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[…] Vi snakker om datalagring. Tilsynelatende handler det om teknologi. Men dette er ikke primært et teknologispørsmål. Det er også politikk, det er ideologi. Det er et strategisk veivalg, og diskusjonen må løftes opp på høyeste politisk nivå. Altså til nasjonalforsamlingen.

Selvsagt må det til sist velges en praktisk løsning som er teknologisk, men den prinsipielle beslutningen er politisk. Derfor har Stortinget pålagt regjeringa å utrede behov for og etablere en felles skytjeneste for forvaltningen.

Forsvaret er blitt stadig mer avhengig av sivile leverandører, på noen felt for langt, for dypt inn i virksomheten. Nå er det i ferd med å ta nye skritt ut i outsourcingen. Nå går de videre fra en meningsløs tjenesteutsetting av renhold til datalagring.

En storstilt satsing er igangsatt: Militær anvendelse av skytjenester (MAST) er et av de viktigste, mest fundamentale forsvarsprogram i moderne tid. Det er omfattende, og vil favne nærmest all virksomhet i Forsvaret: Alt fra, noe forenklet, sivil kontorstøtte til militære operasjoner. Her ligger det mye sensitiv informasjon, på mange nivå.

Programmet har et tiårsperspektiv mot 2028. Det er i så smått i gang. Er det på rett vei? Nei. Bør kursen endres – fra markedet, tilbake til staten? Ja. Läs artikel

The NATO-led exercise Steadfast Defender 2021 recently concluded. While NATO stressed the exercise was intended to reinforce the bloc’s collective defense capability, public opinions held them as much cry but little wool.

Led by Allied Command Operations, the Steadfast Defender 2021 involved 22 participating countries, including 20 NATO members and Finland and Sweden. Three commands – the Joint Force Command Norfolk, Allied Joint Force Command Naples, and Ulm Joint Support and Enabling Command– participated in the commanding. […]

The exercise tested NATO forces’ maneuverability to some extent, but the real-combat effects remain doubted. On the one hand, the involvement of about 9,000 troops is limited given NATO’s defense demand; on the other hand, the desktop dry run of the allied forces’ massive maneuvering across the European continent is unable to fully verify their actual commanding and control capability or their state of war-readiness.

Since the conflict between Russia and Ukraine broke out, NATO has carried out exercises and training more frequently with a clear intention of deterring Moscow and rooting for Kyiv. The Steadfast Defender 2021 was intended for the same purpose but had generated the opposite results, as Russia announced to adjust and upgrade its military presence on the European border in response to threats from NATO. In general, the exercise couldn’t cover up the bloc’s current conflicts and dilemma and were of limited substantial effects. Läs artikel

In 2025, 50 years will have passed since the Helsinki Summit of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). In 1975, during a few hot summer days in the midst of the Cold War, 35 heads of state and government came together in the Finnish capital and signed the Helsinki Final Act. The document outlined an important set of principles and confidence-building measures to improve security and covered a broad list of areas for cooperation, from the economy to science and technology and from the environment to human contacts.

The Helsinki Summit’s CSCE was a turning point in East-West détente. At the time, some criticized the conference for confirming Europe’s post-war division. Yet the Helsinki Final Act turned out to be anything but a final act. A little more than a decade later, the process that started in Helsinki, its letter as well as its spirit, was a crucial factor in overcoming that very division. Rather than solidifying the status quo, it spurred a dynamic change for the better.

On its own terms, therefore, 1975 is a remarkable historical milestone worth remembering. Finland is committed to taking the lead in marking the anniversary. But I believe we should not be satisfied with only reminiscing past achievements. Instead, we should be far more ambitious and focus on what is needed for the future. We should revive the Helsinki legacy, both its letter and its spirit, to address the challenges of the next half century together. Läs artikel

USA:s erbjudande att Sveriges nyinköpta luftvärnssystem Patriot kan kopplas ihop med grannländerna i Nato väcker politiska reaktioner. De borgerliga anser att det vore ett naturligt steg, Sverigedemokraterna säger nej medan förvarsminister Peter Hultqvist (S) hänvisar till sekretess. […]

Sverigedemokraterna var emot hela anskaffningen av Patriot och SD:s försvarspolitiker Roger Richthoff slår bakut:

– Jag säger blankt nej. Vi har inte fått någon information eller analys av konsekvenserna. Vem ska styra det här, är det Natoländerna som ska avgöra när vi ska använda våra system?  Blir det en stormaktskonflikt riskerar vi automatiskt komma med i kriget. Det här nånting som regeringen håller på och kucklar med själv, säger Roger Richthoff.

Försvarsminister Peter Hultqvist förklarar för DN:

– Köpet av Patriot var ett jätteviktigt och strategiskt beslut. Nu sker utbildning och leveranser enligt tidplanen och vi är mycket nöjda. Patriot har en oerhörd betydelse för svensk försvarsförmåga. Det är bra ur alla aspekter, säger försvarsministern.

Hultqvist känner uppenbarligen till möjligheterna att koppla samman systemen över nationsgränserna.

– Det som den amerikanske generalen säger i DN är helt sant. Att det går att genomföra den typen av samordning är fakta, säger Peter Hultqvist. Men han vill inte bli mer konkret än så:

– Jag kan inte uttala mig om några avtal eller någonting i den frågan. Det är av sekretesskäl. Just nu representerar jag en övergångsregering så framtidsbedömningar kan jag inte heller uttala mig om, säger Peter Hultqvist.

