The Arms Race, Launched by Putin’s Threat

Posted on January 26, 2015January 26, 2015 by Denise Simon

It is no secret that Putin has allied Russia with Iran. It is further no secret that Iran is near completion of their nuclear weapons program such that many countries are on Iran’s target list. Coordination and cooperation on nuclear warheads is no secret either but questions need to be asked least of which is who are those that are collaborating and to what end. As Putin finds himself at loggerheads with the West, following his invasion of the Ukraine, he has mentioned Russia’s 5,000 nuclear warheads on at least three occasions recently, and by all accounts, he wasn’t joking, for example, last Thursday night, when Putin was en route to a 50 nations summit, the annual Asia-Europe Meeting in Milan.

“He’s again threatened the West with nuclear weapons,” says John Besemeres, a Russia expert at the ANU. *** So why is this a dangerous topic that needs discussion?

US-Russian rift threatens security of nuclear material

More than two decades of cooperation in guarding weapons-grade stockpiles comes to an end, leaving the world ‘a more dangerous place’

One of the greatest boons brought to the world by the end of the Cold War was the agreement been the US and the countries of the former Soviet Union to cooperate in securing the USSR’s vast nuclear arsenal.

Under the 1991 Cooperative Threat Reduction agreement, better known as the Nunn-Lugar programme (after the two senators who persuaded Congress to pay for it) 900 intercontinental ballistic missiles were destroyed, and over 7600 warheads were deactivated. Some 250 tons of bomb-grade fissile material, scattered across the disintegrating superpower, was locked up and put under guard, so it could not be stolen and sold to the highest bidder. Tens of thousands of former Soviet nuclear weapons scientists and technicians were found jobs and salaries to help reduce the incentives to offer their expertise to rogue states and terrorists.

All in all, a pretty big deal, whose benefits will only be fully appreciated in their absence.

The spirit of cooperation that underpinned the programme has crumbled over recent years. Under Vladimir Putin’s leadership, Russia has increasingly bristled at the premise that it was unable to ensure the security of its own arsenal and fretted about Americans using the programme to spy on its nuclear secrets. In 2012, Moscow announced it would not extend Nunn-Lugar, but a replacement US-Russian bilateral nuclear security deal was cobbled together in its place a year later.

That deal, under the framework of the Multilateral Nuclear Environment Programme in Russia (MNEPR), was more limited. The US would not longer take part in the dismantling of weapons but would continue to assist safeguarding stocks of fissile plutonium and uranium.

Now, even that has fallen apart. In December, Congress voted to cut funding, in part because the Ukraine war, although unspent money in the programme could still have been used. A few days later however, as the Boston Globe reported, Russian officials broke the news to their American counterparts in a hotel overlooking Red Square that they were cutting off almost all cooperation.

As a result, no US-funded security work will be done at any Russian nuclear weapons sites nor will there be any joint security upgrades at any Russian facility where substantial amounts of weapons-usable nuclear material are stored.

Speaking by phone from the US, former Senator Sam Nunn, half of the Nunn-Lugar partnership that started the programme, said “the world is a less safe place because of this”.

There has been a race between cooperation and catastrophe, when you look at the possibility of catastrophic acts of terrorism. Cooperation has been running rapidly over the past twenty years, but this is a real setback…The Russians says they are going to spend resources to secure their materials and we have to hope they will. They have the expertise to do it, but they are under heavy economic pressure.

Matthew Bunn, a Harvard University professor and one of the world’s leading experts on the issue, said: “Nuclear security is dramatically better than it was in the 1990’s. The question now is how much those improvements will be sustained. Will there sufficient protection against insiders? Because all thefts up to now have been by insiders, not 20 guys coming in from the outside with guns blazing.”

Of the new US-Russian rift, Bunn said: It makes the world a more dangerous place. It will make it more likely there will be nuclear security incidents in the world’s biggest nuclear stockpile. ***

Saudi nuclear weapons ‘on order’ from Pakistan

Saudi Arabia has invested in Pakistani nuclear weapons projects, and believes it could obtain atomic bombs at will, a variety of sources have told BBC Newsnight.

While the kingdom’s quest has often been set in the context of countering Iran’s atomic programme, it is now possible that the Saudis might be able to deploy such devices more quickly than the Islamic republic.

Earlier this year, a senior Nato decision maker told me that he had seen intelligence reporting that nuclear weapons made in Pakistan on behalf of Saudi Arabia are now sitting ready for delivery.

Last month Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, told a conference in Sweden that if Iran got the bomb, “the Saudis will not wait one month. They already paid for the bomb, they will go to Pakistan and bring what they need to bring.”

Since 2009, when King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia warned visiting US special envoy to the Middle East Dennis Ross that if Iran crossed the threshold, “we will get nuclear weapons”, the kingdom has sent the Americans numerous signals of its intentions.

Gary Samore, until March 2013 President Barack Obama’s counter-proliferation adviser, has told Newsnight:

“I do think that the Saudis believe that they have some understanding with Pakistan that, in extremis, they would have claim to acquire nuclear weapons from Pakistan.”

