The Pentagon reviews its global military requirements

China’s modernising People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is getting younger, smarter and more focused on frontline combat readiness. In line with orders from President Xi Zinping six years ago, the PLA has divested itself of 300,000 non-combat personnel, bringing to an end the military careers of dancers, singers, editors, writers and some medical staff, all of whom had roles which are now regarded as unnecessary for Beijing’s dream of being a world-class superpower. As part of China’s objective of building a military force capable of mounting both defensive and offensive missions, Beijing now has plans to increase the size of its marine corps from around 40,000 personnel to 100,000 to protect the nation’s maritime ambitions in the South and East China Seas, and prepare for a possible invasion of Taiwan, according to the South China Morning Post. In 2019 the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based US think-tank, said the Chinese marine corps had grown from two brigades to eight, totalling about 40,000 marines. It said the PLA may have transferred more than 20,000 army troops to the marine units. Recent training programmes indicate the marine force is expected to perform expeditionary missions in any terrain and climate. In its annual report on China, published this month (Nov), the Pentagon revealed that of the eight marine brigades, five were stationed in the Taiwan Strait area, alongside six amphibious brigades, seven airborne brigades and five artillery brigades. The Taiwan Strait area includes the PLA’s eastern and southern theatres. The PLA has 12 units organised and equipped to carry out amphibious landings and seize and defend small islands. Over the last five years, according to the Pentagon, the PLA army (PLAA) and the PLA navy marine corps (PLANMC) have fielded new equipment designed specifically for amphibious operations. They include the ZBD-05 amphibious infantry fighting vehicle and the PLZ-07B amphibious self-propelled howitzer. Watching the steady, and in some cases remarkable pace of China’s military modernisation programme, the Pentagon has been conducting a global posture review to make sure America’s forces are aligned in sufficient strength and firepower capability around the world to confront the security threats emerging. The unclassified version of the review’s conclusions, outlined yesterday (Tues), highlights the Indo-Pacific as the priority region for the Pentagon in the years ahead. The challenge, Mara Karlin, the Pentagon’s deputy undersecretary for policy, was “to deter potential military aggression from China and threats from North Korea” whose leader, Kim Jong-un, is supported by Beijing. The review, the first to be carried out by the Biden administration, was also about broadening cooperation with allies and partners across the region, including Australia, Pacific islands, Japan, and South Korea. The Pentagon has already taken steps to station a permanent Apache attack helicopter squadron and artillery division headquarters in South Korea. There will also be new measures to boost military infrastructure and increase the presence of fighter and bomber aircraft in order to improve deterrence for the island of Guam in the western Pacific where the US has a significant airbase, and in Australia. “In Australia you’ll see new rotational fighter and bomber aircraft deployments,” Karlin said at a Pentagon briefing. The aircraft are expected to include B-2 stealth bombers, as well as F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters. The deployment of more US jet fighters and bombers to Australia was flagged a day after the AUKUS treaty was signed with America and Britain to supply the Canberra government with nuclear-powered submarine technology. The decision enraged France because it meant scrapping the existing deal for the French to supply conventionally-powered submarines. But it also upset Beijing which accused Australia of undermining regional peace and intensifying an arms race in the Pacific. Under the global posture review, there will be Improvements to airfields in both Australia and Guam. The work which will start next year will expand America’s capacity to deploy troop reinforcements to the region in the event of a security crisis. “You’ll see ground forces training and increased logistics cooperation and more broadly across the Indo-Pacific, you’ll see a range of infrastructure improvements in Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Marian Islands [14 US islands in the north western Pacific Ocean] and Australia," Karlin said. The Pentagon announcement comes four days after Peter Dutton, the Australian defence minister, said every city in the country was vulnerable to a Chinese missile attack. Australia, he said, was at the epicentre of “global strategic competition” caused by the rise of China as a world power. Last week the Canberra government revealed a Chinese military spy ship was recently tracked for three weeks off the coast of Australia inside the 125-mile exclusive economic zone. Despite increasing belligerent rhetoric from Beijing, and regular military flights to test Taiwan’s defences, the unclassified report on the Pentagon’s global posture review does not specifically reallocate US troops from other parts of the world to the Indo-Pacific to confront China. Karlin said the Indo-Pacific region was a “priority theatre” but declined to talk about potential additional force numbers. It is possible, however, that as the Biden administration continues to reassess security requirements for the future, there will be additional troop deployments to the region. These could be outlined in the forthcoming national defence strategy which is currently under review. The global posture review has underlined the challenges faced by the Biden administration. China is not the only concern. Biden has already rescinded the 25,000-troop cap in Germany set by President Trump because of growing aggressiveness by Russia. In August the Pentagon notified Belgium and Germany that the US would keep its forces at seven sites which had previously been designated for return to the host nations.

Ex-US defence secretary takes on the Pentagon

Former US defence secretary Mark Esper who was “terminated” in a tweet by President Trump is now suing his old department for blocking key passages in a memoir about his volatile relationship with his ex-commander-in-chief. Esper, 57, was Pentagon chief from July 2019 to November 2020 and has written his own version of what it was like to serve under Trump, including during the violent civil unrest following the murder by a white police officer of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis. The memoir called A Sacred Oath includes his recollection of private one-to-one conversations he had with Trump as well as discussions with the former president and officials during crisis national security meetings. Esper who was deeply engaged in high-level Trump administration debates on pulling US troops out of Afghanistan and acting against Iran and North Korea over their nuclear weapons programmes, denies that his book includes any classified material, or compromises national security. The issue that finally persuaded Trump to sack Esper just six days after losing the presidential election on November 3, 2020 was the defence secretary’s opposition to deploying active-service troops on the streets in Washington and elsewhere to counter rioters protesting over the fatal shooting of George Floyd. The dispute over his memoir is the most bitter legal issue involving a past cabinet member since the attempt by the Trump administration to stop John Bolton, ex-national security adviser, from publishing a book about his tempestuous relationship with the former president. In a statement, Esper said the objective with the book was to make public “a full and unvarnished accounting of our nation’s history, especially the more difficult periods”. His lawsuit, filed in the federal district court in Washington, says: “Significant text is being improperly withheld from publication in Secretary Esper’s manuscript under the guise of classification.” “I am more than disappointed the current administration is infringing on my First Amendment constitutional rights,” Esper said. The lawsuit says Esper was in charge at the Pentagon through “an unprecedented time of civil unrest, public health crises, growing threats abroad, Pentagon transformation and a White House seemingly bent on circumventing the constitution”. Esper submitted a draft of his memoir in May to the Pentagon department that handles security reviews of planned books to ensure there are no breaches of national security. In November he wrote an email to Lloyd Austin, his successor at the Pentagon, complaining that “multiple words, sentences and paragraphs from approximately 60 pages of the manuscript were redacted”. He had been asked not to quote Trump and others in meetings nor to describe conversations with the former president and “to not use certain verbs or nouns when describing historical events”. “Many items were already in the public domain, “ Esper said. “As with all such reviews, the department takes seriously its obligation to balance national security with an author’s narrative desire,” John Kirby, Pentagon press secretary, said. “Given that this matter is now under litigation, we will refrain from commenting further,” he said.

