Showing posts with label Cold War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cold War. Show all posts

Monday, April 8, 2024

UKUSA Agreement - FVEY

23-10-17 “Five Eyes” summit: Top intelligence chiefs on innovation threats - Global > .
23-4-13 Intelligence = Information + Analysis; P00 & Pentagon Leaks | DiD > .
Pine Gap (JDFPG) - Armor >> .

◊ Indo-Pacific ..

Born out of the Cold War, Five Eyes is a multinational spy network comprised of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, and the United States. The member states of Five Eyes gather intelligence about foreign countries, sharing it freely between themselves.

The United Kingdom – United States of America Agreement (UKUSA) is a multilateral agreement for cooperation in signals intelligence between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The alliance of intelligence operations is also known as the Five Eyes. In classification markings this is abbreviated as FVEY, with the individual countries being abbreviated as AUS, CAN, NZL, GBR, and USA, respectively.

Emerging from an informal agreement related to the 1941 Atlantic Charter, the secret treaty was renewed with the passage of the 1943 BRUSA Agreement, before being officially enacted on 5 March 1946 by the United Kingdom and the United States. In the following years, it was extended to encompass Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Other countries, known as "third parties", such as West Germany, the Philippines, and several Nordic countries, also joined the UKUSA community in associate capacities, although they are not part of mechanism for automatic sharing of intelligence that exists between the Five Eyes.

Much of the sharing of information is performed via the ultra-sensitive STONEGHOST network, which has been claimed to contain "some of the Western world's most closely guarded secrets". Besides laying down rules for intelligence sharing, the agreement formalized and cemented the "Special Relationship" between the UK and the US.

Due to its status as a secret treaty, its existence was not known to the Prime Minister of Australia until 1973, and it was not disclosed to the public until 2005. On 25 June 2010, for the first time in history, the full text of the agreement was publicly released by the United Kingdom and the United States, and can now be viewed online. Shortly after its release, the seven-page UKUSA Agreement was recognized by Time magazine as one of the Cold War's most important documents, with immense historical significance.

The global surveillance disclosure by Edward Snowden has shown that the intelligence-sharing activities between the First World allies of the Cold War are rapidly shifting into the digital realm of the Internet.


The documents, including diary entries, detail the war time meetings that began at Bletchley Park and led to the UKUSA deal being signed in March 1946. The alliance involved working together to intercept communications and break codes, sharing almost everything.

A short entry from February 1941 in the diary of Alastair Denniston, released for the first time today by GCHQ, marked the beginning of what was once the most secret of relationships. Denniston was head of Bletchley Park and he was welcoming a group of American code breakers at a time when the US had not yet entered WW2.

"The Ys are coming!" the entry read - meaning the Yanks. The Americans had undertaken a perilous crossing with their boat shot at by Nazi planes but they arrived at the home of British code breakers on a mission of huge importance.

With the permission of then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the two groups of spies would share their most sensitive secrets - that the UK had broken the German Enigma code and the US the Japanese code called Purple. 

Further diary entries reveal how key figures would travel back and forth over the Atlantic, including Denniston to meet with his opposite number as well as code breaker Alan Turing.

The power of the alliance in WW2 has made it the heart of what is sometimes called the "special relationship" between the two countries. The term seems increasingly outdated but the one place where it has always been real is when it comes to code breaking.

The relationship forged in that visit would outlast WW2 and, after a series of meetings, be formalised at the start of the Cold War with a document signed in Washington on 5 March 1946. The agreement was something of a "marriage contract" - each agreed honesty, openness and commitment to the other including a "no spy agreement" in which they would not target the other side. They would share nearly all the intelligence they produced through breaking codes and intercepting communications (known as signals intelligence or SIGINT) although the agreement did allow some wiggle room if one side felt they had to act independently.

Initially known as UKUSA, over the next 10 years it would be expanded as Australia, Canada and New Zealand joined, making up what is known today as the Five Eyes alliance. 



