The EU’s foreign policy chief on Saturday expressed “regret” over the resumption of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, emphasizing Tel Aviv’s obligation to respect international humanitarian law and the laws of war, which he described as “not only a moral obligation but also a legal one.”

“The way Israel exercises its right to self-defence matters. It’s imperative that Israel respects International Humanitarian Law and the laws of war,” Josep Borrell wrote on X.

His remarks came after the Israeli army resumed attacks on Gaza after declaring the end of a week-long humanitarian pause on Friday morning, for which Borrell expressed regret, fearing that the already high civilian death toll would rise further.

Reiterating his call for Israel to respect international law, he stressed that this is “not only a moral obligation but a legal one as well.”

He also mentioned the increasing violence in the occupied West Bank. Citing the UN figures, Borrell said 271 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis since Oct. 7.

“It’s not sufficient humanitarian pauses should be resumed, while simultaneously working towards a comprehensive political solution for all the Palestinian territories,” he added.

The Israeli army resumed bombing the Gaza Strip early Friday after ending a week-long humanitarian pause with the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.

At least 178 Palestinians have been killed and 589 injured on Friday in Israeli airstrikes, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

The humanitarian pause began on Nov. 24 as part of an agreement between Israel and Hamas to temporarily halt fighting to allow hostage swaps and aid delivery.

More than 15,000 Palestinians, mostly children and women, have been killed in Israeli attacks since Oct. 7 following a cross-border attack by Hamas.

Around 1,200 Israelis have also been killed, according to official estimates.

Source : AA

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Ukraine’s Defence Minister Rustem Umierov has signed an order approving the Military Personnel Policy Concept through to 2028, which focuses on meeting the human resources needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).

Quote: “The document defines a strategic vision for developing military personnel policy in defence over the next five years, both during martial law and peacetime.

The main emphasis of the concept is to ensure that the needs of the AFU in personnel are met during a full-scale war, integration into the Euro-Atlantic security space, and interoperability of the AFU with the armed forces of NATO member states.”

Details: The Ukrainian Defence Ministry expects the following effects:

The AFU will switch to contract military service. Conscript military service will be replaced by intensive military training for citizens of draft age;

Ukraine will have an effective system of recruiting professional and motivated personnel for the AFU;

A human-centred approach to career management of military personnel, taking into account their education;

Professional development, and gender equality. Equal opportunities for men and women in the AFU;

Improved electronic military registration system;

Automated and digitalised personnel management processes;

Expanded cooperation between Ukrainian higher education institutions and those of NATO and EU member states;

An effective and transparent system of financial support for servicemen and women and provision of housing;

Improved psychological support;

A new style of relations between commanders and subordinates;

Proper conditions for transitioning from military career to civilian life for service members subject to discharge from military service.

Source : Yahoo

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The AUKUS program—sweeping in the intimacy and level of its proposed cooperation—has enjoyed a high level of bipartisan support among the Australian political elite. First agreed by the Coalition government in September 2021, it was reaffirmed by the Australian Labor Party—then in opposition—within 24 hours, subject to a small number of caveats. The Labor government under Anthony Albanese has taken more fulsome ownership of the program since its election in May 2022. The prime minister was in Washington last week, meeting with President Joe Biden and making the case for AUKUS with some recalcitrant members of the US Congress.

That bipartisanship is unsurprising, given the golden chalice that AUKUS holds out to Australia: namely, assistance in the acquisition of eight nuclear-powered submarines (Pillar 1), a capability exercised by few countries worldwide, and a seat at the top table in exploring the potential of a range of cutting-edge technologies (Pillar 2).

But it would be wrong to imagine that AUKUS is above political debate. Indeed, quite the opposite. The program has provoked the revival of some old areas of contention in Australian strategic policy and encouraged a few new ones. I intend to explore five: three that relate directly to AUKUS and two others that reflect older, wider divisions.

The two broader debates are about:

• the near versus the far in Australian strategic policy priority-setting
• the relative balance between Asia and the Anglosphere in Australian strategic linkages.

The three that touch directly on AUKUS are about whether the program will:

• deliver the hoped-for blend of purchased US submarines and home-built Australian ones
• have a distortionary effect on other defence and social spending (what we might call the ‘elephant on the waterbed’ effect)
• provide the right outcomes—a debate spurred in part by a sotto voce concern about whether the advanced technologies of Pillar 2 will, in fact, help provide the means of tracking and sinking the submarines so expensively procured under Pillar 1.

