Russian military demonstrates its quick-reaction readiness in Kazakhstan

From the order to standby for deployment in Kazakhstan to when troops began to pile into transport aircraft only a few hours had passed. It was an impressive display of Russian military quick-reaction readiness. Armoured personnel vehicles, mobile-phone-jamming drones and a whole lot of other equipment for the "peacekeeping" mission were also spotted being shipped into the huge aircraft. The Russian-led rapid reaction force set up in 2009 but never used operationally until now was in position and controlling the capital of Kazakhstan in a breathtakingly short time. The force was mostly Russian - airborne and special operations Spetsnaz troops - but there were also contributions from Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, all sent in the emergency under the Collective Security Treaty Organisation signed in May 1992 and involving nine regional nations. A sort of mini Warsaw Pact arrangement. The appeal for help by the Kazakhstan president after days of violent protests came at a bad time for President Putin who was gving all his focus to Ukraine and what he hoped to get from the planned talks in Geneva on Sunday between US and Russian officials. But in some ways he was probably quite happy to deploy troops to Kazakhstan to prove to the world that the Russian military was now a modernised force capable of mounting operations swiftly and lethally. You could almost hear him saying to himself: "Watch out, Ukraine."

Angry words between Biden and Trump

Oh my goodness, Joe Biden chose the first anniversary of the January 6 assault on the Capitol to lay into Donald Trump. Big time. No holding back. A positive thundering attack on his immediate predecessor in the White House. It has been a long time coming. Most presidents don't talk ill of their predecessors but Biden couldn't resist the moment to slam into him over his involvement in the January 6 outrage. Trump did after all rouse his supporters to march on the Capitol on the day Congress was supposed to be voting to confirm the result of the 2020 election. And despite his daughter Ivanka pleading with him to call off his supporters he did nothing to stop the violence. So Biden grabbed his moment to denounce Trump in language which, for the president, was pretty strong. He also emphasised that there was absolutely no evidence that the 2020 election was wrong or false. Seven million voters - the difference between Trump's total and Biden's - was the only evidence needed to prove that point. Trump must have been steaming when he heard what Biden had to say and issued a statement which attacked everything Biden stood for and accused him of operating a failed presidency. Democracy is a great thing in America. The president attacks his predecessor for inspiring a violent assault on the Capitol and the former president reacts back with a vitriolic denunciation of his successor but unlike in, say China or Russia, it's all part of a normal day in politics. No one gets arrested at dawn and thrown into prison.

Can Biden and Nato offer any concessions to Putin?