23-5-25 Xina-backed hackers ‘living off the land’ to target critical systems, says Five Eyes group: Targets include US military facilities on Guam that would be key in an Asia-Pacific conflict, say Microsoft and western spy agencies. ... The US and western security agencies warned in their advisory that the activities involved “living off the land” tactics, which take advantage of built-in network tools to blend in with normal Windows systems. The advisory warned that the hacking could then incorporate legitimate system administration commands that appear “benign”. While Xinese hackers are known to spy on western countries, this is one of the largest known cyber-espionage campaigns against American critical infrastructure.

Monday, January 31, 2022

What Cost War?

† The Fallen of World War II - NeHa > .
† Number of Dead In WW2 | Great War In Numbers | Timeline > .
† Numbers of deaths per nation in WW2 | Stats > .WW1: Loss of Life in WWI Visualized - Real > .† Simulation of a Nuclear Blast in a Major City - NeHa > .23-11-17 America's 3 New Nukes (weapons they counter) - Sandboxx > .
23-9-11 All The Times We Nearly Blew Up The World - Veritasium > .23-8-15 What If? P00ti's Nuke Targets - Show > .
22-12-4 [Dare Pooti] Use Nuclear Weapons? - Jake Broe > .22-10-21 Response if Russia uses a nuclear weapon in Ukraine? - J K-L > .22-11-8 Predicted Impact of High-Altitude Nuclear EMP on Power Grid - Practical > .

Monday, January 24, 2022

Europe ➾ 2022

22-1-11 United States of Europe? Germany's idea for a New Europe - gtbt > .
22-2-24 Global Power Rivalry | Michael Buckley > .
22-2-19 Why Germany [daren't] help Ukraine (against Russia) - CaspianReport > .
22-2-7 NATO's Ukraine Mistake | John Mearsheimer > .
22-2-2 Russia-Ukraine Escalation | John Kirby U.S. Pentagon - geopop > .
22-1-28 Why Does Russia Want Ukraine? | cfr Clip > .
22-1-27 Kazakhstan & Ukraine: Russia's Political and Military Manipulations - VP > .

Monday, December 20, 2021

1953-8-19 Iranian Coup

1953-8-19 Coup that Ruined US-Iranian Relations - Weird > .
24-8-29 Detailed Analysis: Why Arabs Lose Wars - Magical > .
24-3-6 Could the Mossad Have Stopped Iran? | Unpacked > .
24-1-26 Saudi Arabia's Catastrophic "Iran" Problem - Hindsight > .
23-11-5 [XIR] Corrupt, Sanctioned Iran's Military, Proxies, Power Projection - Perun > .
23-2-9 Russia, Iran, India Want Persian Corridor 2.0 - gtbt > . skip scam > .
22-9-27 Most Unbelievable Things the CIA Has Done - Side > .
22-6-22 Oman (ME's Switzerland) - Guarding Gulf, Strait of Hormuz - Explore > .
22-3-26 Why Russia’s War Drove Up US Gas Prices - CNBC > .

For decades, knowledge of America's role in the 1953 Iran coup, which led to the ejection of the country's democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and the installation of a despotic shah, was fragmented and vague. However, when CIA documents were declassified in 2000 about what it called Operation Ajax, it became clear American and British agents played a central role in the Iran coup d'état.

The 1953 Iranian coup d'état, known in Iran as the 28 Mordad coup d'état was the overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in favour of strengthening the monarchical rule of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on 19 August 1953. It was orchestrated by the United States (under the name TPAJAX Project or "Operation Ajax") and the United Kingdom (under the name "Operation Boot"). The clergy also played a considerable role.

