Securing North Korean Nuclear Sites Would Require A Ground Invasion, Pentagon Says - Washington Post

Securing North Korean Nuclear Sites Would Require A Ground Invasion, Pentagon Says

A Navy admiral sent a blunt assessment of the dangers of military action to lawmakers.

World | © 2017 The Washington Post | Dan Lamothe, Carol Morello, The Washington Post | Updated: November 05, 2017

Securing North Korean Nuclear Sites Would Require A Ground Invasion, Pentagon Says

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was taunted as "Rocket Man" by Donald Trump. (File)

The only way to locate and secure all of North Korea's nuclear weapons sites "with complete certainty" is through an invasion of U.S. ground forces, and in the event of conflict, Pyongyang could use biological and chemical weapons, the Pentagon told lawmakers in a new, blunt assessment of what war on the Korean Peninsula might look like.

The Pentagon, in a letter to lawmakers, said that a full discussion of U.S. capabilities to "counter North Korea's ability to respond with a nuclear weapon and to eliminate North Korea's nuclear weapons located in deeply buried, underground facilities" is best suited for a classified briefing.

The letter also said that Pentagon leaders "assess that North Korea may consider the use of biological weapons" and that the country "has a long-standing chemical weapons program with the capability to produce nerve, blister, blood and choking agents."

The Pentagon repeated that a detailed discussion of how the United States would respond to the threat could not be discussed in public.

The letter was written by Rear Adm. Michael Dumont, the vice director of the Pentagon's Joint Staff, in response to a request for information from two House members about "expected casualty assessments in a conflict with North Korea," including for civilians and U.S. and allied forces in South Korea, Japan and Guam.

"A decision to attack or invade another country will have ramifications for our troops and taxpayers, as well as the region, for decades," Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., wrote to the Pentagon. "We have not heard detailed analysis of expected U.S. or allied force casualties, expected civilian casualties, what plans exist for the aftermath of a strike - including continuity of the South Korean Government."

The Pentagon said that calculating "best- or worst-case casualty scenarios" was challenging and would depend on the "nature, intensity and duration" of a North Korean attack; how much warning civilians would have to get to the thousands of shelters in South Korea; and the ability of U.S. and South Korean forces to respond to North Korean artillery, rockets and ballistic missiles with their own retaliatory barrage and airstrikes.

The letter noted that Seoul, the South Korean capital, is a densely populated area with 25 million residents.

Any operation to pursue North Korean nuclear weapons would likely be spearheaded by U.S. Special Operations troops. Last year, President Barack Obama and then-Defense Secretary Ashton Carter gave U.S. Special Operations Command a new, leading role coordinating the Pentagon's effort to counter weapons of mass destruction. SOCOM did not receive any new legal authorities for the mission but gained influence in how the military responds to such threats.

Elite U.S. forces have long trained to respond in the case of a so-called "loose nuke" in the hands of terrorists. But senior officials said SOCOM is increasingly focused on North Korea.

Dumont said the military backs the current U.S. strategy on North Korea, which is led by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and focuses on ratcheting up economic and diplomatic pressure as the primary effort to get North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to stop developing nuclear weapons. Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., have emphasized that during trips to Seoul this year.

In contrast, President Donald Trump, who goes unmentioned in the Pentagon letter, has taunted Kim as "Rocket Man" and expressed frustration with diplomatic efforts, hinting that he is considering preemptive military force.

"I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man," Trump tweeted on Oct. 1, adding, "Save your energy Rex, we'll do what has to be done!"

On Oct. 7, Trump added in additional tweets that North Korea had "made fools" of U.S. negotiators. "Sorry, but only one thing will work!" he said.

Mattis and other Pentagon leaders have often cited the grave threat faced by Seoul, but the military much less frequently draws attention to its plans for an underground hunt for nuclear weapons.

Air Force Col. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said that Dumont and other Pentagon officials had no additional comment about the letter.

A senior U.S. military official in South Korea, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing operations, said that while the 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea maintain a high degree of readiness, he "has to believe" that North Korea does not want a war, given all of the nations aligned against it.