On April 4, 2008, President Vladimir Putin strode into the huge conference hall inside the Palace of Parliament in Bucharest to confront the world’s media on the last day of a Nato summit and put down his marker for future relations with the Western alliance. The Russian leader was there as an invited guest to attend the post-summit meeting of the Nato-Russia Council, an organisation set up after the Cold War to generate and motivate good relations between the former Soviet Union and its old perceived adversary. Putin was in an ebullient mood. “So let’s be friends, guys, let’s be frank and open,” he quipped. Some of the reporters present had clapped him when he entered the hall. However, behind the smiles and the bravura performance, Putin had a message for the West. One of the items on the Nato summit agenda had been a proposal to hand to Ukraine and Georgia the greatest gift the alliance could offer, a membership action plan which would lead to both countries joining the organisation in due course. Any such move to expand eastwards to embrace Ukraine and Georgia would not “contribute to trust and predictability in our relations” and would be treated as “a direct threat to the security of our country”, Putin warned. From that moment, more than 13 years ago, the Ukraine issue became the standard bearer for both Nato which wanted its open door policy to include any nation which wished to adopt its values and defensive commitments, as well as for Putin who had decried the loss of the Soviet empire and still regarded Russia’s former Warsaw Pact ally as a Moscow satellite. The Nato summit held in the old Romanian dictator President Nicolae Ceausescu’s 1,000-room palace, had been an ill-conceived affair. President George W Bush had pushed hard for the membership plan to be handed to Ukraine and Georgia but wiser counsel, principally from France, Germany and Italy, softened what would have been viewed as a highly provocative move by the Russian president. With British negotiators at the heart of the struggle to avoid a slap in Putin’s face, a fudge was designed. The formal invitation for Nato membership was postponed. But it remained on the table. Thirteen years later Ukraine is getting impatient and is wondering why it has had to wait so long. Having watched as Nato expanded rapidly across eastern Europe, absorbing the eager and anxious Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1999, and the Baltics, plus Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Slovenia in 2004, the sense of encroachment reached paranoia level inside the Kremlin. Putin struck back in 2014 with the annexing of Crimea and the long war in eastern Ukraine. Now Putin is trying to turn the tables on the West by effectively blackmailing Washington and other Nato capitals to reverse much of what was decided in Bucharest and previous Nato summits by threatening an invasion of Ukraine and other military retaliatory steps. The US and Russia will be holding talks to discuss these issues on January 10, and Putin and President Biden are talking on the phone today for the second time in less than a month. Looking ahead from the Kremlin’s point of view, Putin has always insisted that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, then Russian president, was given a promise that Nato wouldn’t expand eastwards. No such pledge was given. Indeed, Nato expansion eastwards was not an issue in 1990 although Gorbachev did raise Moscow’s concerns about the potential reunification of Germany and the possibility of Nato troops taking up positions closer to Russia. Since taking power, Putin has demonstrated his antipathy towards Nato. But does the alliance owe him some form of concession as a result of the expansion to Russia’s borders? Putin has posed his red lines, including scrapping all talk of Nato membership for Ukraine and a pull-back of troops and weapons from eastern Europe. Could or should Biden offer flexibility as a means of dissuading Putin from ordering an invasion of Ukraine? Withdrawing troops or weapons from Poland or the Baltics, or reneging on Nato’s acceptance of Ukraine’s right to apply for alliance membership are surely steps too far. However, could Biden, with Nato approval, offer extended talks with Moscow on the whole issue of alliance expansion in return for a stand-down of Russian forces on Ukraine’s border; or suggest confidence-building military exchanges and even some minor combined exercises to demonstrate good will? “If Biden/Nato offers to abandon the Ukrainians and the Poles and the Baltic states by agreeing to forego placing troops there it would be an attractive deal for Putin, giving him vastly increased geostrategic positional advantage and an enhanced ability for Moscow to engage in coercion against these states, “ said Andrew Krepinevich, a Washington-based security analyst who served on the personal staff of three US secretaries of defence. “Were I Biden I would tell Putin that if he attacks Ukraine Nato would do a great deal, short of introducing troops to aid Kyiv, such as providing intelligence equipment, perhaps engaging in cyber activities as well as imposing severe economic measures. But also to look to offer Putin a way out without losing face,” he said. Eric Edelman, undersecretary of defence for policy in the George W Bush administration, said all of the Russian complaints were based on a false premise, “which is that Nato is somehow threatening Russia”. It’s the same false premise that kept the Cold War alive for so long. “I don’t think Putin has grievances that he wants the West to assuage,” he said. “I think he just wants to be aggrieved to justify his aggressive policies to an increasingly restive Russian public that is sick of the economic stagnation and utter corruption of Putin’s kleptocratic regime,” he said. Whatever is in Putin’s mind right now, he will be seeking in the January 10 talks some counter-proposal from the US that will either meet his red-lines ultimatum which he must realise is unrealistic or will provide him with sufficient incentive to call back his troops from the Ukraine border. Any significant concession to appease Putin’s security concerns will be seen in Moscow as a sign of Washington’s weakness, something to be exploited in the future. Biden and his national security team, and fellow Nato leaders, have to find a formula that will sound concessionary without actually offering anything of real substance: an acknowledgment of Putin’s concerns and a commitment to improved relations and communications, but only if the threat to Ukraine’s borders is lifted.

The massive frustrations of Covid

For reasons that are totally understandable, Covid and the scarecity of staff are more often than not the reasons why it is almost impossible to get through to any business/company/bank/etc when there is something urgent to get fixed or sorted out. But waiting one and a half hours to get through when there is a serious worry about fraudulent scamming activity and then once through to be cut off!!!! I won't mention the particular company involved but it has to be one of a million cases a day in this country and other nations where the long long wait to get something sorted out raises stress levels to Everest height. This is one of the many negative impacts of the pandemic. With so many key workers working from home they are inundated with calls and can't cope. How many thousands of people must have slammed the phone down in frustration and anger as they fail totally to get the answer they need to resolve a particular crisis. Fraud and scams are so prevalent that anyone with any common sense would be wary about trying to do anything over the phone or indeed Online that relates to transferring sums of money. But sometimes it has to be done. And that's when the nightmare starts. An hour and a half waiting for that voice that actually says "hello can I help you", rather than "sorry for the delay but we are short of staff because of Covid". I fear it is only going to get worse as the number of Omicron victims accelerates over the next few weeks and people are forced to self-isolate. The one and a half hours delay will become two hours and then three hours. Who is going to wait that long before bursting a blood vessel?