“What did we think the Saudis were giving us all that money for? It wasn’t charity” Senior Pakistani official

The story of Saudi Arabia’s project – including the acquisition of missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads over long ranges – goes back decades.

In the late 1980s they secretly bought dozens of CSS-2 ballistic missiles from China.

These rockets, considered by many experts too inaccurate for use as conventional weapons, were deployed 20 years ago.

This summer experts at defence publishers Jane’s reported the completion of a new Saudi CSS-2 base with missile launch rails aligned with Israel and Iran.

It has also been clear for many years that Saudi Arabia has given generous financial assistance to Pakistan’s defence sector, including, western experts allege, to its missile and nuclear labs.

Visits by the then Saudi defence minister Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz al Saud to the Pakistani nuclear research centre in 1999 and 2002 underlined the closeness of the defence relationship.

In its quest for a strategic deterrent against India, Pakistan co-operated closely with China which sold them missiles and provided the design for a nuclear warhead.

The Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan was accused by western intelligence agencies of selling atomic know-how and uranium enrichment centrifuges to Libya and North Korea.

AQ Khan is also believed to have passed the Chinese nuclear weapon design to those countries. This blueprint was for a device engineered to fit on the CSS-2 missile, i.e the same type sold to Saudi Arabia.

Because of this circumstantial evidence, allegations of a Saudi-Pakistani nuclear deal started to circulate even in the 1990s, but were denied by Saudi officials.

They noted that their country had signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and called for a nuclear-free Middle East, pointing to Israel’s possession of such weapons.

The fact that handing over atom bombs to a foreign government could create huge political difficulties for Pakistan, not least with the World Bank and other donors, added to scepticism about those early claims.

“The Saudis speak about Iran and nuclear matters very seriously. They don’t bluff on this issue”

In Eating the Grass, his semi-official history of the Pakistani nuclear program, Major General Feroz Hassan Khan wrote that Prince Sultan’s visits to Pakistan’s atomic labs were not proof of an agreement between the two countries. But he acknowledged, “Saudi Arabia provided generous financial support to Pakistan that enabled the nuclear program to continue.”

Whatever understandings did or did not exist between the two countries in the 1990s, it was around 2003 that the kingdom started serious strategic thinking about its changing security environment and the prospect of nuclear proliferation.

A paper leaked that year by senior Saudi officials mapped out three possible responses – to acquire their own nuclear weapons, to enter into an arrangement with another nuclear power to protect the kingdom, or to rely on the establishment of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.

It was around the same time, following the US invasion of Iraq, that serious strains in the US/Saudi relationship began to show themselves, says Gary Samore.

The Saudis resented the removal of Saddam Hussein, had long been unhappy about US policy on Israel, and were growing increasingly concerned about the Iranian nuclear program.

In the years that followed, diplomatic chatter about Saudi-Pakistani nuclear cooperation began to increase.

In 2007, the US mission in Riyadh noted they were being asked questions by Pakistani diplomats about US knowledge of “Saudi-Pakistani nuclear cooperation”.

The unnamed Pakistanis opined that “it is logical for the Saudis to step in as the physical ‘protector’” of the Arab world by seeking nuclear weapons, according to one of the State Department cables posted by Wikileaks.

By the end of that decade Saudi princes and officials were giving explicit warnings of their intention to acquire nuclear weapons if Iran did.

Having warned the Americans in private for years, last year Saudi officials in Riyadh escalated it to a public warning, telling a journalist from the Times “it would be completely unacceptable to have Iran with a nuclear capability and not the kingdom”.

But were these statements bluster, aimed at forcing a stronger US line on Iran, or were they evidence of a deliberate, long-term plan for a Saudi bomb? Both, is the answer I have received from former key officials.

One senior Pakistani, speaking on background terms, confirmed the broad nature of the deal – probably unwritten – his country had reached with the kingdom and asked rhetorically “what did we think the Saudis were giving us all that money for? It wasn’t charity.”

Another, a one-time intelligence officer from the same country, said he believed “the Pakistanis certainly maintain a certain number of warheads on the basis that if the Saudis were to ask for them at any given time they would immediately be transferred.”

As for the seriousness of the Saudi threat to make good on the deal, Simon Henderson, Director of the Global Gulf and Energy Policy Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told BBC Newsnight “the Saudis speak about Iran and nuclear matters very seriously. They don’t bluff on this issue.”

Talking to many serving and former officials about this over the past few months, the only real debate I have found is about how exactly the Saudi Arabians would redeem the bargain with Pakistan.

Some think it is a cash-and-carry deal for warheads, the first of those options sketched out by the Saudis back in 2003; others that it is the second, an arrangement under which Pakistani nuclear forces could be deployed in the kingdom.

Gary Samore, considering these questions at the centre of the US intelligence and policy web, at the White House until earlier this year, thinks that what he calls, “the Nato model”, is more likely.

However ,”I think just giving Saudi Arabia a handful of nuclear weapons would be a very provocative action”, says Gary Samore.

He adds: “I’ve always thought it was much more likely – the most likely option if Pakistan were to honour any agreement would be for be for Pakistan to send its own forces, its own troops armed with nuclear weapons and with delivery systems to be deployed in Saudi Arabia”.