So there won't be an Xi variant of Covid-19

The World Health Organisation has moved swiftly to make sure that there can never be an Xi variant of Covid-19. The new one emanating from Southern Africa and considered to be potentially the most dangerous and transmissable one to date was described as the Nu variant. That new name only lasted a few hours because, presumably, some official in China, possibly someone working high up in the WHO, realised with heart in mouth that when the next strain turned up, the new variant might be called the Xi variant because xi follows nu in the Greek alphabet. Even though the alphabet hasn't been followed strictly, some wag in WHO might have insisted on Nu being followed by Xi, just to emphasise to the world at large that Covid originated in Wuhan in China and therefore it was right and proper and appropriate that one of the variants should be called Xi - although of course not in honour of, or in deference to, let alone as an insultt to Xi Zinping, the Chinese president who gets very angry when anyone suggests the virus started in China at all. Anyway the danger passed. The WHO dropped Nu and went for Omicron, skipping Xi which in the Greek alphabet sits between the two letters. Diplomatic crisis averted. If variants get all the way to Omega, the last letter in the Greek alphabet I bet the watchmakers with that name will kick up a helluva fuss. With any luck the pandemic will be over by then and there will be no Omega variant or for that matter pi, rho, sigma, tau, upsilon, phi, chi or psi.

Franco-British war of words

Boris has bungled. Writing a letter to the French government, setting out what he wants France to do to meet the growing migrant problem, and then publishing it on his Twitter account smacks of Trump. With such a sensitive issue dividing Britain from France, these sort of things need to be dealt with confidentially, especially with the French who get very uptight very quickly if they think the Brits are trying to get one over them. Basically, since Brexit, the French government under Macron despises the Brits and Boris in particular. So to publish his demands on Twitter will be seen in Paris as Boris throwing down the gauntlet like a schoolboy in the playground. They immediately cancelled the invitation to Pritti Patel, the Home Secretary, to attend a crucial meeting with the EU countries affected by the present crisis. Patel was disinvited. I bet she didn't appreciate that. What a farce, grownups or alleged grownups behaving like spoilt children. And now we have yet another variant of Covid potentially to hit our shores with an even more dangerous pedigree. Boris has cancelled all flights from South Africa and other African countries as from today (Friday) but the variant was first discovered in South Africa on Tuesday, so two whole days went by with many flights arriving in the UK. How many of the passengers will have brought the new virus with them? It won't be long before the whole of Europe is suffering from the so-called Nu variant which might be too strong for the vaccines and make everyone vulnerable once again. Is anything going right at the moment? It seems not.

When will race not be an issue in the US?

The answer is never unfortunately. Race divisions have been part of the American way of life since the country was founded in 1776. The terrible days of racial and racist segregation are over but the murder of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, a black man, by three white men, has shown that the lynch-mob tendency is still alive and well. Arbery was jogging in a white area and was therefore seen as highly suspicious and possibly a robber because of a spate of recent burglaries and needed to be challenged and dealt with. It was like a scene out of the brilliant 1980s film, Mississipi Burning. The court case in which the three white men were eventually found guilty and now face life imprisonment, had terrifying echoes of that film. The defence counsel for the defendants spoke in appallingly racist language to try and persuade the jury that Arbery deserved what happened to him. At one point attorney Laura Hogue told the jury that Arbery was wearing no socks "to cover his long dirty toenails". I wasn't in the court room obviously but I can just see the attorney saying these words with a sneer on her face. The whole case was riddled with racism and the fact that the jury dismissed the self-defence argument and found the men guilty was thanks to the clear evidence on video that Arbery had been killed for only one reason. He was black. Or to put it another way, he didn't look like any of the three men who were involved in his brutal death. On Thanksgiving Day, a time of celebration for the whole nation, I wish all my American friends a happy family get-together. Added to the Thanksgiving should be huge thanksgiving and relief that the three white men were convicted of this appalling crime.

The Pentagon is back hunting for UFOs

The Pentagon and America’s top spying agency are to begin an investigation to decide once and for all whether UFOs pose a threat to the United States. After decades of failing to explain the unexplainable presence of mysterious brightly-lit, rapidly accelerating and oddly-shaped phenomena in the skies, especially over US military installations, the Pentagon has set up yet another organisation to try and find answers. Only five months ago, a special US government task force concluded following an examination into more than 140 UFO sightings over two decades that there was no evidence of anything non-terrestrial involved in the incidents. However, the possibility of an alien presence could not be ruled out. In 18 cases there appeared to be a demonstration of technological know-how unfamiliar to the US – or, it was believed, to China and Russia. With both intelligence officials and UFO conspiracy theorists dissatisfied with the result, the Pentagon decided to have one more go at tracking and identifying any future suspected mystery objects in the sky. “Incursions by any airborne object into our ‘special-use airspace’ pose safety of flight and operations security concerns and may pose national security challenges,” the Pentagon said in a statement. Special-use airspace is defined as areas over military bases, training ranges and national security locations, such as the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and the National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Meade in Maryland. “The DoD [department of defence] takes reports of incursions – by any airborne object identified or unidentified - very seriously and investigates each one,” the Pentagon said. Now the UFO issue, or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) as the Pentagon calls it, has been handed over to a new organisation consisting of senior defence officials and representatives from the office of the director of national intelligence which oversees America’s 18 spying agencies. The 18th spy service belongs to the recently formed US Space Force which is expected to play an important role in deciding whether or not strange aerial phenomena might have begun their journey from beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. The new organisation has the acronym AOIMSG (airborne object identification and management synchronisation group).

China's questionable hypersonic missile test

So now it seems China carried out a hypersonic missile test at the end of July as well as in August and, according to the Financial Times, during the earth-orbiting hypersonic trip the Mach 5-plus glide vehicle managed to launch another projectile of some sort before it headed for its target, missing by about 12 miles. What on earth was the objective of this missile within a missile experiment? Very clever if true and certainly the Pentagon seems somewhat aghast at the technology demonstrated by the Chinese. But to what end? Could this extra hidden missie/projectile be a decoy system to fool attempts to shoot down the hypersonic glide vehicle? Possibly. Could it be just another missile with another target in mind? Possible, too, but seems a little silly, especially if the Chinese actually go ahead with having such a weapon careering round the earth during an international crisis - with a nuclear warhead attached. The biggest mystery of all is why Beijing is so intent on having the technology to put a nuclear warhead into low orbit. Is it supposed to be a new type of deterrent to the United States or is it seen as a usable war-winning weapon to force the US to surrender or back off what it was thinking of doing, like going to Taiwan's aid in the event of a Chinese PLA invasion? No one knows what's in Xi Zinping's mind but there is only one conclusion as far as I can see. The Chinese president is playing a very dangerous, even reckless, game here.