Let’s start with the near–far debate. It’s an old debate in Australia that’s always close to the surface. It pits those who believe Australia should concentrate on fighting off existential threats close to home—‘border wars’— against those who would be prepared to fight for grander goals in more distant theatres—‘order wars’. The classic criticism that the border school throws at the order school is that they get sucked into ‘other people’s wars’. And the classic response of the order school is that order wars help prevent the emergence of border wars.

The nuclear-powered submarines are, unmistakably, vessels that would fit better as a contribution to order wars—the far rather than the near—and so stir once more that old polarisation.

Sam Roggeveen’s recent book, The echidna strategy, shows that we’re witnessing a revival of this debate. For Roggeveen, who is the director of the Lowy Institute’s international security program, Australia’s geographical location is a prized strategic asset—because distance complicates an aggressor’s calculations about use of force.

In normal years, Australians don’t think of their country as a spiky, indigestible monotreme. Echidnas spend most of their lives with their noses in the dirt. Their strategic horizon is low and short. By contrast, Australia is a strategic extrovert—not just because its closest strategic partners live far away, but because the global, regional and even neighbourhood order is set by the force balances along the Eurasian rimlands. When Albanese spoke in Washington of the AUKUS submarines as Australia’s contribution to ‘strategic equilibrium in the Indo-Pacific’, he was echoing that thought.

Existential threats to Australia aren’t merely those that unfold close to our borders, although the emphasis placed on deterrence by denial in the recent defence strategic review unhelpfully misleads on that point. Coercion can happen over longer ranges. And our strategic fate is entangled with the fates of our allies and partners: there is no world in which Australia bravely soldiers on as the last bastion of democracy when all others have fallen.

The second debate concerns the relative weighting of Asia and the Anglosphere in Australian policy settings. Some of the fiercest criticism of AUKUS has come from those who—in earlier years—invested heavily in Australia’s supposed ‘reorientation’ to Asia. Unsurprisingly, this debate is coloured by a wide range of factors that have almost nothing to do with submarines—such as the rise and fall of Asian-language tuition in Australian schools and universities, and the correlation between Anglophilia and being at the right of the Australian political spectrum.

In his National Press Club speech in March, former prime minister Paul Keating charged that ‘a contemporary Labor government [was] shunning security in Asia for security in and within the Anglosphere’. AUKUS tied Australia to the old, declining Anglospheric powers. In his book Engagement, published in 2000, Keating wrote of the US as ‘the big dog’ on the Asia–Pacific block. Clearly, he thinks that time has passed; he argues for the US to be a balancing power in the region, but believes that any attempt by Washington to cling to primacy would not have a happy ending.

This debate turns directly on the impact—real or imagined—of the AUKUS program on Australia’s relations with Asian countries. The opinions of the Southeast Asian states seem to be of particular concern, with Indonesian statements meriting exegetical analysis. Northeast Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea—fellow US allies—are generally supportive.

And then there’s China itself, of course. What does AUKUS mean for Australia’s relations with China? Despite AUKUS, the bilateral relationship has stabilised. Former head of intelligence Peter Varghese says it’s not in Australia’s interest to thwart the rise of China. But that depends on what kind of China rises, doesn’t it?

Let’s move to the three debates over AUKUS itself. The debate over capacity has two foci—because AUKUS has both a purchase component and a build one. The purchase part of the program is scheduled to unfold during a time when America’s submarine-construction capacity has no spare headroom—US submarine yards are struggling to satisfy US domestic demand. There are questions too about the build component. Australia has never built a nuclear-powered submarine, or indeed anything of such complexity. And while the US has experience in different shipyards each producing parts of a submarine, the final assembly is usually done by the shipyard with the responsibility for installing the reactor unit.

These two difficulties are directly related: if we minimise the number of submarines purchased from the US, we increase our reliance on domestic production. Conversely, if we minimise the vessels built locally, we increase the disruptive effects on the US shipyards.

The fourth debate centres on the potential distortionary effect of AUKUS on other defence programs and on broader social spending. That concern is about more than simple opportunity costs. The sheer size of AUKUS means the program may prove to be a gravity well, sucking talented personnel and funding from other areas both within and beyond the defence portfolio. The defence budget will have to increase substantially for the country to be able to afford both the AUKUS submarine program and a viable surface fleet, air force and army. Former ministers differ on the degree of distortion. Kim Beazley still supports the program, arguing that the subs will be worth the wait and the cost. Alexander Downer supports getting nuclear-powered submarines but buying them all off the shelf.

