6 Reasons Why Kim Jong Un Is Screwed

If I was reading this without any background knowledge of north Korea I would say that these six reasons would indicate significant resistance potential inside north Korea.  Unfortunately it appears that the regime's suppression mechanisms remain firmly in place and while much of what is described in the article is known to be taking place inside north Korea, the regime is still able to quash any grass roots organization and resistance.  However, this should also provide some validation of the recommended preparations, particularly in the area of an influence campaign that can lay the foundation for operations in a post Kim Family Regime north. 

V/R

Dave

6 Reasons Why Kim Jong Un Is Screwed

For all the bloviating, North Korea is actually changing from the inside out, and things don't look good for its leadership.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/06/6-reasons-why-kim-jong-un-is-screwed/277072/

SOKEEL PARKJUN 20 2013, 2:30 PM ET

A schoolgirl walks by as North Korean students and volunteers work to repair a water supply system in Haeju on October 1, 2011. (Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

The North Korean state is increasingly an anomaly in the world today, a throwback to some of the most egregious authoritarian regimes of the 20th century. The regime prevents any political dissent through collective punishment in political prison camps for not just the offending individual, but also their whole family. This means there are no known dissidents or human rights activists inside the country; no North Korean Aung San Suu Kyis or Liu Xiabos, and therefore no leaders for alternative domestic political forces to organize around.

If North Korea falls, the ruling elite fears it will be absorbed into the larger and richer South Korean system, where anybody who is anybody -- in the military, internal security forces, the party, government officials, even the new economic elites -- could lose their jobs to their counterparts from the south and see the system they rely on for power and wealth disappear. Former officials could find themselves on trial or even suffer reprisals from citizens who have been oppressed for so long.

North Korean refugees have reported evidence of several long-term, significant, irreversible social trends that will eventually lead to their country's transformation.

This uncertainty heightens the ruling elite's fear of instability and makes them averse to any kind of change that may accelerate their loss of control.

But wait, there's hope.

North Korean refugees have reported evidence of several long-term, significant, irreversible social trends that will eventually lead to a transformation of North Korea.

The trigger for these social changes was the collapse of the state-socialist economy in the 1990s, which led to a famine that killed up to one million North Koreans. Out of that tragedy emerged the survival mechanism of grassroots marketization, which enabled people to provide for themselves and others with food, goods and services that the government could not or would not provide. In this changing North Korea, we have identified six reasons why the North Korean people will drive a transformation of their country in our lifetime.

Here are the reasons North Korea is unsustainable.

1) Economic Divergence

Reliable data on North Korea's economy is unsurprisingly hard to come by, but the simple truth is that the current system is unable to foster economic development. This is primarily the result of the regime's absolute prioritization of political control. The obsessive effort to micromanage society stifles the people's potential, holding them back and effectively enforcing poverty on them.

By contrast, over the past 50 years South Korea has gone from being one of the poorest countries in the world to sitting between Israel and New Zealand in per capita GDP (see above chart). The difference between North and South Korea's economies is already the biggest of any two neighboring countries in the world. Just 30 years ago, China was poorer than North Korea; now North Koreans who manage to travel to China (or even just look across the river) are amazed at the bright lights and development they see there. As the rest of the region races ahead, the regime's strategy of obstinately denying change will become incrementally more difficult, especially as this economic discrepancy becomes increasingly obvious to the people.

2) Grassroots Glasnost

The regime has traditionally denied free speech and isolated its people from the outside world in order to maintain its monopoly as the only source of information inside the country. There is no Internet access for all but a select group of officials, and every newspaper and TV station is a mouthpiece for the regime.

However, this information blockade is crumbling, and increasing numbers of refugees report watching South Korean dramas and Hollywood (and even Bollywood) movies that are smuggled in on DVDs and USBs from China. There is also a growing number of Chinese cell phones that are used in border regions to call contacts in China and South Korea -- highly illegal but massively lucrative. Many North Koreans leaving the country more recently report having a much better awareness of the reality of the outside world -- including the relative advancement of South Korea -- than those who left 10 or even five years ago.

The spread of new technologies and information cannot be stopped, and as the information flows increase the regime will be faced with a simple choice: either align their narrative about their country closer to reality, or watch as their traditional narrative becomes increasingly hollow and powerless.