This would give a big political advantage to Pakistan since it would allow them to deny that they had simply handed over the weapons, but implies a dual key system in which they would need to agree in order for ‘Saudi Arabian’ “nukes” to be launched.

Others I have spoken to think this is not credible, since Saudi Arabia, which regards itself as the leader of the broader Sunni Islamic ‘ummah’ or community, would want complete control of its nuclear deterrent, particularly at this time of worsening sectarian confrontation with Shia Iran.

And it is Israeli information – that Saudi Arabia is now ready to take delivery of finished warheads for its long-range missiles – that informs some recent US and Nato intelligence reporting. Israel of course shares Saudi Arabia’s motive in wanting to worry the US into containing Iran.

Amos Yadlin declined to be interviewed for our BBC Newsnight report, but told me by email that “unlike other potential regional threats, the Saudi one is very credible and imminent.”

Even if this view is accurate there are many good reasons for Saudi Arabia to leave its nuclear warheads in Pakistan for the time being.

Doing so allows the kingdom to deny there are any on its soil. It avoids challenging Iran to cross the nuclear threshold in response, and it insulates Pakistan from the international opprobrium of being seen to operate an atomic cash-and-carry.

These assumptions though may not be safe for much longer. The US diplomatic thaw with Iran has touched deep insecurities in Riyadh, which fears that any deal to constrain the Islamic republic’s nuclear program would be ineffective.

Earlier this month the Saudi intelligence chief and former ambassador to Washington Prince Bandar announced that the kingdom would be distancing itself more from the US.

While investigating this, I have heard rumours on the diplomatic grapevine, that Pakistan has recently actually delivered Shaheen mobile ballistic missiles to Saudi Arabia, minus warheads.

These reports, still unconfirmed, would suggest an ability to deploy nuclear weapons in the kingdom, and mount them on an effective, modern, missile system more quickly than some analysts had previously imagined.

In Egypt, Saudi Arabia showed itself ready to step in with large-scale backing following the military overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi’s government.

There is a message here for Pakistan, of Riyadh being ready to replace US military assistance or World Bank loans, if standing with Saudi Arabia causes a country to lose them.

Newsnight contacted both the Pakistani and Saudi governments. The Pakistan Foreign Ministry has described our story as “speculative, mischievous and baseless”.

It adds: “Pakistan is a responsible nuclear weapon state with robust command and control structures and comprehensive export controls.”

The Saudi embassy in London has also issued a statement pointing out that the Kingdom is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and has worked for a nuclear free Middle East.

But it also points out that the UN’s “failure to make the Middle East a nuclear free zone is one of the reasons the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia rejected the offer of a seat on the UN Security Council”.

It says the Saudi Foreign Minister has stressed that this lack of international action “has put the region under the threat of a time bomb that cannot easily be defused by manoeuvring around it”.

Iran, the Enemy: Ignored by the White House

Posted on January 22, 2015January 22, 2015 by Denise Simon

There are at least 3 Executive Orders blocking assets of Iranian entities due in part to the category placed on Iran by the U.S. State Department that Iran is a known and proven state sponsor of terror. Barack Obama has lifted sanctions on Iran for the misguided mission and talks to neutralize their nuclear weapons program in violation of the Executive Orders.

The United States began imposing sanctions on Iran in 1983 for the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon. The U.S. placed Iran on the terror list which automatically triggers sanctions. It must be noted however, that there are certain conditions where sanctions do not apply and this includes humanitarian aid.

Iran has also been at the core of the instability in Iraq mostly by financially supporting and providing arms to Iraqi militias going back to as early as 2006. This coordination between Iran and the Iraqi militias were under the Qods force at the command of Qasem Soleimani. Today, this commander is leading the hostilities again in Iraq as the U.S. is battling Islamic State. Why is this all important? The Obama White House and the U.S. Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry have been in long talks with Iranian leadership over their nuclear weapons program. To date this has included lifting sanctions, un-freezing of billions of dollars to keep Iran at the negotiations table. Why are we legitimizing Iran at all when they continue to be a state sponsor of terror?

State Department officials as recently as this week admitted they are not working to eliminate the nuclear program but simply to manage it by trusting Iran’s position and pledges. Iran lies and has lied and continues to lie, but the Obama administration dismisses that fact completely. In short Israel being allied with America has been replaced with allying with Iran.

Barack Obama emphasized in this week’s State of the Union address that he will veto any Congressional action to re-apply sanctions to Iran while the talks continue. Speaker Boehner drew first blood the following day by inviting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before a joint session on Congress on February 17. The White House responded immediately calling the invitation a violation of diplomatic processes. The White House went further to state that during Netanyahu’s visit to the United States, the President will NOT meet with the Prime Minister.

The matter gets worse when it comes to the fact that the White House and the State Department continue to run to Iran for the sake of saving nuclear talks which for the last year have failed. No one can explain exactly just why these talks are so tantamount to complete with a win, rather than preventing Iran’s nuclear program completely. If you are still in question as to why the talks must be terminated, it is simply due to lies and never-ending terrorism at the hands of Iran against not only Israel but includes Europe and the United States of America.

