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NATO says that Russian military activity in the alliance’s airspace increased slightly this year as its jets across Europe scrambled more than 400 times to escort or shadow unknown aircraft.

In a statement released Monday, NATO said almost 90 percent, or about 350 of these missions, were connected to flights by Russian military aircraft.

“This is a moderate increase from 2019,” NATO said. “Russian military aircraft often do not transmit a transponder code indicating their position and altitude, do not file a flight plan, or do not communicate with air traffic controllers, posing a potential risk to civilian airliners.” Läs artikel

Riksdagen har utsatts för en cyberattack under hösten. Attacken uppdagades av riksdagens egen tekniska övervakning, uppger riksdagsinformationen i ett pressmeddelande. Centralkriminalpolisen (CKP) utreder attacken. […]

CKP uppger att det är möjligt att okända gärningsmän har fått tag på information och spridit det till en annan stat för att gynna staten eller för att skada Finland.

”Intrånget har riktats mot fler än en person, men vi kan inte uppge exakt hur många som drabbats”, säger kriminalöverkommissarie Tero Muurman vid CKP i ett pressmeddelande.

Enligt CKP samarbetar man bland annat med Skyddspolisen gällande fallet. Också internationellt samarbete har ingått i utredningen. ”Fallet är exceptionellt i Finland, allvarligt på grund av målet och tråkigt för offren”, säger Muurman. Läs artikel

Avskrekking og beroligelse er kjernen i Norges forhold til Russland, vår mektige nabo i øst.

Nå trues denne doktrinen av vår allierte i vest, USA, uten at dette gjenspeiles i den offisielle norske diskusjonen.

USA bygger mye av sin arktiske sikkerhetspolitikk på overraskende manøvrer. Det reduserer den forutsigbarheten som ligger til grunn for norsk sikkerhetspolitikk. […]

Det er Nato og USA som skal komme oss til unnsetning dersom det skulle bli behov for det.

Reduseres forutsigbarheten veies ikke det opp av forsterket avskrekking. Mye tyder på at USA vil det annerledes, og dermed stiller Norge overfor større utfordringer enn vi så langt har vært vant til å håndtere. I løpet av de siste par årene har den militære opptrappingen i nordområdene ikke bare økt, men også blitt mer synlig for oss som ikke sitter foran skjermene i Forsvarets operative hovedkvarter utenfor Bodø. […]

I desember 2018 seilte for første gang siden 1990-tallet et atomdrevet amerikansk hangarskip inn i nordlige farvann. I løpet av høsten er det avslørt at samme type skip skal bruke Tromsø som havn i perioder. I samme periodesendte amerikanske og britiske styrker sine krigsskip inn i Barentshavet, et område hvor amerikanerne ikke har vært siden 80-tallet.

På spørsmål om hvorfor norske styrker ikke deltok i denne øvelsen, var det offisielle svaret at det ikke var prioritert. Det riktige svaret er antakelig at Norge forsøker å unngå å provosere Russland. Läs artikel

Tre franska soldater dödades på måndagen när en sprängladdning exploderade intill ett bepansrat fordon i Hombori-området i Mali, uppger det franska presidentkansliet.

Soldaterna var en del av antiterrorstyrkan Barkhane som är i regionen för att bekämpa jihadistiska grupper. […]

Sverige har cirka 150 FN-soldater i Gao, nordost om Hombori. Försvarsmakten uppger för TT att inga rapporter finns om att svenskar var inblandade i måndagens händelse.

Nu har 47 franska soldater dött i Mali sedan Frankrikes militära inblandning i landet inleddes 2013. I Bakhane ingår i dag cirka 5 100 militärer. Styrkan är operativ i Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauretanien, Niger och Tchad.

Regionen plågas även av etniskt motiverat våld samt av kriminella gruppers härjningar. Läs artikel

The modern German armed forces, or Bundeswehr, were created just ten years after the end of World War II. Cold war tensions and the presence of Soviet troops in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland made a West German defense force necessary.

The end of the Cold War and withdraw of the Red Army from Eastern Europe was a boon for European security. The National Volksarmee of East Germany and the Bundeswehr merged into a new national army. Inventories of ships, aircraft and armored vehicles were cut by up to seventy five percent, and the German defense budget was cut further. Germany now spends just 1.2% of GDP on defense, far below the NATO recommended 2%. Läs artikel

[…] The challenges awaiting Biden and Harris arguably outweigh those that confronted any of those past administrations, Roosevelt’s excepted. In a recent New York Times column, the man who lost that disputed 2000 election, Al Gore, inventoried the most pressing problems that Biden’s team will confront. In addition to the coronavirus pandemic, they include:

“40 years of economic stagnation for middle-income families; hyper-inequality of incomes and wealth, with high levels of poverty; horrific structural racism; toxic partisanship; the impending collapse of nuclear arms control agreements; an epistemological crisis undermining the authority of knowledge; recklessly unprincipled behavior by social media companies; and, most dangerous of all, the climate crisis.”