3) Explosion of Corruption

The corruption that was born of the 1990s economic collapse has also led to a loss of control over grassroots society. The regime is essentially broke and cannot provide a budget to most government agencies, nor can they afford proper wages for most officials. Paired with the emergence of new routes to private wealth through the informal economy, bribes and kickbacks have become widespread.

North Koreans consistently tell us that to get ahead or even just survive in North Korea, you have to break the regime's rules, and that money enables all of those rules to be broken. Corruption is therefore steadily eroding the regime's control and authority over society, and there is no effective way to rein this in unless the system itself changes.

4) Refugees Bridging Back Into North Korea

There are tens of thousands of North Koreans that have illegally escaped and have resettled in South Korea, Europe, and North America, and thousands more are leaving every year. These resettled refugees are playing a crucial role in accelerating change in their homeland by serving as a bridge back into North Korea.

An estimated 50 percent of resettled refugees maintain contact with their families back inside through illicit channels and illegal Chinese cell phones. This provides a route for information about the outside world, which is then spread around by word of mouth. Perhaps even more importantly, refugees are sending money back to their North Korean relatives through broker networks. An estimated $10-15 million is being sent each year, enabling family members to bribe security officials, protect themselves, and even invest in entrepreneurial business activity or smuggling operations. Refugees' remittances are fueling the grassroots economy, speeding up the erosion of regime power, and increasing the bottom-up forces for change.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/06/6-reasons-why-kim-jong-un-is-screwed/277072/

How Chinese Strategists Think - and a comparison to north Korean Strategists

See the article on Chinese Strategists below.  I received the following in response to the article.

I think this is a very instructive summary of how the north Koreans view and "do" strategy from one our nation's foremost experts on north Korea: Robert Collins.  This short summary explains more about the nature of the Kim Family Regime than can be read in volumes of studies on north Korea.

Conversely, North Korean strategists are constrained by a stovepipe organizational structure where individuals developing strategy and individuals implementing strategy are judged consistently on their support of supreme leader guidance.  Organizations - party, military and government - are judged the same way.  Policy is developed around supreme leader guidance and never the other way around.  While competing leaders have differing opinions, they cannot go against supreme leader guidance unless they are close enough to talk directly to the supreme leader or demonstrate fault in a competitor's logic.  This creates an extremely dominant trend of compliance with current policy - whether it is the military planning provocations, the foreign ministry linking alternatives to military policy for maximum effect (the on-again, off-again provocation mixed with diplomatic initiatives), human rights policy, or economic policy.  The only entity that can openly counter supreme leader guidance is the supreme leader himself.  To change his opinion demands personal access, something only a handful of people have.  Strategists must comply with the on-again, off-again approach that has been the standard for decades.  Same people, same policy, same strategy. 

V/R
Dave

How Chinese Strategists Think

By  James R. Holmes

http://thediplomat.com/the-naval-diplomat/2013/06/19/how-chinese-strategists-think/

June 19, 2013

Toshi Yoshihara joins me (or I join him) over at Investor's Business Dailyto refocus attention on the human dimension of the U.S.-China strategic competition. Followers of these pages pixels know that Toshi and I are true believers in the idea that competition is a human enterprise. As Colonel John Boyd liked to say, people, ideas, and hardware — in that order — are the determinants of competitive endeavors like power politics.

People, not stuff, fight.

That's not to say hardware is unimportant. Not for nothing did author Hilaire Belloc ascribe British imperial dominance over subject peoples to the fact that "we have got the Maxim gun, and they have not." Too great a material advantage, then, can translate into an insurmountable competitive advantage. And this mismatch holds true beyond colonial wars against outgunned antagonists. World War I proved that there were limits to men's capacity to stand against fire, even when peer army faced peer army.

But human ingenuity is crucial even in the material dimension, isn't it? It's the common denominator among all of Boyd's elements of competition. People with ample resources concoct gee-whiz engines of war. People not blessed with such abundance can work around material shortcomings, devising asymmetric tactics and weaponry to get more bang out of scarce materiel. Look no further than the improvised explosive device, a homemade landmine that has given high-tech militaries fits in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Only expensive countermeasures have kept the IED menace at bay, and imperfectly so at that.

