En 2017 se descubrió en el seno de la Bundeswehr (Fuerzas Armadas) de Alemania una conspiración conocida como Tag X (Día X). Esta operación se había articulado a partir del embrión de un posible "Ejército en la sombra", apoyado por organizaciones paramilitares, y su objetivo era tomar el poder mediante el uso de la violencia y el terror Der Tag X (El Día X). Esta dinámica culminaría con la puesta en marcha de una "limpieza étnica", la eliminación de los "enemigos internos" y el establecimiento de un Estado autoritario. La tesis que mantenemos es que el origen de esta conspiración militar está íntimamente asociada a un conjunto de transformaciones políticas, sociales, económicas y culturales que se han producido desde la última década del siglo XX y que han creado una situación favorable para el ascenso de la extrema derecha en Alemania y "legitimado" a militares de esta ideología para intervenir en el proceso de toma de decisiones políticas. Para desarrollar nuestro trabajo, hemos utilizado fundamentalmente dos tipos de fuentes. Por un lado, las primarias, formadas por los decretos sobre la tradición en la Bundeswehr, y las investigaciones parlamentarias y los informes de los servicios de inteligencia sobre el extremismo de derechas en la Bundeswehr. Por otro, las bibliográficas y hemerográficas, donde se recogen los principales acontecimientos vinculados a la conspiración de Der Tag X.
Lord Acton se mostró partidario de la causa Confederada. Lo hizo guiado por su sentido de la Historia y del poder: los ideales tienen una potencia transformadora y los estados del Sur proclamaron la secesión movidos por la reivindicación de los principios originales de la Revolución norteamericana frente a la tiranía de la mayoría. Acton no entra en interpretaciones jurídicas acerca de la materialización del derecho de secesión, pero explica el significado efectivo de la noción de soberanía y la incluye entre los inalienables derechos de los estados. Acton, celoso de preservar los contrapesos que neutralicen o limiten la tendencia hacia el despotismo de la mayoría y del "Gobierno General", considera que los estados del Sur lucharon por un ideal: proteger sus derechos sobre la base de la vieja Constitución y por una nueva Unión.
Este trabajo estudia el desarrollo de la Ilustración india, cuyas ideas reformistas sientan las bases del pensamiento político indio moderno. Su auge coincide con la expansión del gobierno de la Compañía de las Indias Orientales británica y de las ideas orientalistas ilustradas. El colonialismo, defendemos, espolea un debate entre la intelectualidad india acerca del orden social tradicional y la necesidad de su reforma. El artículo hace una distinción entre una Ilustración india moderada, que desea modernizar India manteniendo sus raíces civilizatorias, y una radical, que busca reformular todo el edificio social y filosófico. Para ello, se estudia el pensamiento y activismo de dos destacados ilustrados indios, el liberal Rammohun Roy y el radical Jotirao Phule. El artículo concluye que la Ilustración india es una Ilustración por derecho propio, que, aunque bebe y dialoga con la modernidad occidental, desarrolla sus propios debates y propuestas de reforma. El trabajo también busca contribuir a la expansión de la historia intelectual de la Ilustración fuera de Occidente.
"This book argues that Anglo-American military cooperation makes an important contribution to the 'Special Relationship' and that this has frequently been neglected in the literature. It uses a conceptual lens of historical institutionalism to provides insights into how military doctrine, practical cooperation and narratives underpin the way the British military have worked with their American counterparts in the post-Cold War era. The British have found military cooperation with US armed forces difficult to achieve because of their greater size and strength. This pattern of cooperation has been occurring within a dynamic environment in which the nature of warfare has been evolving. New digital technologies have been transforming the battlespace and the post-Cold War period has enabled the two sides to intervene in emergencies where the use of force has been employed in highly selective ways. The US and the UK have been called upon to fashion new military doctrines to address peacebuilding and nation-building tasks and prepare to encounter adversaries who pursued asymmetric military strategies. Aligning with the US military has generated risks as well as benefits for UK armed forces. It has required the UK to sustain a breadth of capabilities and to engage in tasks that have weighed heavily upon its resources. It has led British decision-makers to look at global problems through a lens conditioned by US priorities. This has led to tensions between the two sides that are explored in the book"--
During World War II, the military dog became synonymous with patriotism and a symbol of the fight for a free world. In the absence of a military dog program at the beginning of the war, the United States was the exception among Western powers. The establishment of an official military dog program during World War II was a critical step in the development of the country's military. Through the creative collaboration of civilians and military personnel, the K-9 Corps and Dogs for Defense organization produced trained military dogs that had immediate positive impacts on the battlefield. The creation of the American military dog program laid the foundation for the continued utilization of the military dog, served as the proving ground for the capabilities of dogs, and expanded the understanding of how dogs might be used on the battlefield. This piece distinguishes the U.S. Marines' military dog program separately from the Army's.
