Connect with us

World News

Russia Revises Navy Doctrine to counter “unacceptable” NATO expansion

Avatar photo

Published

on

Welcome to the Caspian Daily, where you will find the 10 most important things you need to know on Caspian Sea Region. We appreciate ideas, reports, news and interesting articles. Send along to Caspian[at]moderndiplomacy.eu or on Twitter: @DGiannakopoulos

1Russia will guarantee a permanent naval presence in the Mediterranean and boost its strength in the Atlantic and Arctic under a new strategy to counter “unacceptable” Nato expansion.The plans, which also include ambitious ship-building targets and expansion of infrastructure for the country’s fleet in the Black Sea, were laid out in a new naval doctrine approved by Vladimir Putin on Sunday.Dmitry Rogozin, the deputy prime minister with a portfolio for defence, emphasised the “accent put on the Atlantic and the Arctic” in a meeting with Mr Putin on Sunday. Mr Rogozin, a strong critic of Nato, said that the new doctrine reflects “changes in the international political situation and the objective strengthening of Russia as a great naval power. Our attention towards the Atlantic is justified by the expansion of Nato in the east,” he told Russian news agencies. [Telegraph]

2Why is Russia sending bombers close to U.S. airspace? Two Russian bombers intercepted by U.S. fighter jets off the California coast on July Fourth could be seen as having raised a metaphorical middle finger to the United States.”Good morning, American pilots. We are here to greet you on your Fourth of July Independence Day,” they said, according to the North American Aerospace Defense Command.U.S. fighters also intercepted two other Russian Tu-95 bombers the same day off the southern coast of Alaska. In both instances, American fighter jets flew up to intercept the Russian bombers, and the aircraft turned away. [CNN]

3Azerbaijan is a strategic partner of the EU in peace-building processes and the fields of energy, culture and sport, Novruz Mammadov, the deputy head of Azerbaijani Presidential Administration said.“All this is reality. There is a strange situation. From ambassadors to heads of state, all say Azerbaijan is a country to be cooperated. However, they say that it’s a newspaper and wrote this article, it’s a NGO and made this statement. This breaks the balance of justice. Officials say Azerbaijan is at high level, but if any newspaper or NGO release any information, it undermines Azerbaijan’s reputation. I’m in doubt that such mechanism will bring a success to the West. Most of world countries are in doubt about these approaches,” Mammadov noted.

4Kazakhstan Wind Power Market: Outlook 2015 – 2025.This market report offers an incisive and reliable long-term overview of the wind power sector of the country for the period 2015-2025. Current cumulative installed wind capacity in the country is insignificant, but a number of fully permitted and ready to build projects will promptly increase in 2015 and next years. First MW szie wind power plants have been launched into commerical operation, whilst pipeline of over 1,300 MW (1.3 GW) wind projects pipeline are progressing in different stages of permitting process. Feed-in tariff for wind energy has been approved in Kazakhstan in June 2014, and combined with 15 years PPA period are expected to pave the way for fast further growth of wind power market in Kazakhstan. [Research And Markets]

5Iran announced that it will invest $6 billion in Kazakhstan at the latest Kazakh-Iranian forum held in Almaty on July 22-24. The Islamic Republic also plans to establish a center for the exchange of technologies in Kazakhstan’s special economic zone, the “Park of innovative technologies,” where it will present the country’s latest achievements in the mining and oil and gas industries, and the agriculture and healthcare sectors.”Your country has great economic prospects. And we would like to join our efforts for dynamic development in the field of innovative technologies. This forum should be a first step in this work,” Iranian Deputy Minister of Science, Research, and Technology Vahid Ahmadi said. Kazakhstan and Iran cooperate fruitfully in international and regional organizations, including the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

6Kazakhstan: 100 Steps Toward a New Nation. “The 100 Concrete Steps program, called Plan of the Nation, was unveiled soon after President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s re-election and is designed to provide the strong national platform needed to overcome both short-term challenges and achieve the country’s ambition of joining the top 30 developed countries by 2050. It is a comprehensive reform package that builds on past progress to drive improvements in all the country’s institutional pillars” writes Erlan Idrissov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan. [The Diplomat]

7Azerbaijan was effective in countering radicalisation. “Azerbaijan continues to be a beacon of secularism and tolerance notwithstanding the recent turbulence in the Muslim world. Walking in the streets of the Azerbaijan, a country with a predominantly Muslim population, one cannot help admiring the culture of acceptance. Even during the holy month of Ramadan, all the restaurants and cafes in Baku are open with plenty of people in them. Some people wear modern dresses, others more traditional ones. Some are drinking alcoholic beverages whereas others prefer soft drinks. Judgement and enforced values are absent here” [Euractiv]

8Iran ready to sign $1bn worth of contracts with Turkmenistan. Irans oil minister, Bijan Zanganeh held talks with Turkmenistan’s Foreign Minister, Rashid Muradov in Tehran on Sunday, discussing further expansion of trade exchanges between Tehran and Ashgabat.On the sidelines of the meeting, Iran’s deputy oil minister for international affairs and trade said Iran is ready to sign about $1 billion worth of contracts with Turkmenistan for the export of technical and engineering goods and services to the Central Asian country .Turkmenistan has been always a good trade partner for Iran and we hope it would remain the same in the future,” Amir Hossein Zamaninia added .