Mosaddegh had sought to audit the documents of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), a British corporation (now part of BP), in order to verify that AIOC was paying the contracted royalties to Iran, and to limit the company's control over Iranian oil reserves. Upon the AIOC's refusal to co-operate with the Iranian government, the parliament (Majlis) voted to nationalize Iran's oil industry and to expel foreign corporate representatives from the country. After this vote, Britain instigated a worldwide boycott of Iranian oil to pressure Iran economically. Initially, Britain mobilized its military to seize control of the British-built Abadan oil refinery, then the world's largest, but Prime Minister Clement Attlee (in power until 1951) opted instead to tighten the economic boycott while using Iranian agents to undermine Mosaddegh's government. Judging Mosaddegh to be unreliable and fearing a Communist takeover in Iran, UK prime minister Winston Churchill and the Eisenhower administration decided in early 1953 to overthrow Iran's government, though the preceding Truman administration had opposed a coup, fearing the precedent that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) involvement would set. British intelligence officials' conclusions and the UK government's solicitations were instrumental in initiating and planning the coup, despite the fact that the U.S. government in 1952 had been considering unilateral action (without UK support) to assist the Mosaddegh government.

Following the coup in 1953, a government under General Fazlollah Zahedi was formed which allowed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran (Persian for an Iranian king), to rule more firmly as monarch. He relied heavily on United States support to hold on to power. According to the CIA's declassified documents and records, some of the most feared mobsters in Tehran were hired by the CIA to stage pro-Shah riots on 19 August. Other men paid by the CIA were brought into Tehran in buses and trucks, and took over the streets of the city. Between 200 and 300 people were killed because of the conflict. Mosaddegh was arrested, tried and convicted of treason by the Shah's military court. On 21 December 1953, he was sentenced to three years in jail, then placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life. Other Mosaddegh supporters were imprisoned, and several received the death penalty. After the coup, the Shah continued his rule as monarch for the next 26 years until he was overthrown in the Iranian Revolution in 1979.

In August 2013 the U.S. government formally acknowledged the U.S. role in the coup by releasing a bulk of previously classified government documents that show it was in charge of both the planning and the execution of the coup, including the bribing of Iranian politicians, security and army high-ranking officials, as well as pro-coup propaganda. The CIA is quoted acknowledging the coup was carried out "under CIA direction" and "as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government".

Saturday, March 27, 2021

Bessarabia - Moldova, Romania, Transnistria, Ukraine

22-5-22 Could Moldova & Transnistria end up like Ukraine? - VisPol > .
24-12-13 Pooti Using Romania to Shake NATO’s Foundations | VisPol > .
24-4-25 [Innacurate Depictions of] "Eastern Europe" - Kraut > .
24-3-29 MOLDOVA | Time to Retake Transnistria? - Prof J K-L > .
24-2-2 Romania, After America || Peter Zeihan > .
24-1-9 Volga River - History, Importance; Volga-Don Canal - Animation > .
23-9-17 How the Rich Ate Moldova - Asianometry > .
23-8-20 NATO's Rearmament & Spending - NATO's R-U Response - Perun > .
23-7-8 R-U War could unite Moldova & Romania - Perspective > . skip > .
23-4-18 Why Ruscia wants [weak, impoverished, pro-EU] Moldova - T&P > .
23-3-8 Tensions mounting in Moldova amid war in Ukraine | DW > .
23-2-25 Why Moldova Is Important in the Russia-Ukraine War | WSJ > .
22-12-16 Moldova’s frozen conflict c R-backed breakaway Transnistria - BBC > .
22-12-2 Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Croatia - Danube & Europe's Future - Kraut > .
22-7-21 Why Every NATO Member Joined (Why Others Haven't) - Spaniel > .
22-4-27 Trans-Dneister | DW > .
22-4-22 Romania-Moldova | Could They Really Unite? - Prof J K-L > .
22-4-15 Russia’s Disinformation Spreads Beyond Its Borders | Russia-Ukraine War > .
22-4-10 Ukraine War From Russia's Perspective - CaspianReport > .
22-4-7 Russian attacks on Ukraine → Former Soviet republic of Moldova's fears > .
22-3-29 (full Transnistria) Moldova: Putin's Next Target? | SBS Dateline > .
1:45 - Frozen in amber 
5:25 - Lines on map 
8:55 - ad
10:25 - Forged in fire 
14:15 - Old battles re fought
15:26 - Gaugauz - Pridnestrovian Moldavian SSR - Transnistria War
16:18 - Collapse of USSR
18:41 - Mafia State

A senior Russian commander has said that Moscow is planning to seize Ukraine's south and open a route to Moldova's Transnistria. The Russian commander said that Moscow plans to establish full control over the Donbas and southern Ukraine. As per Gen Rustam Minnekayev, control over southern Ukraine will give Moscow direct access to Transnistria. The Russian commander also claimed there was evidence of "oppression" of the Russian-speaking population there. Russia had previously used claims of oppression of Russian minorities in eastern Ukraine as grounds for military action.

