CONSTRUCTION OF THAILAND'S 'KRA CANAL' FINANCED BY CHINA

SOURCE:
http://www.theindependent.sg/the-real-threat-to-spore-construction-of-thais-kra-canal-financed-by-china/

THE   REAL THREAT TO SINGAPORE  & INDIA                -  CONSTRUCTION OF THAILAND'S 'KRA  CANAL' FINANCED BY CHINA

                          BY

 FOREVER VAGABOND  

October 2, 2016

The Kra Canal or the Thai Canal refers to a proposal for a canal to cut through the southern isthmus of Thailand, connecting the Gulf of Thailand with the Andaman Sea. It would provide an alternative to transit through the Strait of Malacca and shorten transit for shipments of oil to East Asian countries like Japan and China by 1,200 km, saving much time. China refers to it as part of its 21st century maritime Silk Road.

China is keen on the Kra Canal project partly for strategic reasons. Presently, 80% of China’s oil from the Middle East and Africa passes through the Straits of Malacca. China has long recognized that in a potential conflict with other rivals, particularly with the US, the Strait of Malacca could easily be blockaded, cutting-off its oil lifeline. Former Chinese President Hu Jintao even coined a term for this, calling it China’s “Malacca Dilemma”.

History of Kra Canal

The idea to shorten shipping time and distance through the proposed Kra Canal is not new. It was proposed as early as in 1677 when Thai King Narai asked the French engineer de Lamar to survey the possibility of building a waterway to connect Songkhla with Marid (now Myanmar), but the idea was discarded as impractical with the technology of that time.

In 1793, the idea resurfaced. The younger brother of King Chakri suggested it would make it easier to protect the west coast with military ships. In the early 19th century, the British East India Company became interested in a canal. After Burma became a British colony in 1863, an exploration was undertaken with Victoria Point (Kawthaung) opposite the Kra estuary as its southernmost point, again with negative result. In 1882, the constructor of the Suez canal, Ferdinand de Lesseps, visited the area, but the Thai king did not allow him to investigate in detail.

In 1897, Thailand and the British empire agreed not to build a canal so as to maintain the importance of Singapore as a shipping hub, since by that time, Singapore was already prospering as an international hub with great importance to the British.

In the 20th century the idea resurfaced with various proposals to build the canal but did not go far due to various constraints including technology and cost constraints as well as indecisive political leadership of Thailand

China shows Thailand the money

In the last decade, China has now become the potential game changer who can possibly turn Kra Canal proposal into reality in the 21st century. It has the money, technology and strong political leadership and will to support the project if it wants to.

Last year, news emerged that China and Thailand have signed an MOU to advance the Kra Canal project. On 15 May 2015, the MOU was signed by the China-Thailand Kra Infrastructure Investment and Development company (中泰克拉基礎設施投資開發有限公司) and Asia Union Group in Guangzhou. According to the news reports, the Kra Canal project will take a decade to complete and incur a cost of US$28 billion.

But 4 days later on 19 May, it was reported that both Chinese and Thai governments denied there was any official agreement between the 2 governments to build the canal.

A statement by the Chinese embassy in Thailand said that China has not taken part in any study or cooperation on the matter. It later clarified that the organisations who signed the MOU have no links to the Chinese government. Separately, Xinhua news agency traced the announcement of the canal project to another Chinese firm Longhao, which declined comment when contacted.

Dr Zhao Hong, an expert on China-Asean relations from the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, told the media that China would not embark on such a project lightly, given the political and bilateral implications.

“China will have to consider the feedback from countries such as Singapore, which it has friendly ties with, given the impact that the Kra canal might have,” he said at the time when news of the MOU emerged. But Dr Zhao added that China might be open to private companies studying the feasibility of such a project, but will not directly back it for now.

It was said that the the chairman of Asia Union Group, the Thai party which signed the MOU, is former Thai premier Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, a long-time supporter of the Kra Canal.