9UAE’s Alpha Destination Management Company hosted a series of roadshows in Russia in a bid to promote the Gulf region as an all-encompassing tourism destination. Russia is among Dubai’s top 10 tourism source markets with the number of weekly flights from to UAE almost tripling in the past two years, reaching 124 flights last year. The promotional and marketing initiative was held over a 10-day period in eight Russian cities and evoked strong response from the travel trade professionals.

10Azerbaijan supports Turkey in its fight against ISIL. “The Syrian crisis and the operations of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) are taking place in Turkey’s neighborhood. Other processes, respectively, also affect Turkey. It is normal that the Turkish government is taking actions against ISIL” said Novruz Mammadov, deputy head of Azerbaijani Presidential Administration, chief of the Administration’s Foreign Relations Department.

Journalist, specialized in Middle East, Russia & FSU, Terrorism and Security issues. Founder and Editor-in-chief of the Modern Diplomacy magazine.

Continue Reading
Comments

World News

White House is following a narrow path of strict escalation toward superpower confrontation

Avatar photo

Published

on

Current U.S. foreign policy toward Russia is following a narrow path of strict escalation toward superpower confrontation. Russia is not going to lead a peace effort, nor will Ukraine, writes Matthew G. Andersson, a law and policy author, he studied with White House National Security Advisor W.W. Rostow at the Johnson School of Public Affairs.

The Biden administration has through its own incompetence and incapacity, also left leadership open to other countries. It is a strategy that creates economic and industrial disruption, perhaps even deliberate destruction, including of American government itself.

Why would this be?

I suggest that there are six reasons that directly serve the “Biden” administration by this foreign policy of war escalation:

The current administration’s domestic social policies are so radical that they cannot be implemented (or disclosed) within a normal spectrum of law and government. Its plans require extra-constitutional authority. War provides that authority.

A formalized war footing with Russia is presumed an essential path to oil and gas supply disruption, both physical (exploration, production, and refinement, including Arctic claims) and price stability disruption, which presumably will accelerate green energy switching behavior (problem: there is nothing to switch to). In reality, war merely enriches oil and gas, and further consolidates its central energy role.

Financial flows, commercial/central banking, and U.S. dollar stability would all be subject to war-time emergency manipulation. The U.S. is not able to absorb over $30 Trillion in national debt obligations under normal economic arrangements and methods.

War is also an ideal platform to fully effect political persecution, and the marginalization or complete removal of competitive political parties. The U.S. is already well on its way to a single-party consolidation. A civil or world war “seals the deal” just as it did in wartime Germany, the Soviet Union, North Korea, and eventually in Cuba and China. The Biden administration has numerous “blueprints” it can follow from other countries, as the administration is saturated with inexperienced ideologues who both naively admire “revolutionaries” and at the same time are intellectually incapable of imagining and carrying out actual economic development policy.

A fifth reason involves traditional Pentagon motivations in defense spending. Most of the public (and even political class) doesn’t acknowledge that the GWOT (Global War on Terror) is still fully operational, but more, its legal infrastructure, formed after 2001 through the Patriot Act, among other legislation and executive orders (hundreds that remain undisclosed or unexamined) can be activated at-will under emergency pretext. Moreover, the GWOT has been turned inward toward America’s own citizens. All that was required was a structured program of terror accusations against a manufactured target: Trump provided that, and now Russia does in a war context.

Finally, war unleashes massive disruptions in population, demographics and health risk. The current administration and its supporters, above all else, are ideologues devoted to population control because it is the “root cause” of global warming. And global warming is the fundamental organizing policy of the Left, even though it has nothing to do with climate, but rather with absolute social control.

An unsettling aspect of the Biden administration’s foreign policy is that, while it seeks war, it isn’t prepared to fight one (especially with a putative civilian commander qualified for 25th Amendment removal): it invites a confrontation with Russia (and to some extent with China) not to win, but in an unprecedented perversion of U.S. national security interests, to lose: it has declared America, Americanism, and a majority of Americans, as its enemy.

It will use Russia as a tool for its own domestic “transformation” which means the attempted dismantling of U.S. constitutional law.

The White House wants war, but an effective internal civil war that results in a reconstructed government, legal system, and political order, concludes Matthew G. Andersson.

Continue Reading

World News

Polish militants join armored assaults into Russian Territory

Avatar photo

Published

on

Polish militants fighting in Ukraine have participated in recent assaults into Russia’s Belgorod Region, with the Polish Volunteer Corps releasing an announcement and video evidence of their roles in these operations. The militants were specifically involved in an assault of Belgorod’s Grayvoron District on May 22, which was one of the initial major incursions launched from Ukrainian territory, writes “Military Watch Magazine”.

