al-qaida chief ayman al-zawahiri the coordinator 2017 part 19-122-russia-10-90-nato-1

CdW Intelligence to Rent; Strategic Intelligence Adviser [email protected]

Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2017 Part 19-122-Russia-10-90-NATO-1

"If China is required to play that leadership role, then China will assume its responsibilities," - A senior Chinese Foreign Ministry,

"If anyone were to say China is playing a leadership role in the world, I would say it's not China rushing to the front but rather the frontrunners have stepped back, leaving the place to China," Zhang Jun,

“NATO has always been in charge of the dirty and bloody deeds in the country - Şamil Tayyar.

NATO Western Balkans, the region’s pro-Russian and pro-Serbian voices are growing bolder in their calls for “Kosovo to return back to Serbia” and for an end to “America’s colonialism.” In the absence of Western institutional backing, the consequences of such rhetoric could further destabilize an already vulnerable region in the heart of Europe. --Ebi Spahiu

Previous: Su offers a Chinese perspective on the Northern Sea Route [северный морской путь]: “… the majority of this sea route traverses Russia’s near seas. While this could generate some fees, the overall safety/security is assured.” Moreover, such cooperative efforts to develop the Arctic fit easily into the “Belt and Road Initiative,” (BRI) according to this analysis, as BRI aims to create infrastructure linkages that span Asia’s vastness, to include apparently its northern vastness.

China marked an important date on July the 1st, the 95th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. The President of China Xi Jinping, made a statement at the ceremony dedicated to this event. Along with the congratulations, Xi Jinping noted some important things in his speech.

“The world is on the verge of radical change. We see that the European Union is gradually falling apart, how the US economy is crashing, and that all this will end with a new rearrangement of the world. In 10 years we can expect a new world order in which the key factor will be the alliance between China and Russia.” “We are currently observing the USA’s aggressive actions, both in regards of Russia and China. I believe that Russia and China can create an alliance before which NATO would be weak, and this would put an end to the imperialist ambitions of the West” stated Xi Jinping.

Turkey is looking into joining a Chinese- and Russian-led alliance known as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters on Sunday at the end of his official tour of Pakistan and Uzbekistan.

WASHINGTON - US Secretary of Defense James Mattis spoke with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Monday to highlight the importance he places on the military alliance. "The two leaders discussed the importance of our shared values, and the secretary emphasized that when looking for allies to help defend these values, the United States always starts with Europe," Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said in a statement regarding the call.

Beijing has deployed advanced Dongfeng-41 ICBMs in Heilongjiang Province, which borders Russia, according to reports based on images, possibly leaked to coincide with

“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

CdW Intelligence to Rent of 15 01/05/2023

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Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president.“Pictures of China's Dongfeng-41 ballistic missile were exposed on Chinese mainland websites,” the Global Times said citing reports in “some Hong Kong and Taiwan media.” Russian news agencies identified one of them as the Apple Daily, a Hong Kong-based tabloid-style resource.“It was revealed that the pictures were taken in Heilongjiang Province. Military analysts believe that this is perhaps the second Dongfeng-41 strategic missile brigade and it should be deployed in northeastern China,” the report in the Chinese daily adds. The Global Times works under the auspices of the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, though the former tends to be more controversial. The DF-41 is a three-stage solid-propellant missile, which is estimated to have a range of up to 15,000km and be capable of delivering up to 10 MIRVed nuclear warheads. There is speculation that China plans to deploy at least three brigades of DF-41s throughout the country. The image leak may have been timed with Trump’s inauguration, with the new president expected to take a confrontational stance towards China, according to the Global Times’ report. The alleged deployment of the DF-41 near Russia’s border should not be read as a threat to Russia, military analyst Konstantin Sivkov told RIA Novosti.“DF-41 missiles placed near Russia’s border are a smaller threat than if they were placed deeper in the Chinese territory. Such missiles usually have a very large ‘dead zone’ [area within minimal range that cannot be attacked by a weapon],” he said, adding that the ICBMs would not be able to target Russia’s Far East and most of Eastern Siberia from the Heilongjiang Province.The Kremlin agreed with the assessment, saying that China is Russia’s “strategic partner in political and economic senses.”“Certainly, the actions of the Chinese military, if the reports prove correct, the military build-up in China is not perceived as a threat to our country,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

An MP from Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) has questioned NATO’s commitment to its key ally, claiming that the bloc has been backing regime change attempts in Ankara and supports “terrorist groups” in the region. Şamil Tayyar, who represents Turkey’s southeast Gazientep province, launched a scathing verbal attack





on the military alliance in an interview to Milat daily on Monday, claiming that since Turkey joining the alliance in the 1950s, it has played a negative role in Turkish history.“NATO has always been in charge of the dirty and bloody deeds in the country. The 1960 military coup was staged by the British, the 1971 coup was staged by the CIA, and the 1980 coup was staged by NATO,” Tayyar said, as cited by Hurriyet.The MP argued that in NATO’s vision for the future, there would be no place for current Turkish president and AKP party leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan.Far from being a partner, NATO “has become a threat and is spreading terror organizations across the region,” Tayyar claimed, adding that it should be treated on a par with other Turkish adversaries designated as terrorist groups by Ankara, such as Islamic State [IS, formerly ISIS, ISIL], the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, as well as the Hizmet movement led by exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen, which the Turkish authorities label as FETÖ (Fethullahist Terror Organization).

