AFRICOM: Hdqtrs to be in Italy

Italy To Host AFRICOM Headquarters, By Lisa M. Novak, Stars and Stripes, December 5, 2008 NAPLES

Italy has agreed to host the Army and Navy headquarters units of the recently created U.S. Africa Command.

The official announcement was made Wednesday evening in a joint statement at the U.S. Embassy in Rome by the U.S. Ambassador to Italy Ronald P. Spogli and the Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini.

The headquarters units might see slight personnel increases over the next few years. The Army’s Southern European Task Force — located in Vicenza — could increase by about 50 active-duty personnel, bringing the active-duty staff to about 300 soldiers, according to Col. Marcus De Oliveira, SETAF chief of staff.

In Naples, Naval Forces Europe was expanded to include the AFRICOM component. The new Navy designation is NAVEUR NAVAF. With a staff of about 500, that number could increase over the next few years by about 140, according to Navy officials.

Officially established Oct. 1, “AFRICOM was created to provide a strategic, holistic DOD approach to security on the African continent,” according to AFRICOM commander Gen. William Ward, in his first posture statement to the House Armed Services Committee this past March.

To that end, much of the Navy’s engagement in Africa has focused on building regional cooperation on the continent. Combating piracy is a continuing focus for the Navy and for AFRICOM.

“The model you want to see is the regional states band together, and that’s what we’re trying to do in the Gulf of Guinea: set up regional partnerships down there so we can get them to work together,” said Adm. Mark Fitzgerald, commander of NAVEUR NAVAF.

The Navy’s Africa Partnership Station helps train African navies to combat regional problems such as drug smuggling, piracy, illegal immigration and human trafficking. While Fitzgerald doesn’t see APS being absorbed by AFRICOM, the new command may provide strategic direction. For example, it could request medical training in one area or security training in another.

“We … have always supported both Africa and Europe in our missions and goals,” Fitzgerald said. “With the stand-up of AFRICOM, what changed was our administrative aligning, but not really the way we do business.”

“I think Italy recognizes and certainly appreciates the complexities of Africa,” Fitzgerald said regarding the location for the Navy component. “The bottom line is that Italy is as concerned about Africa as the United States is.”

New National Security Advisor: Gen (Ret) Jones

Straight-Shooting Jones, (Washington Times)…Georgie Anne Geyer

Our new national security adviser to the president-elect is perhaps best known as the supreme allied commander of NATO from 2003 to 2007, but to me he should be heralded as the supreme survivor of the last eight years. Here’s why: …

We pressed him on Iraq, and we particularly pressed him on the responsibility of the military man to speak out. He was very careful in his answers. He finally said there is a law in America that military men have “the obligation to speak their own minds … when they testify before Congress.” There is such a law, although few invoke it.

I always think of that moment as the moment when a man, long put-upon to fight and lead in wars he did not believe in, deftly pointed out to us, by inversion if you will, the military man or woman’s real responsibility.

Pakistan, India, Afghanistan: Scenario

Opinion: Plans Of Attack, (Washington Post)…Richard A. Clarke

…To most of the world, the Mumbai massacre seems inexplicable and random, like the periodic devastation caused by typhoons or tornadoes, or simply pointless, just killing for killing’s sake. But the attack was neither random nor pointless. The carnage in Mumbai was goal-oriented, an attempt to advance an overall strategy that is being ruthlessly pursued by the Islamist radical network.

Seven years after 9/11, the United States has neither eliminated the threat from al-Qaeda nor secured Afghanistan, where bin Laden’s terrorists were once headquartered. To accomplish these two tasks, we must now eliminate the new terrorist safe haven in Pakistan. But that will require effective action from a weak and riven Pakistani government. It might also depend upon dealing with the long-standing India-Pakistan rivalry. On balance, al-Qaeda’s agenda for 2009 looks to be the easier one.

Richard A. Clarke served as White House counterterrorism coordinator under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. His most recent book is “Your Government Failed You: Breaking the Cycle of National Security Disasters.”

Banning Nuclear Weapons: "Transforming the image we see in the mirror"

A laudable goal. To paraphrase the argument against banning handguns, “nuclear weapons don’t kill people, people making the decision to use nuclear weapons is what kills people.”  Desire for nulcear weapons motivated by power, fear, insecurity,  mistrust, and survival.   