Only this week were Israeli tourists attacked while on vacation in Argentina by Iranian attackers. But the most chilling aspect of Iran is their history of terrorism especially when it comes to the bombing of a Jewish Center in 1994 killing 85. A prosecutor all of these subsequent years has been investigating this bombing and submitted a 500 page indictment two years ago. The prosecutor, Alberto Nisman was set to testify a few days ago, but was found dead in his home over the weekend. Nisman had built a case file on Iran’s globally deadly proven evidence and shared all documents with Interpol. Argentina worked diligently to cover up and protect Iran….it became yet another bloody and deadly end.

Nisman’s 500-page-long indictment, handed on Wednesday to an Argentine federal judge, says that several intelligence stations were established to sponsor, foster and execute terrorist attacks in order to export the Islamic revolution. Identical intelligence bases and centers were discovered in Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname.

“I legally accuse Iran of infiltrating several South American countries to instal intelligence stations – in other words espionage bases – destined to commit, encourage and sponsor terror attacks like the one that took place against the AMIA,” Nisman was quoted as saying.

According to the dossier, the terrorist network that struck the AMIA center was nearly successful in an attempt in 2007 to blow up the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. The bid was thwarted, however, and the plotters were arrested and later sentenced to life terms in prison. The prosecutor said in his report that these two attacks were part of a wider plan to strike against other targets in Latin America. The report also mentioned the potential development in parts of Latin America by Iran of sleeper cells.

In his report, Nisman also offered new and corroborating evidence implicating the highest authorities of Iran in the AMIA bombing. The indictment says that Mohsen Rabbani, a former Iranian cultural attaché in Buenos Aires, had not only orchestrated the AMIA center bombing in which 85 people died and hundreds were wounded, but also acted as a coordinator of the Iranian infiltration in South America.

According to Nisman, Rabbani spread his activities to Guyana through a disciple, Abdul Kadir, who is a former Guyanese lawmaker and imprisoned for the attempted attack on Kennedy Airport. Kadir was trained and supported by Tehran, the indictment said, and was arrested while boarding a plane for Iran.

Nisman’s office said that the prosecutor had sent copies of his indictment to the judicial authorities of the respective countries. He also requested the International Police Organization (Interpol) to increase precautions and take further measures in order to detain all the suspects in the AMIA case.

Reaction

The head of the Argentine Jewish umbrella group DAIA, Julio Schlosser, who is also a vice-president of the World Jewish Congress, said that Nisman’s filing “reinforces the sentiment that Iran is an unreliable interlocutor that finances and promotes terrorism.” The report provded that the Jewish community had been right in rejecting the memorandum of understanding signed between the governments of Argentina and Iran earlier this year which calls for the establishment of an international ‘truth commission’ tasked with investigation the AMIA bombing. Schlosser said Iran was “not a valid interlocutor because it finances and promotes terrorism.”

Argentine courts have charged eight current and former senior Iranian officials in the bombing, including the current Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi and ex-Revolutionary Guard chief Mohsen Rezai. Both are among the candidates in the 14 June presidential election in Iran.

In closing, shame on Barack Obama and John Kerry and those European leaders that are in lock step with the continued quest on the nuclear talks and placing Iran on equal footing globally. There is no case in history where this objective by the White House is aiding and abetting the enemy.

Hat Tip to Boehner on Obama, Immigration

Posted on January 14, 2015January 14, 2015 by Denise Simon

‘Enough is enough!’: Boehner fills House chamber with high drama as he lashes out against Obama in high-stakes immigration battle – and throws his own words back in his face

John Boehner created the first live-action high drama on the House floor Wednesday, staking out a no-compromise position on blocking Barack Obama’s sweeping immigration plan and reading aloud 22 examples of the president’s past claims that he lacked the authority to put it into action.

Obama outlined the plan on Nov. 20, promising to mainstream 5 million or more illegal immigrants by guaranteeing – without input from Congress – that they won’t be deported during his time in office.

Angering Democrats, the House speaker spoke during a floor debate to defend an amendment to the Homeland Security Department’s budget bill that would forbid the cabinet agency from spending any money to implement it.

Boehner openly mocked Obama for what he said was an effort to evade the U.S. Constitution, throwing in his face his past claims that he wasn’t a ‘king’ or an ’emperor.’

The Constitution explicitly gives Congress the power to control America’s immigration policies.

IN YOUR FACE: Boehner took Obama to the woodshed on Wednesday over immigration, reading aloud nearly two dozen Obama quotations that indicate the White House can’t act unilaterally

NO COMPROMISE: Boehner didn’t buy what the president was selling on Tuesday during a high-stakes White House meeting with all of Congress’s top leaders

”To think that the president of the United States studied constitutional law!’ he boomed. ‘He didn’t just learn constitutional law. He taught it himself.’

‘Enough is enough!’

The move came less than 24 hours after Boehner and other Capitol Hill leaders met with Obama in the White House to air their differences over legislation that would likely make up the bulk of congressional business for in the coming months.

On Wednesday, Boehner was in no mood to compromise.

Obama’s unilateral move, he said, is an ‘executive overreach … an affront to the rule of law and to the Constitution itself.’