Thai PM: Kra Canal project should be looked into by future democratic governments

In Jan this year, the Thai PM reiterated again that the Kra Canal project is not on his government agenda. His announcement came after a member of the King’s Privy Council, Thanin Kraivichien, wrote an open letter to the government advocating for the canal’s construction.Thanin was the 14th PM of Thailand between October 1976 and October 1977. His call is part of a growing chorus of Kra Canal proponents in Thailand’s political and business communities that started talking openly last year after several Chinese firms expressed interest in funding and constructing the canal.

Responding to Thanin’s call for the project, the Thai PM said the Kra Canal project should be looked into by democratic governments in the future, meaning to say Thailand has not ruled out the construction of Kra Canal completely. And in the case of Thailand, changes to its government occur frequently like the changing of clothes.

China getting angry with Singapore

In the last couple of months, China is increasingly angered by PM Lee’s move to side with the US over the South China Seas issue, even though Singapore has no claims over any of the territories there.

It all started 2 months ago when PM Lee was invited to the White House and was hosted to a rare White House state dinner on 2 Aug(http://theindependent.sg/pm-lees-speech-at-white-house-state-dinner-angers-china). During his toast, PM Lee welcomed the US to adopt a strategy to “rebalance” the Asia Pacific and went on to call President Obama as the “America’s first Pacific President”.

China immediately responded through their Global Times. “Lee Hsien Loong addressed Obama as the American ‘first Pacific President’. Such flattery (‘戴高帽’) given to Obama directly does not concern us (‘倒也没啥’),” the Global Times’ article said. “The key is he praised the American strategy to ‘re-balance Asia-Pacific’ and publicised that all Southeast Asian countries welcome such American ‘balancing’. Because the ‘rebalance Asia-Pacific’ strategy is pointed at China to a large extent, Lee Hsien Loong is clearly taking side already.”

“If Singapore completely becomes an American ‘pawn’ (‘马前卒’) and loses any of its resilience to move between US and China, its influence will be considerably reduced. Its value to the US will also be greatly discounted,” it added.

The article went on to say that China has its limit in tolerance. It said, “Singapore should not push it (‘新加坡不能太过分’). It cannot play the role of taking the initiative to help US and South East Asian countries to go against China over South China Sea matters. It cannot help American ‘rebalancing Asia-Pacific’ strategy, which is directed at China’s internal affairs, by ‘adding oil and vinegar’ (‘添油加醋’), thereby enabling US to provide an excuse to suppress China’s strategic space as well as providing support to US.”

“Singapore can go and please the Americans, but it needs to do their utmost to avoid harming China’s interests. It needs to be clear and open about its latter attitude,” it cautioned. Singapore’s balancing act should be to help China and US to avoid confrontation as its main objective, and not taking side so as to increase the mistrust between China and US, it said..

The article gave the example of Singapore allowing US to deploy its P-8 reconnaissance aircraft to Singapore, which from the view of the Chinese, increases the tension in South China Sea, and thereby, increasing the mistrust between the 2 big countries.

“Singapore needs more wisdom (‘新加坡

需要更多的智慧’),” the article concluded.

PLA General: We must strike back 

at Singapore

And yesterday, SCMP reported that a PLA General had called for Beijing to impose sanctions and to retaliate against Singapore so as to

“pay the price for seriously damaging China’s 

interests” 

(http://theindependent.sg/pla-general-we-must-strike-back-at-singapore).

The General’s remarks came after a recent spat between Global Times and Singapore Ambassador Loh. On 21 Sep, Global Times carried an article saying that Singapore had raised the issue of the disputed South China Sea at the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit held in Venezuela on 18 Sep. It added that Singapore had “insisted” to include an international tribunal’s ruling on the waterway, which was in favour of the Philippines, in the summit’s final document.

Singapore’s ambassador to China, Stanley Loh, rejected this and wrote an open letter stating that the news report was “false and unfounded”. Mr Loh said the move to include the international ruling in NAM’s final document was a collective act by the members of the ASEAN. But the editor-in-chief of Global Times came out to stand by his paper’s report.

