There are breaking reports of a deadly massacre at a massive U.S. military base, Fort Hood, 60 miles north of Austin, Texas.

One or three perpetrators -- reports differ -- killed at least 12 and injured dozens more inside the base. One alleged shooter is dead, Major Malik Nadal Hasan, age 39; two other people are in custody. The shooter or shooters allegedly used handguns in a facility for soldiers preparing to head to Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is just a horrifying, tragic situation. 

No cabinet-level U.S. official has visited Taiwan since Clinton administration Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater in 2000, but Taipei is hoping to change that with an invitation to Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki:

Representatives of Taiwan's Veterans Affairs Commission recently met Shinseki in the United States to extend the invitation, said Hans Song, the commission's overseas liaison department director.

Taiwan's commission, which was founded in 1954 when Taiwan stood on the brink of war with China, has modeled itself on its U.S. counterpart and has used U.S. money to build hospitals.

"Because the Taiwan veterans system has studied the U.S. system, we hope he can give us some suggestions," Song said.

Shinseki is also just prominent to be counted as a diplomatic victory for the KMT government, but perhas not prominent enough to anger China too much. Shinseki is still mulling the decision apparently.

It does seem a little strange that the U.S. is apparently willing to invoke China's wrath by selling $421 million in missiles to Taiwan, but a short stop-over from a high-ranking cabinet official would be considered a brazenly provocative act. 

According to Izhmash Arms' parent company, the Rosoboronexport State Corporation -- which has a monopoly on supplying Russian arms to the international market -- there are about eight countries in which dozens of business are making their own versions of the Kalashnikov. And they are doing this without passing on any licensing fees to the Russians.

And now it appears that the financial difficulties facing the weapons manufacturer have reached crisis point: its very existence is threatened. A businessman in Izhevsk has filed a motion to declare Izhmash Arms bankrupt because of outstanding debts of around 8 million rubles (around €180,000 or $265,000). The case has caused a sensation in Russia because for a long time the Russian armaments industry has been one of the only industries considered competitive on an international basis. And Izhmash, which was founded in 1807 by Russia's royals, is one of the largest firearms manufacturers in Russia.

However, arms exports have fallen dramatically over the past year, falling from around $10.8 billion (€7.4 billion) worth of weaponry in 2007 to a mere $3.5 billion (€2.4 billion) in 2008.

According to the Der Spiegel article, Izmash's problems are partly of its own making. Licenses to manufacture the AK were granted generously to like-minded regimes throughout the third world during the Cold War. After the Soviet Union fell, the companies that were already making the weapons saw no reason to stop. 

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[W]e need to be realistic in recognising that the campaign will require a sustained, substantial commitment. Many tough tasks loom before us — including resolution of the way ahead after the recent election, which obviously has been marred by allegations of fraud. The challenges in Afghanistan clearly are significant. But the stakes are high. And, while the situation unquestionably is, as General McChrystal has observed, serious, the mission is, as he has affirmed, still doable. In truth, it is, I think, accurate to observe that, as in Iraq in 2007, everything in Afghanistan is hard, and it is hard all the time.

Iran constitutes the main state-based threat to stability in the region. The impact of its malign activities and harsh rhetoric are felt throughout the Arabian Peninsula, making it, ironically, the best recruiter with prospective partners. We now have eight Patriot missile batteries spread across countries on the western side of the Gulf, where two years ago we had far, far fewer.

If Cecil Rhodes was correct in his wonderful observation that “being an Englishman is the greatest prize in the lottery of life”, and I’m inclined to think that he was, then the second greatest prize in the lottery of life must be to be a friend of an Englishman, and based on that, the more than 230,000 men and women in uniform who work with your country’s finest day by day are very lucky indeed, as am I.

Petraeus also gave an address at London's Policy Exchange think tank, saying, "The challenges in Afghanistan are significant, but the stakes are also high, and while the situation unquestionably is serious, the mission is still do-able." (See the AfPak Channel for more.)