Thousands of US Marines could be booted out over Covid vaccine refusal

The deadline for the US military to get vaccinated against Covid is fast approaching. Normally when ordered to do something soldiers, marines, airmen, sailors etc generally get on with it. But for reasons that have not been made public, six per cent of US Marines have refused or failed to have the vaccine. That's potentially around 11,000 Marines who could be kicked out of the corps. It's an extraordinary situation. It's not for religious reasons because apparently that has not been given as the excuse for turning down the jab. It's much more likely that the Marines who have refused to be vaccinated have been put off by social media, or some propaganda put about by ignorant or malign groups who believe that it's against an individual's right of choice which it seems is more important than protecting both yourself and everone else. Or perhaps some of these Marines are plain scared of the needle, although that seems a bit far-fetched. These are Marines, right? They obey the rules on haircuts and tattoos but vaccinations appear to be in a different category. They feel they have the right to disobey their commanders. So unless there is a change of mind their careers will come to an abrupt end. It sounds like they need some serious friendly advice from persuasive colleagues or commanders to overcome their fears/doubts. The US Marine Corps has to recruit something like 36,000 people every year to fill vacancies. It can ill afford to lose 11,000 trained Marines. It makes no sense.

The Rittenhouse defence

This kid Kyle Rittenhouse (well 17 at the time of the incident but he still looked pretty young in court) has been acquitted of the murder of two men whom he shot during protests in Kinosha, Wisconsin following the shooting by police of a black man who is now paralysed. There are two things about this extraordinary story which only Americans who believe in the right for all citizens to carry and fire weapons in public places will be able to understand. This acquitted teenager didn't live in Kinosha. He lived in Antioch, Illinois and crossed state lines in order to reach the city in Wisconsin. He went there, he said, in order to protect property and provide medical help where and when required. Sounds very altruistic. But along with his first-aid kit he also brought with him into the protesting city of Kinosha an assault rifle of some kind. Presumably to stand guard outside vulnerable buildings to keep protestors away. I make no comment about the court case and the acquittal. The jury found him not guilty of murder on the grounds that he was acting in sef-defence. That's the law - in the US at least - and so be it. But it begs so many questions. He went to help the people of Kinosha carrying an assault rifle. He was 17 and he had an assault rifle at home to take out whenever he saw fit. Turning up in neighburing Kinosha with an assault rifle cannot be considered a very wise move. Did his parents know what he was doing? He then opened fire during the melee when he felt scared that his life was at risk, killing two men and injuring a third. The man who survived did acknowledge that he was pointing his pistol at Rittenhouse before the kid fired his assault rifle. The whole scenario just beggars belief. It is perfectly all right apparently for a teenager to go to someone else's city with an assault rifle and open fire in self-defence. Is this madness or what?

Joe Biden is healthy and raring to go

Happy Birthday Joe Biden, 79 today. And, according to his official doctor, healthy and fit apart from a stiffness in the spine, a need to clear the throat a lot and high blood pressure. We normal souls get to hear all these fascinating details because he's the president of the United States and the doctor in question is required to reveal all, never mind Biden's personal data rights. So it's fortunate he doesn't suffer from anything that might be more embarrassing. But now we know why he coughs a lot during speeches and looks like he has a rod of steel in his back. But for someone who is one year away from being an octogenarian, President Biden is in tip-top health and looks pretty likely to have a go at a second four-year term. He has more than three years to get his first-term legacy sorted out but once his $1.75 trillion social programme has been passed through Congress he will be more confident of winning again in 2024. The House of Representatives has just approved the bill, so it's looking good for him. Age will definitely be an issue in 2024 but then if Trump stands again, he's getting on too so the former one-term won't be able to play that card. Anyway let's forget about 2024 for the moment. Enjoy your 79th birthday, Joe Biden.

China worries the Pentagon

Anti-ship missile firings at a US supercarrier mock-up in the desert, a hypersonic weapon flight around the Earth, military preparations to invade Taiwan – all apparent signs of an increasingly belligerent China rehearsing for war. One of America’s most senior military officers added to concerns this week by warning that China could one day launch a surprise nuclear attack on the United States. This conclusion by General John Hyten, outgoing vice chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, is just the latest warning about China’s possible intentions as it builds a conventional and nuclear force to match America’s superpower military capabilities. Hyten spent three years as commander of US Strategic Command, in charge of America’s nuclear weapons. He is steeped in Armageddon scenarios. His voice of doom about China’s rapidly-growing military advances which he has previously described as “stunning” reflect the general view among the Pentagon’s top hierarchy that Beijing is on a course that could lead inevitably and unavoidably to conflict with the US. Despite the modestly encouraging agreement between President Biden and President Xi of China to start discussions about strategic stability and nuclear arms control, satellite images demonstrate a persistent picture of a nation preparing for war and developing exotic weapons that put the US homeland at grave risk. Recent satellite images of a Chinese firing range in the desert in the northwest revealed a full-scale model of a US Navy Gerald R Ford-class aircraft carrier sitting on a rail line as a massive moving target for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to test the latest anti-ship missiles. Further images of the same desert site spotted two full-size mock-ups of US Air Force E-3 Sentry airborne early warning aircraft (Awacs) for target practice. Referring to a flight test in August in which China took the Pentagon by surprise by launching a hypersonic missile that orbited the Earth, Hyten told CBS News in an interview this week: “They launched a long-range missile, it went around the world, dropped off a hypersonic glide vehicle that glided all the way back to China that impacted a target in China.” Asked if the hypersonic glide vehicle, travelling at more than five times the speed of sound , hit the target, he replied: “Close enough”. Were the glide vehicle to be armed with a nuclear warhead, it wouldn’t need to be that accurate. “Why are they building all of this capability?” Hyten questioned. “They look like a first-use weapon. That’s what those weapons look like to me.” As the Pentagon revealed in its annual report on China’s military published this month, the concerns about Beijing’s intentions cover the whole gamut of weapons being developed. American military commanders can only look on in amazement at the speed with which the Chinese navy is being converted into a global maritime force, with aircraft carriers, nuclear-powered submarines, cruisers, destroyers and amphibious assault ships under construction at a rate that makes the US industrial production line seem grindingly slow by comparison. The US Navy’s new-generation aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R Ford, will be immensely capable when it deploys on operations for the first time next year. But it has cost more than $13 billion and is three years late. China is already working on a carrier that in many ways copies what the US has designed for the new Ford-class. For example, the PLA Navy (Plan) is switching from steam-driven aircraft-launch catapults to an electromagnetic system, similar to that on the USS Gerald R Ford. China currently has only two carriers, compared with America’s 11. But the second domestically-built carrier is expected to be operational by 2024, joining the Liaoning, rebuilt from an old Soviet Kuznetsov-class aircraft cruiser, and the first Chinese-designed carrier called Shandong. The Plan is also working on a number of future carrier-based aircraft. This includes the development of China’s J-15 fourth-generation strike fighter into a catapult-capable version. It has already been tested from land-based steam and electromagnetic catapults. There have been reports , too, of China’s aim to convert its fifth-generation J-20 stealth fighter into a carrier-based aircraft, although it would seem to be too large for this role. The J-20 was designed to try and match the US Air Force F-22 Raptor stealth fighter. The Pentagon says China is on the way to building a multi-carrier force, and since it is already the top ship-producing nation in the world by tonnage and has the largest navy on the planet, it is small wonder every US commander of Indo-Pacific Command has been warning for years of the threat posed by Beijing’s burgeoning maritime power. Admiral Philip Davidson who retired as Indo-Pacific commander in April famously warned that China could take control of Taiwan “in the next six years”. He pointed to China’s advances in ballistic and hypersonic missile technology which he said was rapidly changing the “security paradigm” in the region. This week the US-China economic and security review commission, a Congress-appointed agency, warned that the Chinese military had the ability to land 25,000 troops on the island to establish a beachhead. Is China practicing for war before it reaches the goal set by President Xi to have a world-class military by 2049? “Of course the PLA is practicing, or training, for war. All serious militaries do,” Andrew Krepinevich, a former senior Pentagon official, said. “Whether the CCP [Chinese communist party] will wait until 2049 will depend on its calculations of cost, benefit and risk,” he said. “These are dynamic factors that are constantly in flux, as well as the person or group of people who are making the go/no go decision, that is to say their view of the prospective costs and benefits and their risk tolerance,” he said.

