2017-01-17 By Kenneth Maxwell

Donald Trump has always seen the Main Stream Media (MSM) as his competitors and frequently enemies.

The press was the most vilified target during his raucous Presidential campaign. Attacking the press always drew the loudest and most popular response from his followers, other than attacking “crooked Hillary ” which was always meet with enthusiastic chants of “lock her up.”

But the MSM was also Donald Trump’s most effective bull horn, for they seem always ready to give him free publicity.

Trump is also a master at the use of Twitter, and he has used his “tweets” to communicate directly with the general public.

He is not the first political leader to use direct communication with the public. The legendary Mayor of New York City, Fiorello La Guardia, used comic books to get his message across to the public, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt used his radio “fireside chats” during the Great Depression in the 1930s.

But no-one has matched Donald Trump’s “tweet” blizzard.

And Donald Trump has consistently outflanked the traditional media gatekeepers: the news editors and columnists.

But this has infuriated them, and they seem constantly looking for ways to get revenge.

The “dirty dossier” of unsubstantial allegations collated about Trump and his connections to Russia by a former British MI6 spy, Christopher Steele, who co-found Orbis Business Intellegence in Belgravia, and who had worked at the UK embassy in Moscow in the early 1990s, has provided the most recent opportunity to play this game.

Steele’s 35 page dossier was first funded by anti-Trump Republican lobbyists, and later by Democrats, and had been circulating in Washington since July.

It was published by BuzzFeed, a New York City based internet company, which has also ironically faced accusations of plagerism and unreliability.

But the “leaking” of the Steele dossier, and the timing of the leak, has emboldened the enemies of Donald Trump on Capital Hill, most notably Republican Senator John McCain, who apparently gave the dossier to the FBI director James Comey, and who is demanding a probe into the Russians role in the U.S. election.

And it also encourages other Republican Trump critics and competitors like Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator Marco Rubio.

There is no loser like a sore loser.

The dossier is explosive precisely because it gets to the heart of the allegations about Trump’s cosy relationships with Vladimir Putin.

And it contains unverified and salacious allegations about Trump covorting with prostitutes while in Moscow which opens him to alleged potential blackmail. And is part of the ongoing allegations about Russian interference in the hacking and release by Wikileaks of Hillary Clinton and John Podesta’s e-emails during the Presidential campaign which adversely impacted the democratic candidate’s reputation.

Trump has clearly argued that the dossier notably by being published on website like Buzz Feed is less than credible.

And he has upped his attacks on the US intelligence “community”  accusing them at his first press conference since July of behaving like “Nazi Germany.”

There is little doubt that as he comes to power reform of the intelligence community is part of what will change in Washington.

The dossier goes to the heart of the most serious allegations about Russian interference on the U.S. electoral process and became, also predictably, the principal topic at the news conference held at Trump Tower in Manhattan on January 11, just a week before his inauguration on 20th January.

The press conference had been intended to discuss Trump’s plans to shift control of Trump enterprises to his two adult sons. Instead Trump was able to level Jim Acosta of CNN who he accused of purveying “false news.”

Buzz-feed he claimed was spreading an “unverified piece of garbage.”

But the problem for the MSM is simply that they are not in control of the public agenda, and the reported reforms coming where the White House Press Corps will be moved out of the White House, is certainly part of a process where the MSM is not gaining ground on being a credible “watchdog for the incoming Administration.

But the ongoing conflict can hurt Trump as well.  He can get snared into in a critical response cycle where his positive impacts are attenuated.

It is ironic, that Trump’s preferred communications methodology, the internet, and leaks, tweets and unverified accusations, are being used by the MSM as part of the arsenal of ongoing attacks, but rather than becoming a credible watchdog they are being reduced to targets of the Tweet arsenal of the incoming President.

Editor’s Note: There is a clear challenge with regard to the use of Tweets for foreign audiences certainly.

In an editorial published in The Australian on January 13, 2017, the concern was expressed that the President-elect needs to rise above scurrilous attacks and focus on the need to reassure the world. The editorial noted that much of the U.S. media has turned feral and BuzzFeed was characterized as a “click bait factory” that boasts that when in doubt about whether claims are true or not one should simply publish anyway.

The point was that although Trump has every right to bash the feral quality of the MSM, it comes at a cost.

“Mr. Trump needs to do much more to look, act, and sound presidential.”