Videos published by the Polish militants regarding their operations show them using Ukrainian T-72B tanks and Mi-8 helicopters as well as U.S.-supplied HMMWV armoured vehicles, which comes as part of a much wider trend towards Polish combatants in Ukraine being given extensive access to weapons supplies as they are often considered more reliable than many of the local conscript units.  

Poland has been outstanding even within the Western world for its hard line position against Russia, with senior politicians calling for Russia’s “balkanization” into separate states, while the country’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki stated shortly after the outbreak of fighting in Ukraine that the only way forward for the West was through “fighting” against Moscow…

The country has accordingly been a leading supplier of armaments to Ukraine. In contrast to political leaders, however, Polish military leaders have repeatedly expressed serious doubts regarding Ukraine and its allies’ ability to prevail in the ongoing war against Russia.

Although forces from multiple Western countries have been deployed very widely in Ukraine, forming what the ‘New York Times’ referred to as a ‘stealth network’ of assets directed by Western intelligence agencies to fight Russia within the country, Poland has been the leading contributor of manpower among foreign countries involved in the conflict.

Former senior advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Defence U.S. Army Colonel (ret.) Douglas McGregor accordingly reported the presence of an estimated 20,000 contractors from Poland alone who have played key roles in the war effort including in frontline positions such as Bakhmut, which was for months a key centre of hostilities until its capture by Russian forces in late May.

Continue Reading

World News

Gen. Li Shangfu: “When jackals or wolves come, we will face them with shotguns”

Avatar photo

Published

on

In his first international public address since becoming defense minister in March, General Li Shangfu told the Shangri-La Dialogue that China doesn’t have any problems with “innocent passage” but that “we must prevent attempts that try to use those freedom of navigation (patrols), that innocent passage, to exercise hegemony of navigation.”

A U.S. guided-missile destroyer and a Canadian frigate were intercepted by a Chinese warship as they transited the strait between the self-governed island of Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, and mainland China. The Chinese vessel overtook the American ship and then veered across its bow at a distance of 150 yards in an “unsafe manner,” according to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

Additionally, the U.S. has said a Chinese J-16 fighter jet late last month “performed an unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” while intercepting a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance aircraft over the South China Sea, flying directly in front of the plane’s nose.

Those and previous incidents have raised concerns of a possible accident occurring that could lead to an escalation between the two nations at a time when tensions are already high.

Li suggested the U.S. and its allies had created the danger, and should instead should focus on taking “good care of your own territorial airspace and waters.”

“The best way is for the countries, especially the naval vessels and fighter jets of countries, not to do closing actions around other countries’ territories,” he said through an interpreter. “What’s the point of going there? In China we always say, ‘Mind your own business.’”

He accused the U.S. and others of “meddling in China’s internal affairs” by providing Taiwan with defense support and training, and conducting high-level diplomatic visits.

“China stays committed to the path of peaceful development, but we will never hesitate to defend our legitimate rights and interests, let alone sacrifice the nation’s core interests,” he said.

“As the lyrics of a well-known Chinese song go: ‘When friends visit us, we welcome them with fine wine. When jackals or wolves come, we will face them with shotguns.’”

In his speech U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin broadly outlined the U.S. vision for a “free, open, and secure Indo-Pacific within a world of rules and rights.”

Li scoffed at the notion, saying “some country takes a selective approach to rules and international laws.” “It likes forcing its own rules on others,” he said. “Its so-called ‘rules-based international order’ never tells you what the rules are and who made these rules.”

Continue Reading

Publications

Latest

South Asia40 mins ago

Whose Human Rights Matter?

Every year, the US State Department publishes a report on the human rights situation in various countries around the world....

Africa2 hours ago

Republic of Ghana to host PanAfrican Mall

The capital city of Accra, Republic of Ghana, hosts the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). The AfCFTA spearheads the...

Health & Wellness4 hours ago

Influenced by light, biological rhythms say a lot about health

Life patterns help humans and other animals stay in sync with nature and in good form. By Gareth Willmer For...

Reports4 hours ago

WEF Report Highlights Retirement Trends as Life Expectancy Increases

Life expectancy increased from an average of 46 to 73 years between 1950 and 2019 and the United Nations forecasts...

World News7 hours ago

White House is following a narrow path of strict escalation toward superpower confrontation

Current U.S. foreign policy toward Russia is following a narrow path of strict escalation toward superpower confrontation. Russia is not...

World News9 hours ago

Polish militants join armored assaults into Russian Territory

Polish militants fighting in Ukraine have participated in recent assaults into Russia’s Belgorod Region, with the Polish Volunteer Corps releasing...

Tech News12 hours ago

Analyzing the Major Unique Problems Modern Cars Can Cause Drivers: Is New Really Better Than Old?

While there are few replacements for the nostalgia of classic cars, are modern motors really more functional than their predecessors?...

Trending