(DW 22-4-29) The Russian military said it plans to seize all of southern Ukraine and open a route to the breakaway Moldovan region of Trans-Dniester. Major General Rustam Minnekayev, acting commander of Russia's Central Military District, said on Friday (22-4-22) that Moscow plans to establish full control over the Donbas region and southern Ukraine, as part of the "second phase" of its military operation. He also claimed that control of southern Ukraine would give Russia a gateway to the breakaway Moldovan region of Trans-Dniester, where there are "facts of oppression of the Russian-speaking population." The announcement has sparked concern that Russia could use the territory to launch attacks on western Ukraine, or move in on Moldova.

What is Trans-Dniester? Trans-Dniester is a narrow strip of land on the east bank of the Dniester River, sandwiched between Ukraine and Moldova. The breakaway region seceded from Moldova after a brief military conflict in 1992. In this conflict, separatists were supported by Moscow. Russia still has about 2,000 soldiers, as well as around 300 peacekeepers, stationed in the region and regularly conducts military maneuvers there. The separatists dubbed the region the "Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic" (PMR), but not even Russia recognizes it as a sovereign state. In 2006, the region held an independence referendum, but the results were not recognized by the international community.
  

Bessarabia (Russian: Бессарабия, Bessarabiya; Ukrainian: Бессара́бія, Bessarabiya; Bulgarian: Бесарабия, Besarabiya) is a historical region in Eastern Europe, bounded by the Dniester river on the east and the Prut river on the west. About two thirds of Bessarabia lies within modern-day Moldova, with the Ukrainian Budjak region covering the southern coastal region and part of the Ukrainian Chernivtsi Oblast covering a small area in the north.

In the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War (1806–1812), and the ensuing Peace of Bucharest, the eastern parts of the Principality of Moldavia, an Ottoman vassal, along with some areas formerly under direct Ottoman rule, were ceded to Imperial Russia. The acquisition was among the Empire's last territorial acquisitions in Europe. The newly acquired territories were organised as the Governorate of Bessarabia, adopting a name previously used for the southern plains between the Dniester and the Danube rivers. Following the Crimean War, in 1856, the southern areas of Bessarabia were returned to Moldavian rule; Russian rule was restored over the whole of the region in 1878, when Romania, the result of Moldavia's union with Wallachia, was pressured into exchanging those territories for the Dobruja.

In 1917, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, the area constituted itself as the Moldavian Democratic Republic, an autonomous republic part of a proposed federative Russian state. Bolshevik agitation in late 1917 and early 1918 resulted in the intervention of the Romanian Army, ostensibly to pacify the region. Soon after, the parliamentary assembly declared independence, and then union with the Kingdom of Romania. However, the legality of these acts was disputed, most prominently by the Soviet Union, which regarded the area as a territory occupied by Romania.

In 1940, after securing the assent of Nazi Germany through the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union pressured Romania, under threat of war, into withdrawing from Bessarabia, allowing the Red Army to annex the region. The area was formally integrated into the Soviet Union: the core joined parts of the Moldavian ASSR to form the Moldavian SSR, while territories inhabited by Slavic majorities in the north and the south of Bessarabia were transferred to the Ukrainian SSR. Axis-aligned Romania recaptured the region in 1941 with the success of Operation München during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, but lost it in 1944 as the tide of war turned. In 1947, the Soviet-Romanian border along the Prut was internationally recognised by the Paris Treaty that ended World War II.