Then, the Chinese government also came out in support of Global Times, not buying Ambassador Loh’s arguments. When a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman was asked about the tiff between Global Times and Singapore, he blamed an unspecified “individual nation” for insisting on including South China Sea issues in the NAM document.

Xu Liping, senior researcher on Southeast Asia studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said China expected Singapore to be a neutral mediator between China and the countries of Asean, and did not want to see disputes over the South China Sea raised in a multilateral platform like the NAM Summit. And that was why China was so angry over Singapore’s active moves in broaching such a sensitive topic, he said.

“If Singapore does not adjust its policies, I am afraid the bilateral relations will deteriorate,” Xu added. “Singapore should think twice about its security cooperation especially with the United States, and strike a better balance between China and US.”

“2-Headed Snake”

On Thursday, the overseas edition of People’s Daily also published an online commentary, saying Singapore “has obviously taken sides over South China Sea issues, while emphasising it does not”. In other words, China is accusing the Singapore government of saying one thing but doing another – a hypocrite.

Online, the Chinese netizens condemned Singapore as a “2-headed snake”. One of them wrote:

(Translation: China should quickly embark on the Kra Canal project and turn Singapore back into a third world country. This is the best present to give to a “2-headed snake”.)

If the Kra Canal truly becomes a reality, ships would certainly consider by-passing the Strait of Malacca and Singapore altogether, making the Singapore’s all-important geographical location redundant. We may truly become a third world country after all.

GROWING NUCLEAR DANGER ON THE SUBCONTINENT

SOURCE:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://pkonweb.com/2017/01/rising-tensions-in-kashmir-a-growing-nuclear-danger-on-the-subcontinent/&gws_rd=cr&ei=whuKWO6eL8zQvgSS76PQBQ

RISING TENSIONS IN KASHMIR, A GROWING NUCLEAR DANGER ON THE SUBCONTINENT

                                  By 

                 Michael Krepon

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will inherit rising nuclear dangers in five regions of the globe. Every one of them could get worse under his watch, including the subcontinent, where Pakistan and India are engaged in an intense nuclear competition with little likelihood of slowing down.

In Indian-ruled Kashmir, New Delhi has lost the battle of hearts and minds in Muslim-majority areas, where security forces are in lock-down mode. In September 2016, after a series of attacks by militant groups, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (supposedly) carried out “surgical strikes” across the Kashmir divide. At the same time, he made thinly veiled threats about Pakistan’s water supply and territorial integrity.

Pakistan, which has suffered more from terrorism than India over the last eight years, claims not to distinguish between “good” and “bad” terrorists, but its actions suggest otherwise. Lashkar e-Taiba and Jaish e-Mohammed continue to use Pakistani territory as a safe haven from which to carry out attacks against India. And, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is also reluctant to take on anti-India and violent sectarian groups that are based in Punjab, his party’s home base.

And, as long as the government in Kabul remains hostile to Islamabad and friendly towards New Delhi, it is unlikely that military leaders in Rawalpindi  will change course. The George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations used carrots and sticks to do so, and have little to show for their efforts. So Pakistan must contend with a hostile India to the east, a hostile Afghan government to the west, and wider regional isolation. When it was Islamabad’s turn to host a conclave of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation in November 2016, only the Maldives planned to attend before the meeting was postponed.

Geopolitics and economics are also working against Pakistan. U.S. military assistance to Pakistan is winding down, reflecting a diminished military presence in Afghanistan and Washington’s grievances over Pakistan’s duplicity on terrorism. Pakistanis view Washington’s shift toward India as a betrayal. Conflicting narratives of duplicity and betrayal leave little room for improved relations, especially when Washington’s ties with New Delhi continue to improve, thanks to the attractiveness of the Indian market and a desire to help India counter China’s military buildup. Pakistan’s sense of unease has grown with Donald Trump’s habit of painting Islamic terrorism in broad-brush strokes. China’s decision to invest heavily in an economic corridor across Pakistan to the Arabian Sea is viewed as a lifeline, but not a counterweight to Washington’s embrace of New Delhi.

