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Horvátország két évtizede foglalta vissza területének közel húsz százalékát a krajinai szerbektől. Zágrábban nagyszabású katonai parádéval emlékeztek a győzelemre, mely ugyanakkor Szerbiában gyásznap.

Az újdonság, a horvát hadsereg Pzh 2000 önjáró tarackja a felvonuláson.

A rendezvény plakátja.

A Kockica vezette a 21-esek áthúzását.

A papíron jóval kisebb létszámú horvát haderőnek összehasonlíthatatlanul erősebb tüzérsége van, mint a magyarnak...ők a Gvozgyikát is rendszerben tartják.

A parádéra Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic köztársasági elnök Ante Kotromanovic védelmi miniszter és Drago Lovric vezérkari főnök kíséretében érkezett.

Továbbiak hamarosan...

Zord

Secretary Kerry presides over meeting of anti-ISIS coalition members at NATO Headquarters in Belgium. Photo Credit: U.S. Department of State

I went into this year’s Aspen Security Forum with the opinion that an effective terrorism strategy should not just be about addressing our options against Al Qaeda and/or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) operations; rather, I viewed defeating these groups as a worldwide problem that requires a worldwide policy. In spite of the many critics, the Obama administration does have a robust strategy for dealing with terrorism; it just does not go far enough in forming an effective, unified global alliance against all violent extremist organizations (VEOs). What you have are separate ongoing, unconnected efforts of various nations, many with varying degrees of U.S. assistance, against groups like Boko Haram in Nigeria and Al Shabaab in Somalia.

What is needed, in my opinion, is an organization much like the NATO alliance, which was formed to deal with the threat of Communism during the Cold War. This time around, however, such an alliance would be directed against VEOs. The organization would maintain a multinational standing rapid deployment force that would be dispersed when requested by a member nation. Although the U.S. government, specifically the Department of Defense, has tried to tackle this issue with varying degrees of success, I heard nothing during the forum that caused me to change my views.

Many of the speakers were asked if Al Qaeda was still a threat. Others weighed in with their opinion on whether ISIS or Al Qaeda posed a the greater threat. My takeaway was that while it has been severely degraded, Al Qaeda was still a threat, but ISIS presented what I call a more “clear and present danger” to the homeland because of the efficacy of their outreach and the potential effect of “lone wolfs.”

As I mentioned in my last blog, FBI Director James Comey considers ISIS the greater threat to the homeland. Others weren’t so sure. James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, when asked if the use of social media by ISIS made it a greater threat to the homeland than Al Qaeda replied: “Well, that’s a hard…question because it’s different; it’s threatening. To say one is of greater magnitude than the other at least for me is hard.”

Still, I think Jeh Johnson, Secretary of Homeland Security, summed this issue up best during his talk when he remarked:

[O]ver the last 14 years, since 9/11, we’re seen core Al Qaeda, as everybody knows, AQAP, the Al Qaeda-affiliated elements of Al Shabab, which, while I was at DoD, we were focused on in our counterterrorism efforts. We have done a lot to degrade core Al Qaeda, through our good efforts. We have done a lot to degrade AQAP and Al Shabaab through our good efforts. The global terrorist threat now, as everybody knows… has evolved, and it has evolved in a very significant way from those groups to more groups, [ISIS] being the most prominent example, obviously, and it has evolved from terrorist directed terrorist attacks to terrorist-inspired attacks.… I think that the distinction between terrorist directed and terrorist-inspired is a significant one that the American people need to understand…why we are where we are in our efforts.

And so if you catalog the terrorist attacks and attempted attacks in this country and in Europe, for example, they almost fit neatly into one of two boxes, the terrorist-directed attacks, with an operative who has been recruited, trained, directed overseas and exported to someplace else to commit a terrorist attack, to terrorist-inspired attacks, which very often, most often involve a homegrown or even homeborn threat, and the individual has never even come face to face with a member of [ISIS] or AQ, but is inspired, through the very effective use of social media, to commit an attack or attempt to commit a small-scale attack.

