East Asia. AOL Defense art.

America counts heavily on a cordon of allies stretching from Japan to the north down to Thailand, and across to India, in the highly unlikely event of war with China. But these same allies could draw the U.S. into strictly local disputes in which America does not always have a clear security interest and which could destabilize the region.

Asian powers including India and Japan possess large, sophisticated navies and air arms which, combined with U.S. Pacific forces, could outgun the rapidly-modernizing People’s Liberation Army in wartime. And in peacetime, these same regional powers can help as counters to Beijing’s growing influence.

Read the rest at AOL Defense.

HMS Dauntless. Wikimedia photo.

United Kingdom
Despite the cuts, the drumbeat of operations rolls on. In addition to the previously announced dispatching of Type 45 Destroyer HMS Daring to the Persian Gulf to join the international flotilla already there, the Foreign Office released a rather hurried notification to the press that Daring’s sister ship, HMS Dauntless, would be sailing south to the Falkland Islands to relieve the Type 23 frigate HMS Montrose.

Daring and Dauntless are currently the two most formidable ships in the Royal Navy’s fleet with stealth features as well as a powerful radar and weapons package designed specifically to defeat aerial threats — including sea-skimming missiles such as Exocet. The ship will be conducting its duties for six months around the islands covering the 30th anniversary of the Falklands conflict in 1982.

Recently, tensions have been rising in the run up to the event with Prime Minister David Cameron and Argentinian President Cristina Kirchner trading barbs over the time-old question of who owns the islands. These tensions have been intensified due to a shipping embargo by Southern Cone trade bloc Mercosur, and increased oil and gas exploration in the waters around the islands.

As well as Dauntless, Britain has 1,500 servicemen stationed on the Falklands servicing four Eurofighter Typhoons, a C-130 Hercules and a VC-10 refueling aircraft. There are also constant rumors about a British submarine operating in the South Atlantic at all times.

Persian Gulf
As well as the Americans and British, the French have committed resources to the international flotilla currently in the Gulf. The French frigate La Motte-Picquet sailed through the contentious Strait of Hormuz with the Royal Navy frigate HMS Argyll and the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.  The carrier was accompanied by a guided missile frigates and two destroyers.

The movement was designed to exercise freedom of the seas in the face of threats by Iran to close the strait to traffic. This would prevent oil from leaving the region to customers abroad and in turn could send oil prices spiking upwards. The idea of policing the seas around Iran in order to keep the sea lanes open, therefore, appears to be a wise one.

There are fears, however, that all this sailing around Iran may well provoke an accidental exchange leading to a wider conflict. Both sides have amassed large amounts of weaponry in a relatively small area. Meanwhile, the lack of adequate diplomatic channels between Iran and many of the flotilla members could mean that if an exchange of fire does happen, no nation will be quick enough to stop a wider conflict from breaking out.

India
Concluding what some could say is a stellar comeback, the French Rafale fighter system has bagged itself an $11 billion order to supply 126 fighter jets to the Indian air force. The French came out as the lowest and most attractive bidder for the Indians, who will now enter exclusive contract negotiations with Dassault. The news will come as a bitter blow for BAE systems and EADS who were seen as favorites for the competition, and who were relying on winning business in India in order to sustain production across Europe. BAE systems said as much when it laid off thousands of staff at its U.K. sites last year.

The order is a coup for the French defense industry. Apart from contests in Brazil and Malaysia, the continued era of austerity may see plane orders dry up rapidly.

Scandinavia
Two men were convicted in Norway of planning to blow up a Danish newspaper that printed controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Mikael Davud, a Chinese Norwegian, was accused of being the ringleader of the plot along with Sadek Saeed Bujak, originally from Iraqi Kurdistan. Their plan allegedly involved bombing the offices of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and prosecutors say the pair received bomb making training from Al Qaeda. Davud denied the charges and said he intended to bomb the Chinese embassy in retaliation for its treatment of the Chinese Uighur community. He also said he received training in Iran.