A senior Chinese Foreign Ministry official has hinted that Beijing may pick up the torch of global leadership if forced to do so by the withdrawal of other contenders for the role as Washington under Trump appears to become more immersed in domestic issues."If anyone were to say China is playing a leadership role in the world, I would say it's not China rushing to the front but rather the frontrunners have stepped back, leaving the place to China," Zhang Jun, the director general of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's international economics department, told reporters on Monday, 23 Jan according to Reuters. At the same time, he said that China would not shun the opportunity to lead the world if needed for the common good."If China is required to play that leadership role, then China will assume its responsibilities," the official added. In his inauguration address, President Trump promised that on his watch Washington would not ignore the needs of ordinary Americans for the sake of foreign nations.

“We’ve defended other nations’ borders while refusing to defend our own; and spent trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay,” Trump said, vowing, “From this moment on, it’s going to be America first.” “The countries aren’t paying their fair share, so we’re supposed to protect countries. There’s five countries that are paying what they’re supposed to. Five. It’s not much,” Trump said in a recent interview to The Times and Bild, while branding the NATO alliance “obsolete.” In contrast, speaking at Davos, Chinese President Xi likened protectionism to “locking oneself in a dark room” with no light or air.

Three Chinese military vessels have docked in Doha, Qatar, as China seeks to match its economic power with a more prominent international role.The Chinese fleet, comprising Harbin, a destroyer, Handan, a frigate, and Dongpinghu, a supply ship, was welcomed with an honor ceremony in the Qatari capital at the start of a 5-day visit on Saturday.“During the visit, naval officers from the two countries will exchange views to enhance friendship and further learn from each other,” said Bai Yaoping, commander of the 24th escort fleet told the Chinese state channel CCTV. In a trip that has been highly-publicized in Chinese-language media, the fleet has already visited Saudi Arabia, and will next dock in UAE and Kuwait.

Chinese vessels have played an important role in keeping pirates at bay in the Gulf of Aden, which is where the three ships operated immediately prior to the tour. Iran and





China combined on naval drills in 2014, but this is the first such tour of the Gulf States since 2010.

Russia and China Part Company in Davos Chinse President Xi Jinping was this year’s star guest at the World Economic Forum in Davos (January 17–20), where the mood of the traditional crowd of successful entrepreneurs and high-flying politicians was far from jubilant. The shadow of the inauguration of US President Donald Trump was so dark that Anatoly Chubais, one of Russia’s veteran reformers who still try to connect with the global elite, described the atmosphere in the Swiss resort as “deep dread” (BFM, January 19). Xi, to the contrary, radiated confidence and enjoyed the sincere admiration of the moneyed audience, which was entirely unconcerned about such topics as human rights in China. Russian President Vladimir Putin had no intention of traveling to Davos this time, and did not even think about dispatching his usual substitute, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. The obstacle for the Kremlin was not the dismal performance of the Russian economy, but the country’s profound incompatibility with the kind of globalization that Davos has come to exemplify (Moscow Echo, January 18). Perfectly at ease with his debut performance at Davos, Xi started his address with a quote from Charles Dickens about “the best of times and the worst of times.” The Chinse leader stated in no uncertain terms that his country was ready to take the lead in sustaining the dynamics of global growth (Kommersant, January 20). He preached to the liberal-minded crowd about the benefits of free trade and condemned protectionism, positioning himself at the forefront of an effort to turn the tide of populist parochialism around the world (Vedomosti, January 19). Asserting his commitment to economic openness, he implied that China did not fear trade wars with the newly-isolationist United States, which is turning away from the negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—the massive multilateral regional trade deal that could have contained China’s expansion (RBC, January 17). He announced a new step forward in his “One Belt, OneRoad” initiative but refrained from addressing such sources of regional instability as North Korea (which seems to be preparing yet another nuclear test) or the South China Sea. The Chinese president concluded on a remarkably positive note about history being “created by the brave” (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, January 18). Xi did not find it opportune to mention Russia even once in his address. This conscious omission reflects the fact, often obscured by layers of self-complimentary rhetoric, that China’s bilateral strategic partnership with Russia simply does not fit into the model of dynamic globalization that Beijing is promoting. At Davos, outgoing US Vice President Joe Biden stated that “Russia has a different vision for the future,” which underpins Moscow’s aim “to collapse the liberal international order.” Biden further discussed the implications of Russia’s international maneuverings at a face-to-face meeting with Xi on the sidelines of the Forum (Newsru.com, January 18). Russia is indeed actively and massively deploying “hybrid” weapons of propaganda, corruption and cyber-crime against the West (Gazeta.ru, January 18). Two thirds of Russians (rather than 80 percent a year ago) now think that the country faces enemies on the international arena, but as many as 75 percent of respondents take pride in the belief that Russia is feared by its neighbors (Levada.ru, January 16).