Sending Petraeus to rally British support makes sense, but it makes me wonder why the Obama adminsitration hasn't used Petraeus -- certainly the most well-known military officer in the country and a bona fide pop-culture icon -- to pitch the Afghanistan strategy to the U.S. public.

The media-savvy general seemed to be everywhere during the later Bush years defending the Iraq surge. But Petraeus has been out of the spotlight lately and the job of "selling" Afghanistan seems to have been left to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen and the previously unknown Stan McChrystal. With the Pentagon worried about declining public support for the war, it seems odd that they haven't pulled out the big guns, so to speak. 

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The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, and his her office released two reports on violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in 2008, citing "possible war crimes and crimes against humanity" by the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), a rebel group formerly led by Laurent Nkunda and backed by the government of Rwanda.

Talk about your diplomatic understatement. The crimes involved dozens of killings and rapes. But for those following the DRC this statement has to seem kind of weak. There have been all sorts of atrocities in Eastern Congo for years, and the only questions really are which militia was guilty in which case. Possible? The U.N. head of mission in the DRC called the attacks war crimes immediately after they happened. 

Reuters reporters shrewdly dig into the problematic fact that while Nkunda was later arrested by Rwandan forces, it was his lieutenant, Jean Bosco Ntaganda (shown above), nicknamed "The Terminator" who was commanding the CNDP forces at the time of the November killings. Guess where he is? 

Ntaganda, who is being sought by the International Criminal Court on separate war crimes charges, wasintegrated into Congo's army in January along with other members of the Tutsi-dominated CNDP...

"We know he is there. We are aware of it. He was integrated. He wasgiven a role. And according to our partners, he does not play a role inthe operations that MONUC is supporting," said Kevin Kennedy, MONUC's head of communications.

"But it isn't our job to investigate the role of Bosco Ntaganda in the (army)," he told journalists in Kinshasa.

One other question for other Congo watchers out there. Doesn't a lot of focus seem to be just on the CNDP, when the Hutu FDLR militia has been committing terrible massacres for years? In fact, wasn't a key reason--along with grabbing minerals--for Rwandan support of Nkunda that he was protecting Congolese Tutsis from the marauding FDLR, many of whom were genocidaires? Maybe I've just missed it or Nkunda made such a good media character. Is the FDLR getting as much U.N. heat?

Update: This post originally mistook the gender and misspelled the name of U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Navanethem, or Navi, Pillay. 

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This does not seem like a very efficient use of resources:

The U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan has banned alcohol and assigned American personnel to watch over the embassy's security guards following allegations of lewd behavior and sexual misconduct at their living quarters.

I feel like it might be hard for the military to replace guards with contractors if they need other guards to make the sure the contractors aren't getting drunk and naked.

Sanctions slapped on Iraq because of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 would have made it impossible to bring the MiG-21 and MiG-23 jet fighters back while he was in power.

Two of the jets were ready for "immediate use", the statement said, and a preliminary agreement had been reached with the Serbian government to repair the others and send them back.

The statement did not say when the existence of the fighters had come to light

During his visit to Iraq earlier this month, Serbia's Defense Minister Dragan Sutanovac told Iraqi officials about the existence of the jets, said a senior Serbian Defense official who did not want to be quoted by name.

"None are in flyable condition, they are dismantled and in crates. Only one MiG 23 that was displayed in (Belgrade's) air force museum is whole," he said. 

This is welcome news for Iraq, which has been looking to build up its air defences, but something seems very off about this. Slobodan Milosevic has been out of power since 2000 and Saddam Hussein since 2003, yet only now has anyone mentioned these planes?

I'm no expert, but given that (according to Wikipedia, at least) Serbia only has about 40 MiGs of its own, it seems like the 19 they were keeping in storage would be kind of hard to miss. 

Also, since when was Milosevic that concerned about violating international sanctions?

Photo: Dmitry A. Mmottl under a creative commons license.