Which is a roundabout way of getting back to China. As red-blooded 'Mercans, my wingman and I have little sympathy with Beijing's goals. But as professors we've come to admire how assiduously our Chinese counterparts do their homework. They look to history, and to the greats of strategic theory, to guide their thinking and illuminate their strategic discourses. Mahan is a fixture in debates over sea power, however improbable that might seem. Corbett puts in the odd appearance. And, unsurprisingly, Sun Tzu and Mao are regulars.

(Continued at the link below)

Is There Method in N.Korea's Diplomatic Madness?

From north Korea's point of view there is plenty of method and no madness.

V/R

Dave

Is There Method in N.Korea's Diplomatic Madness?

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2013/06/18/2013061801356.html

North Korea's proposal of high-level talks with the U.S. was only the latest in a series of developments that have baffled North Korea watchers. The North's recent antics have given the impression of a desperately flailing foreign policy, whether brought about by new leader Kim Jong-un's inexperience or power struggles behind the scenes, but some believe there is a plan behind the chaos.

The proposal on Sunday came not from the Foreign Ministry, which is the usual conduit of talks with Washington, but from the National Defense Commission, which came to excessive influence under former leader Kim Jong-il's "military first" doctrine. It also seemed to be fishing for mutual disarmament talks instead of discussion about ways to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, which North Korea knows the U.S. will not accept.

Some pundits say the recent offers of talks with first South Korea and then the U.S. were never meant to be accepted but merely aimed to mollify China, which is growing tired of the North's histrionics.

◆ Blowing Hot and Cold

North Korea had been ratcheting up tensions since early March, announcing it was scrapping the armistice that halted the 1950-53 Korean War, issuing threats of a nuclear attack against the South and the U.S. and shutting down the inter-Korean Kaesong Industrial Complex.

Then in mid-May it was all suddenly over. Pyongyang welcomed Japanese cabinet advisor Isao Iijima, a key aide to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on May 14. Eight days later Kim dispatched senior military figure Choe Ryong-hae as a special envoy to China, where he was given a frosty reception.

On June 6, North Korea proposed high-level government talks with South Korea, only to scrap them in a huff a few days later, and then on Sunday talks with senior U.S. officials.

Some pundits believe this is all carefully thought out and designed to drive a wedge between South Korea, the U.S. and China, which have grown closer in condemning the North's belligerent antics and calling for it to abandon its nuclear weapons. But most agree that these tactics have been a resounding flop.

(Continued at the link below)

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2013/06/18/2013061801356.html

Tortured, beaten, starved: life in a Korean gulag

Good to hear from our good friend Greg Scarlatoiu who knows a thing or two about Human Rights in north Korea.

V/R

Dave

Tortured, beaten, starved: life in a Korean gulag

• Date 18.06.2013
• Author Esther Felden
• Editor Sarah Berning
• http://www.dw.de/tortured-beaten-starved-life-in-a-korean-gulag/a-16889451

HUMAN RIGHTS

Tortured, beaten, starved: life in a Korean gulag
Thousands of people are worked and tortured to death in North Korean gulags every year. Executive Director of the US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea Greg Scarlatoiu tells DW about their living conditions.

As many as 200,000 people are believed to be locked up in North Korean gulags. But that's just an estimate. How difficult is it to get reliable information?

The information that we have comes from former prisoners and former guards, for example, Shin Dong-Hyuk, the hero of the escape from Camp 14, a young man who was born in the gulag and lived there until the age of 23 when he managed to escape. Mr. Ahn Myong-Chol was a prison guard at Camp 22 in Hoeryong and a driver at the camps. He was there between 1990 and 1994. He is the one who reported that prisoners had been used for human experimentation inside the camps. This information comes not only from former prisoners and guards but also from former employees - North Korea's internal intelligence agencies, the agencies that manage the camps. For example, the number that you mentioned between 150,000 and 200,000 has been confirmed by former officials of North Korea's state security department who defected to South Korea and who were debriefed by South Korean intelligence. Also, the information that we get is cross-checked with satellite imagery. It is amazing to see how the information provided by former prisoners can actually be identified. They identify the structures there, they can recognize, for example, their sleeping quarters, a building that was used as detention and interrogation facility. So these are the means that we have at our disposal.

