Category Archives: Deterrence

Remove Duterte And Modernize The Armed Forces Philippines

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3Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 10, October 2018 

A large group of soldiers are photographed standing to attention in their uniforms on a large tarmac. One soldier in the foreground at the front of the group is depicted holding a flag.

Filipino Armed Forces at Fort Magsaysay, 2003. Soure: NARA & DVIDS Public Domain Archive.

Anonymous Filipino

This is a critical time for the Philippines, in terms of economics, politics, and national defense. Immediately at the start of President Rodrigo Duterte’s term the congress was already submissive to him. There were just a few dissenting Senators. But Duterte is taking them down one by one, especially the opposition stalwarts. Senator Leila de Lima was accused of a sham case, conspiracy to commit illegal drug trading (1), and is now in prison. Senator Antonio Trillanes is having his amnesty revoked [2]. Duterte is under criminal investigation, breaking the Constitution, running the Philippines into the ground, and gradually giving our sovereignty away to China. The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is slowly losing its allies and competitive edge against China, the Philippines’ biggest threat. Duterte should immediately be removed, and the AFP should seek the help from its traditional allies to quickly modernize.

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Forty Dollars and a Trip to Paradise

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The First Green on Blue Attack of Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 8, August 2018 

Heath B. Hansen

U.S. Army

A man in photographed from the side hold a large rifle. He appears to be in a guard tower and is looking through the rifle's scope.

PFC Michael Sall in the only guard tower that existed on FOB Zurmat at the time of the green-on-blue attack. Pictured is an M-240B machine gun. PFC Sall was in the tower on November 9, 2005 during the attack but did not use this weapon, oriented away from the base, to shoot the attacker. He instead made a split second decision to use his smaller M-4 rifle to shoot from the other side of the tower, down and into the base at the ANA soldier. Paktia Province, Afghanistan, 2005. Photographer: Heath Hansen.

We entered the base between the HESCO barriers covered in concertina razor-wire, unprepared for a betrayal from one of our supposed allies. On November 9, 2005, as the convoy snaked its way into the safety of the base walls, I could see Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers watching us from the perimeter. They didn’t wave; they didn’t smile; they just stared. Since the United States invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, there had never been an instance of an Afghan soldier attacking Americans, known as a “green-on-blue attack.” But somehow I instinctively had little trust for them. We parked the Humvees and unloaded our equipment. I took off my helmet and body-armor, and set my weapon beside me.

The mission had been long and I was hungry. Before heading out for the operation, I had secured my favorite meal, and now it was time to relax and enjoy. “Hey, give me your jalapeño cheese. I’ll give you my peanut butter.” I told the guy next to me. “F*** you, I love jalapeño cheese.” My buddy was going to drive a hard bargain before relinquishing his cheese. “Bro, I always put cheese on my chicken-tetrazzini MRE. I’ll give you my M&M’s too.” He looked at my M&M’s and packet of peanut-butter for a moment. “F*** yeah, peanut-butter, M&M’s. Alright, cool. Here.” He threw the packet of cheese over. I was tired, uncomfortable, sore, and thousands of miles from home, but I was content. I got the “MENU 21 – CHICKEN TETRAZZINI” Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) and jalapeño cheese to top it off. It’s the little things in life that make you happy. The day was cold, but sunny, and in that moment, on that forward operating base (FOB) in Zurmat, Afghanistan, I had everything I wanted.

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Tackling the South China Sea Together: British and French Navies Chart a Course

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 6, June 2018 

Pictured are Royal Navy Marines taking part in a simulated beach landing using Landing Platform Dock ships. Two ships appear in the foreground, with a larger one in the background.

Pictured are Royal Navy Marines taking part in a simulated beach landing using Landing Platform Dock ships.
The Assault Ship HMS Bulwark is visable in the distance. The Marines were part of the NATO Exercise, Trident Juncture. The role of the Landing Platform Dock ships, HMS Bulwark and HMS Albion, is to deliver the punch of the Royal Marines ashore by air and by sea, with boats from the landing dock in the belly of the ship and by assault helicopter from the two-spot flight deck. LPDs can carry 256 troops, with their vehicles and combat supplies, and this can be swollen up to 405 troops. Source: Defence Imagery via Flickr.