Last week in the Washington Post, Michael O'Hanlon lamented the inability of the U.S. military to get "boots on the ground" in peacekeeping operations in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo. O'Hanlon, who served in the Peace Corps in Eastern Congo, made the case that an all-volunteer military force trained for peacekeeping could help overcome the current overstretch of the military and the U.S. hesitation to deploy peackeeping troops for fear of public outcry when, as in Somalia in 1993, casualties could result:

The notion is this: Ask for volunteers to join a peace operations division for two years. They would begin their service with, say, 12 weeks of boot camp and 12 weeks of specialized training and then would be deployable. They would receive the same compensation and health benefits as regular troops, given their age and experience. Out of a division of 15,000 troops, one brigade, or about 3,000 to 4,000 soldiers, could be sustained in the field at a time.

This type of training would be modeled after standard practices in today's Army and Marine Corps. To be sure, soldiers and Marines in regular units usually go beyond this regimen to have many months of additional practice and exercise before being deployed. But the peace operations units could be led by a cadre of experienced officers and NCOs -- perhaps some of whom would be drawn back to military service after leaving...

The dangers of deploying such units to missions such as the one in Congo, would be real, but the risks would be acceptable. First, those volunteering would understand the risks and accept them. Second, in most civil conflicts such as Congo's, possible adversarial forces are not sophisticated. Soldiers in the new division would not need to execute complex operations akin to those carried out during the invasion of Iraq or current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. They would largely monitor villages and refugee camps, inspect individuals to make sure they did not have illicit weapons, and call for help if they came under concerted attack.

I agree with O'Hanlon's major point that it can be difficult for peacekeeping operations to succeed without active U.S. support. Most current missions are undermanned and underfunded, even for their already very limited mandates. I also think the volunteer idea has potential, but my hangup is the idea of creating a separate track within the military that has less training. Wouldn't it be better to ask for volunteers from within the armed forces and give them additional peacekeeping training?

To get a perspective on this proposal from the kind of person who might volunteer, I called my friend Marcus Williams, who at the last minute this spring chose to withdraw from his planned Peace Corps deployment in West Africa and instead apply to Officer Candidates School for the U.S. Marines.

Interestingly, Marcus cited peacekeeping and development as one of the reasons he hopes to join the Marines. "Arguably the Iraq war and Afghanistan are right now peace keeping missions. So it becomes kind of hard to define where people are deploying," he said. He added that for better or worse, working on development from within the military means you get resources that Peace Corps volunteers simply do not. 

The proposed short training period and separation from the normal military also worried Williams, who graduated from Stanford in four years with both a degree in International Relations and a Masters in African Studies:

If you had people volunteering and there was less training involved, there's this sort of vision of the idealistic African advocate who's in college or going to college and may not have the serious commitment it takes to serve in the armed forces. They're going to end up in the field and not be a very effective unit. When it comes down to it you have to follow orders and accept very seriously that you might die.

Williams pointed out that for the Marine Corps, Officer Candidates School itself is almost 12 weeks and for those who choose to join afterward another six months or so of basic training is required. 

Ultimately, Williams argued, if the U.S. wants to get serious about supporting peace-keeping operations in places like the DRC, that would be great, but U.S. troops aren't necessarily the key.

I think that if the U.S. were really committed to these peacekeeping operations we wouldn't be focused on getting U.S. boots on the ground. The cost of the Ghanaian peacekeeper on the ground is much less and if the U.S. peacekeeper is going to literally receive less training, it seems like it would be better to support other troops.

If the U.S. really wants to help, he said, it should focus on its comparative advantages:

flying helicopters, intelligence, communications operations. I'm thinking most of the peacekeepers in Sudan. They had boots on the ground but they didn't have any real logistics.

Does all this mean O'Hanlon's idea should be written off? Absolutely not, Williams said, it just needs some careful thought. "I think you'd have a lot of people interested in volunteering," he said.

ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images 

Defense News's Wendell Minnick reports that designs on display at the recent Zhuhai Airshow indicate that China has likely been copying designs of U.S. unmanned arial vehicles:

China appears to be modeling three UAVs on the same V-tail configuration of the U.S.-made RQ-4 Global Hawk: the Chengdu Aircraft Corp.'s Xianglong (Sour Dragon) UAV and Yilong UAV, and the Guizhou Aviation Industry Group's WZ-2000 UAV.