“In the final analysis, any contemplation of war must return to  the nature of humanity, which yet stands as the root cause of war and the wellspring of History’s inestimable tragedy.  Throughout time, governments, like wars, have both flowed from and reflected human nature in both positive and negative manifestation. If we are to overcome the massive violence that has typified modern civilization for five centuries, our ultimate challenge is nothing more or less than transforming the image we see in the mirror. That, however, is a task that lends itself to no purely political solution.”  — Bruce Porter, War and the Rise of The State.

Leaders Seek Ban On Nuclear Weapons, (Philadelphia Inquirer)…Barry Schweid, Associated Press

A new international group committed to eliminating nuclear weapons over the next 25 years has enlisted scores of world leaders as its campaign gets under way at a conference in Paris on Tuesday.

Unmanned Aircraft: Reaper – "Thinking" Ahead

Not uncommon for the military to develop technologies that will eventually be applied within the private/commercial sector.

Delivering Devastation, (Washington Times)…Sara A. Carter

Unmanned aircraft controlled from U.S. fly over Afghanistan, Iraq on ‘kill’ missions.

Air Force officials say that the Predator and Reaper are just the first in a revolution in cyber and warfare technology that will take pilots out of the skies and put them behind computers and joysticks.

“We believe we’ll have a computer with as much computing power as a human no later than 2012,” Gen. Peterson said in reference to meetings he had with IBM and other computer technology firms. “We want the aircraft to initially think through the problem and offer the pilot a couple of solutions to choose from.”

Although the technology is still being developed, he said he hopes that one day advanced aircraft will be able to “plan ahead” and evaluate changes in the mission if required.

Leadership and Ethics

Additional opinion on the conflict of interest issue.

POST: Compromised general? by Thomas P.M. Barnett on December 5, 2008

ARTICLE: One Man’s Military-Industrial-Media Complex, By DAVID BARSTOW, New York Times, November 29, 2008

I was stunned by the level of reporting on this piece on McCaffrey. The jump section extended across virtually two full pages, which is a huge investigative effort on the NYT’s part.

Clearly, this is a follow-up to the piece months back on the generals being paid, secret spokesmen for the administration (“message multipliers”) whereby Barstow found enough out about McCaffrey to justify what must have been a huge reporting effort on his part.

It will be interesting to see if this hurts McCaffrey at all. He is sort of a King Kong figure. You read his reports and they always reference his West Point status, but I was really surprised to see how many commercial entities he works for.

The phenomenon of retired generals doing this is well known. Some refuse the temptation of such synergy, and others go whole hog. McCaffrey, on all levels, seems to be in a class by himself.

What constitutes wrong here? Not easy to say. But clearly, McCaffrey loses the perception-of-conflict-of-interest battle here.

Iraq: Significance of the Security Agreement

Milestone In Baghdad, (Washington Post)…Charles Krauthammer, Dec 5, 2008.

The barbarism in Mumbai and the economic crisis at home have largely overshadowed an otherwise singular event: the ratification of military and strategic cooperation agreements between Iraq and the United States.

They must not pass unnoted. They were certainly noted by Iran, which fought fiercely to undermine the agreements. Tehran understood how a formal U.S.-Iraqi alliance endorsed by a broad Iraqi consensus expressed in a freely elected parliament changes the strategic balance in the region.

For the United States, this represents the single most important geopolitical advance in the region since Henry Kissinger turned Egypt from a Soviet client into an American ally. If we don’t blow it with too hasty a withdrawal from Iraq, we will have turned a chronically destabilizing enemy state at the epicenter of the Arab Middle East into an ally.

Also largely overlooked at home was the sheer wonder of the procedure that produced Iraq’s consent: classic legislative maneuvering with no more than a tussle or two — tame by international standards (see YouTube: “Best Taiwanese Parliament Fights of All Time!”) — over the most fundamental issues of national identity and direction.

National Security 101

Team Of Heavyweights, (Washington Post)…Henry A. Kissinger

President-elect Barack Obama has appointed an extraordinary team for national security policy.

…Process is no substitute for substance, of course. But even with this caveat, the new national security team encourages the hope that America is moving beyond its divisions to its opportunities.

The writer was national security adviser to President Richard M. Nixon and secretary of state under Presidents Nixon and Gerald R. Ford.