On 14 July 1943, soldiers of the Oklahoma Army National Guard's 1st Battalion, 180th Infantry Regiment brutally murdered more than 70 German and Italian prisoners of war in two separate incidents in the vicinity of the Santo Pietro Airfield near the village of Santo Pietro di Caltagirone, Sicily. These killings, erroneously known as the 'Biscari Massacre,' stand as some of the most brutal atrocities committed by American forces in Europe during the Second World War. Despite this, the US Army generally failed to hold the massacres' perpetrators accountable for their crimes due to the US Military's desire to keep details of the atrocities secret. Of the roughly two dozen soldiers who directly participated in the killings, only two-faced indictment under the 92nd Article of War. Of these, only one suffered punishment. That said, the War Department released the convicted war criminal a mere 14 months into his life sentence due to a potential public relations crisis in relation to issues of command responsibility. In the end, the US Army refused to accept responsibility for the atrocities and actively protected those culpable at the highest levels.
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The U.S. government is compromising democratic values for the sake of maintaining an expensive and ineffective drone base in the West African country of Niger — all while exploring new drone bases in three nearby coastal countries: Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, and Benin.The rationale for both the existing base and the aspirational ones is to constrain jihadist insurgencies. The problem is, there's no publicly available evidence that the base in Niger has done any good. In fact, regional trends — in terms of political violence, but also in terms of overall political instability — suggest that expeditionary counterterrorism does more harm than good.The U.S. military's Air Base 201 is situated outside Agadez, northern Niger, and was built in the late 2010s at a cost of some $110 million or more (and upwards of $30 million per year to operate and maintain). Operations began at the site in 2019, involving "intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance" (ISR) drone flights. The New York Times calls it "vital" but it has yet to demonstrate its worth to the public.During the 2010s, Niger was considered the most reliable Sahelian country in the eyes of Washington, Paris, Berlin, and others. Ruled by an elected civilian, Mahamadou Issoufou (in office 2011-2021), Niger had seemed to be entering a new chapter, leaving behind the coups and rebellions that still plagued neighboring Mali. As crises grew in virtually all of Niger's neighbors — especially in Libya, Mali, Nigeria, and soon Burkina Faso as well — Niger appeared to be more a victim of spillover violence than of its own homegrown insurgencies.By 2019, however, it should already have been clear that Niger was brittle — and that France's assertive counterterrorism operations in Mali were yielding only fleeting gains. In Niger, the 2016 election had been lopsided at best and farcical at worst, with Issoufou's main opponent, Hama Amadou, spending much of the campaign in detention on shaky charges connected to human trafficking. Niger was also beginning to produce its own militants — and its own spate of human rights abuses by the military. In Mali, France had killed many top jihadist leaders, but violence was only growing. If American airpower was meant to support the tracking of top targets, and if removing those targets did not fundamentally disrupt the insurgencies, then what good was all that surveillance capacity?Starting in 2020, coup after coup struck the countries of central Sahel. In Mali and soon after in Burkina Faso, coup-makers both channeled and stoked anti-French sentiment, eventually expelling French troops and other Western-backed security missions, such as the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali. French counterterrorism ran aground not just at the level of strategy, but also politically. The French failed to maintain the goodwill of populations who cared little if Abdelmalek Droukdel or Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi had been killed when that did nothing against the grassroots fighters, bandits, and ethnic militias that made ordinary people's lives hellish. Surveillance capacity, moreover, is even less effective when it comes to sorting out who is who at the level of ordinary fighters — just ask the French, who horrified Malians by striking a wedding party at the town of Bounti in January 2019, believing the targets were terrorists.Niger's government has been the most recent to fall to a coup, in July 2023. The combination of the coup and the U.S. military's assets triggered an awkward dance in Washington, as the administration sought — and continues to seek — an impossible balance. On the one hand, there is the imperative