Category: Foreign

Christine Wormuth is the Secretary of the United States Army.  In this briefing attended by United States Bureau Chief OLUKOREDE YISHAU, Wormuth speaks about the U.S. Army’s global engagements, relationships with allies, including Nigeria, and others. Excerpts:

What it means to be the Secretary of the Army

The Army is led by two senior officials – a civilian, the Secretary of the Army – and I am the 25th Secretary of the Army – and then also led by a four-star general.  Currently, that general is John McConville, and the two of us together are responsible for over $185 billion annual budget for the United States Army.  Our institution includes almost a million soldiers; those are active, guard, and reserve.  And with General McConville, I am responsible essentially for organising the entire United States Army.  I am responsible for all of our recruiting, also for training and equipping the United States Army. 

U.S. and the Nigerian Army

 I would say the primary presentation, if you will, of the United States Army in Africa is – has been through United States Africa Command, and particularly through our Security Force Assistance Brigade that I mentioned.  So we – just like Multi-Domain Task Forces that are aligned to different theaters, we have a Security Force Assistance Brigade aligned to the Western Hemisphere, we also have one aligned to the African continent.  So that is primarily how the United States works with countries – or excuse me, how the Army works with countries like Nigeria.  It is through exercises and partnering to build capacity.  So I would be happy to try to get you additional information about our plans with Nigeria specifically, but United States Africa Command would probably have the most comprehensive description of what we’re doing there.

Foreign deployment

We are currently deployed in almost 140 countries around the world today.  We have more than 40,000 soldiers in Europe.  Some of those soldiers are permanently stationed there; many of them have been deployed there in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  We also have United States Army soldiers permanently stationed in Korea and Japan as well as Hawaii and Alaska. 

 United States Army’s role in supporting Ukraine

We have trained over 10,000 Ukrainian armed forces.  We’ve trained them on Patriot, Avenger, and Stinger air defense systems.  We’ve provided training on a range of armored vehicles, including Bradleys, Strikers, and now Abrams tanks.  We also – the Army has provided the Ukrainian armed forces with billions of dollars of equipment – everything from vehicles to Patriots to radars to hundreds of thousands of rounds of munition.  For example, we’ve provided over 700,000 155-millimeter artillery shells.

We also in the United States Army have learned many lessons from the conflict in Ukraine, and I’d be happy to talk about that for those of you who are interested. 

Role of the Army in the Indo-Pacific

 A lot of national security observers tend to focus on the Navy and the Air Force’s role in the Indo-Pacific, and those are very important roles, but the Army has an important role to play there as well.  Just to mention two things, first, if the Army – if the United States, for example, were ever to get into a conflict in the Indo-Pacific, the United States Army would play an essential role as a lynchpin force. 

We would be responsible, I would expect, for establishing our bases for the Air Force and the Navy, for protecting those bases.  We would play a tremendous role in resupplying the United States Military, so we would be doing a lot of in terms of logistics.  And we also would be able to provide long-range fires.  So for example, the Army is developing a hypersonic weapon, and that would be something that we could employ in that role. 

But on a day-to-day basis, every day, the United States Army also plays a very important role in campaigning in the Indo-Pacific in essentially trying to continue to preserve the security and stability there in that region by strengthening deterrence.  And we do that largely by basically conducting exercises in that region.  We have many very comprehensive, multilateral exercises through United States Army Pacific, and we also engage on a regular basis with all of our allies and partners in that region.  So we are able to demonstrate our ability to interoperate every day with those countries, and we use things like our Security Force Assistance Brigades to help build capacity of our partners in the region. 

China and America

Well, first of all, I would say I don’t think either the United States or China wants a war.  I don’t think that would be in the interests of either of our countries.  So I think, one, we need to be working on lowering the temperature in the region.  That said, I am certainly concerned about China’s coercive and aggressive behavior in the region.  So what we are focused on, as I said in my opening remarks, is really trying to strengthen deterrence, trying to make sure that every day President Xi and his senior military leaders wake up and say to themselves, “Today is not the day to try to take Taiwan by force,” for example. 