China, on the other hand, seeks to reassure its partners—though not always successfully—that they have nothing to fear from its peaceful rise. Beijing now has an opportunity to claim the role of a guarantor of the stable evolution of the international order. Whereas Russia continues its full-blown assault on this order by targeting particularly the turbulent Middle East. It has recently joined forces with Turkey in combat operations in northern Syria, treating the Kurdish forces as hostile rebels on par with the Islamic State (Novaya Gazeta, January 19). At the same time, Moscow has launched a new format for Syrian peace talks—a conference in Astana, Kazakhstan, co-sponsored with Iran and Turkey, but with no Western contribution (RBC, January 20). In a parallel intrigue, Moscow hosted a meeting between Hamas and Fatah, where yet another agreement on forming a Palestinian national unity government was penciled. This meeting was supposed to convince Israel that Russia is a key party to the talks on the impossible but inescapable two-state solution (Gazeta.ru, January 15). China remains suspicious of Russian attempts to exploit the US’s retreat from the Middle East: For instance, Khalifa Haftar—the self-appointed “marshal” of the rebel forces in Benghazi who challenges the Libyan government in Tripoli—was recently welcomed onboard the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, on its way back to Severomorsk from the eastern Mediterranean (Svobodnaya Pressa, January 12). Beijing is also far from thrilled by Russia’s agreement with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on cuts in oil production to push the price up, amounting to a cartel colluding against free trade—which Xi so powerfully promoted in Davos (Forbes.ru, January 18). Yet, the strongest force contributing to the growing political divergence between Russia and China is their contradictory economic performance. Despite a recent worrisome slowdown, China continues to prioritize growth and remains the main beneficiary of Davos-style globalization (Rossiiskaya Gazeta, January 21). Russia, meanwhile, is stuck in stagnation, and its attempts to lure Asian investors with promises of a return to modest growth in 2017 are as ineffectual as Moscow’s attempts to persuade the European Union to lift its sanctions (Kommersant, January 19). With the limits of the Russian-Chinese strategic partnership becoming clearer and the relationship slipping ever lower, Putin is pinning his best hopes on the incoming Trump administration’s apparent mixture of arrogant unilateralism and narrow-minded isolationism. Nobody from the Trump transition team was present at Davos; and if their boss’s Twitter account gives any indication of the new US administration’s policy guidelines, they indeed would have had no business there. But this does not necessarily determine that a US rapprochement with the anti-globalist and maverick Russia is in the cards, and the Kremlin is now downplaying its expectations of a “beautiful friendship” (RBC, January 20). Indeed, Moscow may soon discover that its best opportunities for both cooperating with Washington and for taking advantage of US reluctance to becoming entangled in new messy conflicts abroad opened and closed during Barack Obama’s just-concluded presidency (Vedomosti, January 20). China has to expect many test of wills in its relations with the US, but Xi needs no help from Putin to manage these challenges. What he expects from Russia is for it stay on an even keel and refrain from high-risk experiments in projecting its diminishing power. But such expectations are unlikely to come true. --Pavel K. Baev





Baltics Sharply Increase Defense Expenditures By approving additional defense spending in their national budgets for 2017, the Baltic States—Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia—strongly answered Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. Their budget figures, adopted this past December, mean not only greater resources for their own national defense, but also a significant step forward in meeting their obligations to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to spend at least 2 percent of their GDP on defense. Estonia has met this requirement for years, while Latvia and Lithuania will reach the 2 percent threshold by 2018. Referring to analysis done by the consulting firm “IHS Markit,” the Ministry of Defense of Latvia indicates that, since 2014, Latvia and Lithuania have the two fastest-growing defense budgets in the Alliance, and this growth rate will continue until next year (Mod.gov.lv, accessed January 16). Since 2014, when Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, Riga and Vilnius have, on average, increased their defense spending by about a third each year. Estonia’s defense spending as compared to its GDP has already far exceeded that of its two Baltic neighbors. And this past December, the Estonian legislature passed an additional 28 million euro ($30 million) increase to annual defense expenditures, for a total of 477 million euros ($513 million) for 2017, which will equal 2.17 percent of the country’s GDP. Last year’s defense expenditures corresponded to 2.07 percent of Estonia’s GDP (Kmin.ee, accessed January 16). The country’s total state budget for this year projects revenues of 9.48 billion euros ($10.18 billion), while spending and investments will equal 9.65 billion euros ($10.35 billion), running a modest deficit (Bnn.com, December 20, 2016). This year’s defense priorities for Estonia are procurement of infantry fighting vehicles, new long-range anti-tank missile systems and self-propelled guns, as well as replenishing equipment and supplies for the wartime units of the Defense Forces. Additionally, Estonia will continue the installation of a fence and other security infrastructure along its eastern border, which will cost 20 million euros ($21.5 million) this year (Kmin.ee, accessed January 16). Latvia, on the other hand, is still on track to reach NATO’s required 2 percent defense spending threshold, according to the progressive budget plan adopted in 2015. In 2016, Latvian defense spending made up 1.4 percent of the country’s GDP. In 2017, state funds for the military will make up 1.7 percent of GDP and, as of 2018—2 percent. Total 2017 state budget revenues are planned at more than 8 billion euros ($8.6 billion), and expenditures at $8.4 billion ($9 billion) (Leta.lv, November 24). As recently approved by the Latvian Parliament, the defense portion of the national budget will be 449.57 million euros ($482.85 million)—an increase over last year of 98 million euros ($105 million) (Mod.gov.lv, accessed January 16). Drilling down on the approved 2017 defense budget itself, 33 percent of the funds are to be allocated to investments, 28 percent—for maintenance, and 39 percent—for staff and personnel costs. The identified defense spending priorities will be on development and infrastructure projects, intelligence, air surveillance and air defense capabilities, as well as troop equipment. Also this year, the defense ministry will continue with its Land Force Infantry Brigade mechanization project. Additional funding this year will be shifted