‘What we are dealing with here is a president who has ignored the people, ignored the Constitution, and even his own past statements,’ he said.

‘In fact, on at least 22 occasions he has said he does not have the authority to do what he did.’

And then Boehner read them. The video is here and don’t miss it.

Obama, he recalled, told an El Paso, Texas audience in May 2011 that immigrants’-rights activists ‘wish I could just bypass Congress and change the law myself. But that’s not how a democracy works.’

The president also insisted in an October 2010 interview with the Spanish-language Univision TV network that ‘I am president; I am not king. I can’t do these things just by myself. … I can’t just make the laws up by myself.’

In an online Q-and-A session held in September 2011, Obama told viewers: ‘We live in a democracy. You have to pass bills through the legislature, and then I can sign it.’

He doubled down in a February 2013 Google+ ‘hangout’ video livestream, saying he was limited in his authority because ‘I’m the president of the United States; I’m not the emperor of the United States.’

Democrats demanded a roll-call vote on the amendment following Boehner’s litany, after hammering Republicans for being ‘anti-immigrant’ and ‘heartless.’

The amendment passed by a vote of 237 to 190.

Another amendment aimed at ending the president’s ‘Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals’ (DACA) program also passed, 218-209.

DACA is a 2012 program that gives sanctuary to illegal immigrants who weer brought to the U.S> as children.

The overall DHS funding bill also passed, by a 236-191 margin.

Matt Wolking, a communications advisor to the speaker, told DailyMail.com that Obama has ‘said over and over that he did not have the authority to do what he eventually did. So his unilateral action sets a very troubling precedent, and not just on immigration. That’s what the Speaker wanted to drive home.’

But New York Democrat Carolyn Maloney insisted that the ‘Take Care clause’ in the Constitution – which demands that the president ‘shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed’ – gives Obama the power to decide which illegal immigrants are deported and which are allowed to stay.

She accused the GOP of ‘play[ing] politics with the security and safety of America.’

Texas Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee went further, calling the Republican amendment ‘a full-force assault on immigrants’ and described it as ‘Homeland Security being held hostage.’

‘A FULL-FORCE ASSAULT ON IMMIGRANTS’: Texas Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee slammed the GOP’s plan, arguing that they were trying to hold the Homeland Security budget ‘hostage

SHOWDOWN: Boehner and House Republicans aim to force Obama into a take-it-or-leave-it veto position on the Homeland Security Department’s budget for the rest of the year

The tension will reach its climax in coming weeks when a Homeland Security budget reaches Obama’s desk.

The White House has a veto of any plan that hamstrings him on immigration, and most Democrats will support him.

That sets up the possibility of a Homeland Security ‘shutdown’ after its funding runs out on February 27.

Democrats claim a shutdown would jeopardize national security in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre in France, an attack for which al-Qaeda in Yemen claimed responsibility on Wednesday.

But if the last partial shutdown is any indication, critical agencies and services wouldn’t be affected.

The budget bill, including the amendment, still has to go through the U.S. Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised the new Democratic minority that they will be permitted to propose their own amendments.

Any differences between the resulting House and Senate bills will have to be ironed out in a conference committee – a uniquely American device that puts leaders from both parties and both houses in the same room to resolve them.

Russia Increasing Destruction Capabilities

Posted on January 13, 2015January 13, 2015 by Denise Simon

Russia to step up combat capabilities in Crimea (Reuters) – Russia‘s top general said on Tuesday he would beef up combat capabilities this year in Crimea, the Arctic and the country’s westernmost Kaliningrad region that borders two NATO states.

The remarks by General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, are likely to deepen concern in the West over what it sees as Russia increasingly flexing its muscles since the start of the crisis in Ukraine.

NATO’s top military commander, General Philip Breedlove, said the alliance was already looking at stepping up exercises in the Baltic Sea region in response to a rise in Russian military manoeuvres there late last year.

“In 2015, the Defence Ministry will focus its efforts on increasing the combat capabilities of its units and increasing combat strength in accordance with the military development plans,” Gerasimov told Russian journalists.

“Special attention will be given to the groups in Crimea, the Kaliningrad region and the Arctic,” he was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies but gave no further details.

His remarks follow the adoption of a new military doctrine signed by President Vladimir Putin in December which underlines the need to protect Russia’s interests in the Arctic and identifies NATO expansion as an external risk.

Any military build-up on NATO’s doorstep in Kaliningrad, an exclave bordering Poland and Lithuania, would worry the Western alliance, while the Arctic’s mineral riches and energy reserves ensure that territory there is contested by several nations.

Russia deployed 14 military jets to Crimea last November as part of a squadron of 30 that will be stationed there, making clear it intends to strengthen its presence on the peninsula since annexing it from Kiev last March.

Breedlove warned at the time that Russia’s “militarization” of Crimea could be used to exert control over the Black Sea.

He said on Tuesday NATO was considering adapting a programme of military exercises in the Baltic Sea region, where he said Russian activities had changed in character and showed capabilities not seen before.