One mystery is why the plethora of UAV models on display at Zhuhai do not go into production, said Andrei Chang, a Chinese military analyst with the Kanwa Information Center in Toronto. China is having difficulty mastering the technical complexity of operating UAVs in real time, he said.

"The companies displaying these are probably trying to elicit foreign investment and probably do not have an actual prototype," Chang said.

China also conducted a massive war game this week as part of a campaign to improve its "long-distance mobility" using new high-speed rail networks to move troops and equipment. Eyebrows were raised in New Delhi. 

The elimination of the F-22 from the defense funding bill passed by the House yesterday was billed as a major victory for President Obama and Defense Secretary Gates, as this list compiled by the AP shows, the House still managed to fund quite a few expensive programs that nobody at the White House or Department of Defense had asked for:

VH-71 presidential helicopter — Obama recommended just $85 million for program termination costs after the troubled helicopter received $835 million this year. The House provided $400 million, drawing a White House veto threat.

F-35 alternative engine — The House provided $560 million for the alternative engine; Obama proposed "zeroing out" the second engine project and threatens a veto if the final bill would "seriously disrupt" the overall F-35 program.

C-17 cargo jets — Obama wants to kill the program and requested only $91 million to shut down the production line. Congress funded eight planes in this year's war funding bill; the House bill provides $674 million for three more planes.

Kinetic Energy Interceptor — Obama requested no funding for the Kinetic Energy Interceptor, aimed at shooting down enemy ballistic missiles during their boost and early mid-course phases of flight. The House provided $80 million.

The idea of spending an addition $400 million for a presidential helicopted that the president doesn't want is obscene enough, but there's plenty more pork to go around, as Jeffrey Smith of the Washington Post wrote yesterday:

Although President Obama has repeatedly criticized earmarks, the White House statement of policy on the House bill obliquely criticized only "programs that fund narrowly focused activities." No mention was made of items such as a proposed $8 million Defense Department grant Murtha inserted for Argon ST, a Pennsylvania military contractor that has contributed $35,200 to him in the past four years, or of a $5 million grant Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) inserted for DRS Technologies, a Florida contractor that has contributed $46,350 to Young during that period, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense.

The White House criticized the addition of $80 million for the Kinetic Energy Interceptor program, which Gates and other Pentagon officials have said is technically troubled, behind schedule, and billions of dollars over budget. But Northrop Grumman, the principal contractor, is building a technology center in Murtha's district that would bring 150 related jobs, and Murtha's subcommittee sought its continuation as a way "to recoup the technology," according to an appropriations staff member, who was not authorized to speak on the record.

As Taxpayers for Common Sense notes, another contractor on the KEI is Kuchera Defense Systems, a contractor tied to Murtha that was raided by the FBI several months ago.

The Center for Defense Information's Winslow Wheeler, who predicted on FP back in April that Gates' efforts at procurement reform wouldn't address the underlying flaws in the process gave an interview with Military.com yesterday, in which he described the situation the U.S. Armed Forces now finds itself in as a consequence of out-of-control "Murthaism:" (my emphasis)

We have today, a World War II high in spending in inflation-adjusted dollars, but we now have the smallest army, the smallest navy, and smallest air force we've ever had since the end of World War II and the inventory for major systems is on average older than its ever been before. We're now at a totally outrageous 20 years per tactical aircraft. And training rates are below what they were during the so-called "hollow years" of the Carter administration.... More money has, quite literally, made our defenses worse.

The U.S. military has revealed some details of a joint training excercise with their Cuban couterparts at Guantanamo Bay:

A Cuban Army helicopter flew over this Navy base and dropped 500 gallons of saltwater on burning plywood to extinguish a simulated raging wildfire. American sailors crossed into Cuban-controlled turf to set up a mock triage center run by both nations' militaries, should catastrophe strike.

What may be more surprising is that the drill has been conducted every since the mid-'90s, though this is the first time it has been oficially acknowledged.