Is there any real hope of a nuclear arms deal between the US and China?

The agreement between President Biden and President Xi to discuss nuclear arms control has been hailed as a breakthrough but realistically the chances of a meaningful deal are low. Under Xi, China is progressing rapidly towards its aim of being a military superpower on a par with the United States by 2049. All elements of Beijing’s military modernisation programme, including the build-up of nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems, have that objective in mind. Looking at arms control through Beijing’s eyes, the only reason why Xi would be interested in US/China talks would be to persuade Washington to make substantial cuts in its nuclear stockpile. There is no obvious quid pro quo that Beijing would wish to offer because even if China were to reach 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030, as predicted by the Pentagon, the US would still have a more than 3-1 numerical advantage. The current US arsenal stands at 3,750 warheads. Moreover, any talk of warhead reductions by the US could not take place without the involvement of Russia. It remains to be seen whether China would contemplate a trilateral arms control discussion which the US has been pushing for unsuccessfully for many years. However, there are areas where bilateral negotiations might have a positive influence on relations between the US and China, if only to introduce an element of transparency on the key question: at what point would either side be prepared to resort to using nuclear weapons? This has become an important issue because of the move towards deploying ballistic missiles with low-yield nuclear warheads. The US already has low-yield warheads (8-10 kilotons) fitted to some of the Trident II missiles on board Ohio class strategic submarines, and Chinese strategists have written about the need for lower-yield nuclear weapons to increase deterrence. In its annual report on China, published this month, the Pentagon warned that Beijing might fit small warheads to the Dong Feng-26 intermediate-range ballistic missile. Critics of this concept of nuclear deterrence warn that small-yield nuclear weapons on long-range missiles lower the threshold for their use, and thus make them more liable to be launched in a controlled manner on the battlefield. As part of nuclear arms control discussions it would be imperative for the US and China to understand how each approaches this topic. The notion of a usable nuclear warhead, taking it outside the realm of deterrence theology, has potential for alarming miscalculation. On nuclear weapons, China has a stated no first use policy, although the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has also adopted a “launch on warning” position under which a nuclear missile can be fired preemptively if there is a warning of an incoming missile strike. The Pentagon has confirmed that the PLA rocket force (PLARF) has conducted exercises involving early warning of a nuclear strike and launch on warning responses. This posture is broadly similar to the US and Russian position. Another important area for discussion between the US and China would be Beijing’s claim that it only maintains a minimum deterrent. Beijing’s idea of minimum or limited deterrence is clearly evolving as China, under Xi, develops its desired “world class” military.

Three hours of talking by Biden and Xi got nowhere

Well Washington HAD played down the likelihood of any amazing breakthroughs in the video chat between Joe Biden and Xi Zinping but it seems that in the three and a half hours of chat, nothing concrete was actually agreed apart from some reference to easing visas for their respective media. Three cheers for that, but you would have thought there might have been a little bit more to chew on the day after. At least Xi called Joe his old friend which was nice. But old friends are supposed to look for ways out of problems. Biden and Xi just went over old and familiar ground without meeting in the middle. Taiwan is a hopeless case because there is absolutely no compromise as far as either leader was concerned. Biden adhered to the Congress act which allows the US to help Taiwan defend itself, and Xi made all sorts of warning sounds to Joe to steer clear of Taiwan and not to even consider interferng in the event of a decision by Beijing to take back what he says belongs to China. So the potential for conflict between China and the US remains a realistic possibility. Neither the US nor China wants a war but Xi could not have made it clearer that the US has no right to get involved in a matter which comes solely under China's jurisdiction. Biden will have come away from his video chat with a flea in his ear. All somewhat disappointing but hardly surprising.

Russia smashes a satellite into 1,500 bits

The US is outraged that Russia hit one of its old satellites, scattering debris throughout space and forcing astronauts in the international space station, including two Russians, to take cover in refuge capsules. At least 1,500 bits and pieces, all capable of doing serious damage to something like the space station, were sent hurling around like swarms of metal projectiles. All highly dangerous and irresponsible as the US state department spokesman said. But while everyone is focusing on those cowering spacemen in the space station, what about the fact that the Russians have proved they have developed an anti-satellite weapon that is clearly deadly accurate and effective? A huge fuss was made in Washington when China launched a similar test some time ago, and North Korea, too, is known to be developing anti-satellite weapons with only one target in mind - America's neworks of reconnaissance and communications satellites in orbit around the Earth upon which the US military depend for their operational life. The scattering of debris in space seems to have gripped America because of those poor vulnerable astronauts but the real worry surely is Russia must be cockahoop about the satellite direct hit. I'm sure the US is working on a similar capability but Russia seems to have got in first. Was the Pentagon caught out by the successful Russian satellite-smashing event? Russia seems to be pushing the envelope militarily despite a pretty poor economy. It has the first deployed hypersonic missile, the first hypersonic nuclear cruise missile and now a proven ability to shoot down satellites in space. Yes, China is the big one to worry about but never underestimate Russia and Putin's dreams of being a military super superpower.

Will coal still be the ruin of us all?

John Kerry, tall immaculately haired climate change special envoy for President Biden, has sounded a reasonably opimistic note about the Glasgow COP26 summit of 200 nations. I like John Kerry, he has serious gravitas and that's good in this flippant world. He believes that coal production has to be phased down before it can be phased out, and that what was agreed at the summit should prevent the world from suffering climate catastrophe. Like Boris Johnson, he regretted the last-minute change of language in the final draft of the communique, after India and China insisted on "phase down" instead of "phase out". But at least coal was high on the hitlist and without that agreed change in text there probably wouldn't have been an agreed text at all which would have been disastrous. So I prefer to go along with Kerry's reasoned optimism rather than Greta Thunberg's summing-up of COP26 as just blah blah bah. There was a helluva lot more than blah blah blah but to realise that you have to read the text and I somehow doubt the Swedish climate activist spent enough time reading the whole deal. If Kerry is convinced that the agreement will prevent the sort of catastrophe that has been predicted on the BBC almost every night then I'll go along with that. Provided of course every nation who signed up to the deal actually implements the agreements and, even more important, continues to find ways of improving on the deal. No one can stop the world's temperature from rising by 1.5 C but everyone can do their bit to prevent it rising above that level.