The convictions come at a time of rising extremism across Scandinavia. As well as Denmark fending off terrorist plots, Norway and Sweden have been the victims of terrorist attacks including the notorious rampage by right-wing fanatic Anders Breivik last year, which resulted in the deaths of 77 people.

Northern Ireland
It can be said the little steps are the most important ones. The impressive relationship between the Democratic Unionist leader Peter Robinson and his Sinn Fein counterpart, Martin McGuinness, has steered Northern Ireland back towards localized rule, mainstream Republicanism, cooperating with the police and further cooperation with the South.

And in a further development of this warm relationship, Robinson broke a long standing Unionist taboo by attending a Gaelic football match with McGuinness. Attending the Dr. McKenna Cup match between Derry and Tyrone, Robinson reportedly received a “warm reception.” McGuinness also plans to attend a Northern Ireland soccer international at its home stadium, Windsor Park, and intends to cheer for Northern Ireland.

Tiger helicopter and assault ship. Via Mahjoob.com.

Libya
Events are starting to move quickly in North Africa, with a visit by the most senior American official yet to the rebel leadership — as well as reports of the French dispatching 12 attack helicopters on May 17 to the region to assist rebel forces. The force was dispatched on the amphibious assault ship Le Tonnerre. Now it appears that Britain intends to send attack helicopters, too.

Eurofighter/Rafale
The biggest fighter competition in the world just got more serious. India is indicating that it may bring forward the decision date for its Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) program competition to before March 2012. The reason for this lies in Pakistan receiving 50 Chinese JF-17 fighters more quickly than India had expected. It could also be a move to signal to China and Pakistan that it isn’t afraid to engage in an arms race. Lately India and China have squabbled over borders and visas.

Germany
German defense officials were pressured into an embarrassing u-turn last week. The issue surrounds protests outside of a German base in northern Afghanistan and reports that German troops fired into the crowds. Initially the German Defense Ministry denied the reports, but has now admitted that German troops did deliberately fire into the crowd to protect the base — and that 12 Afghans died in the chaos.

The instigator for the violence was a raid by American Special Forces that killed four, including two women. Local witnesses said that the funeral march passed by a small base housing a German Provincial Advisory Team and it was here that things got ugly. According to witnesses, both the Germans and their Afghan guards were in a “full self-defense mode.” They first issued verbal and visual warnings using hand signals, before shooting into the air and then firing “targeted shots” into the crowd, apparently aiming for protesters’ legs.

The tragedy will only serve to inflame the passionate debate within Germany over its role in Afghanistan and the world.

Rafale. Via India Defense.

Eurofighter Typhoon/Dassault Rafale
India is a step closer to choosing a candidate for the medium multi-role combat aircraft order. Dropping bids from America, Russia and Sweden, the final shortlist includes EADS’s Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassault’s Rafale. The two companies have been asked to extend their bids to the end of the year where a winner will be chosen.

Libya
It isn’t just geo-political sour grapes that is hamstringing Italy’s contribution to the NATO effort over Libya. A party within Italian Prime Minister Silvio Burlesconi’s fragile coalition government, the Northern League, has threatened to force fresh elections unless Italy pulls out of the effort to maintain the no fly zone over the troubled North African country. The Northern League is a xenophobic party which represents Italy’s rich north and believes that any continued action against Libya will provoke a new wave of immigration to the country.

Italy has already traded tit-for-tat accusations with France over the transfer of illegal migrants from Egypt, Libya and Tunisia with France blocking a train carrying hundreds of illegals last week in apparent contravention of the “Schengen” agreement between the core European Union nations allowing free movement of goods and people across borders.

Defense Spending
Growth in global defense spending has been slashed heavily in the past two years, with European governments leading the charge, according to research by a Swedish think tank. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found that while spending on defense rose by 1.3 percent in real terms in 2010 to $1.1 trillion euros, the rate has actually slowed by 5.9 percent since 2009 and marks the lowest increase in spending since 2001.

European governments were at the forefront of this marked decline, having spent 2.8 percent less than in 2009 as they struggled to rein in high budget deficits. Germany lowered its defense budget by 1.3 percent while France slashed its spending by over 8 percent. The biggest cuts were seen in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, with Estonia slashing a huge 28 percent off of its budget and others seeing cuts of 10 percent or more.