NUCLEAR DANGERS, PAST AND PRESENT

As Pakistan’s sense of isolation grows and as the conventional military balance shifts even further in India’s favor, Islamabad is relying increasingly on Chinese military help and on nuclear weapons for deterrence. Its nuclear arsenal is growing faster than India’s, with a capacity to produce 15 or more warheads a year, adding more nuclear weapons every year than North Korea has accumulated to date. While India is moving to close this gap, Pakistan is planning to compete even harder with longer-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles to be delivered in the air, on the ground and at sea, as well as with tactical nuclear weapons. Since testing nuclear devices in 1998, India and Pakistan have together flight-tested on average one new type of missile capable of carrying a nuclear weapon every year.

The buildup of nuclear capabilities has accompanied greater risk-taking. One year after the nuclear tests, India and Pakistan fought a limited conventional war, which was instigated when then-Pakistani Army Chief Pervez Musharraf authorized advances across the Kashmir divide. Musharraf’s gambit nullified a plan for improved relations that both countries’ prime ministers had crafted. The resulting war in the heights above Kargil made clear that hopes for stability based on offsetting nuclear deterrence were fanciful. Two dramatic attacks by militant groups against India subsequently followed—one in 2001 against the Indian parliament building, which prompted both armies to mobilize, and the other in 2008, against luxury hotels, the central train station, and other targets in Mumbai. There has been no sustained, substantive diplomatic engagement between India and Pakistan since the Mumbai attacks.

Against this backdrop, even modest downturns in relations between India and Pakistan warrant attention. Ever since the 2008 Mumbai carnage, cross-border attacks have been modest—not enough to prompt a major crisis, but sufficient to block New Delhi’s overtures to improve relations. In May 2014, two days after Modi invited Sharif to attend his inauguration, Lashkar e-Taiba cadres attacked the Indian consulate in Herat. In July 2015, 17 days after the Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries released a joint statement announcing their readiness to “discuss all outstanding issues” and condemning “terrorism in all its forms,” militants attacked a police station in Gurdaspur, killing seven. And in January 2016, eight days after Modi’s surprise Christmas Day visit to Lahore bearing birthday and wedding gifts for Sharif and his family, the Indian Air Force Base at Pathankot was attacked, followed the next day by an attack on the Indian consulate at Mazar-i-Sharif. And in June 2016, as Kashmir boiled over due to the killing of a prominent anti-Indian social media crusader, militants attacked Indian army camps at Uri and Nagrota.

This familiar sequence of events prompted Modi to adopt a harder line. In August 2016, speaking at the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi on India’s Independence Day, he made a pointed reference to Baluchistan, Pakistan’s most restive province, implying that India would foment unrest there. After the attack at Uri, Modi stepped up threats over water sharing under the Indus Waters Treaty, declaring that “blood and water cannot flow simultaneously.” Implied Indian threats against Pakistan’s water resources and national cohesion are not new, but when delivered by the prime minister himself, they took on new meaning. In the view of Pakistan’s national security establishment and public opinion, Modi’s statements merely revealed his true colors as a Hindu nationalist zealot bent on subjugating, if not breaking up, Pakistan.

WILL THE ESCALATION CONTINUE?

After the attack against the military camp at Uri, Modi decided to carry out and then publicize commando raids across the Line of Control dividing Kashmir. Such raids are not new, but advertising them is, increasing pressure on Pakistan to up the ante. (Pakistan’s military denies that these cross-border raids even occurred, but Washington has concluded otherwise.) Throughout the fall and early winter, casualties mounted, with both sides stepping up fire across this divide, including the use of artillery. A ceasefire took hold in conjunction with the elevation of a new Pakistan Army chief in late November, but such ceasefires are no longer durable.