Get better soon, Ma'am

Anything and everything that happens to Queen Elizabeth II is of interest to millions of people. She was unable to attend the Cenotaph ceremony on Remembrance Sunday today because of a strained back and you can read the headlines across the world. I liked the headline in The Hill in the US: "Queen Elizabeth II skips event after straining back". At the age of 95 her skipping days are over but we know what they mean. The Queen is such an important part of so many people's lives that we all worry at the slightest change in her daily life. A cold, a strained back, feeling a little under the weather, not quite herself - all these phrases provide royal correspondents with endless reasons to speculate but most of them, if not all, do so with respect and affection. How she strained her back we don't know and probably never will know but at her age, with all due respect, Ma'am, even getting out of your favourite chair can give an unexpected and unwelcome twist. But one thing we know from the Queen is that as soon as she can she will be back carrying out all her duties. After all these years as the monarch, it really is an extraordinary story of devotion to duty.

Are we really closer to a war with Russia than in the Cold War?

I always worry when a very senior military chief, either serving or retiring, starts warning about war with Russia or whoever. Not because I think he knows more about what's really goinig on in some part of the world and is therefore in possession of some alarming intelligence which he feels we ought to know about. But because very senior military chiefs tend to think of nothing else and fail to see the broader picture. Thus, General Sir Nick Carter, outgoing British chief of the defence staff, the top dog at the Ministry of Defence, has given a warning that an "accidental" war with Russia is now more likely than at any time durring the Cold War era. An accidental war? There is no such thing as an accidental war, not if it involves Russia anyway. Everything Putin does is calculated and calculated again. If he wants a war he will engineer it. If he doesn't want a war he will make sure that if he is being pushy and aggressive it will only go so far; in other words, he won't take that fatal step which will invite/provoke Nato to answer back militarily. So he won't invade Ukraine with 100,000 troops and tanks and armoured vehicles and rockets because he knows that would provoke the US into action. The US has come up with that old and familiar phrase about how America's commitment to Ukraine is "iron clad". These two words are overused by Washington but I assume they have been selected as the go-to phrase because they are meant to imply that the US would rush to Ukraine's aid with all the firepower necessary if Russian troops invaded the country. It's not a straightforward calculation for Putin because the US and Nato didn't exactly rush to help when Russia invaded two provinces in Georgia in 2008 and then annexed Crimea by force in 2014. But that iron-clad phrase for Ukraine probably means what it says. Anyway it would be a helluva risk for Putin. And the last thing he wants is to have a war with Nato. And lose. So no way is there going to be an "accidental" war with Russia over Ukraine. I don't know what General Sir Nick Carter has in mind but what he said in an interview with Times Radio was the usual old stuff spoken by an outgoing defence chief who wants to warn the world that it is in a more dangerous position now that ever before. Well thanks for that. But give Putin his due. He knows better than most that going to war is a serious business and has to be worked out tactically, strategically and purposefully. Nothing would be accidental. Nor would it be accidental on Nato's side. Nato has had more experience of fighting wars than Russia in the last few decades, and has no intention of fighting one with Russia unless Putin decides to invade Ukraine or Latvia or Lithuania or Estonia or all of them at once. But he won't do that, and he certainly won't do it by mistake. So the Carter Doctrine doesn't sound that impressive or realistic. It's Carter talking without thinking of what Putin might be thinking. The bigger international picture.

CIA director and Putin have a phone chat

A phone conversation between President Putin and the director of the CIA played a key role in lowering concerns in Washington about the Russian leader’s reported threat to order troops into Ukraine. Sent to Moscow by President Biden as his special envoy, William Burns, the Russian-speaking US spy chief, spoke to Putin about the build-up of troops, tanks and other armoured vehicles on the Ukraine border. Although the detailed contents of the one-to-one phone call remain secret, the involvement of Burns, a former ambassador to Moscow, has underlined the growing diplomatic role being played by the CIA chief. In August Biden sent Burns to Kabul to meet Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar to discuss final arrangements for the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan by the August 31 deadline and to remind the new rulers of their commitment to sever links with al-Qaeda. Burns is the first member of the US diplomatic service to be appointed CIA director and his use as a special envoy in foreign policy crises reflects a subtle change in emphasis at America’s primary intelligence agency. Successive CIA directors, like their counterparts in MI6, have by tradition enjoyed unique access to world leaders. But Biden chose an outsider to head up the CIA with a career background in diplomacy in order to exploit that historic access at times of greatest urgency, sources said. Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, warned in Washington this week that Moscow would be making a serious mistake if it mounted aggressive action against Ukraine, following claims by the defence ministry in Kyiv that about 90,000 Russian troops were stationed near the border. However, Biden had already turned to Burns to challenge Putin. Burns is a “crisis-tested” diplomat who served as ambassador in Moscow from 2005 to 2008 during his 33-year career, and knows Russia and the Moscow leadership better than anyone. He is said to be an expert in seeing the world through Putin’s eyes. Although his trip to Moscow was in his role as the head of the CIA, an agency that focuses on clandestine operations, his experience as a highly-respected ambassador provided the perfect combination for his phone call with Putin, himself a former KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years. One of the CIA’s principal functions is to ensure that the US is not caught by surprise. The agency was formed in 1947 as a result of the worst wartime surprise in America’s history, the bombing of Pearl Harbour by the Japanese in 1941. The US has been surprised on many occasions since Pearl Harbour such as the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979 and the 9/11 al-Qaeda terrorist attack in 2001. However, with Burns at the helm of the CIA, Biden appears to be determined to prioritise diplomacy over intelligence as a way of putting maximum leverage on adversaries. Thus, a single phone call with Putin might have given the Biden administration a better understanding of Putin’s intentions towards Ukraine than an assessment of the latest satellite images of the Russian border troop build-up. In recent years the CIA has become significantly more involved in paramilitary, counter-terrorist operations. CIA paramilitary officers in a mission codenamed Jawbreaker were in Afghanistan working with anti-Taliban allies and hunting for al-Qaeda 11 days before the arrival of the first US and British special forces. As the war on terror continued, there were concerns that the CIA’s focus on counter-terrorism would weaken intelligence-gathering capabilities in relation to Russia and China. That perceived imbalance has now changed, and Burns has put Russia and China at the top of his priorities.

The Joe and Zinping show

Big one for the diary: Monday November 15th, in the evening. This is the date chosen by Washington and Beijing for the virtual summit between President Joe Biden and President Xi Zinping. Joe must remember that Xi (Shee) is his Chinese counterpart's surname and Zinping his first given name. They do it the other way around in China. I hope he remembers. If he starts the dialogue, "Now look here, Xi..." dear old smiley Zinping might not take too kindly to the abrupt use of his surname. But I expect it will be all right because each leader will no doubt refer to each other as Mr President. Always the safest. If they get chummy - though unlikely - they might revert to Joe and Zinping. Strangely, the vibes seem to be pretty good. John Kerry, Biden's climate csar, has announced a deal with the Chinese to go it together on pushing for climate action which was quite a surprise seeing as how Xi didn't turn up for the Glasgow COP26. But that's a good sign at least for the Monday summit. And it would be terrific if Joe and Zinping could find a formula of words that lowered the temperature somewhat (climate temperature and every other sort of temperature). Tension has been building up, particularly over the South China Sea and Taiwan and all that fuss about Beijing's launching of a hypersonic glider vehicle in orbit around the globe. But these two leaders need to get on. The world is too complex and filled with so many dangers that we can do without having Biden and Xi at each other's throats. Some nice soft selling please on Monday so we can all sleep better at night. The trouble is Joe is only going to be president for a limited period whereas Zinping is waiting to be confirmed as president for life, so he has time on his side. But even so, if he wants to build China into a military and economic superpower by 2049, he would be wise to get on with it without acting the big bully in Indo-China and making the West think he is prepared to fight a war. Cool down Xi and you'll find Biden quite a decent companion.