So how big would you say is the part of the overall picture that is still unknown or guess work?

Well, I would say that we have a fairly clear idea. There are things we know for sure: that the camps exist, the population of the camps is between 150,00 and 200,000; massive human rights violations happen at these facilities, that we know for sure. We also know there are different types of facilities and that the level of seclusion might be different; there are facilities called "total control zones." People who are held there have no chance of getting out. Those are very rare occurrences. So we know many things for certain. There are also things we don't know for certain. We know that the death rate inside these camps is absolutely astounding. Every witness you talk to has seen someone die next to him or her. It almost seems that some of the work units inside the camps lose a third or half of their members due to forced labor, induced malnutrition, torture, beatings - due to the horrifying conditions inside the camps. So we know that the death rates are high but what we don't know for sure is whether new arrivals, new prisoners, make up for the number of those who have died. So in other words, if 2,000 prisoners die at a given camp during one year, we're not sure if 2,000 new prisoners are brought to the camp. And that would have a direct impact on the number of prisoners being held there. The number that we still work with is 150,000 to 200,000. Some of our colleagues in South Korea have signaled that due to the astoundingly high death rates at the camps, the number might have declined. But we are not sure and in the process of verifying the information. We know that these abuses are terrible but probably we have barely scratched the surface. The number of witnesses we've talked to is very limited. One day, we will learn the full truth about these facilities and it will be terrible.

What kind of torture is applied to the prisoners?

(Continued at the link below)

• http://www.dw.de/tortured-beaten-starved-life-in-a-korean-gulag/a-16889451

5 Rules for Arming Rebels: Before going to war in Syria, the Obama administration should heed the lessons of history.

I hope the strategists and planners (and even policymakers) are paying close attention to unconventional warfare history  doctrine, and best practices.

V/R
Dave

5 Rules for Arming Rebels

Before going to war in Syria, the Obama administration should heed the lessons of history.

BY EDWARD LUTTWAK | JUNE 17, 2013

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/17/five_rules_for_arming_rebels_syria?print=yes&hidecomments=yes&page=full

It was for several good and solid reasons that U.S. President Barack Obama's administration long resisted pressures to intervene more forcefully in Syria's civil war. To start with, there is the sheer complexity of a conflict at the intersection of religious, ethnic, regional, and global politics, as illustrated by the plain fact that the most Westernized of Syrians (including its Christians) support the Assad government that the United States seeks to displace, while its enemies are certainly not America's friends and, indeed, include the most dangerous of Muslim extremists. But no matter: After two years of restraint, the administration -- having decided to send "direct military assistance" to the rebels -- has chosen sides and is now choosing sides within sides.

By now, after failed attempts at managing complexity in Iraq and Afghanistan, all should soberly recognize that any successful intervention requires the terrible I-win, you-lose simplicity of war. When that is absent, so too is success. In the end, regardless of the costs in blood and treasure of U.S. efforts -- costs that in this case also include a greater enmity with Russia -- it is still likely that all sides will blame the American infidel for anything that displeases them, as in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, and Libya. Neither complexity nor the inevitable accusations of sinister American motives (greed for oil, war on Islam, or both) can be helped, but the Obama administration has stepped forward anyway. Even if conditions on the ground in Syria virtually exclude the possibility of a good outcome, the following five rules -- derived from bitter experience in arming other rebels (some of it personal) -- could at least serve to minimize the damage.

Rule 1: Figure out who your friends are.

The first rule, politically, is to identify one's allies. When Obama finally, officially, makes the announcement that Washington is arming the rebels, it must include the key phrases: "We are acting with our allies in the region" or, better, "our close allies in the region and beyond it." But once the obligatory words are spoken, it is essential that all U.S. personnel all the way down the chain of command be fully aware of the brutal truth that explains the survival of Bashar al-Assad's regime: America's "allies in the region" are remarkably ineffectual, in spite of every apparent advantage. Early on, Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani proclaimed his total support for the "Syrian people," sending money and buying weapons at ridiculous prices (and delivering very few). And though his armed forces are small and poorly placed to provide any combat support, he does have billions of dollars at his disposal that he can and does spend on every passing whim. The same goes for the Saudis, who are much less noisy than the Qataris in supporting the rebels but are the real leaders of the Sunni crusade against Assad -- and they too are not short of funds.