For now, with India and Pakistan at loggerheads, another flashpoint and test of wills might be avoided, since there is no need for anti-India groups and their backers in Pakistan to block improved relations. Irony is, however, an insufficient basis for stability when emotions are so raw and when Kashmiri opposition to Indian rule is so intense. Sooner or later, there will be another strike against India originating from Pakistan. The question will then become whether pieces other than pawns along the Kashmir divide are moved on the chessboard.

 If New Delhi chooses to retaliate, there will be many rungs available for escalation, beginning with intensified, quick hit-and-return operations within the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir. These dynamics may not favor India, however, as Pakistan has more lucrative targets—including an air base and the Hindu-majority area of Jammu—to aim at within these confines. Indian strikes might thus be contemplated elsewhere. One key escalation threshold would be the use of airpower, perhaps initially at standoff distances. At this point, knights and bishops would be moved on the chessboard. If Modi takes steps to move his queen by diverting Pakistan’s water and stepping up threats to its territorial integrity, hostilities are unlikely to be confined to Kashmir.

New Delhi still has not been able to figure out how to deal with Pakistan’s non-state actors, while military leaders in Rawalpindi can’t figure out how to live without them. Friction is growing alongside nuclear weapons’ stockpiles and missiles. As they mount, no one can confidently predict what the new normal for violent interaction between India and Pakistan will be. If push comes to shove, it falls to the U.S. President, Secretary of State, and National Security Adviser to serve as crisis managers. None of these individuals in the incoming Trump administration seem suited for this crucial role.

Michael Krepon is the Co-Founder of the Stimson Center. This piece originally ran in Foreign Affairs on January 16, 2017.

MILITANCY IN JAMMU & KASHMIR A VESTED INTEREST

SOURCE:


      MILITANCY IN JAMMU & KASHMIR
                A VESTED INTEREST

REVENGE OF GEOGRAPHY; Black Sea Strategy Papers

SOURCE:http://www.fpri.org/article/2017/01/why-the-black-sea/

Black Sea Strategy Papers

                 

                    Why the Black Sea?

                          Chris Miller

January 23, 2017

                      

Black Sea. Source: Wikipedia Commons.

When Americans think about the world, they divide it into discrete regions: Europe, spanning from Norway to Greece; the Middle East, stretching from Morocco to Iran; and the Asia-Pacific, covering Japan through Indonesia, or sometimes even to India. This mental map of the world is profoundly powerful and entirely imaginaryBlack Sea. Source: Wikipedia Commons.
. Powerful, because where we place countries affects how we treat them. Imaginary, because our mental geographies are not the only way of seeing the world. Often, they are not even the best way.

No region of the world is more divided in Americans’ mental map than the Black Sea. We place the countries that surround the Black Sea coast into three different categories. Romania and Bulgaria are in Europe, members of NATO and the European Union. Russia, Moldova, Ukraine, and Georgia are the former Soviet Union; for better or for worse, they are still defined by the historical legacy of Soviet rule. And Turkey, embroiled by Kurdish insurgency and at war in Syria and Iraq, is increasingly seen as one of the main powers of the Middle East.

                                          Batumi, Georgia

There is much sense, of course, in this tripartite division of the region, since it accurately describes at least some of these countries’ current domestic politics and international orientation. But thinking only in terms of Europe, the Middle East, and the former USSR misses many, perhaps most, of the dynamics that unite the region. Only several hundred miles separate Turkey’s great Black Sea port of Trabzon from Tiraspol, the border city serving as capital of Moldova’s breakaway Transnistria region. Burgas, Bulgaria’s biggest port and an oil-refining hub, is a one-day sail from Georgia’s Batumi, formerly the greatest oil port of Tsarist Russia. Sochi, the host of Russia’s 2014 winter Olympics, is located due north of Rize, the home province of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The geography of the Black Sea matters not only because the region is increasingly at the center of the United States’ foreign policy, but we continue to wrongly see the region as divided into unconnected chunks. Beyond geographic proximity and historical connections, however, there are three main reasons to look at the Black Sea as a coherent region, rather than merely as a medium-sized body of water:  security, energy, and European and Eurasian integration. Each of these themes is shared across the Black Sea region. Unless we recognize the interconnections—and treat the Black Sea as a whole—we cannot fully understand the region. Why the Black Sea? We may see it as a body of water that separates Europe from Asia, or that divides the Middle East from the former USSR. But all sides of the Black Sea’s shores share many of the factors driving political and economic change in the region.