“The first series of changes will not be an increase in number but they will be to group them together … to better prepare our forces and to allow nations to work together as a NATO force, but we are looking at increasing some exercises,” he said at a NATO base at Szczecin in northwest Poland.

NATO has boosted its military presence in eastern Europe, saying it has evidence Russia orchestrated and armed the rebellion in eastern Ukraine last year that followed the overthrow of a Kremlin-backed president in Kiev.

Putin says Russia poses no threat to anyone and denies Russia has sent troops or weapons to back the separatists. *** Beyond the usual sources of influence in Ukraine, George Soros continues to take an active role. Yet it gets much worse as civilians have died in shelling operations.

Pro-Russian separatists unleashed a series of bomb attacks Tuesday in eastern Ukraine, leveling a key airport in Donetsk, killing 12 in an attack on a passenger bus and almost certainly dooming a short-lived cease-fire, according to reports.

A senior State Department official confirmed to Fox News that the separatists destroyed the government-held airport in eastern Ukraine Tuesday afternoon.

The facility has been “flattened” and the air control tower was “decimated,” the official said. “They are now fighting over rubble.”

Maria Ivanovna, a local retiree, told The Associated Press she has become desensitized to the blasts and drew an arc with her arm to show how shells fly over her home toward the airport.

“We will survive the same way we did after World War II. Ration cards for bread; 11 ounces for children; 800 grams for factory workers and 1,200 grams for miners,” she said.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said on Tuesday the bus attack was “egregious” and blamed Russia for helping to arm the separatists.

“We again call on Russia to fulfill its commitment under the Minsk Agreement, which includes ceasing its substantial military support to the separatists, restoring Ukrainian sovereignty over the international border between Ukraine and Russia, releasing all hostages, and working toward the peaceful resolution of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine,” Harf said.

Across Donetsk, the city that Russian-backed separatists call their capital, explosions and the sound of shells whistling overhead are again unnerving the local population. The holiday period was spent in relative tranquility after a new truce was called in December between government troops and Russian-backed militia. But by late last week, that uneasy calm was steadily unraveling.

In the single largest loss of life so far this year, civilians traveling on a commuter bus from Donetsk were killed Tuesday afternoon by what Ukrainians say were rockets fired from a Grad launcher in rebel territory. Regional authorities loyal to Kiev said the bus was passing a Ukrainian Army checkpoint at the time, putting it in the line of fire.

Leading rebel representative Denis Pushilin denied responsibility for the attack.

The warring sides are now trading accusations over who is responsible for the breakdown in the truce that led to Tuesday’s deaths.

Military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said that separatist attacks in recent days suggest an attempted onslaught to push back the frontline is under way. Separatist leader Alexander Zakharchenko says Ukraine’s armed forces unilaterally resumed hostilities and that his fighters would respond in kind.

An AP reporter over the weekend saw a convoy of around 30 military-style trucks without license plates heading for Donetsk, suggesting that new supplies were coming in for the rebels.

NATO’s top commander, Gen. Philip Breedlove, said Tuesday that there has been a continued resupply and training of rebel forces over the holiday period.

“Those continue to provide a concern and something that we have to be thinking about,” Breedlove said.

Ukraine and the West have routinely accused Russia of being behind such consignments. Moscow flatly rejects the charges, although rebel forces are so well-equipped with powerful arms that the denials have become increasingly hollow.

In the rebel-held Donetsk suburb of Makiivka, the thrash of outgoing mortars shakes still-inhabited neighborhoods on a daily basis. Separatists have consistently denied using residential areas for cover, but there are ample witness accounts undermining those claims.

Ukrainian responses to artillery lobbed out of Donetsk are woefully inaccurate and regularly hit houses and apartment blocks, often killing people inside. The separatist military headquarters in Donetsk said Tuesday that 12 people had been killed and another 30 injured in the preceding three-day period. It did not specify who had been killed.

There is little sign of life in Makiivka these days. People rush home from work or aid distribution points and occasionally come out of shelters to exchange information about where shells are landing.

A senior U.N. human rights official said this week that developments look poised to go in one of three directions — a frozen conflict, an escalation in violence or an evolution to sustainable peace.

“In case of frozen conflict, we will more or less continue to be seeing [the same] human rights violations that we have been facing so far,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “But in case of escalation of hostilities, which is quite possible, we could also be seeing further internationalization of the conflict and far more human rights violations and suffering.”

The grimmest of outcomes appears most likely.

A hoped-for round of peace negotiations this week between the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France has been put on ice — possibly indefinitely.

Ukrainian military authorities talk like they are bracing for the long-haul and Tuesday laid out plans for a new round of mobilization.

Volodymyr Talalai, deputy head of the army’s mobilization planning, said recruits will be drawn from all regions of the country. He gave no figure for how many people will be mobilized, but said that the primary aim of the upcoming drive is to enable the rotation of forces.

Unremitting violence is radicalizing the mood. One resident of Donetsk’s Petrovsky neighborhood — one of the most intensely bombed — said she took up arms and joined the separatist army after a rocket hit a home in her neighborhood.

“A Grad landed … and people were killed and blown to bits,” she said, giving her name only as Vera. “How were we supposed to react? We are out here defending ourselves.”