"If you open the history books, this is not the first time that we've been in a heavy provocation cycle," the official said. On the side of South Korea and the United States, he said, "there is no action taken without extreme consideration of not putting this in a position where a fight is going to happen."

Dumont's letter also notes that "we have not seen any change in the offensive posture of North Korea's forces."

A statement by 16 lawmakers, released simultaneously with the Pentagon letter, urged Trump to stop making "provocative statements" that impede diplomatic efforts and risk the lives of U.S. troops.

The Pentagon's "assessment underscores what we've known all along: There are no good military options for North Korea," said the statement, organized by Lieu and Gallego and signed by 14 other members of Congress who are veterans, all but one of them Democrats.

In a telephone interview, Lieu said that the intent of asking the Pentagon for information was to spell out the cataclysmic consequences of war with North Korea and the aftermath.

"It's important for people to understand what a war with a nuclear power would look like," said Lieu, citing estimates of 300,000 dead in the first few days alone. More than 100,000 Americans are potentially at risk.

Lieu, who spent part of his time in the Air Force on Guam preparing for military action against North Korea, called the letter a confirmation that a conflict would result in a "bloody, protracted ground war." The Joint Chiefs, he believes, are "trying to send a message to the American public," he said.

"This is grim," Lieu said. "We need to understand what war means. And it hasn't been articulated very well. I think they're trying to articulate some of that."

Gallego said that he wanted information because of what he sees as a cavalier attitude in the White House about military action in North Korea. The idea that a ground invasion would be needed to secure nuclear weapons is eye-opening, he said, and raises the possibility of the U.S. military losing thousands of troops.

"I think that you're dealing with career professionals at the Pentagon who realize that the drumbeats of war could actually end up leading us to war," he said. "They want to make sure that there is full transparency and information out there about what can occur if our civilian leaders make wrong calculations."

The Pentagon letter also notes the possibility of "opposition from China or Russia."

"The Department of Defense maintains a set of up-to-date contingency plans to secure our vital national security interests," Dumont wrote. "These plans account for a wide range of possibilities, including third-party intervention, and address how best to 'contain escalation.' "

The letter says that both "Russia or China may prefer to avoid conflict with the United States, or possibly cooperate with us."

A year ago Trump spoke of binding the nation's wounds – so what happened next? - Guardian

A year ago Trump spoke of binding the nation's wounds – so what happened next?

A bruising campaign and a shocking result was followed by … a presidency championing a border wall to a travel ban and sympathy for neo-Nazis

by David Smith in Washington

It was one small step for a man, one giant leap into the political unknown. Just before 3am, Donald Trump moved to the microphone at the Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan as an astounded, euphoric crowd chanted: “USA! USA! USA!” The president-elect gave a thumbs up, spoke graciously about opponent Hillary Clinton and made a promise: “Now it’s time for America to bind the wounds of division.”

As the first anniversary of that wild night approaches, Trump’s victory over Clinton in the US presidential election has lost none of its power to shock supporters and opponents alike. The jubiliation in the hotel ballroom with its red, white and blue lighting, Air Force One theme music and red sea of “Make America great again” baseball caps was matched by grief – and genuine fear – at Clinton’s funereal election watch party and in millions of homes.

The billionaire businessman’s acceptance speech, with its nod to Abraham Lincoln (who once pledged to “bind up the nation’s wounds”), was an uncharacteristically conventional attempt to unify following the most brutal of campaigns. It raised hopes that Trump the president would differ from Trump the candidate. Today, however, many of those hopes have been dashed. Critics say he has divided America more deeply than ever, driving wedges between black and white, female and male, rural and urban – perhaps as a deliberate political strategy.

“Looking back to that moment, they were just words on paper because there has not been healing, no binding of the wounds from the campaign, no return to American tradition in that sense,” said Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee. “He has weaponised some of the tools in politics. He’s fascinating to watch because he’s able to manipulates messages, people, situations. It astonishes me that people are still dumbfounded by it all.”