And the way we strengthen that deterrence, I think, as I said, is by demonstrating combat credible forces in the region.  So through our Pacific Pathways set of exercises, we are able to bring Army forces into the region; we are able to show how we can conduct joint air assault operations; we are able to use systems like HIMARS, artillery, for example, in our exercises.  And we’re able to show how we’re able to operate with our allies and partners in the region, and I think that does a lot to strengthen deterrence and to show that basically, as we say sometimes, the best way to avoid fighting a war is to show that you can win any war you might have to fight.  And I think that’s where the United States Army really tries to focus.

Certainly China has what we like to say in the Army, excellent interior lines of communication.  They’re – the distances in the Indo-Pacific are formidable, and all of the issues that you point out, I think, are real issues.  That said, I think what we’ve seen in how the international community has rallied to Ukraine’s side, I think there’s a lesson there for China, which is that if there were to be a war, I think that it is highly unlikely that China would be facing the United States alone.  I think you would be facing a coalition of countries even broader than strictly limited to the Indo-Pacific.  So I think some of the geographic challenges that you’re pointing to are mitigated when you think about the fact that we would probably have other countries involved in the region in any kind of a conflict. 

We have been working very diligently to broaden and diversify our basing agreements in the region.  So I think the agreement that Secretary Austin was able to come to with the Philippines, for example, is a great example of being able to show how we’ll have more bases from which to operate.  I think Japan’s sense of its own security and the threat that it perceives from China has shifted dramatically in the last 10 years.  I think you see Australia being more and more concerned about Chinese aggressive actions in the region.  So I think all of that would come into play if there were to be a conflict there. 

And I think in terms of China feeling encircled or contained, if you will, I think the United States has a strong track record of showing we are a democratic nation that respects the concept of territorial sovereignty.  We do not believe in unprovoked aggression, such as what we’ve seen, again, with Russia going into Ukraine.  I think the role that the United States has played in the Pacific for decades has been about preserving the security and stability of that region so that all of the countries in the region, to include the United States, which is a Pacific nation, can continue to prosper economically.  So I think China wouldn’t have anything, I think, to worry about were it not to be making very expansive territorial claims, for example, that have been rejected by the international tribunal.   

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Apple has revealed iOS 17, with a host of new features for the iPhone.

The new update includes updates to central apps, including Messages, FaceTime and the Phone app. It also adds a new app, in the form of “Journal”, which Apple says will help people practise gratitude.

The new update also tweaks other parts of the iPhone experience, including AirDrop. Now users will be able to share more information through it – including contact details – and transfers will happen when users go out of contact.

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Apple began with the introduction of a new tool called “Contact Posters”, which work across Phone, FaceTime and elsewhere. That allows users to design their own images which include their name and a picture, and will show up on other people’s phones when calling them.

Apple has also added transcription to voicemails, so that users can see what a person is saying while they leave a message. The same will happen to voice notes within the Messages app.

Sweden has become the first country in the world to officially register s3x as a sport and will also host the first-ever European S3x Championship in Gothenburg on June 8.

A panel of judges will decide the winners of the s3x competition while the audience will also influence the final decisions

An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.2 struck Japan’s eastern regions, the country’s weather agency said on Friday.

According to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) the temblor occurred at 7:03 p.m. local time at a depth of 50 km.

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It measured 5 lower on Japan’s seismic intensity scale which peaked at 7.

The temblor’s epicentre was located off eastern Chiba prefecture at a latitude of 35.6 degrees north and a longitude of 140.7 degrees east.

No tsunami warning had been issued. (Xinhua/NAN)

The number of people displaced inside Sudan on Wednesday by fighting between rival military factions rose to more than one million.

According to the UN’s International Organisation for Migration (IOM), another 319,000 people have fled to neighbouring countries, Egypt, Sudan’s northern neighbour, took in the largest share of the refugees, with more than 132,000 people. Chad accepted 80,000 refugees and South Sudan about 69,000.