toward bolstering the country’s eastern border as well as strengthening the capacity of the Security Police and the Constitution Protection Bureau (National Security Authority) (Mod.gov.lv, accessed January 16). Additional details of Latvia’s budgetary priorities for defense can be found in the National Armed Forces (NAF) Development Plan 2016–2028, which was adopted by the government in late November of last year. This document states that infrastructure development will receive more than 8 percent of the total annual defense budget, and about 20 percent will be allocated for equipment acquisitions. Taking into account the international and regional security situation, the NAF’s medium-term development goals, according to the NAF Development Plan, must be aimed to improve early-warning capacity, airspace surveillance, air defense, mobility, land-combat capabilities and Host Nation Support capability (Leta.lv, November 29, 2016). Additionally, in order to boost recruitment, more funds this will be spent to extend soldiers’ “motivation packages.” At the same time, the NAF’s structure will be revised, delegating specific tasks to civilian staff and businesses while outsourcing certain services (Lsm.lv, December 20, 2016). The largest of the three Baltic States, Lithuania has passed a budget for 2017 that will see expected revenues of 12.35 billion euros ($13.26 billion) and total expenditures of 12.63 billion euros ($13.56 billion), resulting in a deficit of 0.7 percent of GDP (Finmin.lrv.lt, accessed January 16). Lithuania’s parliament gave up the goal of a balanced budget for 2017, prioritizing national security by increasing defense spending amid tensions with neighboring Russia, despite the Lithuanian central bank’s warnings against such a fiscal policy (Reuters, December 22, 2016). Compared to last year, Vilnius has boosted its defense expenditures by about 150 million euros ($161 million)—a 25 percent increase over 2016—to a total of 723.5 million euros ($777 million), which equals 1.8 percent of the country’s GDP (Kam.lt, accessed January 16). Lithuanian Ministry of Defense officials indicate that additional financing will be used to modernize the Army and troop equipment. The Army will acquire infantry fighting vehicles, as well as anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons. The biggest part of the national defense budget this year will be used to enhance the Armed Forces’ combat and combat-support capabilities (Kam.lt. accessed January 16). Further priority areas for Lithuanian defense appropriations this year will be the development of combat-training support capabilities and upgrading the military’s command-and-control (C2) as well as cyber-security capabilities. Lithuania has met NATO’s defense budget allocation requirements since 2015. According to these requirements, member states’ appropriations funding for military personnel cannot exceed 50 percent while major procurements and upgrades of weaponry and materiel cannot take up less than 20 percent of the national defense ministries’ annual appropriation budgets (Defense-aerospace.com, October 15, 2016). Lithuania’s 2017 defense budget allocates around 43 percent of appropriations funds for personnel and around 43 percent for contracts (investment and other property, weaponry and military equipment, war reserves, as well as strategic and non-expendable stocks). Around 14 percent of all appropriations funds are to be used to cover running costs (Kam.lt, accessed January 16). Coming into the new year, Latvia and Lithuania have adopted the largest defense budgets the two Baltic States have had since regaining their independence in 1991. As such, these