Yet in spite of the most ample promises by Qatar and the Saudis, Syrian refugees in Jordan have been living in misery -- there are even persistent reports of the sale of child brides by desperate families. Likewise, the actual flow of weapons to the rebels has been notably meager. In neither case it is just a matter of simple avarice, but rather reflects the operational incapacity of both governments. For more than a year, Washington has been content to allow others to funnel weapons and money, but with Assad's recent victories against the rebels, Obama was forced into action. The Saudi and Qatari rulers just do not have honest, efficient officials whom they can rely on to distribute money or weapons wisely. In the bad old days, the Saudis would just hand over sacks of $100 bills to Osama bin Laden, before he turned against them. Now, too, they would willingly hand over sacks of bank notes to a chief if there were one, but they simply cannot field officials on the ground who can choose between the great number of Syrian claimants, given U.S. injunctions not to arm the most extreme jihadists, including those who accept the "al-Nusra" label.

A much greater surprise is Turkey's all-round incapacity. Early on, with characteristic bombast, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan more or less ordered Assad to stop shooting and start talking. With 75 million inhabitants, a fast-growing economy, a million men under arms, and a 510-mile border with Syria, Turkey should have been the dominant power in the confrontation. But instead of being intimidated into surrender, or just moderation, the Assad regime publiclyridiculed Erdogan and Turkish imperial pretensions, denounced Turkey's Islamist government as nothing more than Sunni fanatics, and then proceeded toshoot down a stray Turkish jet fighter before repeatedly sending artillery rounds into Turkish towns. The Turkish response to this insult and attack? Nothing. And that is what Turkey will do as an ally of the United States in Syria: nothing.

It turns out that the country's 15 million to 20 million Bektashis and other Alevis, long cruelly persecuted by Sunni rulers, oppose any action that would strengthen the Sunnis of Syria. In addition, there are also some 2 million Alawites along the border with Syria, mostly in Hatay, the piece of Syria annexed by Turkey in 1939, who vehemently support their compatriot Assad. Then there are the Kurds who predominate in the provinces along the border with Syria and automatically oppose any action by the Turkish armed forces they have so long resisted. On top of that, Turkey's ruling AKP Islamist party has used conspiracy charges, arising from the supposedly vast Ergenekon plot, against dozens of very senior officers to immobilize the armed forces, which are guilty in the party's eyes of both defending secularism and menacing democracy. They have succeeded all too well, but this leaves Turkey as a non-power -- a richly ironic outcome given the solemn debates of recent years on whether Ankara is a regional power, a middle power, or a neo-Ottoman power as Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu kept claiming. The world has discovered that Turkey is not even a small power. The bottom line is that the United States will not only lack an ally in fighting Assad, but will also have to operate in a hostile environment, given the many people in Turkey who support the Syrian regime -- some of them ready and willing to attack any U.S. personnel they encounter, or at least help Assad's agents in trying to kill Americans.

Rule 2: Be prepared to do all the work.

Given these "allies," the United States will have to do the lifting -- and not just the heavy part. There should be no illusions now that anyone will be of much help, with the possible exception of whatever money can be extracted from Qatar and Saudi Arabia. That, in turn, raises the issue of which Americans should do the dirty work of funneling weapons. Always bureaucratically adept, even if operationally incompetent in far too many cases, the CIA already has the Washington end of the action. But if weapons are to be supplied, it is essential to call on the only Americans who can tell the difference between Sunni bad guys who only want to oppress other Syrians and the really bad guys who happen to be waging their global jihad in Syria. What's needed are true experts, people who really speak the region's Arabic: the regular U.S. Army and Marine Corps officers who successfully sponsored and then effectively controlled the Sunni tribal insurgents in Iraq whose "awakening" defeated the jihadists who were attacking U.S. troops. Some of them are already involved in supporting the rebels under Joint Special Operations Command, but if the mission were expanded it would be a good idea to call for volunteers from the reservists who did the same job in Iraq.

Rule 3: Don't give away anything that you would want to have back.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/17/five_rules_for_arming_rebels_syria?print=yes&hidecomments=yes&page=full

Building A Nation, One Village At A Time (VSO in Afghanistan and my commentary and excerpts on Army Activities in Underdeveloped Areas Short of Declared War in 1961)

The first half of the article is an overview of village stability operations (VSO)  at the team village level.