Republicans are still going on about the "false" 2020 election

There are a lot of stories and commentaries and editorial pieces in the US papers today about how America's democracy is truly at stake. Why? Because, aided and abetted by Donald Trump, a huge number of Republicans, voters and "lawmakers", still believe that Joe Biden falsely won the 2020 presidential election. It is totally unbelievable that this is still the case after very nearly a year since a bunch of wild Trump supporters charged Capitol Hill and took over the sacred parliamentary building to try and overturn the election verdict. It was the most scandalous event of 2021 and there are many sensible and intelligent people in the US who fear that this sort of incident could happen again. I believe they are right. There is a burning resentment in many parts of America that won't go away and Trump is still peddling his conviction that he and not Biden should have won the election when patently the voting records show that Biden lawfully and constitutionally was the victor. Let me paint the worst possible scenario: Trump announces later this year that he is definitely going to stand for reelection in 2024, his supporters go wild and then in 2024 he loses for the second time by a relatively small margin. Would there then be another assault on the Capitol, but this time far more organised and deadly? I have to say the chances must be high. Senior politicians such as Hillary Clinton and Liz Cheney (Republican!) are warning of the dangers facing democracy in the US if Trump were to win in 2024. But actually if he nearly wins but loses to Biden or whoever, the dangers are still there because his supporters will not accept it. All those terrible images of January 6, 2021, will come flooding back. Scary? Definitely.

Most political leaders failed in one way or another in 2021

No political leader can look back on 2021 with any degree of satisfaction. There were too many failures, too many bad judgments and too many signs that their political fortunes are heading for reverse. The possible exception is Vladimir Putin who somehow manages to look and sound as if he is in total control of his master plan for himself and for his country. He has thrown down the gauntlet to Joe Biden over Ukraine and Nato's eaternwards expansion and clearly believes his ultimatums are going to bear fruit. We shall see. But Biden has suffered many setbacks during 2021, not least his failure (not really his fault) to defeat Covid as he promised he would because of the dramatic appearance of the Omicron variant. Then there's his failure to persuade an obstructive Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, to back his Build Back Better $2 trillion legislation and thus saw the end of the year pass by without a deal. There are also rumblings about 2024 and whetherhe will be capable, physically and mentally, to do another four years in the White House. As for Boris Johnson he has had such mixed fortunes and misfortunes that it's a wonder he is still in charge at all. But it's possible that things are beginning to look up. He stuck his neck out and refused to impose new liberty restrictions on the English - and the Scottish who flocked in coaches over the border to drink in English bars on New Year's Eve. The signs so far are that he may have got away with it. There have been masses of Omicron infections over the period but not a big jump in deaths and hospitalisations. It's still touch-and-go whether his judgment will be proved sound but he must be desperately hoping that 2022 will revive his popularity ratings. But all in all 2021 was very bad for him. President Macron also had a bad year. All his nonsense about the boatloads of migrants leaving French beaches, claiming the French police were doing everything to stop them when it was patently obvious they did the opposite, and the French leader trying to stop the Brits from coming anywhere near France because of Covid. His political fortunes took a very definite turn for the worse with right wing extremism looking healthier every day. Other leaders around the world battled away to try and save their countries from Covid but never quite seemed to find the right formula. So let us hope that in 2022 political leaders get the balance right between freedom and common sense restrictions until Covid in whatever form is finally sent packing.