Finally, the fifth debate touches on outcomes. Even the full eight submarines won’t be deployable simultaneously, so, really, we’d be looking at one or two at sea at any one time. That could still be a significant capability—provided submarines remain largely invisible and invulnerable during their deployments.

But there’s the rub: might the potency of the AUKUS submarines be compromised by the very technologies being explored in Pillar 2? Back in 2019, the US Defense Science Board observed that quantum sensing applications were ‘currently poised for mission use’. Such improvements, married to more capable artificial intelligence, might render the seas less opaque than they are now. There would be a degree of irony if the technologies of Pillar 2 ended up substantially negating the very submarines so expensively procured under Pillar 1.

Together, those five debates suggest the AUKUS program will be the subject of continuing controversy. Today’s bipartisanship is deceptive.

Source : ASPI The Strategist

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The significant attack on Israel launched by Hamas on Saturday—dubbed “Al-Aqsa Storm” by the Palestinian militant group—is an indictment of the policies pursued by both the governments of Israel and the United States. Unrest caused by the domestic debate over judicial reform in Israel may have compromised the country’s deterrence. And US policies aimed at de-escalating tensions with Iran did nothing to halt Tehran’s coordination with Hamas, likely including support for its attack against Israel.

The drivers of the attack and the failure to deter it are manifold. The Islamic Republic of Iran’s proxy and partner network—comprised of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)—perhaps perceived Israel as weakening from within. Unrest over Israeli judicial reforms this summer—during which reservists threatened to refuse to serve—likely reinforced Tehran’s impression that the Jewish state is collapsing. This may have in part prompted all these groups to push the envelope in recent months—in Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza—to realize the Iranian supreme leader’s ambition to surround Israel in a “ring of fire.”

Coordination among Iran and its allies

There was significant coordination among Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas, and PIJ throughout September 2023. Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah hosted Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy head of the Hamas politburo, and Ziyad al-Nakhalah, the secretary-general of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, on September 2. This meeting coincided with a visit from Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian to Lebanon. The commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force, Esmail Ghaani, also reportedly visited Lebanon in September. Late last month, al-Arouri, Nikhalah, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s Deputy Secretary General Jamil Mazhar also met, announcing their intention to escalate conflict with Israel. They issued a statement dubbing Israeli settlers’ demands a “declaration of war against the Palestinian people.” They also criticized the normalization process that has been underway between Israel and Saudi Arabia, calling it “a clear betrayal of the blood of the martyrs and the Arab people.”

This dialogue continued in Tehran, which hosted representatives of its Axis of Resistance factions during an International Islamic Unity Conference held October 1–3. Osama Hamdan, Hamas’s representative in Lebanon and a member of its politburo, was in Iran for the conference, as was Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s deputy secretary general. The Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke at the conference, prophesying that Israel is dying; that the Palestinian cause “is the main issue of the Islamic world”; and warning those countries considering establishing diplomatic relations with the Jewish state that “they are betting on a losing horse.” 

Iran has been seeking to create a mutual defense pact among its proxies and partners. On Sunday, Hezbollah already shelled and rocketed Israeli positions in a show of support for Hamas and a nod to the IRGC’s ambition to establish a NATO-like formation among the Axis of Resistance. Whether this expands into a more significant northern front as Israel prepares to crush Hamas in Gaza in the coming days and weeks will be important to watch and a test of the IRGC’s eagerness to escalate. Hamas has also been moving closer to the orbit of Iran and Hezbollah. In September, Iran International TV, a Persian-language news channel headquartered in London, exposed a network led by Saeed Izadi, the head of the IRGC’s Quds Force’s Palestinian Division, which smuggled arms from Iran to Lebanon for Hamas. 

Failures of deterrence

US policy has also played a role in the current escalation. The Biden administration has been engaged in implementing a series of understandings with Tehran to keep the Iran file off the president’s desk ahead of his campaign for reelection. The publicly reported components of these informal agreements include Iran refraining from targeting US forces in Iraq and Syria, as well as steps for Tehran to slow down its accumulation of 60 percent enriched uranium and refrain from advancing its nuclear program above that level. This is apparently in exchange for Washington turning a blind eye to Iran’s illicit exports of oil to customers such as China in contravention of US sanctions.

US officials, such as National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, have been championing this record, saying on September 29 that the White House hoped to “depressurize, deescalate, and ultimately integrate the region.” He went on to state that “the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades now.” Given this weekend’s attack on Israel, such assessments appear fanciful. Tehran and its partners are demonstrating they can simultaneously escalate in theaters which are not covered by its informal understandings with the United States even as it deescalates in others. These are adjustments in tactics, not changes in fundamental strategy by the IRGC and its militia network. Washington’s refusal to more strictly enforce sanctions against Iran misses an opportunity to further curtail Iran’s funding for its regional allies such as Hamas.