countries are demonstrating a sound political consensus and growing cohesion within their societies regarding national defense, which suggests a smooth road ahead to reach at least 2 percent of GDP for defense spending by 2018 and beyond. --Olevs Nikers Russia Expands Its Subversive Involvement in Western Balkans As a number of key countries in the Western Balkans continue to experience serious political volatility, the blame is increasingly falling on Russia’s subversive local activities and an insufficient level of engagement in this region by the European Union and the United States (Shqiptarja.com, January 2). Several months of local crises across the region underscore the fact that the current negative political trends were not solely born of local dynamics (Balkan Insight, January 12). In Albania—a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and a staunch EU aspirant—indications of Russia’s influence are viewed with particular concern due to the country’s history of experiencing instability as a result of sudden geopolitical shifts (Shqiptarja.com, January 2). Domestic political inquietude and conflicts involving ethnic-Albanian communities residing in neighboring Slavic-majority countries are routinely harshly portrayed by various media outlets that support the Kremlin’s and Belgrade’s regional agenda. This dispersed negative media campaign is now inspiring renewed anti-Albanian sentiments among radical and fringe nationalist groups led by mainstream political leaders from both sides of the political spectrum. In particular, such rhetoric is more and more coming from Balkan Slavic populations still loyal to Russia’s Pan-Slavic aspirations (RT, January 16) With Moscow’s foreign policy attention again focused on the Western Balkans, policymakers in the West should expect growing tensions between the region’s Christian Orthodox and Muslim communities. That is particularly the case because religious identities in the Balkans are once more being altered to respond to nationalist calls to protect territorial claims and minorities living abroad (Balkan Insight, January 10). Similar calls in the past inspired Serbian-backed nationalists during the Yugoslav War. More recently, such sentiment played a role in a potentially dangerous clash between the governments of Serbia and Kosovo, when the former launched a new direct train line between Belgrade and Mitrovica—a highly disputed territory in Kosovo, along the border between the two countries. The train was notoriously painted with words “Kosovo is Serbia,” and its interior decorations featured Christian Orthodox religious motifs that authorities described as “imagery of the Serb cultural and spiritual heritage located in Kosovo and Metohija” (B92.net, January 13). On its maiden voyage, the Mitrovica-bound train stopped in the southern Serbian city of Raška, following allegations that explosives had been planted along the railway line to halt it from entering Kosovo (RT, January 16). Serbian authorities were quick to denounce the alleged act as a “terrorist” plot carried out by Albanian nationalists. Belgrade also criticized Kosovo for deploying special forces aimed at stopping the train at the border (Sputnik News, January 14). Kosovar authorities denied the allegations of any potential bomb attack but reinforced their commitment to protect the country’s territorial integrity from provocations—particularly of the type that could enable or obfuscate a potential military invasion by its northern neighbor (Shqiptarja.com, January 14). This incident was





certainly not the only recent instance when Serbian authorities have pointed to so-called “Albanian terrorists.” And local experts see such cases as explicitly serving Serbia’s political agenda of seeking to undermine Albanian and particularly Kosovar standing in the region (Telegraf.rs, January 11) The region’s moderate majority-Muslim populations, including those of ethnic-Albanians and Bosniaks, are particularly vulnerable to attacks from Serbian and Russian-supported media efforts. Moscow’s and Belgrade’s information campaigns frequently connect Albanian nationalist movements to Islamist ideologies, while Serbia’s actions are generally characterized as defending its Orthodox Christian heritage against Islamism (Sputnik News, July 21, 2016). Inflammatory statements alleging terrorist attacks organized by Albanian nationalists and Islamist factions have become the norm in both Russian and Serbian media. These news outlets frequently hyperbolize additional reports of Muslim-majority communities in the region purportedly supporting the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and of pursuing other territorial aspirations in the Balkans, including debates over “Greater Albania” (Sputnik News, October 2, 2016). Although the Western Balkans had, indeed, seen significant numbers of locals leaving to fight alongside extremist organizations in the Middle East since the outset of the war in Syria, depicting nationalist disputes among secular majority-Muslim populations risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy for the region. Nationalist agendas may end up becoming hijacked by religious extremist ideologies or recast as larger struggles between Muslims and Christians, instead of merely localized ethnic grievances. It is no secret that President Vladimir Putin has stirred up Russian nationalism both at home and abroad, and the Kremlin has explicitly cultivated a closer relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) for his own political gains. The ROC, in turn, has repeatedly been used by the Kremlin to forge soft power relations with other majority-Orthodox countries across the post-Soviet space and Central-Eastern Europe (see EDM, March 17, 2016 September 13, 2016; November 14, 2016). Similar trends have been observed by Belgrade’s leaders, who are also stirring up religious sentiments and ethnic grievances domestically as well as abroad. Leaders in Kosovo have explicitly stated they fear a “Crimea scenario” by Serbia against ethnic-Serb-majority areas of the country—particularly in light of the weak EU involvement and an uncertain role the United States may play in the region following the election of President Donald Trump. The Western Balkans’ geopolitical future is further clouded by rival interests of Russia and Turkey in the region (Shqiptarja.com, January 2). Many experts believe that the current volatile situation came about because of years of failed attempts to advance the Western Balkans as a whole toward membership in supranational Euro-Atlantic entities—in particular, the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) (Balkan Insight, January 16). But failures have also been homegrown, including as a result of insufficient reforms and the rise of governments unable to fight endemic corruption or engage in constructive dialogue with their neighbors. Successes in terms of cultural exchanges and regional economic links, achieved in post-war years, have all stalled more recently (Balkan Insight, January 12). As fears mount over the West’s collective withdrawal from the non-EU and/or non-NATO Western Balkans, the region’s pro-Russian and pro-Serbian voices are growing bolder in their calls for “Kosovo to return back to Serbia” and for an end to “America’s colonialism.” In the





absence of Western institutional backing, the consequences of such rhetoric could further destabilize an already vulnerable region in the heart of Europe. --Ebi Spahiu