Peter M. Solomon

Government and Regulatory Affairs Consultant

At a September 2015, joint press conference at the White House, China’s President Xi Jinping stood beside U.S. President Barack Obama and said, “China does not intend to pursue militarization” with respect to “construction activities that China are undertaking” on the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.[1] Since then, China has established several offensive capabilities in the region, including surface-to-air and anti-ship missile systems on three features in the Spratly Islands and the ability to deploy strategic bombers from the Paracel Islands.[2]  In comparison to the United States, which has been a consistent critic of China’s reclamation and militarization and has embarked on numerous freedom of maritime navigation exercises in the region, the European Union (EU) has historically been reserved in its comments regarding China’s activities in the South China Sea. Instead, the EU has limited itself to general comments about the importance of maintaining freedom of the seas and resolving disputes peacefully. While these statements are not without importance, the lack of a more critical, unified EU approach to China’s destabilizing activities has left missing a crucial voice. The tides could soon turn.

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Reason, Imagination and Invention in the South Pacific: The Laser Beam Kiwi

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 6, June 2018 

Three troops in uniform pose with the "Laser Kiwi" flag. A New Zealand flag is visible in the background.

Troops pose with the “Laser Kiwi” flag, submitted to the New Zealand Flag Consideration panel in 2015 by James Gray. Source: Reddit.

Bernard Cadogan, Ph.D.

Foreign Affairs and Diplomatic Advisor to King Tuheitia, the seventh King of the Maori Kiingitanga

Address to the U.K. Defence Academy, Shrivenham, 7th February 2018

New Zealand is proof that nature does not always abhor, a vacuum. The country is truly, “the last, the loneliest and the loveliest” as Rudyard Kipling declared Auckland to be in his “Song of the Cities”. Strategic systems never tolerate vacuums. They punish confusion and ambivalence. New Zealand is no redoubt, nor is it overlooked.

The intention of this address is to consider New Zealand’s sense of geopolitical reality. Are we proof that the Versailles Conference unassociated Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nation state has been outclassed in the 21st century Pacific? Are we a living fossil ?

Woodrow Wilson envisaged a world in which there would be no assemblages such as empires, nor alliance systems even. Sovereignty-pooling exercises such as the European Union and Mercosur or Caricom would have been anathema to Wilson. They are not an option for us.

When asked at the Versailles Conference, why we had made the effort we did in the Great War, our Prime Minister Bill Massey replied, “we did it for Civilisation”.

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A Peculiar Chess Game in North Korea《奇怪的棋局》

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 6, No. 5, May 2018

Chinese human rights activist Wei Jingsheng (left) and American politician US President Bill Clinton are photographed talking together in the White House. They are both seated at a table in an office.

Chinese human rights activist Wei Jingsheng (left) and American politician US President Bill Clinton talk together in the White House, Washington DC, December 8, 1997. Source: White House Press.

Wei Jingsheng (魏京生)

Wei Jingsheng (魏京生) was the most famous Chinese dissident in 1979, when Deng Xiaoping put him on a nationally televised trial for writing the essay, “The Fifth Modernization: Democracy.” He received 15 years in prison. After meeting with President Clinton’s Assistant Secretary for Human Rights in 1993, he was put back in jail for another 14 years. He served 4 years of his second jail term before being exiled to the United States in 1997. A number of points are new in his latest article, published in English for the first time here. In particular, the discussion of China’s President Xi obstructing the Trump/Kim summit has very serious implications for the future of U.S.-China relations, and the credibility of President Xi as an interlocutor in Korean peace negotiations. Wei Jingsheng’s piece was originally published on Radio Free Asia’s blog and dated May 17, 2018. The article, including its Beijing slang, has been translated into English below.

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