Excerpt describing the future of SOF in Afghanistan post-2014:

“The Village Stability Operations mission will go away in December 2014,” says the man who created the program, Brig. Gen. Donald C. Bolduc, deputy commanding general of Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan. “We are planning for that very closely with our Afghan partners. We see that as a very doable objective.” 

Bolduc, who rushed back to his office at a base in Kabul from a local police ceremony in the eastern city of Mihtarlam because of threatening weather, says the plan is to turn the keys over to the Afghans. They will be “fully in control, of the training, logistics, sustainment, education, pay, and quality control of the Afghan Local Police.” 

Though the White House and Pentagon have yet to say how many troops will remain beyond 2014, when President Barack Obama wants most U.S. forces out of Afghanistan, Bolduc has a vision for what special operations forces will be doing. 

“Our role will be two-fold,” Bolduc says in an interview. 

The first will be ensuring that regional training centers, like the one run by the 7th Special Forces Group team, “are functioning properly. We will do that for a period of time.” 

The second role will be “mentoring here in Kabul at the national level, for both the deputy minister of security as well as the commander of the Afghan Local Police. That's what I see.” 

But while the author means well here but I cannot believe that USSOCOM really means to conduct VSO around the world.  I think a lot of US country teams and Host Nations might be put off by the idea that US Special Forces will be coming into the HN to conduct VSO. 

Called Village Stability Operations, it's a classic role for special operations forces and one that could work in different places around the world as Special Operations Command headquarters in Tampa develops a new global doctrine for those forces.

I would also point that a traditional part of Special Forces doctrine has always been the conduct of Remote Area Operations from which the concept of VSO comes but unfortunately the last time I can find it in any SOF doctrine is from 2007 but this concept has been part of Army SF doctrine since the 1960's:

Remote Area Operations. Remote area operations are operations undertaken in insurgent-controlled or contested areas to establish islands of popular support for the HN government and deny support to the insurgents. They differ from consolidation operations in that they are not designed to establish permanent HN government control over the area. Remote areas may be populated by ethnic, religious, or other isolated minority groups. They may be in the interior of the HN or near border areas where major infiltration routes exist. Remote area operations normally involve the use of specially trained paramilitary or irregular forces. SF teams support remote area operations to interdict insurgent activity, destroy insurgent base areas in the remote area, and demonstrate that the HN government has not conceded control to the insurgents. They also collect and report information concerning insurgent intentions in more populated areas. In this case, SF teams advise and assist irregular HN forces operating in a manner similar to the insurgents themselves, but with access to superior combat support (CS) and combat service support (CSS) resources. (From FM 3-05.202 Foreign Internal Defense 2007.)

We should keep in mind that there is no silver bullet/holy grail once size fits all template which is why I challenge the idea that we will be conducting VSO around the world.  I hope that is not what USSOCOM means.

As an aside I would offer this 1961 document, Army Activities in Underdeveloped Areas Short of Declared War by Brigadier General Richard G. Stilwell.  What we are talking about today in terms of a Global SOF Network as well as the whole concept of regionally aligned brigades is not new.  This is a pretty detailed review of what was going on in 1961 within the Army around the world and what the possibilities were for supporting US national interests in "underdeveloped areas short of declared war."Excerpt from page 1-3.  The 4.1 MB 71 page document can be downloaded at this link: http://db.tt/EKfPuCjB

3. In essence, General Decker envisaged the employment
of selected military personnel and units as a "transmission belt" _
communicating, at the grass roots, Army know-how and community
of aims. Three major purposes tobe served by U. S. military

a. To give impetus to the employrrlent of military
talent and resources in ways contributing to the political stability,
economic betterment and social' progress of the country concerned _
subject to the proviso that capability to perform assigned combat
missions not be degraded. (The public works of Bolivian engineer
units are representative of this category. ) 

b. To heighten the effectiveness of indigenous
military and paramilitary forces in insuring against the development
of dissident factions; or in dealing with armed insurg'ency, should it
erupt. (Programs undertaken in Laos and proposed in South Vietnam
are examples. ) 

c. As the complement to the foregoing, to accelerate
the development of indigenous military and paramilitary capabilities, to
include support mechanisms, for conducting subversion or guerrilla
activities, in contiguous Communist territory. ,(We have already
developed such units in Taiwan and South Korea. )