Since Hamas attacked Israel on Saturday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the administration has “not yet seen evidence that Iran directed or was behind this particular attack.” But Iranian involvement is not binary. Tehran, through its patronage of Hamas, has created the conditions for this moment and at the very least likely had foreknowledge of and endorsed the attack. In fact, Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad told the BBC that the group had direct backing from the Islamic Republic. The US government should not shy away from holding both the attacker and its patron responsible. It will be the only way to alter the calculus in Tehran to make the costs of such support outweigh the benefits. Piecemeal sanctions alone will not do the job.

The intelligence failures leading to what many Israelis are calling their 9/11 will be examined in the weeks ahead. Local grievances in Israel and the Palestinian territories have certainly brought about the current moment and should not be understated. But both Israel and the United States should also engage in deep introspection at the policy level over their failure to deter Hamas’s brutal attack. 

Source : Atlantic Council

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The Wall Street Journal exclusively and convincingly reported on Sunday that Iran helped plot the ongoing military attack against Israel “over several weeks.” The facts of the Journal’s report utterly undercut Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s assertion over the weekend that there is no direct evidence of Iranian complicity in Hamas’s attack on Israel.

His denial is no longer plausible. It should by now be clear that U.S. foreign policy toward Iran needs a thorough reassessment.

The current policy is based on wishful thinking and false assumptions about Iran’s long-term involvement with Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Iranian-directed attack on Israel is part of a global plan intended to undermine U.S. national security by diminishing our most important ally in the region and sending a chilling message to partners worldwide that America is stumbling in the geopolitical landscape.

Events should induce President Biden, the State Department and all U.S. agencies to abandon the conviction that Iran is reformable. Iran cannot be appeased with monetary gifts, sanctions relief or nuclear concessions. In fact, all of these gestures have been and are counterproductive. In fact, the carrot-and-stick approach used since 2009 has been an all-around failure.

Unbeknownst to most Americans, the Biden administration has chosen only to partially enforce American sanctions against Iran.  This has allowed Iran to prosper through oil shipments to China in the naive hope that this will make Iran more willing to pause development of nuclear weapons. You can connect the dots from U.S. sanctions largesse and relief to Iranian monetary support of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.

Not only must maximum sanctions be enforced, but America and the West need secondary sanctions against nations that circumvent them. Those who say that sanctions don’t work never tell you that we have not fully enforced them. They also make the mistake of using an impatient Western timeline to judge success.

As for U.S. policy concerning the Israeli situation in the south with Hamas, an American-designated terrorist organization, Biden’s initial unconditional rhetorical support must translate to long-term support of a sustained Israeli operation, particularly when the anti-Israel wing in Congress raises its voice to advocate for a ceasefire before Israel can accomplish its goals.

American goals should be aligned with Israel’s regarding Hamas and, more importantly, the Iranian puppet-masters behind it. President Barack Obama tried creating “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel, to endear ourselves to the Iranian dictatorship. The results of this experiment should by now be clear enough.

Unfortunately, educating a polarized America about the true nature of Hamas and why there is a war today is incredibly difficult. For example, a New York Times article referred to a “blockaded” Gaza without context, due to its editorial bent. When Israel left 100 percent of Gaza in 2005, the Palestinians could have chosen to become Hong Kong on the Mediterranean, with open borders and relations with Israel. Instead, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas chose terrorism and poverty.

That is why, for reference, the Times chooses not to educate readers with quotes from the Hamas Charter, a blatantly anti-Semitic document calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. From the beginning, The Times conflated Israeli civilian casualties with Palestinian terrorist totals, deliberately obscuring the facts of the conflict.

Can the administration swim against the tide, when the war becomes confusing and parties revert to their echo chambers? The truth is the first casualty of war, and already, parties are taking advantage of the fog of war to advance agendas.

Elliot Abrams’s advice in National Review offers a much better path. “It would be far better to see Republicans and Democrats realize and say the obvious: The world is a very dangerous place, and when our friends and allies are attacked, we will have their backs. That’s the message we want Hamas, Hezbollah, their backers in Iran, and their partners in Russia and China to receive.”

The only question now is whether Biden and Blinken can rise to the challenge, overcome partisan interests and entrenched thinking and reassess the U.S. relationship with Iran in a rational and fact-based manner.