A long-simmering power struggle in Sudan escalated violently on April 15. The army under the command of de-facto president Abdel Fattah al-Burhan is fighting the paramilitary units of his deputy, Mohammed Hamdan Daglo.

The two generals jointly seized power in 2021.

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Even before the current crisis, Sudan was one of the poorest and politically unstable countries in the world with 3.7 million internally displaced people due to previous crises.

Now, the IOM warns of a further deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the country with a total population of around 46 million.

The fighting is making access to basic goods and fuel increasingly difficult.

Volker Turk, UN rights chief, said the recent fighting in Sudan has killed hundreds of civilians and forced more than one million people to flee the violence.

Turk, who met with both generals in Sudan in November 2022, said his office had received reports of fighter jets and clashes in the capital, Khartoum overnight despite a ceasefire.

He told a Geneva news briefing where he addressed crises from around the world that “many civilians are virtually besieged in areas where fighting has been relentless.

“General al-Burhan, General Dagalo, you must issue clear instructions, in no uncertain terms to all those under your command, that there is zero tolerance for sexual violence.

“Civilians must be spared and you must stop this senseless violence now,” he said.

Members of the African Union (AU) will today commemorate the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) now AU.

Since the founding of OAU, the anniversary begs the question: How much of the vision of the OAU’s founding fathers has been realised 60 years on?

The birth of pan-African dream

Dr. Sizo Nkala Nkala, a Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Africa-China Studies, described the birth of OAU as symbolising the beginning of the post-colonial era which engendered promises of African renaissance or rebirth.

Nkala said the founding document of the new continental body, the OAU Charter, committed it to ending colonialism, forging African unity, and promoting peace, security, and socio-economic development on the continent.

 “At the core of the continental initiative was a pan-African dream underpinned by the belief that people of African descent were connected by brotherhood and sisterhood and shared a common history and a common destiny.

“It was hoped that pan-Africanist ideals would lead to the unification of the continent and enhance its socio-economic potential,” Nkala said.

The challenges

However, precious little has been achieved in terms of turning the pan-African dream into reality in the last 60 years.

The post-colonial era has brought more suffering and misery than relief and freedom for millions of Africans who live under the violent lordship of despots. Africa has been in a permanent state of crisis since the end of colonialism.

One dimension of the crisis is political. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index for 2022, which measures electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political culture, civil liberties, and political participation, showed that Africa is trailing the world when it comes to democracy.

While the global average for the Democracy Index was 5.29, Africa registered an average of a mere 4.14. Only Mauritius out of Africa’s 55 countries is recognised as a full democracy while 23 countries are classified as authoritarian.

These are countries where elections are rigged, dissent is violently suppressed while constitutions are tweaked to extend the incumbents’ stay in power.

Vicious security forces are readily unleashed on protesters raising legitimate grievances.

As such, the vast majority of African people still live under oppressive conditions 60 years after the demise of colonialism. The lack of democracy has led to a corresponding rise in violent conflicts and military coups as people jostle for power.

Success of OAU/AU

The Conversation stated that one success of the African Union is its growing prestige. After its founding in 2002, Wikipedia did not consider it merited an entry until 2011. But today 50 non-African states accredit ambassadors to the Aafrican Union. The diaspora demanded inclusion during South African President Thabo Mbeki’s leadership and is now formally recognised as the “sixth region” of the African Union since 2003. Caribbean nations, members of CARRICOM, recently started formal links with the African Union: these are African-descendant nations, abducted out of Africa during centuries of slave trade.

The African Union architecture for peacekeeping and peacemaking has no peer in the Organisation of American States, Arab League, or ASEAN. While most African Union organs meet only twice per year, the Peace and Security Council has met twice per month since its founding in 2004. Dozens of its ad hoc military missions help governments with the suppression of terrorism everywhere from the Sahel to northern Mozambique. Various African Union and regional economic community peacekeepers have served in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s numerous civil wars for decades.