David Axe photo.

DUNGU, Democratic Republic of Congo — A truck carrying Indian U.N. peacekeepers trundles along the red dirt roads of Luvungi, a small town in a remote part of eastern Congo, on a routine patrol in late summer. The town seems quiet, and seeing and hearing nothing unusual, the soldiers quickly pass through back to their company operating base in nearby Kibua.

But unknown to them, just out of sight and earshot, rebel gangs were systematically raping Luvungi’s residents. Over a horrific three-day period beginning July 30, more than 300 men, women and children were raped.

Mass sexual assault is tragically common in Congo, but the Luvungi rapes stood out for having taken place in such close proximity to U.N. troops. Amid intensive international criticism, the United Nations issued a report defending the peacekeepers.

‘The Kibua COB has one interpreter and one mobile satellite phone, thus operationally restricting it to one patrol at any given time given the distances and conditions of the roads to be traversed,’ the report stated. The Indian patrol in Luvungi reportedly couldn’t linger long enough to detect the attacks were occurring, with most reportedly taking place indoors, in homes that might have been hundreds of yards apart.

The language barrier is ‘the most difficult portion’ of working in Congo, according to Sgt. Stuart Hammer, a U.S. Army soldier deployed to Kinshasa to train Congolese troops. In the absence of a much larger contingent of interpreters (an unrealistic prospect given the U.N.’s budgetary constraints) the inability of most of the Indian troops in Congo to speak any of the local languages — including French and the local dialect Lingala — seriously undermines their ability to achieve their mission: protecting Congolese civilians.

But despite this serious limitation, non-Francophone Indians and other South Asians comprise a large proportion of the U.N. troops in Congo, for reasons rooted more in South Asian than African history.

Read the rest at The Diplomat.

Via Stanford University.

First, India:

The two sides [India, Japan] discussed non-traditional threats to security and decided to hold the next meeting of the India-Japan Joint Working Group on Counter-Terrorism at an early date.

The two sides also discussed ways and means to expand co-operation in anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden and reviewed the joint naval exercises.

That’s funny, Japan doesn’t even have a terrorism problem.

Now, Indonesia:

Japan and Indonesia look to expand security cooperation, including possibly establishing a joint anti-piracy force in the Gulf of Aden, after decades of focusing on economic development ties, officials say.

Japanese Ambassador to Indonesia Kojiro Shiojiri said Monday in a seminar to mark the Japan Self-Defense Force Day that Indonesia and Japan were “strategic partners” who had made constructive contributions to the region. …

Shingo Miyamoto, counsellor at the Japanese embassy in Jakarta, said the Indonesia Military (TNI) could work with the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) on a joint anti-piracy force in the Gulf of Aden, given that many sailors passing through the area were Indonesians. …

The 52-year-old diplomatic relations between Indonesia and Japan have focused mostly on economic cooperation. Japan is one of Indonesia’s main export destinations and Indonesia is the third-largest recipient of Japanese Overseas Development Assistance after China and India. Tokyo and Jakarta signed the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) in 2007 that has seen import duties reduced to zero.

Indonesia is not the first country I think of when I think of Japan partnering with other navies to combat Somali piracy, but any cooperation is good. The more interaction with outside countries the better, given Japan’s recent societal trend back towards isolation. It’s also nice to see the industrial democracies engaging the Indonesian military and keeping it busy … so it doesn’t continue to do things like repress people and start shady businesses.

The Japanese and Indonesians are also cooperating on another kind of piracy: the pirates of the Malacca Straits. This is an older piracy movement, going back 15 years or so. The Malaccan pirates have been much less successful than their Somali counterparts, but much of the world’s shipping passes through the Malacca Straits. The article says that Japan has been working with Indonesia for some time, even giving Indonesia three patrol vessels.

When asked whether Japan would seek to enhance its presence in the Malacca Straits, a strategic waterway for stability and economic interests in the region, Shiojiri said Japan had not made any single priority at the moment but added that Japan would continue working with Indonesia on security in the area.