Source : The Hill

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Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is calling for new severe sanctions against Iran in response to attacks carried out by Hamas fighters against Israeli civilians over the weekend.   

U.S. deputy national security adviser Jonathan Finer said early Monday that Iran was “broadly complicit” in the Hamas attack on Israel over the weekend, and a spokesman for Hamas told the BBC Monday that Hamas had received support from Iran to conduct the attacks, which caught Israel Defense Forces off guard. 

McConnell, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Monday afternoon, called on Western allies to “reimpose extensive multilateral sanctions on Tehran.”

Specifically, he called on the United States and allies to deny Iranian planes the right to fly over their territory and to “impound the shipping vessels Iran uses to circumvent sanctions.” 

He also urged the United States and its allies to close Iranian banks with access to the West and “cease the Iranian operations of European businesses.” 

The call for harsh new sanctions was one of four steps McConnell urged in response to the terror attacks outside the Gaza Strip that have claimed the lives of hundreds of Israelis.  

McConnell said the Biden administration and members of Congress need to call out Hamas and its supporters directly and stay away from neutral language urging “both sides” to de-escalate the situation.  

And he said the administration needs to move quickly to provide military aid and intelligence to Israel’s defense forces to “target and destroy” Hamas militants, whom he denounced as “savages” responsible for killing women, children and the elderly. 

He said the administration should stop trying to cut the defense budget and urged Congress to pass an emergency defense spending supplemental to assist Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan.  

And he said the United States should put more focus on the threat posed by Iran, which he called “the world’s most active state sponsor of terror.” 

“The world has once again seen the face of evil. Those blessed to live in the democratic West must understand that this barbarism, like that we have witnessed in Russia’s war against Ukraine, threatens all of us. And the civilized world must offer Israel more than rhetorical solidarity,” he wrote in the op-ed published Monday afternoon.  

He argued that political leaders and policymakers should “distinguish between the aggressor and the victim” and warned against “calls for ‘both sides’ to de-escalate.” 

“Israel deserves the time and space to defend itself,” he wrote.  

The Republican leader repeated his call for Congress to pass an emergency spending package, which House Republicans stripped out of a government funding stopgap last month. 

“Congress has the opportunity this fall to provide emergency appropriations to the Defense Department so that it can assist partners like Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, as well as invest in our own military capabilities,” he wrote.  

He said such a package should “include significant replenishment funding,” which allows the United States to expand and modernize its own weapons inventories and provide funding to expand the production of artillery munitions, missiles and “other essential defense technologies.”

On the subject of Iran, McConnell argued that policymakers need to do more to “recognize the deepening partnership between Tehran and Moscow,” noting the armed drones Iran shipped to Russia to attack Ukraine.

“The West should reimpose extensive multilateral sanctions on Tehran and deny Iranian planes overflight rights. Impound the shipping vessels Iran uses to circumvent sanctions. Close Iranian banks with access to the West, and cease the Iranian operations of European businesses,” he wrote.

“Treat Iranian officials like pariahs and sink Iranian naval boats that threaten international shipping,” the GOP leader added.  

Source : The Hill

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Today marks the 12th anniversary of the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that was effective from Feb. 28, 1994, to Sept. 20, 2011.

Sept. 20, 2011, was “a historic day for the Department of Defense that made our military stronger,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said at a Pentagon news briefing today.

Hicks also said the Defense Department is now working to upgrade veterans’ discharges that were less than honorable as a result of the policy.

DOD Instruction 1304.26, widely known as the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy,” prohibited military personnel from discriminating against or harassing non-heterosexual service members who did not reveal their sexual orientation, while barring openly LGBTQ+ persons from military service.

Some LGBTQ+ service members were given discharges that may have resulted in denied access to veterans’ benefits — including home loans, health care, GI Bill tuition assistance and even some government jobs, she said.

Since the repeal, DOD has helped eligible veterans discharged because of their sexual orientation access the benefits they deserve. More than four out of five veterans who’ve applied for discharge upgrades or records corrections have been successful — but others might not have taken the opportunity, she said.

Hicks said some veterans haven’t gotten their discharges upgraded because:

• The application process was harder to navigate than it is today.
• They’re worried about whether they would be treated with dignity and respect after the painful experiences suffered.
• They didn’t know it was an option.

Over the last two-plus years, DOD has worked to make the process easier, she said, explaining steps the department has taken.

The department is re-doubling its outreach to LGBTQ+ veterans discharged under “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” to encourage anyone who might be eligible to apply for corrections to their military records, including to their discharge paperwork, she said.