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They call themselves the US “Intelligence Community,” or the IC. If you include the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which in 2005 began as a crew of 12 people, including its director, and by 2008 had already grown to a staff of 1,750, there are 17 members (adding up to an alphabet soup of acronyms including the CIA, the NSA, and the DIA). The IC spends something like $70 billion of your taxpayer dollars annually, mostly in secret, hires staggering numbers of private contractors from various warrior corporations to lend a hand, sucks up communications of every sort across the planet, runs a drone air force, monitors satellites galore, builds its agencies multibillion-dollar headquarters and storage facilities, and does all of this, ostensibly, to provide the president and the rest of the government with the best information imaginable on what’s happening in the world and what dangers the United States faces.-- This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com.Since 9/11, expansion has been the name of its game, as the leading intelligence agencies gained ever more power, prestige, and the big bucks, while wrapping themselves in an unprecedented blanket of secrecy. Typically, in the final days of the Obama administration, the National Security Agency was given yet more leeway to share the warrantless data it scoops up worldwide (including from American citizens) with ever more members of the IC.And oh yes, in the weeks leading up to the inauguration of Donald Trump, several of those intelligence outfits found themselves in a knock-down, drag-out barroom brawl with our new tweeter in chief (who has begun threatening to downsize parts of the IC) over the possible Russian hacking of an American election and his relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In the process, they have received regular media plaudits for their crucial importance to all of us, our security and safety, along with tweeted curses from the then-president-elect.Let me lay my own cards on the table here. Based on the relatively little we can know about the information the Intelligence Community has been delivering to the president and his people in these years, I’ve never been particularly impressed with its work. Again, given what’s available to judge from, it seems as if, despite its size, reach, money, and power, the IC has been caught “off-guard” by developments in our world with startling regularity and might be thought of as something closer to an “un-intelligence machine.” It’s always been my suspicion that, if a group of smart, out-of-the-box thinkers were let loose on purely open-source material, the US government might actually end up with a far more accurate view of our world and how it works, not to speak of what dangers lie in store for us.There’s just one problem in saying such things. In an era when the secrecy around the Intelligence Community has only grown and those leaking information from it have been prosecuted with a fierceness unprecedented in our history, we out here in what passes for the world don’t have much of a way to judge the value of the “product” it produces.There is, however, one modest exception to this rule. Every four years, before a newly elected president enters the Oval Office, the National Intelligence Council, or NIC, which





bills itself as “the IC’s center for long-term strategic analysis,” produces just such a document. The NIC is largely staffed from the IC (evidently in significant measure from the CIA), presents “senior policymakers with coordinated views of the entire Intelligence Community, including National Intelligence Estimates,” and does other classified work of various sorts.Still, proudly and with some fanfare, it makes public one lengthy document quadrennially for any of us to read. Until now, that report has gone by the name of Global Trends with a futuristic year attached. The previous one, its fifth, made public just before Barack Obama’s second term in office, was Global Trends 2030. This one would have been the 2035 edition, had the NIC not decided to drop that futuristic year for what it calls fear of “false precision” (though projections of developments to 2035 are still part of the text). Instead, the sixth edition arrives as Global Trends: The Paradox of Progress, an anodyne phrase whose meaning is summarized this way: “The achievements of the industrial and information ages are shaping a world to come that is both more dangerous and richer with opportunity than ever before. Whether promise or peril prevails will turn on the choices of humankind.” According to the NIC, in producing such documents its role is to identify “key drivers and developments likely to shape world events a couple of decades into the future” for the incoming president and his people.Think of Global Trends as another example of how the American world of intelligence has expanded in these years. Starting relatively modestly in 1997, the IC decided to go where no intelligence outfit had previously gone and plant its flag in the future. Chalk that up as a bold decision, since the future might be thought of as the most democratic as well as least penetrable of time frames. After all, any one of us is free to venture there any time we choose without either financing or staff. It’s also a place where you can’t embed spies, you can’t gather communications from across the planet, you can’t bug the phones or hack into the e-mails of world leaders, no drones can fly, and there are no satellite images to study or interpret. Historically, until the NIC decided to make the future its property, it had largely been left to visionaries and kooks, dreamers and sci-fi writers—people, in short, with a penchant for thinking outside the box.In these years, however, in the heartland of the world’s “sole superpower,” the urge to control and surveil everything grew to monumental proportions leading the IC directly into the future in the only way it knew how to do anything: monumentally. As a result, the new Global Trends boasts about the size and reach of the operation that produced it. Its team “visited more than 35 countries and one territory, soliciting ideas and feedback from over 2,500 people around the world from all walks of life.”As its massive acknowledgements section makes clear, along with all the unnamed officials and staff who did the basic work and many people who were consulted but could not be identified, the staff talked to everyone from a former prime minister and two foreign ministers to an ambassador and a sci-fi writer, not to mention “senior officials and strategists worldwide…hundreds of natural and social scientists, thought leaders, religious figures, business and industry representatives, diplomats, development experts, and women, youth, and civil society organizations around the world.”The NIC’s two-year intelligence voyage into a universe that, by definition, must remain unknown to us all, even made “extensive use of analytic simulations—employing teams of experts to represent key international actors—to explore the future trajectories for regions of the world, the international order, the security environment, and the global economy.” In other words, to produce this unclassified report on how, according to NIC Chairman Gregory Treverton, “the NIC is thinking about the future,” it mounted a major intelligence operation that—though no figures are offered—must have cost millions of dollars. In the