Never mind COP26, it's all sleaze sleaze sleaze

The media can be merciless. Boris Johnson held a press conference at COP26 to highlight what he sees as the successes during the climate-change summit in Glasgow but all reporters wanted to ask about was Tory sleaze allegations. No wonder Boris looked at his watch and said he had a train to catch. Of course the reporters asked him about Tory sleaze because back in London that's what everyone is talking about. Well, everyone in the Westminster bubble - MPs and political reporters. I don't suppose the general public gives a monkeys about whether MPs have half a dozen other jobs while serving their constituents. It's not against parliamentary rules provided they can show they are devoting more time to the constituency and Commons responsibilities than earning big money doing this or that. Boris said MPs having other jobs is good for democracy. I'm not sure what that means. Anyway, his press conference was all about this issue and whether the former Conservative attorney general Sir Geoffrey Cox should be earning so much money while swanning around in British Virgin Islands. I doubt that has helped to spread democracy but Boris seems to think it's all good. The trouble is once the ugly "sleaze" word has made the headlines, almost everything MPs and ministers do comes under the microscope and if there is even a hint of dodginess, it turns into a naming and shaming game for the media. It happens every few years and it's by no means always the Tories who get sleaze accusations hurled at them. So watch out Labour MPs. While you are bashing the Tories over sleaze and corruption you better examine your own lives and cupboards and see what skeletons are lying around. As for COP26, Boris made one last plea to the world to do something about global warming and sent off for his train with "sleaze" ringing in his ears. At least this time he went back to London by train. Last week he took a private plane to the capital from Glasgow so that he could attend a party for him by his old Telegraph chums at the Garrick Club. He learned that lesson at least.

US Army ups the ante in Europe versus Russia

A deactivated US Army Cold War artillery unit in Germany which used to host intermediate-range nuclear missiles targeting Russia has now been reformed and is preparing for its first hypersonic long-range weapon. The US 56th Artillery Command, based in Mainz-Kastel in western Germany, is to be armed with the Dark Eagle hypersonic weapon which will be capable of accelerating to more than five times the speed of sound (nearly 4,000mph). The re-emergence of 56th Artillery Command and the plan to arm it with the first hypersonic weapon reflect growing concerns in the Pentagon that Russia has succeeded in outgunning the US and Nato in Europe with longer-range artillery rockets and its own development of hypersonic weapons. After the Cold War ended the focus on maintaining strong defences in Germany and elsewhere in Europe diminished. Thousands of troops were withdrawn and units deactivated. However, in the new era of great-power rivalry between the US, Russia and China, Europe once again has become a frontline defence zone, and the most advanced weaponry is being earmarked for Germany to boost Nato’s conventional deterrence profile. Apart from the Dark Eagle hypersonic weapon, 56th Artillery Command is also expected to receive a ground-launched version of the US Navy’s Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile. Under a programme called Typhon the US Army has been developing launcher systems with the US Navy to fire a range of different missiles. They include the Tomahawk and the Standard extended range active missile (SM-6) which is being developed by the navy to intercept high-altitude or sea-skimming anti-ship missiles. Germany hosts America’s Europe and Africa commands. “The reactivation of the 56th Artillery Command will provide the US Army Europe and Africa with significant capabilities in multi-domain operations,” Major-General Stephen Maranian, commanding general of the artillery unit, said. He spoke of plans to deploy “future long-range surface-to-surface” missiles, a reference to the anticipated arrival of hypersonic weapons in Europe. Although no hypersonic missiles are yet ready for deployment, the first launcher systems mounted on trailers were delivered in September to an army base in Washington state for troops to begin training programmes. The Pentagon has previously confirmed that three tests of “hypersonic technologies, capabilities and prototype systems” linked to Dark Eagle had been carried out successfully. However, last month a hypersonic missile test in Alaska failed. The booster rocket with the hypersonic glide vehicle attached failed to launch at Kodiac in Alaska. The glide vehicle is supposed to be carried up to the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere and then released at more than Mach 5 to manoeuvre to its target without any form of propulsion. The newly reactivated 56th Artillery Command in Germany was officially stood down in 1991 as part of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) signed by the US and the Soviet Union. The command’s nuclear Pershing II missiles which had been deployed in 1983 to counter Russia’s mobile nuclear-armed SS-20 systems, were withdrawn from Germany. Ground-launched nuclear cruise missiles in Britain and elsewhere in Europe were also dismantled. However, the INF treaty collapsed in 2019 following allegations by the Trump administration that Moscow was violating the agreement with the testing of a banned missile system. Russia first tested its SSC-8 cruise missile with a Nato-estimated range of 1,900 miles in 2008. Moscow claimed its range was only 300 miles, below the INF limits of 500-1,000 kilometres (310-620 miles) for short-to-medium-range missiles and 1,000-5,500 kilometres (620 to 3,420 miles) for intermediate-range systems.

A US Navy supercarrier in the middle of a Chinese desert

The Chinese military has built a huge target on a desert firing range for its latest anti-ship ballistic missiles which is in the shape of the US Navy’s latest Gerald R Ford-class aircraft carrier, new satellite images have revealed. Two other targets shaped like Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers have also been spotted at the same site as the full-scale carrier constructed in the Ruoqiang area of Xinjiang region in northwest China. The carrier has been built on a rail line, according to the satellite images provided by Maxar, a Colorado-based American space technology company and published by the US Naval Institute. The new complex in the Taklamakan desert is believed to have been built to test China’s “carrier killer”, the Dong Feng 21D (DF-21D), a medium-range, road-mobile anti-ship ballistic missile. The presence of a mock-up US carrier and two warships suggests the Chinese military has deliberately constructed the equivalent of a US carrier strike group for target practice. The disclosure comes at a time when tensions have increased in the region because of China’s aggressive naval and air actions close to Taiwan. President Biden recently said the US would come to Taiwan’s military aid if Beijing invaded the self-governing island. China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has for years been developing a strategy to deny access to US carrier groups in the South China Sea and elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific by building up its stock of anti-ship ballistic missiles. The carrier target does not include the full superstructure of a Ford-class warship. There is no sign of the carrier’s flight control island. But the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers have vertical poles to give an impression of the ship’s superstructure. The institute reported that the rail-mobile carrier target complex was first built between March and April, 2019 but later dismantled. The latest satellite images show that the site was brought back into operational use in September and completed last month. Last week the Pentagon revealed in its annual report on China’s military that the PLA rocket force fired its first live carrier killer in July 2019. The Pentagon said six DF-21D missiles had been launched into the waters north of the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. Last year China fired anti-ship ballistic missiles against a moving target in the South China Sea for the first time, the Pentagon said. China has built US carrier mock-ups in the desert before for target practice. But they were unsophisticated slabs of concrete approximately the size of an aircraft carrier. The latest targets are far more closely designed to represent a real US Navy carrier. US aircraft carrier strike groups make regular appearances in the South China Sea region to demonstrate the right to operate in international waters. In July last year two Nimitz-class carriers, the USS Ronald Reagan and USS Nimitz, operated together in the South China Sea. Last year Iran’s Revolutionary Guard launched missiles at a mock aircraft carrier in the Strait of Hormuz during naval war games. After a barrage of missiles, the fake carrier listed to one side with nearly half of the flight deck submerged.