And I think the American people need to understand how we have evolved to this new phase, because it does involve a whole of government approach, it does involve a lot of domestic-based efforts, in addition to the good work of the FBI and in addition to taking the fight to the enemy overseas.

Since most of the terrorism discussions revolved around ISIS, that will be my focus for the rest of this blog. I’m a bottom line kind of person, so it seems fitting to start with defining what is President Obama’s ISIS strategy and the status of the threat and the challenges as described by the intelligence community. The White House was represented by Lisa Monaco, Deputy National Security Adviser and Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. Monaco stated the goal was “to degrade, defeat and ultimately, to destroy [ISIS]. But we’ve got to be very clear-eyed about this. It is going to take time.”

ISIS’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, “the caliph,” has urged other groups to join them. Many VEOs around the world, such as Nigeria’s Boko Haram have responded and declared allegiance to ISIS. Monaco indicated the Obama administration was prepared to respond to this challenge by taking the fight into areas other than Iraq and Syria.

[ISIS] is undertaking an effort to establish an Islamic State, first in the heartland of Syria and Iraq. But…they’re trying to expand to at least eight provinces at this point, Libya being the most advanced and concerning in terms of sending actual operative focused on external attacks, but everywhere, from North Africa to the Caucasus. So yes, we’re absolutely concerned about their ability to find safe haven, to take root, and to attract fighters and to then extend their reach against our partners, our allies and ultimately to the homeland. And we’re going to make sure that we’re taking steps. If there is a threat posed to the United States from Libya, from one of these places, there should be no satisfaction amongst [ISIS] that they’re going to have a safe haven and that that threat won’t be addressed.

What form these efforts take or how robust they would be was unclear. The Obama administration has been pretty adamant about the boots on the ground issue.

Nevertheless, the Obama administration is working with a coalition of 62 nations to implement its strategy. Former Marine General John Allen, now the Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, remarked that the coalition operated along five lines of efforts: military, counter-finance, countering flow of foreign fighters, counter-messaging, and humanitarian assistance and stabilization support. The intent of the effort is to achieve the U.S.’s strategic goals.

As for the challenges the intelligence community faces, the senior leaders present were pretty much in agreement. Clapper best summarized these challenges:

[T]he problem for us in intelligence is with the way people radicalize on their own or are radicalized via social media where they don’t leave out a signature. They don’t emit, if you will — and I mean that in a holistic sense — some attribute or trait or behavior that would lead you to begin watching them.

And so we’re lacking that. And this phenomenon of the radicalization, either on one zone or through the vehicle of social media — and I think [Comey] spoke to the challenge we have now where someone is proselyted by an [ISIS] recruiter sitting in Syria or some place, and then if there is an interest that is evoked on the part of the one being proselyted or the potential extremist, and then they’ll switch to, you know, encrypted communications that we can’t watch, we can’t warrant.

And as Jim has said, probably there are now investigations in every one of the 50 states. And this is a real worry, a real concern for us because I personally think it’s a question of time before we have more of these than we have already. And it’s a very daunting challenge for us. And so — and I think it’s illustrative of how the threat has morphed to a certain extent from, you know, industrial-size attack of the magnitude of the 9/11 in which there are or were, as we learned afterwards, signatures that could have forewarned us had we seen them.

And in this case, you don’t have those, even though there are a smaller scale, but as we’ve seen with the case of the shootings in Chattanooga, the psychological impact that has is, I think, quite profound. So it’s a serious threat.

Think I’ll end here. More to follow on terrorism, cyber and other issues discussed at the Forum in the coming days.

C’est un contrat qui tourne au désastre pour Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Déjà plombé financièrement par les difficultés rencontrées sur la construction du paquebot AIDAprima, qui accusait déjà six mois de retard, le  chantier japonais vient d’annoncer qu’il ne pourrait pas tenir les derniers délais de livraison, pourtant repoussés l’an dernier de mars à octobre 2016. Aucune nouvelle date de mise en service du navire n’a pour l’heure été avancée.