hands of the IC, the future like the present is, it seems, an endlessly expensive proposition.A GRIM FUTURE OFFSET BY CHEERIf you’re now thinking about tossing your Ray Bradbury, Ursula Le Guin, Philip K. Dick, and Octavia Butler novels into the trash bin of history and diving into the newest Global Trends, then I’ve done you an enormous favor. I’ve already read it for you. And let me assure you that, unlike William Gibson’s “discovery” of cyberspace in his futuristic novel Neuromancer, the NIC’s document uncovers nothing in the future that hasn’t already been clearly identified in the present and isn’t obvious to you and just about everyone else on the planet. Perhaps Global Trends’ greatest achievement is to transform that future into a reading experience so mind-numbing that it was my own vale of tears. A completely typical sentence: “The most powerful actors of the future will be states, groups, and individuals who can leverage material capabilities, relationships, and information in a more rapid, integrated, and adaptive mode than in generations past.”Admittedly, every now and then you stumble across a genuinely interesting stat or fact that catches your attention (“one in every 112 persons in the world is a refugee, an internally displaced person, or an asylum seeker”) and, on rare occasions, the odd thought stops you momentarily. Generally though, the future as imagined by the wordsmiths of the IC is a slog, a kind of living nightmare of groupthink.Whatever quirky and original brains may be hidden in the depths of the IC, on the basis of Global Trends you would have to conclude that its collective brain, the one it assumedly offers to presidents and other officials, couldn’t be more mundane. Start with this: published on the eve of the Trumpian accession, it can’t seem to imagine anything truly new under the sun, including Donald J. Trump (who goes unmentioned in this glimpse of our future). Even as we watch our present world being upended daily, the authors of Global Trends can’t conceive of the genuine upending of much on this planet.Perhaps that helps explain why its leadership felt so caught off-guard and discombobulated by our new president. In him, after all, the American future is already becoming the unimaginable American present, tweet by tweet. (And let me here express a bit of sympathy for President Trump. If Global Trends is typical of the kind of thinking and presentation that goes into the President’s Daily Brief from the Intelligence Community, then I’m not surprised that he chose to start skipping those sessions for almost anything else, including Fox and Friends and spitball fights with Meryl Streep and John Lewis).As the IC imagines it, the near-future offers a relatively grim set of prospects, all transposed from obvious developments in our present moment, but each of them almost mechanistically offset by a hopeful conclusion: terrorism will undoubtedly spread and worsen (before it gets better); inequality will increase in a distinctly 1 percent world as anti-globalist sentiments sweep the planet and “populism,” along with more authoritarian ways of thinking, will continue to spread along with isolationist sentiments in the West (before other trends take hold); the risk of interstate conflict will increase thanks to China and Russia (even if the world will not be devastated by it); governing will grow harder globally and technology more potentially disruptive (though hope lurks close at hand); and the pressures of climate change are likely to create a more tenuous planet, short on food and especially water, and filled with the desperate and migrationally inclined (but is also likely to foster “a twenty-first-century set of common principles”). In truth, even the grimmest version of the IC’s future seems eerily mild, given the onrushing present—from a Trumpian presidency to the recently reported reality that eight billionaires now control the same amount of wealth as the bottom 50 percent of the planet’s population. (Only a year ago, it took 62 billionaires to hit that mark.) According to the Engelhardt Intelligence