As a candidate, Trump had broken every taboo, from a launch event where he described Mexicans as rapists and drug smugglers to his attack on the parents of a fallen Muslim soldier to the revelation of an old videotape in which he bragged about groping women. Despite huge, raucously enthusiastic crowds, it was assumed he could not win an election in the America of Barack Obama. Indeed, he did lose the popular vote by 3 million yet took the electoral college to become the oldest US president to enter the White House in history and the first with no prior political or military experience. Whether his campaign knowingly colluded with Russia along the way is the subject of ongoing investigations.

Two weeks before election day, a New York Times front page headline read: “Victory in sight, Clinton presses beyond Trump.”

Trump supporter Benjamin Marchi, a healthcare service franchise owner and Republican platform committee member in Maryland, had, though, begun 8 November 2016 with cautious optimism.

Then at around lunchtime he spoke to a friend who had seen exit polls: the outlook was bleak. “As hopeful as I was, there was no explaining away the margins in those polls,” he said. “I thought that’s that.”

Marchi then got a call from the Trump campaign inviting him to the official watch party at the Hilton in New York. “My wife said, ‘Does he have a chance? I said no, not really.” Even so, they drove up from St Michaels in Maryland and found an event that, by Trump’s standards of showmanship, was relatively low key. “It was obvious when we arrived at around 8 or 9pm there was not the level of excitement or expectation,” Marchi recalled.

The Women’s March on Washington on 21 January 2017 in Washington DC was one of the biggest protests in US history.

The Women’s March on Washington on 21 January 2017 in Washington DC was one of the biggest protests in US history. Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage

But as the night wore on and Fox News beamed results into the room, the mood shifted and the crowd swelled, like sports fans going from resignation to curiosity to giddy laughter. “A lot of people made a big deal about North Carolina and holding close in Virginia but what did it for me was Wisconsin. When he won Wisconsin, he wasn’t going to lose Pennsylvania and I knew there was no stopping him.”

A year later, Marchi, 39, can still hardly believe it. “I haven’t stopped thinking about that night since it happened because it was awesome.”

He believes Trump has lived up to his promises during his first nine months in office, despite constant criticism. “He delivers tough medicine and, when people don’t want to take their medicine, they’re going to squeal. He has pursued exactly what he said he would pursue and it shouldn’t be a shock or surprise to anyone.”

Division is a business model for much of the conservative media and it is central to the political strategy [of Trump]

Broadcaster Charlie Sykes

The celebrations at Trump HQ contrasted spectacularly with the tears across town at the Javits Center, where Clinton’s speech was abruptly cancelled, and among Democrats and progressives across the country. Many conservatives were shaken too. Charlie Sykes, a broadcaster and author, said: “I think I was numbed by the enormity of it.”

Sykes was unimpressed by Trump’s election night pitch. “He can read a speech written by others that may have some grace notes but his presidency has thrived on division, stoking acrimony and inflaming the culture wars. No one who paid attention during the campaign should be surprised but it’s still shocking to see a US president behave like that. Division is a business model for much of the conservative media and it is central to the political strategy of the president.”

Thousands gathered at Terminal Four at JFK Airport to protest against the detention of several travellers under Trump’s first travel ban on 28 January.

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Thousands gathered at Terminal Four at JFK Airport to protest against the detention of several travellers under Trump’s first travel ban on 28 January. Photograph: Press vi/Rex/Shutterstock

After a concert short on stars at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, Trump took office on 20 January. It was his inaugural address, not his election night speech, that revealed his true colours: “Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation … the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives … This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”

Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, said drily: “I don’t recall his inaugural address being similar to Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address in which, on the eve of civil war, he appealed to ‘the better angels of our nature’. With Trump we got ‘American carnage’.”

Just a week later the president issued an executive order banning entry for 90 days by citizens of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. The order also indefinitely halted admission of refugees from Syria. It triggered immediate confusion at airports as well as widespread protests. The ban was knocked back by judges and Trump has been wrangling with the courts ever since.

It was a sign of the divisiveness to come along the fault lines of class, culture, gender, gun ownership, race and religion. Blumenthal, a biographer of Lincoln, added: “Trump pursues polarisation whenever he can. It’s his life raft. He cannot survive without dividing. All he has is his base, such as it is, and it can only be held together through constant alarms, emergencies and appeals to its instincts. Instead of the better angels of our nature, he appeals to the demon instincts of his base.”