• Lire la suite de Nouveau retard de livraison pour l’AIDAprima

Le groupe maritime français CMA CGM a pris livraison, le 29 juillet, du second des trois porte-conteneurs du type « Guyanamax » spécialement conçus pour accéder au port de Dégrad des Cannes en Guyane. Long de 190 mètres pour une largeur de 30 mètres, le CMA CGM Marseille offre une capacité de 2100 EVP, dont 530 conteneurs réfrigérés (reefer). Ce navire, qui bat pavillon britannique, sera positionné sur la ligne « North Europe French Guiana North Brazil » (NEFGUI), qui offre une liaison hebdomadaire directe entre l’Europe du Nord, la Caraïbe, la Guyane française et le Nord du Brésil.

• Lire la suite de Le CMA CGM Marseille entre en flotte

Representatives of ASEAN countries gather at Putra World Trade Centre on Saturday. RAJA FAISAL HISHAN/The Star.

“It should not be discussed,” remarked Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin on Monday, referring to the South China Sea dispute prior to Tuesday’s meeting in Kuala Lumpur of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). China claims close to 90 percent of the South China Sea, amid rival claims by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei, many of which overlap.

Liu, in an interview with Reuters, warned non-ASEAN countries, such as the U.S., not to interfere. “This is not the right forum. This is a forum for promoting cooperation. If the U.S. raises the issue we shall of course object. We hope they will not.” Other non-ASEAN participants in this week’s meeting include China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Russia and the European Union.

Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi also argued on Monday that the upcoming ASEAN meeting is not “the appropriate place for discussing specific bilateral disputes” and noted that discussion would “heighten confrontation.”

The most vocal of nations criticizing China’s actions in the South China Sea is the Philippines, which recently took Beijing to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague for a ruling over its right to waters in a 200-nautical mile “exclusive economic zone” off its coast. The U.S. has also been critical of Beijing’s actions, calling for a halt to the construction of artificial islands and an airstrip on Fiery Cross Reef. Last week, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) speculated Beijing is building another artificial island for military purposes.

While the U.S. is officially neutral in the dispute, arguing for freedom of navigation to protect the $5 trillion in shipping trade that passes through the region each year, the U.S. military has become increasingly active in the region, stepping up military drills with regional allies such as the Philippines and Japan. The Obama administration will send Secretary of State John Kerry as its representative to Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday, who will likely press for a halt to island reclamation and a demilitarization in the South China Sea, regardless of any attempt by Beijing to stifle discussion.

Indeed, the dictatorial attempt by Liu to halt discussion is almost laughable in diplomatic circles. It is counter to Beijing’s policy of non-interference in other countries affairs and inherently unenforceable. Furthermore, Wang’s similar attempt to stifle discussion of the South China Sea at the ASEAN meeting by suggesting the forum is not “the appropriate place for discussing specific bilateral disputes,” purposely fails to take into account that some of these disputes are multilateral. Many disputes are multilateral and overlapping.

Beijing, of course, prefers to approach the dispute on a bilateral basis, using potentially lucrative trade deals as an economic carrot and its vast military clout as a stick. This carrot and stick approach has been used to stifle discussion during other ASEAN meetings held in Laos and Cambodia, but this time around in Kuala Lumpur may prove more difficult, given heightened island reclaiming activity by China in the Spratley Island chain, increased military activity by Beijing, budding anger among other South Sea claimants, and (given the slow pace and inability to enforce any decision reached by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague) the lack of an alternative multilateral platform for resolving the issues.

Par tous les temps, de jour comme de nuit, les sauveteurs bénévoles de la SNSM portent secours aux marins, nageurs et plaisanciers. Dimanche 2 août, à Audierne, on a fêté les 150 ans de l'association.