The security of the Malacca Straits is the responsibility of littoral states Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore while foreign countries can contribute technical support, but not direct military assistance.

Indonesia and Malaysia have voiced caution against foreign security support in the Malacca Straits, where the overwhelming bulk of trade and crude oil supplies for Asia pass in transit, while Singapore has been more open to the idea.

In the past month, Japan’s been active in working with Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and South Korea over a variety of issues, from piracy to the North Korean sinking of the Cheonan, with everything from soft power humanitarian visits to footwork by foreign and defense ministers.

In lieu of increasing defense spending, Japan is strengthening ties throughout Asia.

Originally posted at Japan Security Watch.

Indian Mirage 2000s. IAF photo.

“Last May, just days before India’s general election results were announced, the country’s highest policy making body for security matters was convened by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh,” Nitin Gokhale writes in The Diplomat. “Its mandate: Find ways of enabling India’s military to take on an increasingly powerful (and belligerent) China.”

At the end of a marathon meeting, the Cabinet Committee on Security initiated a comprehensive, well-funded plan to bolster India’s land, air and naval forces to counter China’s rising military prowess. The plan is historic, coming after years of dithering by an Indian establishment seemingly paralysed by memories of the country’s humiliating defeat at the hands of the Chinese in a brief but brutal war in 1962.

Since the CCS plan was launched, there have been significant and wide-ranging signs that Indian policymakers are finally willing to realistically assess possible military responses to China’s rise. One clear example is a new division of troops aimed exclusively at the border region of the two great powers. India is now mid-way through raising two mountain divisions for the north-eastern border area with China, with the two divisions pencilled in to be ready for deployment by the middle of next year.

The goal is to plug existing gaps in India’s preparedness along the Arunachal Pradesh-China frontier, and the two divisions, consisting of about 20,000 well-armed troops, will include a squadron of India’s armored spearhead — Soviet-built T-90 tanks and a regiment of artillery. They will be backed by enhanced command, control, communications and intelligence (C4I) capabilities aimed at covering the Tibet region.

But that’s certainly not all.

The Indian Air Force has over the past year deployed 36 Su-30MKI, its most advanced multi-role fighter aircraft, to Tezpur in the country’s north-east in response to the People’s Liberation Army Air Force’s seven airbases in Tibet and southern China.

Meanwhile, the Indian Navy is working to counter the growing clout of the PLA Navy. The current thinking at Indian naval headquarters is that China will move to aggressively increase its presence in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) to secure its extended energy supply lines (despite its name, military planners in Beijing don’t feel India has ownership of this expanse of water).

Read the whole story at The Diplomat.

Naxal. Merinews photo.

India’s Maoist rebels have struck again. 8ak editor Manu Sood has the story:

In the second deadly attack on CRPF personnel in Chattisgarh, Maoist guerrillas have killed 27 Central Reserve Police Force jawans at around 3:00 PM yesterday. The jawans were on foot patrol to open up a road in an area close to Maharashtra. Since the area is remote, not much details are available yet but it is clear that the jawans had very little time to fire and the attackers escaped in to the dense forests immediately.

Good coverage from The Telegraph of India here that reports State Home Minister Nankiram Kanwar did not make it to an emergency meeting convened by Chief Minister Raman Singh because he was performing a puja religious ceremony at his residence. Other reports seem to back up an attitude of “more deaths are expected” that has come about in the government.

Some reports say that traveling on foot is the recommended way for jawans in these mine-infested forests, 8ak has asked some experts whether this is really so or just a failure to provide proper equipment to the jawans and just send them in as “cannon fodder.”

Indian troops. Photo via The Diplomat.

On the early morning of April 6, the 80 troopers from the Indian Central Reserve Police Force were exhausted. For three days straight, they and a single district policeman had patrolled the thick forests of Chhattisgarh, a state in rural western India. They were on the lookout for fighters from the Naxals, an armed group originating in West Bengal that had split off from the Communist Party of India in 1967. Forty-three years on, senior officials in New Delhi consider the Naxals India’s most serious internal threat.