A protester is surrounded by members of the group Bikers For Trump during a ‘Make America Great Again Rally’ in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on 29 April.

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A protester is surrounded by members of the group Bikers For Trump during a ‘Make America Great Again Rally’ in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on 29 April. Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Trump pursued the construction of a wall on the Mexican border and terminated the Obama-era programme that protects the so-called Dreamers from deportation. He pardoned Joe Arpaio, a sheriff in Arizona who defied a court order to stop racially profiling Latino people. He set up a voter fraud commission, which many saw as an attempt to disenfranchise black voters. He championed a law and order crackdown and casually suggested to police that they should handle suspects more roughly. He condemned professional football players who “take the knee” during the national anthem in protest over racial injustice.

His response to the hurricanes in Puerto Rico appeared slower than in Florida or Texas, he sparred with the mayor of San Juan and earned scorn for lobbing paper towels at citizens there. He effectively accused an African American war widow of lying. And perhaps most infamously of all he drew moral equivalence between white supremacists and anti-Nazi demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia, suggesting that “both sides” were to blame for deadly violence.

Julissa Arce, a former undocumented immigrant from Mexico, was at a party in Los Angeles on election night. “It was the first time I’d voted in a presidential election and I was super-excited that I got to vote for what I thought would be the first female president of the United States, so I walked into the party with a smile.”

But after seeing Clinton defeated in Pennsylvania and Ohio, she left and watched the rest in her apartment. “I was stunned. I just couldn’t believe how disappointed I was in the United States for electing someone like him, who ran on such divisive rhetoric and who was not qualified.”

Members of the Ku Klux Klan arrive for a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that ended in the death of a counter-protester.

Arce, a board member at the National Immigration Law Center added: “He continues to be incredibly divisive and, with every tweet, he divides the country more and more. The problem with it is that he gives permission to other people to be divisive as well. I see it in my Twitter feed: people are constantly saying, ‘go back to where you came from’ or ‘we need to build a wall and you should be on the other side of it’. Trump did not create anti-immigrant sentiment but he made a ripe environment to say things that were unacceptable to say in public before.”

Arce, a former vice-president at Goldman Sachs and now a naturalised US citizen, is convinced that Trump is a white supremacist. “I think he’s become that more and more. He wasn’t always but as he’s embodied this persona to get election he can no longer tell the difference.”

Trump got elected partly by bolting together a powerful coalition of conservative pressure groups such as Christian evangelicals, anti-abortion campaigners, Tea Party anti-tax advocates and, above all, the National Rifle Association (NRA). In Atlanta in April he became the first sitting president to address the annual NRA convention since Ronald Reagan and that “bind the wounds of division” speech in New York felt like a different universe as the crowd booed and jeered images of Clinton, Obama and Hollywood actors.

Trump has also continued to fire up his core support with an average of one rally per month, seeking to delegitimise institutions through “us against them” rhetoric and claiming to back the common man against the elites. In Huntington, West Virginia, he told supporters that the Russia investigation was an attack on them; in Phoenix, Arizona, he spoke of “damned dishonest” journalists who “don’t like our country”. The crowd chanted: “USA! USA! USA! … CNN sucks! CNN sucks! CNN sucks! … Build that wall! Build that wall! Build that wall!”

Neil Sroka, communications director of Democracy for America, a liberal advocacy group, watched the election results with colleagues in Seattle. He had pre-written one press statement for a Clinton victory and another for a Trump surprise. “We figured Secretary Clinton would win and were trying to work out how the left could keep up the pressure,” he recalled.

There was not a moment of hesitation for us in the room: we knew he was lying.

Neil Sroka of Democracy for America

But as it dawned on them that Clinton would lose, they threw out the “Trump wins” statement and started a new one. “I sat in a corner and rewrote it entirely in 20 minutes because the mood had changed instantly. There was a need to change our entire position and outlook: we got very early that resistance would become central to this presidency and we haven’t let up.”

Indeed, Trump’s election night plea for unity cut little ice with Sroka and colleagues. “There was not a moment of hesitation for us in the room: we knew he was lying,” he said. “This is a man who has spent his life saying what he needs to say to get ahead. In a moment of shock for him, somebody handed it to him and he read it.”