That makes for quite a daunting catalog. Yet note this one striking omission: Gore makes no mention of America’s seemingly never-ending penchant for war and military adventurism. […]

I could write pages and pages on how Vietnam and Iraq differ from each other, beginning with the fact that they are separated in time by nearly a half-century. Locale, the contours of the battlefields, the character of combat, the casualties inflicted and sustained, the sheer quantity of ordnance expended — when it comes to such measures and others, Vietnam and Iraq differ greatly. Yet while those differences are worth noting, it’s the unappreciated similarities between them that are truly instructive.

Seven such similarities stand out:

First, Vietnam and Iraq were both avoidable: For the United States, they were wars of choice. No one pushed us. We dove in headfirst.

Second, both turned out to be superfluous, undertaken in response to threats — monolithic Communism and Iraqi weapons of mass destruction — that were figments of fevered imaginations. In both cases, cynicism and moral cowardice played a role in paving the way toward war. Dissenting voices were ignored. Läs artikel

As President-elect Joe Biden prepares to take office, American foreign policy is at a crossroads. Biden has promised America’s allies in Europe and Asia that Washington will be “back” after the Trump era. But can he successfully fulfill his vow at a moment when Russia and China are becoming increasingly assertive? Has the world changed fundamentally over the past four years as to render it difficult if not impossible to return to the approach of past administrations? John Mearsheimer, Graham Allison, Melinda Haring, and Dimitri K. Simes weigh-in in a discussion moderated by Jacob Heilbrunn. […]

John Mearsheimer:Thank you, Jacob, for inviting me to be here today and also to participate in the forum in the journal. For me, the principal purpose of American foreign policy is to maximize our prospects for both security and prosperity. And, in my opinion, the best way to do that is to, number one, be a regional hegemon, i.e. to dominate your area of the world, and two, to make sure that you don’t have a pure competitor. In other words, make sure there is no other regional hegemon on the planet. The problem that the United States faces today, and in particular, the incoming Biden administration, is that we have a potential pure competitor. And that potential pure competitor is China. Läs artikel

The United States is the luckiest country in modern history. It began as a set of marginal European outposts, separated from the settlers’ home countries by a difficult sea voyage. When the colonies gained independence, they were weak, poor, and fractious. But in less than a century and a half, those 13 original colonies had expanded across North America, survived a civil war, driven other great powers from the Western Hemisphere, and created the world’s largest and most dynamic economy. That ascent didn’t stop until the end of the 20th century, when victory in the Cold War left the United States alone at the pinnacle of power. For a little while.

Americans like to attribute this remarkable story to their ancestors’ virtues, the enlightened wisdom of the Founding Fathers, and the intrinsic merits of America’s peculiar blend of liberal democratic capitalism. But in addition to the considerable cruelty displayed toward the native population and the slaves imported from Africa, good fortune played a major role as well. Läs artikel

Efter ett drygt år på jobbet är det ”back to basics” för utrikesminister Ann Linde som vill ha en hård linje mot Ryssland och ser inte något problem med att ”vi tjänar en massa pengar på att handla med Kina”.[…]

Ann Linde svarar med det som på UD-språk kallas ”tvåspårspolitik”.

– Det handlar dels om att ha en principfast och hård linje mot Ryssland, där vi tillsammans med EU har sanktioner för brott mot den euroepiska säkerhetsordningen. Samtidigt som vi på vissa områden har samarbete. Det kan gälla hälsofrågor, miljöfrågor och vissa brottsfrågor. Plus att det är viktigt att vi upprustar vårt försvar, vilket vi gör nu.

Är det inte svårt att driva två linjer samtidigt?

– Jag skulle säga att balansgången är där hela tiden. I relationen till Ryssland, i relationen till Kina, i relationen till Turkiet. För mig är det viktigt att se att det både finns utmaningar och möjligheter. Det går inte att säga att nu ska vi helt isolera Ryssland eller nu ska vi helt isolera Kina, säger hon.

Den senaste tiden har relation till stormakterna hamnat allt högre upp på EU:s dagordning. Efter förgiftningen av den ryska oppositionsledaren Aleksej Navalnyj var det flera länder som ville se tuffare tag mot Ryssland. Och kinesiska företagsjätten Huawei har stött på hårt motstånd i utbygganden av 5G-nätet i Europa, med hänvisning till nationell säkerhet. Men utvecklingen har även visat hur smärtsamt beroende Europa är: Av rysk energi. Av turkisk flyktingpolitik. Och av handeln med Kina. Läs intervjun

The General Staff of Russia’s armed forces has noted the outspoken anti-Russian nature of NATO’s training activities and growing provocations near Russia’s borders, the chief of the General Staff of Russia’s armed forces, First Deputy Defense Minister Valery Gerasimov told a news briefing for foreign military attaches.

”The training of the alliance’s forces is developing an outspokenly anti-Russian bias, with non-NATO countries getting increasingly involved. Provocative activities near Russia’s borders are growing,” Gerasimov said.

He pointed to the considerable growth of NATO countries’ defense budgets and further buildup of their military potential.

”The unbridled buildup of the missile defense potential is continuing, which considerably affects the balance of forces and gives one side the edge in using strategic weapons. The role of non-nuclear means of attack with long range, high accuracy and great destructive potential is increasing,” Gerasimov said. Läs artikel