Black Sea Security

Take security. A ring of smoldering conflicts surrounds the Black Sea. In Moldova, a 25-year-old frozen conflict divides the country into two pieces. Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula was annexed by Russia, and the Donbass region remains occupied by Russian-backed separatist forces. Russia’s main supply route to its forces in Syria runs through the Black Sea via the Bosphorus and Dardanelles to the Eastern Mediterranean. In the Caucasus, ongoing conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh and between Georgia and the breakaway regions South Ossetia and Abkhazia continue to attract the interest of outside powers, Russia chief among them.

All of these conflicts—frozen to various degrees—are usually seen as the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, remnants of the retreating Russian Empire. This is true, but it misses their Black Sea context. It is not a coincidence that all the ongoing post-Soviet conflicts (including, it is worth noting, Russia’s ongoing struggle to pacify and integrate its own North Caucasus) occur around the Black Sea.

                                      

                                               Sevastopol

Why is this case? Primarily because the Black Sea area is where Russia and the West failed to agree on post-Cold War “rules of the game.” In Central Asia, the West never seriously expected to wield dominant influence or to transform local governance. The civil war in Tajikistan, therefore, was resolved in the 1990s along Russian lines, with relatively little Western input. Similarly, Moscow has recognized the Baltic states—Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia—as part of the European system, and disagreements between these countries’ ethnic majorities and Russian-speaking minorities have been managed along the West’s preferred methods.

Russia and the West never agreed about the Black Sea. Are Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia in Russia’s sphere of control, or are they on track to join Western institutions? Such disagreement exists, largely because in the 1990s, neither the West nor Russia seriously imagined that these countries would want or could be prepared to join Western institutions. (In the 1990s, the debate was whether Poland would join NATO.) At the same time, Turkey had long sought to join the European Union, but was held at bay by Western European voters who feared a wave of Turkish immigrants. This confusion added an additional level of geopolitical complication. Lacking a clear set of rules, the Black Sea region’s existing conflicts continued to smolder. The wars in Georgia in 2008 and in Ukraine in 2014 were sparked by local disputes, but they only occurred because of this larger disagreement about how the Black Sea region should be governed.

Today, the situation is as confused as a decade ago, but far more tense. Both Russia and Ukraine are building up their military power in the Black Sea. NATO has stationed additional forces in Romania and has considered adding to its naval presence. Over the past year, Turkey and Russia have swung between tentative friendship and near-open conflict. Ankara relies on NATO defense commitments even as it seeks to maintain its privileged position in the Black Sea itself. And Russia’s expansion of its military role in Syria adds to the importance the Kremlin attaches to Black Sea naval supply routes. The Black Sea is more militarized and less stable than at any point since the Cold War’s end—and perhaps since the late 1940s.

Black Sea Energy

The question of security and insecurity in the Black Sea overlaps with other areas of conflict and cooperation. One key and contested theme is energy. A significant share of Russia’s gas exports run via the Black Sea region, primarily through Ukraine. Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned gas monopoly, says it wants to cut off gas transit through Ukraine, a move in part designed to place pressure on Kyiv’s Western-oriented government. To make such a switch possible, Russia is looking to build new gas pipelines: some further north, but some also located in the Black Sea region. For years, Russia promoted the South Stream pipeline, which would have shipped gas via an underwater pipeline intersecting the Black Sea from Russia to Bulgaria, and then on to other European countries. Despite some support for the project in Bulgaria and elsewhere, it was scrapped in 2014 under pressure from Western leaders who wanted to punish Russia for annexing Crimea.