The scale of the catastrophe came home to Sroka the next day when a Muslim co-worker called him to express anxiety over his future in America. “That was when the emotion hit me directly. As hard as we’d worked, there was the realisation that we hadn’t done enough. There was a deep, profound fear of what Donald Trump’s administration might do in office, some of which has been realised and some of which hasn’t because of his ineptitude. He has proved to be one of the worst managers we’ve ever seen in the Oval Office.”

A year on, polls suggest that only about a third of the country supports Trump. But he continues to energise the anti-anti-Trump base in a common disdain for liberal America and could yet retrace a narrow path to victory in 2020. “There has never been a president more focused, more dedicated and more committed to dividing the country against itself over and over again,” Sroka added. “The only way he wins again is by dividing us further. It’s our job to unify the country specifically against his divisive kind of politics.”

A boring choice for Fed chair, even though these are very interesting times - Guardian

A boring choice for Fed chair, even though these are very interesting times

Jerome Powell’s main qualification for leading the world’s most powerful central bank seems to be his lack of strong views

Donald Trump with his choice for Fed chairman, Jerome Powell.

Sunday 5 November 2017

Jerome Powell was Wall Street’s choice to run the Federal Reserve. Given Donald Trump’s record on doing the unexpected, there was always the chance the president would pick another candidate, but for once he did not make waves.

Powell was the business-as-usual candidate. Nothing he has said or done since he first joined the Fed’s board five years ago suggests he intends to make life difficult for Trump or rattle the financial markets. Well, not deliberately at least, for while Powell is the boring choice, he may not necessarily prove to be the safe choice.

Clearly, the safest choice would have been for Trump to appoint Janet Yellen for a second term as chair of the world’s most powerful central bank. After all, she has presided over a period in which the US economy has grown, unemployment has fallen steadily and inflation has remained below its target. What’s more, without any real tremors, she took the first steps towards the normalisation of monetary policy by edging up interest rates and starting to unwind the Fed’s quantitative easing programme.

This is quite a task, because all central banks are to an extent flying blind. Their models tell them that falling unemployment should by now have led to a significant pick-up in wage inflation, but that’s not happening. The chances of policy error are high.

Washington politics explains why Powell has a seat on the board. Barack Obama wanted Jeremy Stein to fill one of two vacancies, but thought his nominee might be blocked by a Republican-dominated Senate. Needing a Republican makeweight to ease Stein’s passage, Obama chose Powell.

Nothing that has happened since suggested that Powell was destined for greater things. His boilerplate speeches have tended to focus on regulation, and when straying into the realm of monetary policy he has been careful not to deviate from whatever the current Fed orthodoxy might be. Had Trump lost the presidential race, there would not have been the slightest chance of Powell getting the top job. Churchill’s put-down of Attlee – a modest man with much to be modest about – summed him up.

Churchill was, of course, wrong about Attlee, and it is possible that Powell will go on to be one of the all-time great Fed chairmen. But it seems unlikely. Trump did not want Yellen because she was a Democrat. He didn’t want John Taylor or Kevin Warsh because they think the Fed needs to get ahead of the curve on inflation by raising interest rates more quickly.

What the president wanted was a Republican without particularly strong views on monetary policy, someone who would continue with Yellen’s softly, softly approach to raising rates but would be ready to roll back some of the post-crisis regulations imposed on the financial sector. By those criteria, Powell was the perfect choice.

And, in the right circumstances, he may do just fine. If monetary policy is all about the occasional tweak to interest rates – as it was in the Great Moderation of the 1990s – there will be little to fear. Things will get trickier if it proves harder than the Fed thinks to steer the US economy between recession and inflation, or if a crisis arrives from an unexpected quarter.

Unlike Yellen or her predecessor Ben Bernanke, Powell is not an economist. He is a lawyer by training, and has worked in investment banking and private equity. Being a trained economist is not everything. There have been trained economists – Arthur Burns in the 1970s, for example – who have made a right pig’s ear of running the Fed.

But equally there are times – such as when Mario Draghi rescued the euro from its existential crisis in 2012 – when being a journeyman is not sufficient. And there is nothing in Powell’s CV or his time at the Fed to suggest he is anything more than that.