This outreach campaign will be online, by mail, through nonprofits and veterans service organizations, and other avenues. It starts today with a new online resource, which will be continuously updated with relevant information, she said.

There will be more information, including on podcasts and webinars, to explain how the process works and encourage those who aren’t sure if they’re eligible to consider applying, she said.

Also, beginning today, DOD will, for the first time, begin proactively reviewing the military records of veterans discharged because of their sexual orientation to identify those who may be eligible for discharge upgrades, but haven’t yet applied, Hicks said.

DOD will first identify veterans discharged during the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” period and then take steps to retrieve their relevant military records, for example from the National Archives. After a preliminary review and an assessment that an upgrade in discharge may be warranted, DOD will transmit the names to the service secretaries for consideration and potential correction through the Military Department Boards for Correction of Military/Naval Records.

DOD will seek to collaborate with the Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Archives in cases where they might have digitized records that can help expedite the review, she said.

“When we find indications that someone’s less-than-honorable discharge was due to their sexual orientation, we’ll put their name forward to their respective military department’s review board for consideration,” Hicks said.

This will be done with measures to preserve the privacy and dignity of each veteran, she added.

Even as DOD begins these systematic records reviews, it may not catch everyone who’s eligible. For instance, if someone’s military records or discharge papers don’t say why they stopped serving, then it might be hard to discern whether Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was a factor, she said.

Hicks encouraged everyone to visit the new webpage, Spotlight: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Resources, and share it with others.

“We know correcting these records cannot fully restore the dignity taken from LGBTQ+ service members when they were expelled from the military. It doesn’t completely heal the unseen wounds that were left. It doesn’t make people whole again, even for those many who received honorable discharges.

“But this is yet another step we’re taking to make sure we do right by those who served honorably despite being forced to hide who they are and who they love while serving the country they love. Even if the department didn’t see it then, we see it now,” she said.

Source : US Department of Defense

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Covering hundreds of pages on how other governments have “jailed, tortured, or even killed” political opponents, human rights defenders, and journalists, the report kept silent on the thousands of Americans who have lost their lives due to mass shootings, police brutality, and racism discrimination, said the journal.

“America’s historical trajectory shows that it has always viewed human rights as a tool for hegemony and uses it selectively as an excuse to label countries as human rights violators. Under the pretext of defending human rights, the U.S. invaded Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan, but all of these war-torn countries suffered the murder of innocent civilians and catastrophic infrastructure destruction,” it noted.

“Sadly, the U.S. does not uphold the common international standards or guarantee human rights from a fair and impartial standpoint when promoting human rights diplomacy and managing human rights matters. It always exercises double or even multiple standards,” it said.

“Critics argue that the annual report has nothing to do with human rights but is a tool to malign rivals and coerce other countries,” it added.

The post U.S. Human Rights Report Vital Tool for Foreign Policy Goals: Eurasia Review appeared first on Policy Print.

The assessment published by Finland’s Ministry of the Interior covers 21 nationally significant threat scenarios and disruptions, ranging from hybrid influence activities and armed conflicts to natural disasters, industrial accidents and climate phenomena.

The previous risk assessment was published in 2018.

The assessment anticipates sudden incidents targeted at Finland that have an impact on the vital functions of society and require the authorities to adopt exceptional measures or even request help from other countries.

According to the report, climate change, the digitalization of societies, hybrid influence activities and networked value and production chains are further examples of development trends and phenomena in the operating environment of threats and disruptions.

There are two new threats compared with the previous report: multiple simultaneous large wildfires and an extremely powerful space storm, national broadcaster Yle said.

There is also a high probability of a new pandemic, the report noted. However, it is impossible to estimate the magnitude of the risk and the severity of the pandemic in advance, it said.

The post Russia-Ukraine Conflict Destabilizes Finland’s Foreign Policy Position appeared first on Policy Print.

“Through joint efforts in the coming year, Russia and China will be able to strengthen and advance bilateral interstate ties,” the ministry said in a statement. “As it is known, Russian President V.V. Putin invited Chinese leader Xi Jinping to a government visit in the spring. We are proceeding with the understanding that this will be the central event for the bilateral relationship in 2023.”

The meeting, which would be the second in-person meeting between Xi and Putin since the start of the Russian war in Ukraine last February, could signal a deepening of ties between the two states. As many countries have sanctioned Russia in response to the invasion, China is one of the countries credited with keeping the Russian economy afloat by continuing to maintain trade with Russia.

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