Since the cancellation of South Stream, the Kremlin has turned its attention to a new pipeline, Turk Stream. This pipeline would also bypass Ukraine via an underwater, trans-Black Sea link, distributing gas from Russia via Turkey and onward to European customers. This pipeline, too, is partly a geopolitical game. Russia froze the project after tensions with Turkey spiked in late 2015, only to restart it when ties improved in 2016. Many experts, however, consider the project economically unjustified given low energy prices and ample existing pipeline capacity. It remains unclear if the pipeline will be built.

                                                           Burgas, Bulgaria

Other countries also view the Black Sea as a strategic energy corridor. Just as the Kremlin seeks to bypass Ukraine by using other Black Sea routes, so too do Western governments look to the Black Sea as a route for transporting energy from the gas-rich Caspian Sea region to Western markets. Already, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline transports oil from Azerbaijani oil fields to global markets, bypassing Russia.

Potentially more significant are efforts to construct gas pipelines originating in Azerbaijan or even Turkmenistan, transiting through Turkey and supplying gas to Western consumers. The Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), for example, is intended to give Azerbaijan a means of breaking Russia’s monopoly on gas exports from the former USSR to the West. If Iranian gas ever reaches Europe, it too will transit the Black Sea. 

So long as Europe relies on natural gas for 

energy, the Black Sea will remain a crucial 

energy transit corridor.

European and Eurasian Integration in the Black Sea

Energy is not Europe’s only interest in the Black Sea. The region is one of three areas of instability positioned along Europe’s southern border. Coupled with the Eastern Mediterranean (Syria, Lebanon, Israel) and the countries of North Africa, political and economic chaos in the Black Sea risks spilling into the European Union. The threat of instability along its border is a major reason why the European Union involves itself so much in the Black Sea region. Indeed, except for the Balkans, all potential members of the European Union ring the Black Sea, including Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, and (for true optimists) Turkey.

The European Union has already signed Association Agreements with Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia. These agreements do not guarantee these countries future membership in the European Union, but they do provide wide access to European markets as well as aid and technical assistance. Moldovan and Georgian citizens have received the right to travel to the European Union without needing to apply for a visa, a right that Ukrainians may receive in 2017.

Major political groups in each of these countries describe accession to the European Union as a long-term goal. Amid Brexit and a continent-wide populist backlash, further EU expansion looks unlikely in the short term. But it is worth remembering that in 1989, as communist regimes crumbled across Central and Eastern Europe, the idea that Poland or Romania would join the European Union also seemed like a long-term prospect at best. As it happened, the long term came sooner than many expected.

Turkey has been a candidate for EU accession since before the Cold War ended, yet its membership, while still in theory under negotiation, looks unlikely. Unlike tiny Moldova and Georgia, Turkey’s population is the size of Germany’s, so its accession would drastically shift the balance of power within Europe. It would also likely lead to a flood of unwelcome economic migrants to wealthier European countries. That means full EU membership is unlikely, even if current political disagreements between Turkey’s increasingly authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and other European leaders are overcome. Nonetheless, geographic and economic realities mean that ties between Turkey and Europe are likely to persist. The migration deal struck earlier this year by Erdoğan and German Chancellor Angela Merkel is a good example for why cooperation between Turkey and the European Union will continue.

For this reason, Europe’s foreign policy is likely to remain focused on the Black Sea for some time to come. Yet, the Black Sea is also one of two regions that Russia hopes will participate in its own Eurasian Union. Armenia has already signed up, and Russia is pushing hard for Moldova to join. Moscow would also like Ukraine to join its Eurasian project, though this looks unlikely given how strongly Ukrainian public opinion turned against Moscow thanks to the war in the Donbass.