Oil is up: but what would really help renewables is costlier carbon

High oil prices are a boon for the renewables industry. The higher the price of consuming black gold, the more consumers will be prepared to try alternatives, from solar to wind. So the industry might have been expected to cheer the surge last week in Brent crude prices to near a two-year high of $60 a barrel.

Yet the steep cuts in the cost of offshore wind and especially solar electricity generation mean that the economics are already running in their favour. In some countries, wind and solar power are now cost-competitive with oil, coal and natural gas-fired power plants, even when carbon emissions are not priced in.

That leaves the momentum with renewables, even when the oil price falls – as it did in 2014, when the price of a barrel tumbled from around $115 over 18 months to less than $40 in January 2016. And that’s just as well, since oil prices are unlikely to rise much more, despite the public statements from Opec and Russia that they will hold back about 1.8m barrels per day until next spring in an attempt to push prices higher.

There is more to come from the Americans, who mothballed many of their derricks before hurricane Harvey hit the Gulf. So US production, despite hitting its highest level for at least three decades, is likely to rise further, which will act to depress prices.

That’s not to say governments can relax and watch renewables win the day. Putting a price on carbon emissions remains important when global temperatures are rising fast.

Unfortunately, the European system of carbon credits, which is supposed to tax heavy carbon users, is mired in controversy after several years of handing out credits that make it cheaper to belch out CO2 than invest in environmentally friendly alternatives. The market price for credits is €6 a tonne when it needs to be nearer €50.

The remedy is for governments to sidestep the failed market in carbon credits and impose a steeper cost on users. That would help much more than a rise in oil prices.

Ryanair is flying as high as ever – even without its pilots

Ryanair bosses chose not to face the press last week when announcing half-yearly results – an absence surely unrelated to a decision in September to cancel thousands of flights due to lack of pilots.

Yet what the airline had to report was bulging profits, followed by news of its busiest October, cancellations or not. Plenty of pilots remain disgruntled, despite the airline’s deep delve into its pockets to prevent an exodus to competitors.

The rotas fiasco was never likely to be a “Ratners moment” for chief executive Michael O’Leary, a man who had long made an art of upsetting his customers. But Ryanair looks to have been barely jolted by the turbulence – and now, as competitors fall by the wayside, it forecasts higher revenues for the winter.

Not that much higher, though: this autumn’s lesson will reaffirm O’Leary’s conviction that the only way Ryanair could lose its passengers would be by raising fares.

Did Sessions mislead Congress on Russia? - CBS News

By KATHRYN WATSON CBS NEWS November 4, 2017,

Did Sessions mislead Congress on Russia?

Court documents unsealed this week have renewed interest in whether Attorney General Jeff Session misled Congress when he testified recently that neither he nor anyone else was in contact with Russian operatives during the 2016 presidential campaign, CBS News' Jeff Pegues reports.

Last month, Sessions testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that neither he nor anyone else was in contact with Russian operatives during the election cycle. But Pegues reports the court documents unsealed this week claim George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign aide who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with foreign nationals, offered to set up a meeting with then-candidate Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Papadopoulos made the offer during a meeting that both Sessions and Mr. Trump attended in March 2016.

Reported testimony from former campaign policy adviser Carter Page only adds to questions about what Sessions knew. CNN on Thursday reported Page testified in closed-door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee that he told Sessions he was traveling to Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign.

The New York Times reported Friday night that Page testified that he had met with Russian government officials during the trip, contradicting multiple denials he has made in the press.

Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, who is in charge of the committee's Russia investigation, confirmed to CNN that Page gave such testimony, but minimized its meaning.

"I don't make anything sinister out of it," Conaway told CNN. "He said Sessions did not react or comment one way or the other," Conaway told CNN. "If I were Sessions, I wouldn't have recalled it either. It was just in passing. He was walking out of the room. A guy he had never met before, grabs him, 'Hey, I'm out on the team. I changed my travel plans to go to Russia.'"

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, told CBS News there is "no question" Sessions needs to appear before Congress again in an open session to "reconcile" his testimony.

