PDA-Conetta/Knight

Carl Conetta & Charles Knight lead the Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA): innovative analysis since 1991. RTs= of interest. Click on tweet for full text.

[PDA-Conetta/Knight @defensealt]

"Brinkmanship and Nuclear Threat in the Ukraine War" - new article at Project on Defense Alternatives: https://t.co/7eFgYGwRFN - Western brinkmanship in the Ukraine war depends on denying there is a nuclear brink? That's a mistake. #RussianUkrainianWar #UkraineRussianWar #Ukraine

[PDA-Conetta/Knight @defensealt]

Ukraine War: A Practicable Ceasefire… and its Alternative - https://t.co/21xEhYmSoP

[PDA-Conetta/Knight @defensealt]

New from the Project on Defense Alternatives: "The Ukraine War Prospect: How Peace Plans Might Work and Why They Will Fail" https://t.co/dwkfsmHlo2

[PDA-Conetta/Knight @defensealt]

The Global Environmental Crisis -- What does World Population Day have to do with it? https://t.co/FFbruwxTTr

[PDA-Conetta/Knight @defensealt]

https://t.co/N3SKPU73Ce
European Defense: First Horror Vacui and then what?
by Lutz Unterseher

[PDA-Conetta/Knight @defensealt]

@stephenwertheim @guardian Trump has to know that Putin will never allow British troops “guaranteeing” a peace in Ukraine. This talk is just a throw away line to Europe . Never going to happen.

[PDA-Conetta/Knight @defensealt]

"Ukraine: Options for a Confidence-Building Defense," https://t.co/664mOXCAUp - With the advent of the Trump administration, Ukraine has lost its primary war sponsor. This makes especially relevant Lutz Unterseher’s “Ukranine: Options for a Confidence-Building Defense” which outlines a “self-sustaining, emphatically defensive military” posture “without integration into a military alliance and suitable as a possible building block of an all-European security system.”

[PDA-Conetta/Knight @defensealt]

@PangoPangoPago @TheRickWilson You might want to think about and plan to address the underlying causes of conflict, not just buy guns.

[PDA-Conetta/Knight @defensealt]

@TheRickWilson Might you have a death wish for our world?

[PDA-Conetta/Knight @defensealt]

NATO membership for UKR is more than unrealistic. It would mean disastrous risks for the world and an untenable commitment for NATO members. Adding nations with unresolved border conflicts to an already enormous and diverse "defensive" alliance is strategically stupid. It doesn't get much more offensive.

[PDA-Conetta/Knight @defensealt]

"Lift the Syria Sanctions: The Principal Danger in Syria Today is Instability" https://t.co/CjOEsde3AM - Examines key issues facing Syria: the presence of 15,000-20,000 foreign troops, the future of the Kurdish community, the triangular relationship among Damascus, Ankara, and the Kurds, and managing the remnants of the Islamic State.

[PDA-Conetta/Knight @defensealt]

"Hold Ukraine accountable for corruption, misspent aid," https://t.co/WtIl1VZI0n - A rather harsh assessment of Zelensky's war leadership: 🔹The former head of UA military, Gen Zaluzhnyi, argued that in 2023 that the war would stalemate and attention should turn to negotiations. 🔹"But Zelensky had no interest in diplomacy, because ending the war would mean ending the state of emergency, new elections and a change in the structure of international assistance. 🔹In his own political interest, he ousted Zaluzhnyi and continued a war he was warned would waste lives and money without result."

[The Costs of War Project @CostsOfWar]

U.S. federal spending on the post-9/11 wars would have led to at least 1.4 million more jobs had the money been invested instead in education, health care or green energy. https://t.co/9pfQu7pNUr

[PDA-Conetta/Knight @defensealt]

wrong: "The Most Effective Antidote to ISIS Attacks" links here➡️https://t.co/CCKE39YAD6 - Reflecting on the New Orleans killings, the author contends: 🔹“The most effective antidote to attacks like this is probably just to do what the United States” has done in the past: work to “to dismantle the Islamic State and relegate it to obscurity…” This is wrong. 🔹First, which IS is the target? It’s a brand name with many and various groups adopting its flag. Strike at all of them everywhere? That approach has killed many innocents and has failed to stem terrorism generally. It just mutates and/or relocates. 🔹Second, disgruntled and deranged individuals like Jabbar and Livelsberger don’t need IS. Al Qaeda will do. Or Boko Haram. Or the Symbionese Liberation Army. Or the Unabomber’s manifesto. 🔹 The link is usually opportunistic and psychological. It’s seldom organizational… and when it has been in the past (usually thinly or remotely), 🔹 it’s homeland security efforts and domestic law enforcement not the US armed forces overseas that provide the surest block.

[jeremy scahill @jeremyscahill]

How does the Pentagon “recently learn” that it has more than double the number of US troops in Syria than it claimed to have a day earlier?

[Kelley B. Vlahos @KelleyBVlahos]

New from me. Samantha Power made a career scolding the world for not intervening in genocide. Listen to her today, sadly rationalizing her very muted response to the "problem from hell" in Gaza and dodging questions re: US leverage over Israel.
https://t.co/BbwChGi5VE

[PDA-Conetta/Knight @defensealt]

inevitable? “Syria is doomed to instability. Outside agents will stoke chaos,” https://t.co/UNES1U6Png - Menon tours the multiple strains of instability likely to manifest in post-Assad Syria especially targeting “meddling foreigners.” 🔹 Well, with Russia and Iran presently on the run, the USA, Turkey, and Israel are the meddlers of note, all having boots on the ground. Menon also notes that🔹"the West…won’t provide sweeping sanctions relief anytime soon: it will first test HTS’s governance practices.” Probably true but certainly a mistake. 🔹 The paramount threat at present is instability. So humanitarian, stability, and reconstruction aid should commence immediately. 🔹 The Assad sanctions should depart as he did. Don’t grandfather in the new government. 🔹 If necessary, new sanctions can be designed and imposed in the case of threats to international peace (including gross human rights violations). Otherwise, avoid efforts at coercive regime shaping – they’ve proved worse than ineffective.

[PDA-Conetta/Knight @defensealt]

Why? "US says it has 2,000 troops in Syria, not 900 as previously declared," https://t.co/3hy5zvPatw - Three reasons: 1. Deter Turkish attacks on US-allied Kurds. 2. Ensure the containment of 10,000 ISIS fighters (and ~30,000 kin and suspects). 3. Deter the possible advance of HTS on the US and Kurdish held Syrian oil fields - which provides leverage. And how long have extra troops they been in place? Months "at a minimum."