News Story: Russia's Middle East power play

By: Matthew Bodner

Moscow — A week after concluding its combat mission in Syria, Russia’s flagship Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier had one final mission in the Mediterranean. It was, perhaps, a mission for which the ship was most capable: impressing Third-World strongmen.  

On Jan. 11, Russian news agencies reported that East Libyan general Khalifa Haftar was flown aboard the Kuznetsov for a personal tour from the ship’s captain and a video conference with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu. The publicized comments were vague and predictable.  

“They discussed pressing issues in the fight against international terrorist groups in the Middle East,” the Defense Ministry was quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency as saying. It was the latest evidence that Moscow is courting Haftar as part of a broader effort across the region.  

In November, Haftar visited Moscow to meet with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Details of that meeting, too,  were scant. But Haftar reportedly asked the Kremlin to assist him in fighting Islamic terrorists in Libya.   

Read the full story at DefenseNews

Editorial: Nuclear Instability in the Asia-Pacific Region?

By Francis P. Sempa

A new study reaches sobering conclusions on the potential for nuclear proliferation.

Henry D. Sokolski, the executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center and former Pentagon official and consultant to the Office of Net Assessment, has written a thoughtful and sobering study on the potential for nuclear proliferation and competition in the Asia-Pacific region. Published in January 2016 by the U.S. Army War College Press, Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future, presents a bleak but not altogether hopeless view of current trends in the development of strategic, intermediate and battlefield nuclear weapons, the spread of ballistic missile technology, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons-grade material throughout the region.

This vision is not shared by most of the world’s policymakers and academic theorists who instead see the world becoming a safer place as the United States and Russia continue to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons, nuclear deterrence becomes virtually “automatic,” and non-nuclear powers obtain “peaceful” nuclear facilities and materials. Sokolski argues that the more sanguine views of the nuclear future in the Asia-Pacific fail to “fully explore the regional insecurities that arise with threatened nuclear weapons breakouts or ramp-ups,” ignore the “significant overlaps between civilian and military nuclear activities or the risk that ‘peaceful’ nuclear facilities or materials might be diverted to make bombs,” and downplay the potential strategic instability that may result from U.S.-Russian nuclear disarmament in the face of nuclear weapons build-ups by China, India, Pakistan, and possibly other regional states, and the proliferation of nuclear facilities and materials.

Read the full story at The Diplomat