Even if Europe and Russia manage to agree on Ukraine—a prospect that does not look likely—the broader question of Europe’s relations with the other countries of the Black Sea is unlikely to go away. The door to European Union membership formally remains open, particularly for Moldova, a small country on the EU’s border. And the EU has no model for stabilizing European countries on its border that does not involve expanding its own institutions. The Association Agreement that Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia signed with the European Union is unlikely to be the final step of their integration with Europe.

Why the Black Sea Matters

Rarely has a region figured so prominently in American foreign policy without our even realizing it. We treat Turkey as separate from Ukraine, Romania as wholly distinct from Georgia, and Russia as an aggressive “lone wolf” in the region. These are different countries, of course, with diverse historical traditions and political structures. But from security to energy to the future of Europe, the Black Sea operates as a united region far more than Americans usually realize. We underestimate regional connections and fail to understand the linkages that drive regional politics.

The Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Black Sea Initiative, launching this month, will cover these issues in depth. Each month, we will publish an essay on a key Black Sea region issue, looking both at how specific Black Sea countries view the region and examining themes that cut across national borders. These essays will be written by top American and European analysts and by leading experts from the Black Sea region. Our aim is to show that from energy to economics, from security to geopolitics, the region’s relevance is far broader than most people realize. The future of Europe and Eurasia is being contested in the Black Sea.

About the author:
*Chris Miller is Research Director of the FPRI Eurasia Program where he serves as the editor of the Baltic Bulletin and our Black Sea Initiative publications. He is also the Associate Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale University.

Source:

This article was published by FPRI.

TOPICS:

Black SeaCrimeaForeign PolicyRussiaTurkeyUkraineUnited States

Lock and Load! The T-90 tanks will now inherit Armata Tank's Deadly Cannon - WATCH

SOURCE:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O7XCt8K5tc

Lock and Load! The T-90 tanks will now inherit Armata Tank's Deadly Cannon - WATCH

 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O7XCt8K5tc]
  

The latest modernization of Russia's main battle tank, the T-90, will embrace the firepower capabilities of the advanced T-14 Armata. The Uralvagonzavod machine building company recently published the tank's photo for the first time.

"The T-90M will receive a modernized smoothbore 125mm 2A82-1M cannon, the one used in the Armata, and a new fire control system characterized by a higher precision and a higher rate of fire, and its barrel durability will be increased up to 900 shots," Russian military expert Alexei Leonkov told Zvezda TV.

The gun is 20 percent more precise and has 17 percent more muzzle energy (a firearm's destructive potential is directly proportional to this factor) than the rival model on Germany's Leopard 2 battle tank. The automatic loading mechanism allows for the use of projectiles up to one meter long, such as the armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding-sabot (APFSDS) called Vacuum-1, which is used in the Armata.

The T-90M's ammunition load totals 45 projectiles. In addition to shells, the modernized tank is capable of firing Invar and Invar-M tandem-charge guided missiles, which are said to be able to effectively penetrate the protective shielding of all existing and prospective armor vehicles used by foreign armies.

The tank is now protected from enemy fire with the Malakhit reactive armor and the Afghanit active protection system, which were designed for the Armata family of vehicles. Reactive armor is in essence an extra layer of metal "bricks" covering a vehicle's parts, which bear the main weight of a shell's hit and cushion its destructive effect. In its turn, the active protection system can "blind", deflect and strike down an enemy missile or other anti-tank weapon.

The lower part of the turret is now additionally protected by slat armor, shielding it from anti-tank rocket-propelled grenades. The surveillance means of the tank's commander and the gun sighter allow for an equally efficient search for targets day and night, in motion or in a stationary position.

According to Leonkov, Russia is going to upgrade 400 T-90 battle tanks to the T-90M level.

Thanks to the Armata "refresh pack", the Russian main battle tank will be able to conduct even more effective combat operations in different weather conditions and strike targets despite stiff enemy resistance.

The family of Armata platform-based military vehicles is the latest achievement of Russian armor engineers.

        [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnFq54ELpmM]