Just 2 days earlier, the Naxals had killed 11 Indian Special Forces soldiers in a bomb attack. In February, 24 government troops died in a pitched battle with Naxals.

The CRPF troopers, known as ‘jawans,’ were resting from their patrol in Chhattisgarh when a large Naxal force hidden among the trees opened fire; a bomb blast destroyed one of the jawans’ vehicles. The Naxal group numbered up to a thousand fighters, according to the government.

Gunfire peppered the weary, confused CRPF troopers. After just minutes, 72 jawans and the sole district policeman lay dead. When a government helicopter rotored in to retrieve eight survivors, it too came under fire.

Read the rest at The Diplomat.

Indian security troops. Via Mangalorean.com.

Raman Singh, Chief Minister of the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, says he suspects a connection between his state’s Maoist “Naxalite” rebels and the Islamic terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Chhattisgarh has been the site of many of the Maoist’s bloodiest attacks, including an April ambush that killed 73 members of the Indian Central Reserve Police Force. India needs a central strategy for defeating the Maoists, Singh said, but India law requires state police forces to handle most internal-security tasks.

Singh says he understands that the Maoists take root in underdeveloped, under-policed regions, according to The Hindu:

The state police, he admitted were poorly equipped and poorly trained. As against a requirement of some 55 policemen for every 100 square kilometers of territory, the state had only 17. In fact, in every infrastructure sector Chhattisgarh was far behind the national average, with just 33 percent of railway lines, roads, schools and hospitals.

Likewise, security-force corruption sustains the Naxals. Recently, two CPRF troopers were arrested in Uttar Pradesh state for selling weapons to their Naxalite enemies.

On a lighter note, “a senior policeman was injured after a suspected Naxalite woman attacked him with chair at her house in Munger district today, police said here,” according to PTI News.

Naxals. Via Merinews.com.

On Monday a bomb allegedly planted by Maoist rebels — the “Naxals” — killed more than 30 people on a bus in eastern India. Last month the rebels from the town of Naxalbari killed 73 Indian police in a complex ambush. Forty-three years since the first Naxals armed themselves and attacked the Indian government, the Maoists seem to be surging in strength and audacity.

Or maybe not, according to Teresita Schaffer, an analyst with the D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. “I hesitate to say the group has become more successful recently,” Shaffer told me. That perception, she said, is “partly a function of what gets covered and what makes the news.”

Where before, Naxal attacks received only local coverage, now they’re international news because Indian internal security now has a charismatic spokesman. “P. Chidambaram, the internal minister, has been a very take-charge guy,” Schaffer added. “One of the consequences of this is, whatever is happening in India on the internal-security front gets more coverage.”

And that can make the Naxals appear more active than they actually are, if you believe Schaffer.

Naxal victims. Outlook India photo.

A bus carrying around 60 passengers, including at least 20 local policemen, was winding through a thick forest in the eastern Indian state of Chhattisgarh on Monday when it suddenly exploded. At least 30 people were killed. Most of the rest were injured.

Indian authorities were quick to pin the bomb attack on the country’s four-decade-old Naxalite-Maoist rebellion, named for Naxalbari, the town where the group first attacked government security forces in 1967. Naxalite fighters have been known to target security checkpoints along bus routes, and have warned bus operators not to allow police on board their vehicles.

The Naxals, as they are also known, have recently gained power in some of India’s poorest districts, even setting up shadow governments in some of the more remote areas. “They have a one-point agenda of capturing power in Delhi through the barrel of the gun,” Dhruv Katoch, a retired Indian army general and military analyst, told World Politics Review.

The bus attack is the third major Naxalite attack since April 6, when as many as 1,000 Naxal fighters ambushed an 80-strong national police contingent in Chhattisgarh, killing 73 of them. Now officials in New Delhi are promising to redouble efforts to suppress the Naxals. The presiding committee of the Indian National Congress, the country’s largest and most powerful political party, promised a new strategy for rolling back Naxalite troops.

Read the rest at World Politics Review.