China's military marches on

For years the Pentagon has been predicting and warning about China's military modernisation advances but without any real official concern other than taking note of the progress Beijing is making towards its stated goal of matching the US for military dominance by 2049. Now suddenly the Pentagon seems to be shaking in its boots because every previous estimate and expectation of China's growing might has been hit by a new reality. Beijing is making such amazingly rapid progress towards the target of being a military superpower on a par with the US that it has taken the Pentagon's breath away. The latest Pentagon report on China says Beijing might quadruple its nuclear warhead stockpile over the next few years and its recent hypersonic missile test which demonstrated an ability to put a nuclear warhead into orbit around the earth was a revelation to the intelligence boys. Poor General Mark Milley, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff who is having a pretty torrid time as the president's principal military adviser, has had to admit that the August missile test was "concerning". Milley shorthand for "Bloody hell, how did they do that?" The fact is President Xi Zinping is obsessed with building up a military superpower force and of course being the leader of a Communist country he can get on with it without having to worry about parliamentary/congressional opposition. So China is building submarines, warships, stealth fighters, aircraft carriers and long-range missiles at breackneck speed. At this rate Xi will reach his 2049 target by 2039. What the US can do about it is limited, other than attempt to maintain a technological edge over China and to ensure that its triad of nuclear weapons is up-to-date and deterrent credible. But Joe Biden is putting trillions of dollars aside for his social welfare revolution and the defence budget is bound to be affected. This is what democracy is about. The only hope is that Xi will not want to engage in a war of any kind with the US. After all, there's not much point in building his country into a superpower only for him to wage war and destroy everything he has dreamed of for his nation. That's my hope anyway.

US Marines go for old heads as well as jarheads

The US Marine Corps is to start recruiting older men and women with other career skills instead of focusing only on the traditional method of persuading raw teenagers from high school to become “jarhead” warriors.(*) General David Berger, the corps commandant, wants people who can be multi-talented, capable of rapidly mastering surveillance drone missions and maintaining the most advanced weaponry for the new “big-power” threats posed by China and Russia. He is introducing his new campaign to recruit more experienced candidates who might stay a long time in the Marines. Out-of-school applicants tend to join up for only short periods and whatever skills they pick up on their way are then lost to the corps. However, will older recruits, perhaps in their early 30s without any previous military experience, be “rough and tough enough” to match the younger generation for fitness and fighting ferocity? In presenting his ideas for a changing corps, Berger rejected the idea that bringing in older people would reduce the lethality of the Marines. “We have to treat people like human beings instead of inventory [sic]. The physical, the toughness will be at least as demanding as it is today or has been in the past. I think it’ll actually be more so,” he said. The corps had to be smarter to compete with adversaries such as China, he said, and one way was to allow more mature recruits to join the Marines “laterally”, entering at a rank appropriate to their education, experience and previous career talents. Under the present recruiting system, applicants can enlist at 17, with parental consent, up to 28. The maximum enlistment age is 35 but older applicants must have prior military experience. Turnover in the corps is exceptionally high. About 36,000 Marines every year – 75 per cent of the annual intake - decide not to reenlist after their first tour of duty of three years. The recruiting system is based on a set of conditions that existed in the 1980s and 1990s and it was no longer working, Berger said. He wanted to keep Marines for much longer periods and train them to be multi-tasking warriors able “to talk to Reaper drones and understand the satellite connection required to do that”, as well as fire machineguns. Berger has previously outlined one new mission for Marines: island-hopping in the Indo-Pacific armed with anti-ship missiles to meet the growing threat from China in the region. *Jarheads is the nickname for Marines arising from the uniform’s high collar, originally made of leather, which gave the impression of a head sticking out of a jar.

Guantanamo, Biden's forever 9/11 legacy

President Biden has found himself in a legal and security “quagmire” in his attempt to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, US sources say.The camp for captured terrorist suspects located on the southeast end of Cuba was described by seven members of a military jury panel at Guantanamo’s $12 million courtroom this week as a “stain on the moral fibre of America”. Biden wants to go down in history as the president who succeeded in shutting Guantanamo after nearly 20 years. However, the “thorough review” he set up almost nine months ago, involving the National Security Council (NSC), aided by the Pentagon, state and justice departments and the CIA, has yet to find any solution to the same challenges faced by President Obama who also pledged to close the camp. “The Biden administration is committed to closing the facility and the department of defence is fully supporting that effort,” Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Kenneth Hoffman, said. America’s forever war in Afghanistan may have ended, albeit in an unseemly rush. But Guantanamo, one of the by-products of President George W Bush’s war on terror, is still absorbing millions of dollars of US taxpayers’ money ($540 million last year) and requiring hundreds of soldiers to guard a detainee community that has shrunk from 780 to 39. Some savings have been made this year after the decision to close Camp 7, the highly secret facility built for 14 of the “most prized” detainees who, since April, have been housed in the two other main jails, Camp 5 and 6. It has enabled the guard force of 1,800 soldiers to be cut significantly, although the new figure has yet to be made public. Guantanamo has been back in the headlines after self-confessed al-Qaeda terrorist Majid Khan, a 41-year-old Pakistani who pleaded guilty in return for cooperating with the FBI, received a 26-year sentence. Under the tell-all deal which has been running since he first appeared in a blue pin-striped suit in the Pentagon’s military commission Guantanamo courtroom in 2012, he could be freed as early as February next year. That will mean 38 detainees left for the Biden administration to sort out. The vast majority of the 780 were transferred to their countries of origin or to third-party nations willing or persuaded to help out the US government. “Thirteen of the detainees still in Guantanamo were approved for transfer but they’ve been waiting to leave for over ten years,” Hina Shamsi, director of the national security project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said. She insisted Biden had an obvious path forward for closing the camp: transfers for all those not charged and plea bargains for others awaiting trial “so that justice can be done”.It was during Khan’s sentencing that it emerged seven members of the jury panel had written a letter (obtained by The New York Times) condemning the harsh treatment he had suffered at the hands of his CIA interrogators in “black prisons” after his capture in Pakistan in March 2003. Khan, like many of the Guantanamo detainees endured physical and mental abuse, defined by Congress as torture, before they were transferred to the facility in Cuba. Khan had been charged with a number of terrorist crimes including acting as a courier for al-Qaeda and handing $50,000 to the Jemaah Islamiyah affiliated extremist group in southeast Asia who five months after his arrest carried out a suicide bomb attack on the Marriott hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia in August, 2003, killing 12 people and injuring 150. The terrorist-turned-informer case is one of the few success stories for the US military prosecuting authorities. Only one other Guantanamo detainee has been convicted. Fourteen of the 39 detainees are defined as “forever prisoners” who have never been charged and have no prospect of being brought to trial. But they are considered too dangerous ever to be released. The most challenging case of all for the Biden administration involves the five al-Qaeda suspects charged with financing and training the 19 hijackers who crashed passenger planes into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania on 9/11 which led to the deaths of nearly 3,000 people. They face the death penalty if convicted . But every attempt to name a date for their trial at the military commission court at Guantanamo has been thwarted by never-ending legal arguments by defence counsel, hired and paid for by the Pentagon. The arguments have continued for years about the defendants’ rights and, most especially, about their treatment by CIA interrogators. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of 9/11, was waterboarded (the simulated drowning technique) 183 times at a secret site in Poland. The FBI and military prosecutors have tried to build their case against them based on evidence that has to exclude anything the defendants might have said under torture. “We’re nearly 20 years on and nowhere near a trial. Everyone agrees that Guantanamo’s military commission system is broken and can’t provide justice,” Shamsi said. The Covid pandemic, hurricanes and frequent military judge rotations have exacerbated the delay in bringing the five alleged co-conspirators to trial. Now a new commander of US Southern Command, based in Miami, which has overall responsibility for Guantanamo, has taken over following a ceremony last week. US Army General Laura Richardson is the first woman to be given the role. If Biden succeeds in finding a way to close Guantanamo before the end of this four-year term of office, she will have the task of masterminding the end of what has been an unsavoury chapter in America’s history.