The world media has been full of accounts and opinions about the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya. But inside his own country, it's a different story.

In Honduras, some of the most popular and influential television stations and radio networks blacked out coverage or adhered to the de facto government's line that Manuel Zelaya's overthrow was not a coup but a legal "constitutional substitution," press freedom advocates and Honduran journalists said.

Meanwhile, soldiers raided the offices of radio and TV stations loyal to Zelaya, shutting down their signals. Alejandro Villatoro, 52, the owner of Radio Globo, said soldiers broke down doors and dismantled video surveillance cameras.

"They grabbed me and put me face down and put six rifles on me, with a foot on my back holding me down," he said. "It was like I was a common criminal."

Such allegations underscore the one-sided nature of the news that has been served up to Hondurans during the crisis. According to results of a Gallup poll published here Thursday, 41 percent of Hondurans think the ouster was justified, with 28 opposed to it.

Global Post's Ioan Grillo was on top of this story earlier this week, and also notes that some of the biggest commercial networks didn't need any help dumping on Zelaya, as they have been at war with him for a long time. In addition:

[T]he media battle over the Honduras coup also reflects larger news-related issues as leftist governments have risen to power in the region.

Longstanding commercial networks controlled by wealthy families have often had head-on collisions with leftist leaders, who accuse them of undermining their governments.

In reaction, business interests accuse stations controlled by leftist presidents of demonizing the rich and dividing nations along class lines.

“The media across Latin America has become much more polarized in recent years. There is more of an atmosphere of saying, “You have to be with us or against us,” said Elan Reyes, president of Honduras’ journalist association.

ORLANDO SIERRA/AFP/Getty Images

"The news about the preservation of the base was an extremely unpleasant surprise for us. We did not anticipate such a dirty trick," the foreign ministry source told Kommersant.

[...]

Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev announced the decision to close the base in February during a visit to Moscow -- on the same day that Russia unveiled a generous aid package to his impoverished country.

In the package, Russia agreed to settle an estimated 180-million-dollar debt owed by Bishkek to Moscow, extend Kyrgyzstan a grant worth 150 million dollars, and loan it two billion dollars more, news agencies reported at the time.

Russia has consistently denied playing any role in Kyrgyzstan's decision to close the base. But the base's presence had long irritated Moscow, which sees it as an intrusion into its former Soviet domains in Central Asia.

I understand why keeping Manas open is important to the war effort in Afghanistan, but being played like this by Kyrgyzstan against Russia for the personal enrichment of Kurmanbek Bakiyev (the U.S. is paying three times the original rent in order to keep the base open) can't feel like much of a victory for the Pentagon.

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In March, Travis Sharp noted for FP that "governments around the world are throwing billions into the one sector of their economies that will probably do the least good for the world: their military-industrial complexes." Today's announcement from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) confirms the trend: 

Global military spending reached a record $1,464 billion last year with the United States taking up by far the biggest share of the total, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said on Monday.

Arms shipments were up 4 percent worldwide from 2007 and 45 percent higher than in 1999, the think tank said in its annual study of the global arms trade.

"The idea of the 'war on terror' has encouraged many countries to see their problems through a highly militarised lens, using this to justify high military spending," Sam Perlo-Freeman, head of the Military Expenditure Project at the think tank said in a statement[...]

The United States accounted for 58 percent of the worldwide increase between 1999 and 2008. China and Russia both nearly tripled their military spending over the decade, SIPRI said.

Other countries such as India, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel, Brazil, South Korea, Algeria and Britain also contributed substantially to the total increase.

The institute, which conducts independent research on international security, armaments and disarmament, said last year's military spending comprised about 2.4 percent of global gross domestic product, corresponding to $217 per capita.

And if that weren't enough to worry people:

Last year there were around 8,400 operational nuclear warheads in the world, according to SIPRI estimates. Of them, almost 2,000 were kept on high alert and capable of being launched within minutes.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to compile my apocalypse survival kit.

Salah Malkawi/ Getty Images