Samtidigt tillägger ministern att riksdagens försvarsbeslut från december 2020 innebär fortsatt och utökad samverkan med bland annat Nato och USA. Läs artikel

Iran has invited a Taliban delegation from Doha, led by Shir Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, senior Taliban negotiator in Qatar for “bilateral meetings”, said Mohammad Naeem, a Taliban spokesman on Wednesday.

The delegation will also meet with a group of Afghan politicians, led by former vice president Younus Qanooni, who have travelled there from Kabul. […]

Meanwhile, Taliban’s negotiator Sohail Shaheen in an interview with foreign media said there is no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan.

“Military approach will bring victory but not a durable peace,” said Shaheen.

Insufficient progress in the Doha peace talks and the escalation of the war all over Afghanistan has drawn strong criticism among the people of Afghanistan. Läs artikel

Russia’s Gazprom (IW 1000/16) state energy giant on Tuesday launched production at one of the world’s largest natural gas fields some 40 years after its discovery by Soviet scientists in the frozen and hitherto inaccessible Arctic.

President Vladimir Putin formally pushed the button on the start of commercial energy production at the Arctic deposit whose discovery in the early 1970s created excitement and frustration in equal measure. […]

”The field will produce 115 billion cubic meters [4,060 billion cubic feet] of gas and that will go up to nearly 140 billion,” Putin told the field’s workers by live video link-up from Moscow.

”This is nearly the equivalent of how much we export to Europe,” he stressed. Läs artikel

[…] India has chosen the theme for Chairship as ‘BRICS@15: Intra-BRICS cooperation for continuity, consolidation and consensus’. Traditionally, BRICS discusses issues of common interest for all five countries. India has pitched for greater coordination among BRICS nations on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) review and giving more say to developing countries. India wants the five-nation grouping to respond to the COVID-19 crisis through policy support and enhanced international coordination. As the BRICS chair for 2021, India’s approach for the group of nations focuses on strengthening intra-BRICS cooperation.

India has proposed deliverables on issues, including a waiver proposal at World Trade Organization (WTO) for uninterrupted supply of vaccines, the framework for consumer protection in e-commerce and cooperation framework to protect traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources.

In Political and Security sphere: To enhance cooperation and dialogue on global and regional security issues, developments in the global political space for peace, security, and prosperity. […]

BRICS summits give both India and China an opportunity to work in close cooperation with each other. The annual BRICS summit was earlier meant for high-level delegation meeting, but for the last few years changed the format and now participants are also from the Track Two circles including think tank heads, various government officials, industrialists and experts. Läs artikel

We welcome the leadership shown by President Biden and President Putin in their June 16 Joint Statement on Strategic Stability reaffirming the principle that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” We are encouraged that President Putin and President Xi affirmed the same principle in their June 28 Joint Statement.
This principle is fundamental to ensuring predictability, reducing the risk of armed conflicts and the threat of nuclear war. It provides a foundation for progress to reduce existential common risks, including on the climate and global public health. It is especially important as new technologies reduce decision time for leaders. Such a principle is also at the core of the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) whose Preamble recognises “the devastation that would be visited upon all mankind by a nuclear war and the consequent need to make every effort to avert the
danger of such a war and to take measures to safeguard the security of peoples”. Läs  uttalandet

Devi Itono, who heads the so-called military transition council that seized power in the April battle after the death of his father Idriss Dévi, promised to hold a “free and transparent” election within 18 months, but internationally. Warning process without any assistance It may take some time..

On Devi’s funeral day, Macron is in France “Unwavering” friends throw his weight behind Chad’s military junta, Devi Itono.  Läs artikel

[…] The paper outlines a lengthy series of measures for dealing with a host of domestic issues, from rising poverty and continued critical dependence on imported technology to the advent of green energy and the loss of the Soviet-era technological and educational edge. This certainly makes sense. Indeed, the recent Kremlin discovery of climate change as a top-tier issue is a hopeful sign that Russia is overcoming its former denial of the problem, along with inordinately exuberant expectations of the promise of global warming for a predominantly cold country. After all, the Kremlin’s earlier embrace of digitalization has given a major push to the spread of digital services across Russia. […]

Yet here, the strategy misses a key point at the root of Russia’s many economic and social problems: the widespread absence of any values, other than purely materialistic ones, among much of the country’s ruling elite. The paper mentions in passing the need to root out corruption, but the real issue is bigger by an order of magnitude. As each of President Putin’s annual phone-in sessions with the Russian people demonstrates—including the most recent one on June 30—Russia is governed by a class of people who are, for the most part, self-serving, and do not care at all for ordinary people or the country, instead focusing single-mindedly on making themselves rich on the job. Money—or rather Big Money—has become that group’s top value, and the most corrosive element in today’s Russia. Therein lies perhaps the biggest vulnerability of modern Russia. Läs artikel

Just nu levererar USA:s armé ett helt nytt vapensystem till Sverige: luftvärnssystemet Patriot. Det ska tas i bruk redan i slutet av året .

Patriot ersätter de amerikanska Hawk-robotar som Sverige köpte in för snart 60 år sedan, men som fortfarande ingår i krigsförbanden. Hawk-luftvärnet var byggt för att bekämpa attack- och bombflygplan som flög nära sina anfallsmål.

– Patriot är konstruerat för att operera ihop med andra Patriot-system. Så det är mycket enkelt att länka samman Patriot-systemen i olika länder, säger den amerikanske generalen Christopher Cavoli till DN när han besökte Gotland på tisdagen. Läs artikel

Om en krigssituation skulle uppstå i Östersjöregionen kommer Sverige att ligga illa till. Den förutsägelsen gjorde mångårige diplomaten och Moskvaambassadören Sven Hirdman i ett uppmärksammat Hotspot-samtal med Marco Strömberg nyligen. […]