During the process of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Moldavian and Ukrainian SSRs proclaimed their independence in 1991, becoming the modern states of Moldova and Ukraine, while preserving the existing partition of Bessarabia. Following a short war in the early 1990s, the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic was proclaimed in the Transnistria, extending its authority also over the municipality of Bender on the right bank of Dniester river. Part of the Gagauz-inhabited areas in southern Bessarabia was organised in 1994 as an autonomous region within Moldova.

An enclave is a territory (or a part of one) that is entirely surrounded by the territory of one other state or entity. Enclaves may also exist within territorial waters. Enclave is sometimes used improperly to denote a territory that is only partly surrounded by another state. The Vatican City and San Marino, both enclaved by Italy, and Lesotho, enclaved by South Africa, are completely enclaved sovereign states.

An exclave is a portion of a state or territory geographically separated from the main part by surrounding alien territory (of one or more states). Many exclaves are also enclaves, but are not necessarily so; an exclave can be surrounded by several states. The Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan is an example of an exclave that is not an enclave (bordering Armenia, Turkey and Iran).

Semi-enclaves and semi-exclaves are areas that, except for possessing an unsurrounded sea border (a coastline contiguous with international waters), would otherwise be enclaves or exclaves.  Enclaves and semi-enclaves can exist as independent states (Monaco, The Gambia and Brunei are semi-enclaves), while exclaves and semi-exclaves proper always constitute just a part of a sovereign state (like the Kaliningrad Oblast).

A pene-exclave is a part of the territory of one country that can be conveniently approached—in particular, by wheeled traffic—only through the territory of another country.  Pene-exclaves are also called functional exclaves or practical exclaves.  Many pene-exclaves partially border their own territorial waters (i.e., they are not surrounded by other nations' territorial waters), such as Point Roberts, Washington and Minnesota's Northwest Angle. A pene-exclave can also exist entirely on land, such as when intervening mountains render a territory inaccessible from other parts of a country except through alien territory. A commonly cited example is the Kleinwalsertal, a valley part of Vorarlberg, Austria, that is accessible only from Germany to the north.

Thursday, January 14, 2021

Ostpolitik

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25-2-27 Polish Realism vs Ostpolitik 1 | The Origins of Ostpolitik - Kraut > .
19-3-25 [Ostpolitik within Cold War 1] - GCSE > .


Neue Ostpolitik (German for "new eastern policy"), or Ostpolitik (German: [ˈɔstpoliˌtiːk] 🔉) for short, was the normalization of relations between the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, or West Germany) and Eastern Europe, particularly the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) beginning in 1969. Influenced by Egon Bahr, who proposed "change through rapprochement" in a 1963 speech at the Evangelische Akademie Tutzing, the policies were implemented beginning with Willy Brandt, fourth Chancellor of the FRG from 1969 to 1974, and winner of the 1971 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to place this policy at the acme of the FRG.

Ostpolitik was an effort to break with the policies of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which was the elected government of West Germany from 1949 until 1969. The Christian Democrats under Konrad Adenauer and his successors tried to combat the Communist government of East Germany, while Brandt's Social Democrats tried to achieve a certain degree of cooperation with East Germany.

The term Ostpolitik has since been applied to Pope Paul VI's efforts to engage Eastern European countries during the same period. The term Nordpolitik was also coined to describe similar rapprochement policies between North and South Korea beginning in the 1980s.

Wandel durch Handel (WdH, German for "Change through trade"), also known as Wandel durch Annäherung ("Change through Rapprochement"), is a political and economic notion, mostly associated with German foreign policy, of increasing trade with authoritarian regimes in an effort to induce political change. Although most strongly associated with Germany, similar policies have been pursued by several Western countries.

After being a central tenet in German, and European Union, politics since the 1970s, the policy came under intense scrutiny following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. In April 2022, European Commissioner for Economy Paolo Gentiloni stated that "[t]he notion of 'Wandel durch Handel', of bringing about change through trade, has shown its limitations", saying that "[w]e need to rethink our relations with autocratic regimes and strengthen our ties with like-minded partners". Similarly, European Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis stated four days into the Russian invasion that "[t]he weaponization of trade shows no signs of abating. We have no choice but to face up to this reality, and adapt".