to uphold the plain meaning of legal restrictions on U.S. assistance to junta-run countries (a determination the U.S. finally reached in Niger's case in October). On the other hand, the administration seems to feel compelled to engage the junta with an eye to protecting the drone base. Administration officials have hinted to the junta that if it puts forward even a minimally credible transition plan, the administration will explore ways to restore military cooperation.The sunk costs of the Niger base appear to be one of the primary arguments in its favor, as well as the argument that the base is vital for counterterrorism success. Yet throwing good money after bad makes little sense, and the argument about counterterrorism is impossible to falsify, given classification practices — and even if all the data were out in the open, backers of unlimited counterterrorism budgets often make the equally unfalsifiable claim that things would be worse without those expenditures. Meanwhile, there is a circularity involved in the logic of the U.S. military presence in Niger as well. As the New York Times puts it, "The American military is still flying unarmed drone surveillance missions to protect its troops posted in Niamey and Agadez" — in other words, the drone base becomes its own justification.Meanwhile, the U.S. government appears to be simultaneously considering the possibility of maintaining the Niger base and the possibility of shifting resources elsewhere; namely, to Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, and Benin. The Wall Street Journal reports on "preliminary talks" about opening bases in those countries. The logic, in the Journal's own words, is as follows: "Drones would allow U.S. forces to conduct aerial surveillance of militant movements along the coast and provide over-the-shoulder tactical advice to local troops during combat operations."This logic should sound awfully familiar, as it was the same thinking that has now failed in Niger and beyond. None of the core problems have been solved: whether tracking and killing top leaders translates into wider gains; whether it is possible to distinguish insurgents from non-combatants at the level of rank-and-file fighters; and what the wider theory of change and success is.Nor has the fundamental political problem been solved or, it seems, even acknowledged: the reference to "over-the-shoulder tactical advice" is very telling. What might seem like a simple military matter is in fact a political one: again and again in the Sahel, it became evident that soldiers often dislike having someone else peering over their shoulder and telling them what to do. All that assistance and advice can also have unintended consequences, as occurred in Niger. It's not that establishing drone bases in coastal West African countries will inexorably lead to coups — but securitizing the relationship and militarizing those countries' response to insurgency will only hurt. Cote d'Ivoire has won some acclaim for its response to a nascent insurgency, for example, but more for its social programs than for its combat operations.And, finally, for U.S. forces, the temptation to do more than peer over the shoulder and whisper into the ear is always there. Best of all would be to wind down the base in Niger, avoid making the same mistakes elsewhere in the region, and keep the Sahel's juntas at arm's length.
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"This book applies a systematic framework to explain the course, aftermath, and long-term lessons of the of the US intervention in Iraq. The work follows the rise and fall of violence and progress in building a new Iraq state across the 2003-2023 period. There are four sections. The first outlines an approach able to breakdown the basic components of complex, violent, internal conflicts. The second applies that framework to the period of US military occupation and presence, 2003-2011. The third examines the period after US withdrawal specifying the legacy of US military intervention, addressing the rapid takeover and slow defeat of the Islamic State in Iraq, and explaining the continued power of militias and the persistence of a weak Iraqi state. The fourth section concludes with general lessons gleaned from the Iraq experience, a consideration of political and cultural forces constraining US policymakers from learning those lessons, and informed speculation on the nature of future American military interventions"--
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The conference agreement on the 2024 Military Construction and Veterans Affairs appropriations bill is among the six legislative measures that were signed into law on Saturday. The military construction portion of the bill contains money for forces in the United States and around the world. The post 2024 Military Construction Appropriations appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.