5. Two major premises have conditioned the findings. 

a. The first is that the activities under survey (the
unconventional, unorthodox, paramilitary, military assistance by
another name, or whatever) are simply auxiliary weapons within the
total array of U. S. power resources and that they are effective only
when applied in coordination with those other resources. The articulate
proponents thereof notwithstanding, they representa complementary
rather than an alternative means. Moreover, as is the case with
all other power resources, they can be properly applied only in the ,
wake of a prior enunciation of clear and constant objectives sought
vis-a-vis any area or country. 

b. The second is that it is the operative policy of
the Executive Branch to exploit fully the potential of the U. S. Army
to improve the overall capability of indigenous armed forces to deal
with problems of internal defense. This premise is consistent with
the demonstrable, indeed urgent" needs of the world situation today;
it is likewise consistent with the statements of Our Chief Executive.
If the premise is erroneous, then the proposals for gearing for a
substantially higher level of activity are meaningless; the difficulties
whlch have been attributed to growing pains may in fact be deliberate
roadblocks; and the shortcomings noted within the Army are of no
Significance. 

c. The corollary to the second premise is that the
,Army can divert appreciable numbers of its best personnel to these
activities without derogation of its other missions and functions. Only
individuals of exceptional skill, motivation and leadership ability can
properly perform the training, guidance and related tasks involved _
in an alien environment and remote from supervision. Our rolls, of
course, include such personnel aplenty but they are filling key positions
elsewhere. My unsupported estimate is that they can be released from
' current assignment, as required; and that our tr'aining system can '
spawn adequate replacements.

V/R

Dave

Tampa Tribune
June 16, 2013

Building A Nation, One Village At A Time

By Howard Altman, Tribune staff

CHARKUSA, Afghanistan - Shortly after 1 p.m. on a searing hot, dusty day, three armored trucks begin a trip out beyond the security of the 12-foot concrete walls surrounding their military base.

Just before the convoy turns onto a rutted dirt road into bad-guy country leading to the village of Charkusa, an alert sounds on the radio.

“IED. East of the Delta canal,” a voice crackles.

Inside one of the trucks, nicknamed “Batman,” five troops have wordlessly heeded the pre-mission warning from the team sergeant.

“Buckle up. Most casualties come from lack of wearing seat belts.”

With four team members strapped into seats and a fifth standing in the machine gun turret on top, the soldiers adjust their helmets and settle in for the bumpy ride.

For all the men and women working in this group, the “A Team” of the Florida-based 7th Special Forces, it has already been a tense 10 days.

An Afghan Local Police leader they've worked with, Sultan Mohammed, was gunned down by the Taliban. The assassination was retribution, and a warning to others. Days later, four U.S. soldiers were killed by an improvised explosive device near the base.

Now it's time to visit the checkpoint Mohammed patrolled, in the province where the Taliban was born — one of the most restive places in Afghanistan. The plan is to drink some tea with the commander there and find out what he needs.

“The ALP are very centralized,” says the A Team captain before climbing into the lead truck. “Once the head falls off, the rest of the body is likely to fail.”

During the next several days, the team will visit with dozens of Afghan Local Police leaders in several villages across two districts, each leader with a different level of skills, interests and commitment.

Along the way, members of the A Team will help determine in what shape the U.S. leaves Afghanistan. Their mission reflects the motto “you can't surge trust” — a reference to the wave of additional troops sent into battle in both Iraq and Afghanistan and coined by Adm. William McRaven, who heads the Special Operations Command in Tampa.

The clock is ticking on them.

More than a decade after American forces arrived with their NATO allies, hunting the masterminds of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the A Team and teams like it have just 18 months to make sure the Afghans are ready to defend themselves.

The armored trucks used by the team are named “Batman,” “Joker,” “Bain” and “Riddler,” “because it's easier to remember those names than the serial numbers,” says the team sergeant. The military keeps secret the names of commandos in the field.

The team is setting off on what has become the last major U.S.-led objective. While special operations and conventional forces are now serving in an advisory role on most combat missions, they are still taking the lead on programs to train Afghan security forces.