Comment 1: "Ostpolitik" vol. 2 didn't go as planned due to a fundamental misunderstanding of the Merkel government about that policy. Ostpolitik was not just "soft" trade policy and "Handel durch Wandel". It required a massive military deterrence that at the time of Willy Brandt was backed up by substantial (international) troop numbers standing on German soil. It was an offer to the GDR and SU in kindness, not weakness. It very well might have prevented the cold war from turning hot in central Europe. Brandt did not expect the SU to change just by trading with them, and for his government the influence he could have on GDR (let alone SU) policies was limited. The highly ideological approach by the Merkel government expected some kind of free market magic to happen in Russia which they still confused with the SU. They (to be frank: we all) did not listen to the complaints and fears of Eastern European countries. The most important blunder was the incompentence of the European governments to show their willingness to go all the way to fuck-you-town over the sovereignty of Ukraine. Putin thought the West was too weak for a monolithic response - of course, that's also one of the many mistakes on his side. But our determination was way too subtle for the Russian system to be heard.

Comment 2: I think the idea of “trade dependency = peace” works fairly well for democracies, but not dictatorships. Dictatorships have little to no checks and balances, and the people in dictatorships aren’t “citizens to be served,” but pawns to be used by the dictator, with the countries main goal being to serve the dictator’s ego. A dictator won’t care that their decisions will cause hardships for their own citizens or others, and they are used to silencing and repressing any overt complaints by threat, censorship and propaganda.

Monday, July 13, 2020

Pentagon

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Pentagon: America's Modern Military Fortress - Geo > .
24-8-12 HR McMaster on [DUH] Foreign Policy & Technology Warfare | Hoover > .
23-8-29 How Pentagon Became World’s Most Secure Building - Wend > .
22-2-23 New Space Race is More Insane than Ever - RealLifeLore > .

The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase The Pentagon is also often used as a metonym or synecdoche for the Department of Defense and its leadership.

Located in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., the building was designed by American architect George Bergstrom and built by contractor John McShain. Ground was broken on 11 September 1941, and the building was dedicated on 15 January 1943. General Brehon Somervell provided the major motivating power behind the project; Colonel Leslie Groves was responsible for overseeing the project for the U.S. Army.

Before the Pentagon was built, the United States Department of War was headquartered in the Munitions Building, a temporary structure erected during World War I along Constitution Avenue on the National Mall. The War Department, which was a civilian agency created to administer the U.S. Army, was spread out in additional temporary buildings on the National Mall, as well as dozens of other buildings in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia. In the late 1930s, a new War Department Building was constructed at 21st and C Streets in Foggy Bottom but, upon completion, the new building did not solve the department's space problem and ended up being used by the Department of State. When World War II broke out in Europe, the War Department rapidly expanded in anticipation that the United States would be drawn into the conflict. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson found the situation unacceptable, with the Munitions Building overcrowded and the department spread out.

The Pentagon is the world's largest office building, with about 6,500,000 square feet (150 acres; 0.60 km2) of floor space, of which 3,700,000 sq ft (85 acres; 0.34 km2) are used as offices. Some 23,000 military and civilian employees, and another 3,000 non-defense support personnel, work in the Pentagon. It has five sides, five floors above ground, two basement levels, and five ring corridors per floor with a total of 17.5 miles (28.2 km) of corridors. The central five-acre (2.0 ha) pentagonal plaza is nicknamed "ground zero" on the presumption that it would be a prime target in a nuclear war.

On 11 September 2001, American Airlines Flight 77 was hijacked and flown into the western side of the building, killing 189 people. Of those killed, 64 were on the hijacked airplane, and 125 were in the Pentagon. It was the first significant foreign attack on Washington's governmental facilities since the city was burned by the British during the War of 1812.

sī vīs pācem, parā bellum

igitur quī dēsīderat pācem praeparet bellum    therefore, he who desires peace, let him prepare for war sī vīs pācem, parā bellum if you wan...