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On February 15, the U.S. government signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the government of Somalia to construct up to five military bases for the Somali National Army in the name of bolstering the army's capabilities in the ongoing fight against the militant group al-Shabaab. This is a troubling development that not only risks further militarizing Somalia and perpetuating endless war, but comes with the potential of exacerbating geopolitical rivalries at the expense of the needs and interests of ordinary Somalis. According to statements by U.S. officials, the bases are intended for the Danab ("Lightning") Brigade, a U.S.-sponsored Special Ops Force that was established in 2014. Funding for Danab initially came from the U.S. State Department, which contracted the private security firm Bancroft Global to train and advise the unit. More recently, Danab has received funding, equipment, and training from the Department of Defense. U.S. support is made possible by the 127e program, a U.S. budgetary authority that allows the Pentagon to bypass congressional oversight by allowing U.S. special operations forces to use foreign military units as surrogates in counterterrorism missions. The Intercept has documented similar 127e operations in multiple African countries, primarily in locations that the U.S. government does not recognize as combat zones, but in which AFRICOM troops are present on the ground.But this MoU is about much more than the U.S. government's proclaimed commitment to help Somalia defeat al-Shabaab. It is a clear indication of the growing geopolitical significance of the Horn of Africa, and comes at a time of mounting concerns (mostly attempts by Yemen's Houthis to disrupt global shipping in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza) about securing the flow of international commerce via the Red Sea. It also coincides with a growing awareness that rising tensions in the Middle East could force the U.S. out of Iraq.The U.S. government's plan to train Somali security forces at newly-established military bases in five different parts of the country (Baidoa, Dhusamareb, Jowhar, Kismayo, and Mogadishu) is a back-door strategy not only to expand the U.S. military's presence in Somalia, but to position itself more assertively vis-à-vis other powers in the region. Indeed, the 127e program is not the only policy that allows for the training and equipping of foreign forces as proxies: section 1202 of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act further expands the ability of the U.S. to wage war via surrogate forces in places where it has not formally declared war, with the broader objective of countering the influence of adversaries like China and Russia. While much ink has been spilled attempting to analyze great power competition on the continent, we have yet to adequately scrutinize the growing influence of middle powers like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar who are each attempting to negotiate their own sphere of influence, and whose involvement in the Horn points to uncertain, if not waning, U.S. power. Turkey maintains its largest foreign military presence in Mogadishu, has trained Somali security forces, and more recently has worked closely with the Somali government in conducting drone strikes against Al-Shabaab. Further underlining deepening Turkish engagement in the country, Somalia and Turkey signed defense and economic agreements earlier this month. Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have trained, and continue to train, local security forces as part of a broader strategy to secure access to regional markets and to assert their control over vital shipping lanes in the Red Sea.With the drawdown of the African Union sponsored "peacekeeping" mission — previously known as AMISOM but renamed ATMIS in 2022 — analysts have expressed apprehension about the expansive nature of foreign actor involvement in Somalia and the risk of Cold War-style competition fueling instability. Indeed, the foreign-sponsored training of multiple "elite" contingents of the Somali National Army (Danab, Waran, Gashaan) has prompted internal divisions within the security establishment in Somalia as it raises chain of command issues and questions about the loyalty of these units. As Colin D. Robinson and Jahara Matisek, both regional and military experts, have said, "The only thing worse is that various Somali units become more loyal and dependent on their foreign patron, short-circuiting the political logic of having security forces that look more like hired proxies than locally organized for self-defense. This may contribute to the growing perception of Somalia becoming a hyper-competitive arena; a republic of militias if you will."Equally significant is the recently announced Memorandum of Understanding between Ethiopia and Somaliland, a separatist region in northwestern Somalia. According to the terms of this yet-to-be signed agreement, in exchange for Somaliland granting 20km of much coveted sea access for the Ethiopian Navy for a period of 50 years, Ethiopia would formally recognize the Republic of Somaliland as an independent nation. The MoU has elicited a wave of anger among Somalis who view Ethiopia as meddling in their internal affairs — and it is precisely this history of meddling that has in the past contributed to al-Shabaab's support base as it positions itself as the defender of Somali nationalism and autonomy. While the U.S. State Department called for respect for Somalia's sovereignty and territorial integrity and urged dialogue in response to the Ethiopia-Somaliland MoU in the name of de-escalating tensions in the region, the February 15 announcement that the U.S. intends to ramp up its involvement in Somalia is hardly an indication of a neutral stance. Rather, it is an indication of U.S. positioning in an increasingly militarized jockeying by foreign powers in this strategic but troubled country and region. In Mogadishu, many Somalis are welcoming the U.S. announcement, perhaps in some cases hoping for job opportunities, and in others viewing the U.S. military support and presence as a potential buffer against Ethiopia. But if the past several decades of U.S. mis-adventures in Somalia are any indication, expanding U.S. involvement risks perpetuating rather than minimizing further conflict.
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Rockets fired from Lebanon at the northern Israeli city of Safed killed one soldier and wounded eight others. The attack is an escalation, and the Israel Defense Forces launched numerous airstrikes in retaliation. Israel's Chief of Staff told members of northern communities who remain evacuated that the IDF would enable them to return to their homes. The post Rocket fire from Lebanon strikes IDF base first appeared on FDD's Long War Journal.