Special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election meddling and any ties to the Trump campaign does not appear to be slowing down. Mueller's team is set to interview White House communications director Hope Hicks once the president's team returns from a trip to Asia.

France ready to join India’s anti-China front - Asia Times

France ready to join India’s anti-China front

By EMANUELE SCIMIA NOVEMBER 2, 2017

It seems France is set to join the ranks of India’s “anti-China front” in the Indian Ocean. Last week, Paris and New Delhi announced their decision to increase military cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region. The statement came during a two-day visit to the Asian country by French Defense Minister Florence Parly, and amid attempts by the Indian government to try to contain Beijing’s growing assertiveness from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal.

Parly and her Indian counterpart Nirmala Sitharaman said last Friday that the naval collaboration between their countries in the Indian Ocean was part of a broader plan to expand bilateral defense ties. In particular, France and India aim to improve military-to-military relations, counter-terror cooperation and their ability to develop arms systems jointly under the “Make in India” initiative.

The Indo-French military connection

While India considers China’s military presence in the Indian Ocean a strategic challenge to its regional role, it shares with France the goal of keeping international waters free and secure. Beijing’s militarization of the South China Sea, which is one of the world’s busiest shipping routes, is viewed both in Paris and Delhi as an attack on the rules-based world order.

As an Indo-Pacific actor, given its overseas dependencies in the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific, France has an interest in safeguarding regional stability. Paris is well aware that the global center of gravity is shifting to the Asia-Pacific region, notably in trade terms. French exports to South and East Asia were worth US$61.4 billion in 2016, or 12.5% of the European country’s total, according to the World Bank.

French warships routinely sail through the Indian and Pacific oceans to protect freedom of navigation. At the moment, as far as maritime collaboration in the area is concerned, Paris and New Delhi plan to expand their information-sharing deals and the scope of Varuna naval drills, slated for early 2018. The annual Varuna exercises were launched in 2001 with the purpose of improving the capacity to conduct joint operations by the navies of the France and India.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s trip to India in December will reveal more about the consistency of Paris’ military partnership with New Delhi. The question is whether France is sincere about its offer of cooperation or it is wooing India into acquiring more French-manufactured arms.

French aircraft manufacturer Dassault Aviation sold 36 Rafale fighters to India in September 2016 and is now competing to provide the Indian Air Force with another 36 multirole jets. As well, French state-owned shipbuilder Naval Group is contributing to the construction of six Scorpene-class submarines for the Indian Navy and is a contender for the realization – in collaboration with an Indian shipyard – of six advanced stealth submarines.

Multilateral counterbalance to China

France maintains it is an Indo-Pacific power, but it cannot conduct extended naval campaigns in the Indian Ocean or the South China Sea. If it wants to contribute to regional security in South Asia and the Pacific Rim, it must inevitably team up with India, the United States, Japan and Australia. This entails the improvement of interoperability and joint capabilities with the navies of these countries.

Steps have been taken by Washington, Tokyo and Canberra to extend naval assistance to New Delhi against China’s advancements in the Indian Ocean, where it has deployed warships, submarines and spy ships.

India is strengthening naval cooperation with Japan. On Tuesday, the Indian and Japanese navies wrapped up anti-submarine-warfare drills initiated two days earlier. The US has recently shown interest in boosting security collaboration with India. And Australia has an increased focus on the Indian Ocean and is keen to enhance security and defense ties with the Indian government.

France is deepening relations with all these Indo-Pacific powers. The path that Paris and New Delhi are treading is similar to that proposed by the US to ramp up its defense cooperation with India. In essence, Washington is ready to develop joint capabilities with the Indian armed forces, besides fostering defense trade and technology sharing.

Indian foreign policy remains “liquid.” On Sunday, for instance, India concluded military drills with Russia. Started on October 19, they were the most ambitious ever conducted by the two nations, according to the Russian side, and saw the simultaneous participation of their air, naval and ground forces for the first time.

But the level of India’s engagement with the US and its allies (including France) is acquiring a considerable dimension. As a result, it is plausible that New Delhi will manage to put up some sort of “multilateral” counterbalance to Beijing in the Indian Ocean.