• Lire la suite de SNSM : Ancrée sur le bénévolat

Le chantier Ocea des Sables d’Olonne a mis à flot, le 3 août, le sistership du KRI Rigel, livré en mars à la marine indonésienne et arrivé à Djakarta le 14 mai à l’issue d’un périple de 8300 milles. Comme son aîné du type OCEA OSV 190 SC-WB, le nouveau bâtiment océanographique réalisé par le constructeur vendéen mesure 60.1 mètres de long pour une largeur de 11.5 mètres. 

- Voir notre reportage sur le KRI Rigel

 

• Lire la suite de Ocea met à flot un second bâtiment océanographique pour l’Indonésie

Egy amerikai professzor szerint külső beavatkozás is szükségessé válhat Mexikóban az energetikai reform keresztülviteléhez, ami kritikus fontosságú a kontinens energetikai függetlenségének kivívásához.

Key facts, figures and dates

On ne l'a appris qu'aujourd'hui, les paras du 8e RPIMa et du 35e RAP ont effectué leur premier saut
Plus d'infos »

Egy év alatt közel duplájára nőtt a kereskedelmi forgalom Oroszország és Egyiptom közt, miközben továbbra is zajlanak a tárgyalások az Eurázsiai Gazdasági Unió és Egyiptom közti szabadkereskedelmi zóna létrehozásáról.

Provides an overview, basic information and key events for this African country

Le 31 juillet 2015, trois Mirage 2000N de l’escadron de chasse 2/4 "La Fayette", implanté sur la base aérienne d’Istres, ont rallié la base aérienne projetée (BAP) en Jordanie après avoir réalisé un vol de convoyage sans escale d’une durée de quatre heures.

Le ministre de la Défense, M. Jean-Yves le Drian, a été accueilli par les Mirage de l'escadron de chasse (EC) 3/11 « Corse » lors de son arrivée à Djibouti, le 26 juillet 2015. 

Le groupement sud des forces aériennes de la gendarmerie n'a pas chômé ce weekend, décollant à
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On 4 August 2015, the Council approved a regulation amending the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM) in order to protect non-euro area member states from any risk arising from financial assistance given to a euro area country. 

This principle was endorsed on 17 July 2015 by a joint statement of the Commission and the Council. It was agreed along with a decision to grant €7.16bn in short term financial assistance to Greece under the EFSM. 

Specifically, the regulation ensures that financial assistance from the EFSM to a euro area member state will only be granted if legally binding provisions are in place guaranteeing that non-euro area member states are immediately and fully compensated for any liability they may incur as a result of a failure by the beneficiary to repay the financial assistance in accordance with its terms. 

The regulation was adopted by written procedure. 

EFSM 

The EFSM provides financial assistance to EU member states in financial difficulties. It relies on funds raised by the Commission on the financial markets under an implicit EU budget guarantee. 

Le Parlement kosovar a adopté lundi une modification de la constitution de façon à pouvoir créer un tribunal spécial chargé de juger les crimes de guerre commis par la guérilla indépendantiste albanophone.

Les amendements à la constitution ont été adoptés par 82 députés sur 120. Ce tribunal est considéré par nombre d’Albanais du Kosovo comme une tentative de salir leur guérilla contre l’État serbe en 1998-1999.

AMENDMENTS 1 - 41 - Draft opinion Towards a new international climate agreement in Paris
Committee on Foreign Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Le 12 juillet à Toulouse, lors d’une patrouille dans le cadre de la mission Sentinelle, l’équipe du brigadier-chef Bernard-Patrick du 3e RHC (3e régiment d'hélicoptères de combat) est intervenue après un violent accident de la circulation entre deux véhicules, pour éviter un sur-accident. 

Du 20 juillet au 1er août 2015, le groupement tactique désert Est (GTD-E) Chimère et les forces armées nigériennes ont mené l’opération Kounama 4 dans la région de la passe de Salvador. S’inscrivant dans la lignée des précédentes opérations Kounama, cette quatrième opération avait pour objectif de perturber les flux des groupes armés terroristes transitant au Nord-Niger.