Wearing a balaclava and cradling an automatic rifle, Vera said her 19-year-old son too wanted to sign up, but that she refused to let him.

“I told them I would rather go myself than let my child do it,” she said.

Due to Haiti, No White House Run for Hillary

Posted on January 12, 2015January 12, 2015 by Denise Simon

There are countless reasons to keep the Clintons out of the White House in 2017. Many of them are obvious including sex scandals, Benghazi, Travelgate and Hillary’s most recent declaration that we must come to understand the reasons that militant Islamists have for killing, in short be sensitive to their condition. Yeah sure. But let’s take a look at a matter ignored for many years and that is Haiti.

Hillary’s Half-Baked Haiti Project

Caracol Industrial Park is failing to deliver on the promises made to foreign investors and Haitians.

On the fifth anniversary of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti remains a poster child for waste, fraud and corruption in the handling of aid. Nowhere is the bureaucratic ineptitude and greed harder to accept than at the 607-acre Caracol Industrial Park, a project launched by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with U.S. taxpayer money, under the supervision of her husband Bill and his Clinton Foundation.

Between the State Department and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which hands out grants to very poor countries thanks to U.S. generosity, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on this park in an attempt to attract apparel manufacturers. But the park is falling far short of the promises made to provide investors with necessary infrastructure. If things continue this way, frustrated investors will look for greener pastures.

Successful industrial parks are built by people who know the business and who demand accountability. This park was put in the hands of State, the IDB and Bill Clinton. The results have been predictable.

I had been warned about Caracol going to the dogs by sources on the ground in Haiti. So last month I traveled east by truck from Cap Haitien, across the poor rural north of the country to see if the alarm was justified. I found a project in trouble. It can be saved, but only if it is handed over to professionals with skin in the game.

On paper Caracol makes sense. Thanks to special trade legislation passed by the U.S. Congress in Dec. 2006, Haitian-sewn apparel enters the U.S. duty free and the manufacturers can use fabric purchased from anywhere in the world. This gives Haiti a big advantage over apparel exporters to the U.S. who have to source the fabric in the U.S. even if they sew overseas. With lower wages than in many Asian markets and proximity to North America, Haitian-based producers have comparative advantages that might offset the country’s low productivity.

The State Department initially promised that the park would be able to support 65,000 direct jobs by 2020. The Clinton Foundation has made similar statements. That means constructing 40 10,000 square-meter buildings for garment assembly. It won’t happen at the current pace.

The total job-creating capacity since the foundation stone was laid in November 2011 is three assembly buildings and a 10-megawatt power plant. A fourth workshop is under construction but is unlikely to be completed before late spring.

This must be tough to take for the anchor tenant, the Korean manufacturer Sae-A Trading Ltd. It has committed to a $78 million investment at Caracol and currently employs some 4,500 Haitians. It says it wants to hire 20,000. To do so it needs another dozen buildings.

A Dec. 12 IDB press release says the Haitian government is approved for a new $70 million grant to construct, among other things, three new production buildings by 2018 with a goal of providing space for 6,800 workers. Bank officials have to know that putting Haitian government officials in charge of such a project is likely to doom it. But let’s suppose I’m wrong and the buildings go up. The Caracol workforce will then be 11,300—a far cry from the State Department’s estimate of 65,000 direct jobs or even the IBD’s forecast of 40,000.

It’s understandable for the IDB to want to lower expectations. But the target should be higher and it shouldn’t take three years to boost capacity. Craig Miller, president of the Boston-based Waterfield Design Group and a consultant for the Haitian apparel sector, told me that “once the materials are on site, a 10,000 square-meter production workshop can be built in six to eight months.”

Apparel manufacturers in Haiti are hungry for production space but my sources say investors were not given an option to build their own workshops in Caracol. The Clinton planners—Hillary at State and Bill at the Clinton Foundation—wanted to retain that responsibility for reasons that can only be guessed. So now the producers have to wait.

This is tragic for the thousands of Haitians eager to get the sewing jobs. Factory workers earn three times the average income in Haiti’s north. Sae-A produces for a wide number of American labels, such as Target and Wal-Mart, WMT +0.48% Wal-Mart Stores Inc. U.S.: NYSE ^$89.78 +0.43+0.48% Jan 12, 2015 11:44 am Volume (Delayed 15m) : 1.72M P/E Ratio 18.32 Market Cap $287.99 Billion Dividend Yield 2.14% Rev. per Employee $219,905 01/09/15 Toys “R” Us Holiday Period Sam… 01/08/15 Tesco to Cut Prices, Close Unp… 01/08/15 Stocks to Watch: Family Dollar… More quote details and news » WMT in Your Value Your Change Short position and the American companies regularly dispatch auditors to inspect work conditions. Even without the U.S. Labor Department breathing down its back, Sae-A has incentives to care for workers to retain them and boost productivity. Getting a spot on the assembly line opens the door to economic mobility, and that’s unusual in Haiti.

Haiti has a rare opportunity. Investors want to invest, workers want to work, and consumers want to buy. This seems like a good time for government to get out of the way.

But how did all this begin?