The small team of commandos and support staff who left the base in Kandahar are working with Afghan villagers to make sure the local population can resist the Taliban once the majority of U.S. and NATO troops pull out next year.

The goal is to create a patchwork of areas across the country where indigenous forces — made up of members of the local tribes and clans — make it difficult for insurgents to operate.

Called Village Stability Operations, it's a classic role for special operations forces and one that could work in different places around the world as Special Operations Command headquarters in Tampa develops a new global doctrine for those forces.

In this case, the nearly three-year-old program is designed to teach the Afghans security, governance and development. It is seen as a success by U.S. military leaders and by many Afghan government leaders, too.

It is not without its problems.

Some of the 22,000-plus Afghanistan Local Police have brutalized villagers. They have turned on their U.S. trainers and even each other with deadly force. And there was initial objection to the program from the government of President Hamid Karzai, who feared that the local commanders — now armed and trained by commandos — would become warlords uncontrollable by the nation's capital in Kabul.

About a half hour after leaving the base, the armored trucks stop in front of a compound surrounded by 15-foot-high mud walls in a valley about a half mile from a row of jagged rock hills.

After a few last-minute instructions, the A Team gets ready to dismount. Slowly, the rear doors of the trucks open.

(Continued at the link below)

http://tbo.com/list/military-news/afghans-building-a-nation-one-village-at-a-time-b82501864z1

N. Korean leader's rule unlikely to collapse: former top China diplomat

My response to the former Chinese diplomat is the modified Sun Tzu response: never assume the enemy will not attack, make yourself invincible."  Do not assume the regime will not collapse, make all necessary preparations for it.  And I think we should recall all the other failed strategic assumptions we have made.  Assumptions are the mothers of all screw-ups.

And we should consider some other assumptions made in recent history (from an old briefing at the National War College)

Aircraft are interesting but of no military value.  Marshal Foch, 1912

It is an idle dream to think the automobile will replace the railways.  American Road Congress, 1913

There is no likelihood that man will tap the energy of the atom.  Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize Winner, 1920

We have reached the limits of what is possible with computers.  John von Neumann, mathematician, 1949

I think there is a market for maybe five computers  Thomas Watson, CEO, IBM, 1943

The internet will catastrophically collapse in 1996.  John Metcalf, inventor, 1995
Japan will avoid all-out war because it recognized US military superiority.With US superiority growing, a first strike was Japan’s only option.

China would not cross the Yalu River in support of the North Koreans.China would make good on its threats to counter “US aggression.”

The Soviet Union would not introduce offensive weapons into Cuba.Moscow could miscalculate and believe it could create a fait accompli.

Arabs will not start a war in 1973 they cannot win. Surprise attack, even if repelled, could wound Israel psychologically.

East Germany could not unify against the wishes of the Soviet Union.Gorbachev’s USSR was not prepared to intervene militarily in E. Europe.

India won’t test a nuclear weapon because of US and world condemnation.A successful, surprise test could boost a new Indian Govt’s credibility.

Saddam had WMD and was hiding them. Deceiving the IAEA served Iraq’s domestic needs and regional deterrence.

2013/06/15 13:42 KST

N. Korean leader's rule unlikely to collapse: former top China diplomat

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/northkorea/2013/06/15/95/0401000000AEN20130615001500315F.HTML

SEOUL, June 15 (Yonhap) -- North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's rule is unlikely to collapse as he has firm control over the country's military and the ruling party, a former top Chinese diplomat was quoted as saying Saturday.

   Former Chinese State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan made the remark during a breakfast meeting with members of the Korea-China Exchange Association, participants said.

   Tang, an expert on Korean Peninsula issues, said that late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, father of the current leader, had laid all the groundwork before his death for his son to smoothly take over, according to participants.

   Tang, who served as China's foreign minister from 1998-2003, was in Seoul as part of a five-day trip that began on Wednesday.

   Tang also said that Chinese President Xi Jinping made clear during a meeting with a special envoy of the North's leader last month that North Korea's nuclear weapons are unacceptable, according to the participants.

(Continued at the link below)

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/northkorea/2013/06/15/95/0401000000AEN20130615001500315F.HTML