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Frågar någon ens vem som ska betala notan? Militärutgifter är offentliga utgifter så det är förstås skattebetalarna som ska betala biljonerna.

The U.S. and NATO have promised to pay $4 billion a year until 2024 to finance Afghanistan’s military and security forces, which are struggling to contain an advancing Taliban. Already, the U.S. has spent nearly $89 billion over the past 20 years to build, equip and train Afghan forces.

Yet America’s own government watchdog says oversight of the money has been poor, hundreds of millions of dollars have been misspent and corruption is rife in the security apparatus.

Monitoring where the future funding goes will become virtually impossible after Aug. 31, when the last coalition troops leave. Here is a look at some of the issues:

Nearly $83 billion has been spent to build, equip, train and sustain Afghanistan’s National Defense and Security Forces, which include the military, national police and the elite special forces. Läs artikel

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi and President Biden  announced this week that Washington will end its combat mission in Iraq by the end of the year. However, these long-serving U.S. soldiers are not coming home: many of the 2,500 American service members are expected to remain in the country for “training and advisory” purposes.

The United States and Iraq had issued a joint statement in April that the U.S. combat mission would be ending, but the timeline remained unclear. The timing of the recent announcement appears intended to boost Kadhimi’s prospects in October’s parliamentary elections — he faces domestic demands to oust U.S. forces, yet remains dependent on American support to maintain some semblance of control. […]

Announcing a troop withdrawal when no troops are in fact to be withdrawn reinforces a broader alarming trend in the forever wars — finding ways to keep American soldiers perpetually deployed, despite the public’s desire for the United States to prioritize investment at home over violence abroad. Läs artikel

[…] Det är viktigt att få kännedom om var det kommer att behövas personalförstärkningar, exempelvis för att numerären behöver utökas eller för att det behövs andra kompetenser än i vardagen. En fördjupad kunskap om personalbehovet inom det civila försvaret möjliggör en analys av vilka åtgärder som är bäst lämpade för att trygga personalförsörjningen. Med resultatet av detta uppdrag som utgångspunkt avser regeringen att återkomma till analysen av lämpliga åtgärder i ett senare skede. […]

De fördelar en återaktivering av civilplikten skulle kunna innebära ur ett personalförsörjningsperspektiv måste vid en bedömning vägas mot bland annat det ingrepp som åtgärden utgör för de enskilda som berörs. Samtidigt utgör civilplikten en möjlighet för den som vill göra vapenfri plikttjänstgöring att bidra till totalförsvarets samlade behov. Utgångspunkten för planeringen av totalförsvaret är att Sverige under minst tre månader ska kunna hantera en säkerhetspolitisk kris i Europa och Sveriges närområde som innebär allvarliga störningar i samhällets funktionalitet samt krig under del av denna tid. Under de tre månaderna förutsätts att det råder höjd beredskap och att logistikflödena med omvärlden har begränsningar men inte är helt avbrutna. Läs uppdraget

Former intelligence analyst, Daniel Hale. in the drone program for the Air Force who as a private contractor in 2013 leaked some 17 classified documents about drone strikes to the press, was sentenced today to 45 months in prison.

The documents, published by The Intercept on October 15, 2015, exposed that between January 2012 and February 2013, US special operations airstrikes killed more than 200 people. Of those, only 35 were the intended targets. For one five-month period of the operation, according to the documents, nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets. The civilian dead, usually innocent bystanders, were routinely classified as “enemies killed in action.”

The Justice Department coerced Hale, who was deployed to Afghanistan in 2012, on March 31 to plead guilty to one count of violating the Espionage Act, a law passed in 1917 designed to prosecute those who passed on state secrets to a hostile power, not those who expose to the public government lies and crimes. Hale admitted as part of the plea deal to “retention and transmission of national security information” and leaking 11 classified documents to a journalist. If he had refused the plea deal, he could have spent 50 years in prison. Läs artikel

What a difference a few months can make in the rocky relations between the US and China. At the meeting in March in Anchorage, Alaska, Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave a blistering lecture in front of the Western media to the Chinese delegation that Beijing needs to behave in a way consistent with the rules of international order.

China’s most senior diplomat at this summit was Yang Jiechi. He basically responded by telling Blinken to mind his manners and, not incidentally, asked what he was talking about.

Since that meeting, Blinken has gone around the world recruiting allies to oppose China on the basis that it does not follow the rules of international order.

Some Western countries grudgingly yielded to the pressure and signed on with Blinken, but they were befuddled by what he means by “international order.” After all, it has been China that works within the confines of the United Nations while the US has often acted unilaterally. Läs artikel

The Biden administration’s lamentable decision to stop blocking the Nord Stream 2 Russian-German gas pipeline emboldens the Kremlin, weakens Ukraine and Poland, dismays other allies, and rewards German greed and cynicism. Sloppy diplomacy in its communication adds insult to injury.

Yet amid the threnodies, history has an important, even consoling lesson.

On September 17^th, 2009, the Obama administration abruptly shelved its planned missile-defense bases in the Czech Republic and Poland. The decision was defensible (the plans were flawed and what eventually replaced them is better). But the diplomacy was dreadful. The announcement was wrapped up in the gimmicky “reset” of U.S. relations with Russia. It was communicated brusquely to the Polish and Czech governments — on the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland 70 years earlier. No Americans had noticed that. Everyone else did. Läs artikel

USA:s relation med Irak går in i en ”ny fas”, meddelade president Joe Biden efter ett möte med Iraks premiärminister Mustafa al-Kadhemi i Vita husets Ovala rum.

USA ska enligt Biden inte längre vara en stridande part vid årsskiftet, utan skifta till att enbart bistå i kampen mot IS och terrorism.

”Men vi kommer inte, vid årets slut, att vara i strid”, säger presidenten.

Beslutet om USA:s reträtt fullbordades under mötet, skriver Reuters.

Just nu befinner sig 2 500 amerikanska soldater i Irak, med fokus på att bekämpa det som återstår av IS. Hur många soldater som kommer att finnas kvar för träning och utbildning efter årsskiftet är inte uttalat ännu. Läs artikel

The development of the Russian Arctic is continuing with significant investments being made in Arctic Ports at Yenisei, Dikson and Dudinka. Russia’s state-owned nuclear authority Rosatom and Japan’s AEON Corporation have agreed joint ventures to build ice-class, nuclear powered ships to transport coal from the Syradasayskoye coal fields – one of the world’s largest at 5 billion tonnes – in the Taimyr Peninsula.

The agreement is to build Arc5 class vessels to deliver general cargo and products from Syradasayskoye, also part of AEON. This is 110km from Dikson in Russia’s Far East Arctic Krasnoyarsk Region. A new Yenisei seaport will be constructed. Läs artikel

NATO is gradually scaling up activity in the post-Soviet space, with its active stage of the Three Swords 2021 military exercises underway in Ukraine’s Lvov Region with the participation of Ukrainian, Polish, Lithuanian and US forces. On Monday, the Agile Spirit 2021 drills are starting in Georgia, which will involve about 2,500 troops from 15 NATO states and partners (Ukraine and Azerbaijan), Nezavisimaya Gazeta reports. Like before, these drills are of an anti-Russian nature, the newspaper pointed out, with provocative statements aimed at Moscow heard from some NATO officials. Läs artikel