The US drone killing of an Afghan family in Kabul was just bad luck

After an investigation of the drone strike on a car in Kabul soon after the horrific suicide bombing at the Hamid Karzai airport in August, a report into the incident has basically said no one was to blame and it was all a terrible mistake. I think it goes without having to say it that no one involved in the killing of ten members of one Afghan family, including seven children, will have done it knowing or even suspecting that it was the wrong target and that innocent people were about to lose their lives. But the terrible error is one of the worst recent examples of panic action generated by a rising expectation, based on intelligence, that a vehicle-borne suicide bomber was going to attack the airport and killing more people than had died at the earlier attack which led to the deaths of 169 Afghans and 13 American servicemen, mostly Marines. There would have been an atmopshere of desperation and intense pressure to find the vehicle and eliminate it. Thus this Toyota was spotted and it looked suspicious and the movement of people and the putting of packages into the boot, all gave the impression that a bomb was being made ready. All totally understandable. The trouble is that it's a bit like when detectives believe they have got the criminal suspected of murder and even when doubts arise there is such a conviction that they have got the right man all evidence to the contrary is shoved to one side. Even worse, they start to focus only on the evidence that seems to point in his direction, ignoring the vital information that should tell them the man is innocent. It may be an unfair analogy but I am sure that once that Toyota and the suspicious movements were spotted, there was a driving momentum that led to the chain of command authorising go go go. Before it was too late. Even though a child was seen in the vicinity, the pressure was so great to avoid a second suicide bombing that the strike went ahead. In hindsight, whatever the pressures and fears, there should not have been a decision to press the button until it was 100 per cent certain that it was an Isis car with an Isis suicide driver and no civilians around. None of those criteria were met. It was a genuine mistake but such an awful one that it will forever cast doubt on the efficacy of these long-range drone strikes carried out without the aid of ground forwrd air controllers located not far from the target and able to provide up-to-the-minute intelligence.

Will the Taliban join with the US to target Isis in Afghanistan?

Isis-Khorasan (Isis-K), the branch of Islamic State living and fighting in eastern Afghanistan, had a tough time when the Americans were in the country because the US military and CIA and other agencies had built up a huge intelligence-gathering apparatus which was able to eavesdrop on their communications, spot them from satellites, aircraft and drones and help special operations forces to pinpoint and target Isis militants. All that has gone. The US military can still send surveillance drones from Qatar and United Arab Emirates but they only travel at about 500mph, so they take ages to get into position over Afghanistan and then can't stay very long before having to head back to fuel up. So the intelligence picture is minimal. But worse still, there is absolutely no cooperation with the Taliban, so even if a passing drone spotted a gathering of Isis ready to launch an attack somewhere, there would be no one on the ground to call on to mount a counter-terrorist strike and it would take too long to russle up a few fighter bombers to go and bomb them and, anyway, the Biden White House probably wouldn't give permission because Biden wants nothing more to do with forever wars in Afghanistan. So the increasing number of attacks by Isis against the Taliban and civilians is largely because Isis-K knows it can get away with it since they don't have the US breathing down their necks 24 hours a day. I wonder if the Pentagon thought of this scenario when the final US troops were pulled out in August. Whether they did or didn't we now have US officals expressing concern that Isis-K is on the rise and might pose a real threat not only to the survival of Afghanistan but also to the US homeland. Here we go again! You can almost read the script being prepared. The US will have to persuade the Taliban to mount joint attacks to prevent Isis-K from seizing territory in Afghanistan and posing a threat to the world. Well it's not going to happen. Not under Biden. And as for the over-the-horizon counter-terrorist force the Pentagon keeps on talking about - based in the Gulf - I reckon that's going to be very under-used. The Taliban wants to fight Isis on its own but so far it's not coping at all well. What is bizarre is that we are now almost looking on the Taliban as the sort-of good guys taking on an Islamic group even more militant and extreme than they are, on behalf of us all. Very weird.

Child-selling in Afghanistan must be condemned and stopped

I can hardly bear to read the stories that seem to be proliferating about poverty-stricken couples in Afghanistan selling off their young daughters as "brides" to old men, and in some cases babies, in order to provide food for the rest of their family. There can be nothing more monstrously wicked than selling a child. But in Afghanistan where so many families have no money, no food and no future, it has become an act of desperation, a last resort to save their other children. Has the world now turned its attention away from Afghanistan to such a degree that governments are turning a blind eye to this child-selling scandal? Afghanistan needs help. These families need help. Children have suffered during years of war. Now with relative peace because the Taliban are no longer fighting the US and coalition troops, they are facing even graver danger. They are being traded to men for a future that will be devoid of parental love and care. It's yet another horrific consequence of the rushed departure of international troops whose governments had got fed up with the whole Afghanistan saga.

Sir David Attenborough is the king of the COP

Of all the voices warning of doom for the world at COP26 in Glasgow, 95-year-old Sir David Attenborough's gentle predictions must put him in line for the Nobel Prize for saving the planet. If there isn't one there should be. More than anyone else he has been trying to tell us all of what is going to happen in the future and his brilliant documentaries are part of our way of life. But in the end unfortunately Sir David can't actually force the world to be sensible. Only leaders and their governments can do that and those attending COP26 have certainly made the right noises. But will they follow up their grand speeches with positive and immediate action? The outrageous absence of Xi Zinping and Vladimir Putin should not put off the rest of the world from reaching proper and meaningful decisions. Perhaps China and Russia, despite their leaders' indifference, will play their role and help the planet to survive. I believe they will because if they stay stuck in the fossil-burning age, both countries will falter as other nations seize the opportunities that lie ahead in a greener world. Attenborough's voice will win through bless him. For that reason alone I suddenly feel more optimistic or, at least, less pessimistic.