Bill Clinton’s Shameful Haiti Legacy

He may be playing the hero now, but the ex-president’s trip to Haiti is a reminder of the mess his administration left behind. Bob Shacochis on how Clinton wasted a good invasion.

Like many Haitians and not a few Americans who know the island and its history, I had mixed feelings watching the video of former President Clinton step off a plane on to the tarmac at Toussaint Loverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince on Monday afternoon. Bill Clinton, the Second Coming of Hope. The First Coming, the U.S.-led invasion in 1994 adorned with 20,000 American troops, did not turn out so well. By 1996, when the American military decamped, you’d be hard pressed to find a Haitian on the streets of Port-au-Prince who wasn’t suffering miserably from hope. By 1996, Haitians were scratching their heads in bewilderment, asking themselves Why has America come to save us? Who will save us now? Ten years later, by almost every measure, Haiti was worse off than it was before Clinton had “rescued” it from the illegitimate regime of General Raoul Cedras and his gang of terrorist enforcers, known by the acronym FRAPH.

I had heard the Haitians saying of the U.S. after the American troops went home: “Lave men ou, siye li a te. It looks like you wash your hands and dry them in dirt.”

It’s the proper time, of course, to ask what is the legacy of American foreign policy in Haiti, a beleaguered neighbor that we have invaded and occupied twice in the 20th century, the first time to preempt German influence there during and after World War I, the second time during the early years of the Clinton administration, an 18-month long intervention which I reported on for Harper’s magazine.

Looking at the images pouring out of Haiti these days, what comes immediately into focus is the near-sighted, irrational nature of what is out of focus in American foreign policy since the Marshall Plan worked its miracles on a shattered planet. I think that we can all agree that Haiti has finally found its bottom, but the descent, lubricated by man-made folly, was not inevitable.

To be sure, Haiti brings out the cynic in me. Perhaps I should express that sentiment with more precision: The United States’ two-faced relationship with Haiti stirs a cynicism within me that I’d rather not claim.

The U.S. Army came ashore in September 1994 locked and loaded to do battle with a military dictatorship composed of a tiny dysfunctional army and roving bands of FRAPH’s homicidal thugs, who threatened to send America’s sons and daughters back home in coffins. Essentially an absurd boast but from a genuine enemy. Colin Powell’s brinkmanship defused the potential for bloodshed on the eve of the invasion, yet the fact remained—our soldiers would be liberating villages, towns, and cities controlled by a terrorist organization that had brutalized the population.

Early on, there were shootouts between U.S. soldiers and FRAPH. Special Forces hunted down FRAPH leadership in the countryside, captured them and shipped the detainees to headquarters in Port-au-Prince, where, to general dismay, they were invariably released. One night, hunkered down with a detachment of Green Berets in the mountains south of Cap Haitien, I listened in alarm to a radio transmission from Col. Mark Boyatt, the overall commander of Special Forces in Haiti, telling his commandos to begin regarding FRAPH as Haiti’s “loyal opposition,” as if the terrorists, overnight, had become Haiti’s equivalent to the Republican Party, rehabilitated patriots eager to remake Haiti into a modern democratic nation.

Months later, when I challenged Colonel Boyatt on this highly counterproductive order to his troops, he clammed up on me. For the next two years, I tried to track down who in the chain of command had told Boyatt to whitewash the terrorist organization FRAPH. The trail finally led to the American Embassy in Port-au-Prince, and then it jumped to the mainland, Sandy Berger, and the White House.

Legacy No. 1: We left the poison in the system. The result: A Haiti rendered ungovernable by our heedless self-interest. The only Devil in Haiti is to be found in the deals we cut with the worst elements in that society. Sound familiar?

On March 31, 1996, the United States handed over Operation Restore Democracy to the United Nations and a peacekeeping force that has been there ever since. Early in the Clinton administration’s intervention in Haiti, the word came down to the boots on the ground from the White House: You have not been deployed to conduct nation-building. The mission turned out to be foolishly attenuated: Restore Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide, to the National Palace. Hold elections that will remove the troublesome Aristide from the National Palace. Go home.

Ultimately, the mission ended up profoundly disillusioning not only the Haitians but the American troops as well. Back at Fort Bragg, I asked a Special Forces Master Sergeant if he was glad he went to Haiti. “Tough question,” he said. “No carpenter likes to build a house and see it crooked and leaning and ready to fall down the day he leaves. But if he builds a nice house, he’s happy about it, it’s something he’ll be proud of the rest of his life.”

“You don’t think you have anything to be proud of?” I asked.

“No.”

“That’s sad,” I said.

“It is,” said the Master Sergeant. “It is.”

I told him what I had heard the Haitians saying about the United States after the American troops went home. Lave men ou, siye li a te. It looks like you wash your hands and dry them in dirt.

Legacy No. 2: In Haiti, America wasted a perfectly good occupation. Call our post-earthquake presence there anything you want, but let’s hope it works out better this time around. Good luck, Bill. And remember, merry are the builders.

Bob Shacochis, a professor at Florida State University, is the author of The Immaculate Invasion, a chronicle of the 1994 U.S. intervention in Haiti.