Council, the likelihood is that we’re already entering a future far more extreme than anything the NIC and its 2,500-plus outside experts can imagine.The Global Trends crew seems incapable of imagining futures in which some version of the present doesn’t rule all. Despite the global wars of the last century that leveled significant parts of the planet, the arrival of climate change as history’s possible deal-breaker, and the 9/11 attacks, disjunctures are simply not in their playbook. As a result, their idea of futuristic extremes couldn’t be milder. In one of the report’s three scenarios, even the surprise use of a nuclear weapon for the first time since August 9, 1945—in a 2028 confrontation between India and Pakistan—is relieved of most of its potential punch. The bomb goes off not over a major city, killing hundreds of thousands, but in a desert area. And at what seems to be remarkably little cost, the shock of that single explosion miraculously brings a world of hostile powers, including the United States, China, and Russia, together in a strikingly upbeat fashion. (By 2028, it seems that Mr. Smith has indeed gone to Washington and so, in Global Trends, “President Smith” heartwarmingly shares a Nobel Peace Prize with China’s president for the “series of confidence-building measures and arms control agreements” that followed the nuclear incident).I, of course, don’t have thousands of experts to consult in thinking about the future, but based on scientific work already on the record, I could still create a very different South Asian scenario, which wouldn’t exactly be a formula for uniting the planet behind a better security future. Just imagine that one of the “tactical” nuclear weapons the Pakistani military is already evidently beginning to store at its forward military bases was put to use in response to an Indian military challenge. Imagine, then, that it triggered not world peace, but an ongoing nuclear exchange between the two powers, each with significant arsenals of such weaponry. The results in South Asia could be mind boggling—up to 21 million direct deaths by one estimate. Scientists speculate however, that the effects of such a nuclear war would not be restricted to the region, but would spark a nuclear-winter scenario globally, destroying crops across the planet and possibly leading to up to a billion deaths.LIVING IN AN ALL-AMERICAN WORLDSuch grim futures are, however, not for the NIC. Think of them as American imperial optimists and dreamers only masquerading as realists. If you want proof of this, it’s easy enough to find in Global Trends. Here, in fact, is the most curious aspect of that document: The members of the US Intelligence Community evidently can’t bear to look at the last 15 years of their own imperial history. Instead, in taking possession of the future, they simply leave the post-9/11 American past in a roadside ditch and move on. In the future they imagine, much of that past is missing in action, including, of course, Donald J. Trump. (As a group, they must be Clintonistas. At least I can imagine Hillary wonkishly making her way through their document, but The Donald? Don’t make me laugh).Give them credit at least for accepting the obvious: that we will no longer be on a “unipolar planet” dominated by a single superpower, but in a world of “spheres of influence.” (“For better and worse, the emerging global landscape is drawing to a close an era of American dominance following the Cold War…”) But you can search their document in vain for the word “decline.” Forget that they were putting together their report at the very moment that the first openly declinist candidate for president was wowing crowds—who sensed that their country and their own lives were on the downhill slope—with the slogan “Make America Great Again.”Nor were they about to take striking aspects of present-day America and project them into





a truly grim future. Take, for example, something that amused me greatly: You can search Global Trends in vain for all but the most passing reference to the US military. You know, the outfit that our recent presidents keep praising as the “finest fighting force” in world history. Search their document top to bottom and you still won’t have the faintest idea that the US military has been fighting ceaselessly in victory-less conflicts for the past 15 years, and that its “war on terror” efforts have somehow only fueled the spread of terrorist movements, while leaving behind a series of failed or failing states across the Greater Middle East and North Africa. None of that is projected into the future, nor is the militarization of this country (or its police), even though the retired generals now populating the new Trump administration speak directly to this very point.

Or to pick another example, how about the fact that, in a world in which a single country—the very one to which the IC belongs—garrisons the planet with hundreds of military bases from Europe to Japan, Bahrain to Afghanistan, there is but a single futuristic mention of a military base, and it’s a Chinese one to be built on a Fijian Island deep in the Pacific. (A running gag of Global Trends involves future newspaper headlines like this one from 2019: “China Buys Uninhabited Fijian Island To Build Military Base”). What will happen to the present US military framework for dominating the planet? You certainly won’t find out here.But don’t think that the United States itself isn’t on the minds of those who produced this document. After all, among all the stresses of the decades to come, as the IC’s futurologists imagine them, there’s one key to positive national survival in 2035 and that’s what they call “resilience.” (“[T]he very same trends heightening risks in the near term can enable better outcomes over the longer term if the proliferation of power and players builds resilience to manage greater disruptions and uncertainty.”)And which country is the most obviously resilient on Planet Earth? That’s the $100 (but not the 100 ruble or 100 yuan) question. So go ahead, guess—and if you don’t get the answer right, you’re not the reader I think you are.Still, just in case you’re not sure, here’s how Global Trends sums the matter up:“For example, by traditional measures of power, such as GDP, military spending, and population size, China’s share of global power is increasing. China, however, also exhibits several characteristics, such as a centralized government, political corruption, and an economy overly reliant on investment and net exports for growth—which suggest vulnerability to future shocks.“Alternatively, the United States exhibits many of the factors associated with resilience, including decentralized governance, a diversified economy, inclusive society, large land mass, biodiversity, secure energy supplies, and global military power projection capabilities and alliances.”So if there’s one conclusion to be drawn from the NIC’s mighty two-year dive into possible futures on a planet we still garrison and that’s wracked by wars we’re still fighting, it might be summed up this way: Don’t be China, be us.Of course, no one should be surprised by such a conclusion, since you don’t rise in the government by contrarian thinking but by going with the herd. This isn’t the sort of document you read expecting to be surprised, not when the nightmare of every bureaucracy is just that: the unexpected and unpredicted. The Washington bubble is evidently too comfortable and the world far too frightening a place to imagine a fuller range of what might be coming at us. The spooks of the NIC may be living off the money our fear sends their way, but don’t kid yourself for a second, they’re afraid too, or they





could never produce a document like Global Trends: The Paradox of Progress.As a portrait not of the future but of the anxieties of American power in a world it can’t control, this document provides the rest of us with a vivid portrait of the group of people least likely to offer us long-term security.

The last laugh here belongs to Philip K. Dick, Ursula Le Guin, and other authors of their ilk. If you want to be freed to think about the many possible futures that face us, futures that we will help create, then skip Global Trends and head for the kinds of books that might free your mind to think afresh, not bind it to a world growing more dismal by the day.




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