig, on the weekend. The footage also shows at least 14 Syrian soldiers beheaded by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) fighters. It revealed that several of the executioners which appear on the video were Europeans: a former UK medical student and 22-year-old Frenchman Maxime Hauchardt. Allegedly, there were more British, French and German militants, but no names have yet emerged. Kassig is the fifth foreign hostage to be executed this way. He was captured a year ago in Syria while he was helping war causalities. RT: What reaction do you expect from foreign governments after their citizens were recognized as jihadist killers? Moeen Raoof: [Foreign governments] will have the normal reaction of

By William Blum – Published November 19th, 2014 “Russia reinforced what Western and Ukrainian officials described as a stealth invasion on Wednesday [August 27], sending armored troops across the border as it expanded the conflict to a new section of Ukrainian territory. The latest incursion, which Ukraine’s military said included five armored personnel carriers, was at least the third movement of troops and weapons from Russia across the southeast part of the border this week.” None of the photos accompanying this New York Times story online showed any of these Russian troops or armored vehicles. “The Obama administration,” the story continued, “has asserted over the past week that the Russians had moved artillery, air-defense systems and armor to help the separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk. ‘These incursions indicate a Russian-directed counteroffensive is likely underway’, Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, said. At the department’s daily briefing in Washington, Ms. Psaki a