The terror of drone warfare in Ethiopia

The cheapest air force in the world has changed the face of the battlefield in the civil war between Ethiopian government forces and rebels of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Multiple purchases of armed surveillance drones at a fraction of the cost of buying fighter jets and bombers have provided Ethiopia’s leader, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, with a war-winning weapon system that has forced the rebels to take cover. The TPLF has no alternative but to hide from the relentless aerial bombardment. The rebels in the northern Tigray region of Ethiopia have been fighting the government forces since Abiy launched a military campaign in Tigray in November last year. The rebels battled hard and had made such progress that they marched south and were within about 80 miles from the capital Addis Ababa. The government was facing a violent overthrow. A decision to invest in armed drones, widely available from countries which have developed reputations for building cheap and accurate systems not only halted the advance but also threw into disarray the battle plans of the rebels and reversed their territorial gains after months of fighting. The dramatic change in fortune for the TPLF and the role armed drones have played have highlighted how the concept of warfare has been transformed in recent years. With drones and foreign expertise to operate them, the Ethiopian government has been able to gain total aerial superiority over rebel forces that have neither the weapons nor any form of air defence to protect themselves. The slaughter that has followed is reminiscent of the final hours of the 1991 Gulf War when US Apache attack helicopters and fighter aircraft picked off Iraqi forces as they fled from Kuwait City up the six-lane highway to Mutla Ridge en route to the border with Iraq. The success story for the government in Addis Ababa will be a lesson learned by other small-power nations needing to arm against internal or external adversaries. It will also boost significantly the armed drones export by countries which have cleverly exploited this new market by developing their own systems for overseas sales. Turkey, Iran and the United Arab Emirates head the list. “It’s no longer just the big powers such as the US, China, Russia, UK and France producing armed drones. Turkey and Iran are selling significant numbers abroad and for countries that can’t afford fighter aircraft, this is a game-changer,” said Paul Scharre, a former senior Pentagon official who helped develop US policy on drones and is author of the award-winning Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War. “It means these countries can have air power at a much lower cost. The drones also perform surveillance missions, thus changing the whole tactical landscape,” he said. “Clearly they are not as advanced as F-35 stealth fighters but these countries [such as Ethiopia] don’t need F-35s or F-16s because the armed drones provide them with the level of air power that suits their requirements ,” Scharre said. “Drones also provide other advantages over the traditional fighter aircraft. They have longer endurance and can provide vital surveillance of the battlefield, allowing for precision strikes,” he said. Drones had a significant impact on changing the battle landscape in Nagorno-Karabakh last year where Azerbaijan, supported by Turkey-provided drones, won a 44-day war against Armenia for control of the disputed enclave. Turkish drone airpower also saved Tripoli in the war in Libya between the government of national accord (GNA) and the forces of retired Major-General Khalifa Haftar. In Ethiopia, the Addis Ababa government sought multiple sources for a rapid supply of armed drones and began purchasing about a year ago. Turkey , with its Bayrakter TB2, and Iran, selling its Mohajer-6, were willing suppliers. The United Arab Emirates provided China’s Wing Loong-2 drone. The Bayrakter is around $5 million each and can carry four small laser-guided missiles, the Chinese drone is about $2 million and is armed with eight weapons, and the Mohajer-6, an estimated $3 million, is fitted with two missiles. About 90 per cent of armed drone transfers come from China. But with the US reluctant to sell its Reaper and other drones abroad, even to allies, countries such as Turkey and Iran have moved in to snatch some of the export potential from the Chinese. “This spectrum of drone capability is like an air force on the cheap for the Ethiopian government forces. They acquired these drones, initially from Iran, then the Chinese ones from the Emiratis and finally the TB2 from Turkey, which allowed them to spot rebel ground troops and carry out precision strikes,” said Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defence programme at the Washington-based Centre for a New American Security (CNAS). “The TB2 can stick around for about 24 hours, so they could find rebel forces who had no way of defending themselves,” she said. The Tigrayans, she said, were trying to acquire an effective counter to the drones. “But air defence systems are more sophisticated and expensive,” she said. Meanwhile, the Abiy government can not only rely on its arsenal of drones to guarantee battlefield advantage but it reportedly has technical experts from their foreign suppliers to help operate and maintain them. The use of armed drones is no longer a choice solely for nation states. Modified commercial drones fitted with makeshift explosive devices in the hands of terrorists and jihadist insurgents is already a reality. Four years ago Isis revealed in a progaganda video that it had developed its own bomb-carrying quadcopter drones. The off-the-shelf drones not only proved effective weapon systems in Iraq and elsewhere but also demonstrated the heightened publicity value of such attacks from the air. drone strikes create a greater sense of vulnerability than even a fighter bomber flying overhead and generate more media attention. The innovative methods used by Isis will have encouraged other non-state actors engaged in conflicts around the world to devise their own drones. However, more alarming is the possibility that terrorist organisations might be able to get their hands on bigger and better drones now that the export market has expanded so rapidly. China has shown no hesitation in offering its drones to overseas customers. Its CH-4 drone which looks like the US Reaper although is not as technologically advanced, has been sold to Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. More than 100 countries now have armed or surveillance drones. The potential for such systems to end up in the wrong hands must be high.