Editor’s Note: If you would like to comment on this article, please go to the following:

The Case of the Dodgy Dossier

2017-01-16  By Jonathan Ward

Published by The Jamestown Foundation China Brief

January 13, 2017

The naval build-up of the world’s two most populous nations, China and India, will contribute to a new era in the importance of naval power. Owing in part to a collapse in relations in the late 1950s and early 1960s which culminated in the China-India Border War of 1962, relations between China and India continue to be marked by distrust. In the past, geopolitical tensions between China and India were largely confined to the Himalayas, where the border dispute between the two nations remains unresolved. In this century, however, the geopolitics of China-India relations are increasingly defined by the maritime domain.

The Himalayan territories of the disputed China-India border were once considered a “life-line” by Chinese leaders, important to the CCP’s consolidation of control over Tibet following the founding of the PRC. Today, Chinese interests and activities have expanded significantly beyond the regions that defined China-India relations in the past.

As the world’s leading nation in trade, surpassing the United States in 2013, owning the fourth largest commercial shipping fleet, and many of the world’s largest deep water ports, including Shanghai and Shenzhen, the Chinese economy, and the imperative for Chinese leaders to sustain economic growth, is defined by maritime engagement with the globe.

With this comes great vulnerabilities, and a new dimension to China-India relations in which naval power will be paramount.

Both China and India are dependent on sea-borne trade and shipping routes. Hemmed in by the Himalayas to its north and gaining little economically from its neighbor Pakistan, India’s natural geography is maritime.

The South Asian nation depends on the sea for 90 percent of its trade by volume and for 90 percent of its oil imports, with the majority of its imported oil coming from the nearby Persian Gulf (MEA, March 20, 2015).

India’s maritime geography is hospitable as the nation dominates the Indian Ocean region with easy access to some of the world’s most vital sea lanes. China’s economic life-lines, by contrast, pass through much more difficult terrain.

China’s Indian Ocean Dependency: the “Malacca Dilemma”, the South China Sea, and China’s Growing Presence in the Indian Ocean

As China’s global economic footprint increases, its Indian Ocean dependency is increasing in kind. Chinese access to vital African resources, Persian Gulf oil and gas, and sea-borne trade with Europe all depends on the passage of these goods across the Indian Ocean.

To reach the People’s Republic, all of this must then pass through the Straits of Malacca, a narrow, pirate-infested waterway which is less than two miles across at its narrowest point. The Straits of Malacca is one of the world’s most significant maritime chokepoints: 25 percent of the world’s traded goods and 25 percent of all sea-borne oil pass through it.

According to the US Energy Information Agency, roughly 80 percent of China’s imported oil passes through the Straits, leading President Hu Jintao to label this strategic bottleneck the “Malacca Dilemma” in 2003. [ref]Marc Lanteigne Asian Security, China’s Maritime Security and the “Malacca Dilemma”, 4:2, 2008. pp.143–161.[/ref]

The phrase encapsulates two problems: on one hand the fact that the lifeblood of China’s economy must pass through a two mile wide channel after transiting the Indian Ocean, and on the other hand, the concern that, as President Hu phrased it, “certain powers” could control the Straits and put China at risk with comparative ease.

Importantly, China’s dependence on the Indian Ocean is likely to be long-standing.

As Professor Zhang Li, director of security and diplomatic studies at Sichuan University’s Institute of South Asian Studies explained to this author in 2014, the Indian Ocean would be the region which most of China’s energy imports would transit “for the next forty years”, also explaining that “There is a very strong fear in India about China’s intentions in the Indian Ocean” (China Brief, June 19, 2014). Indeed, as China takes steps to offset its Malacca dilemma by building both military and industrial infrastructure in the Indian Ocean region, frictions with India are likely to increase.

Chinese infrastructure building in the Indian Ocean region is taking place under the framework of “One Belt, One Road”, (OBOR) an initiative to build up ports, pipelines, roads and railways that will link Eurasia, Africa, and the Indian Ocean more closely to China, facilitating the transport of goods and natural resources to and from the People’s Republic. Chinese or Chinese-funded port building is underway or under contract in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Myanmar, and along the East African coast.

The heart of OBOR’s Indian Ocean initiatives is arguably the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, (CPEC) a $46 billion investment plan by the PRC to build port and overland infrastructure links that would give China access to the Arabian Sea just to the east of the Persian Gulf.

Along with existing port-to-rail facilities in Myanmar that link the Bay of Bengal to China’s southern Yunnan province, CPEC provides a major potential offset to the “Malacca Dilemma”. Importantly for India, however, China’s infrastructure building in the Indian Ocean is not purely for economic purposes.

China’s 2015 Defense White Paper, made clear that “[T]he security of overseas interests concerning energy and resources, strategic sea lines of communications (SLOCs), as well as institutions, personnel and assets abroad, has become an imminent issue” (SCIO, May 29, 2015). The document tasks the People’s Liberation Army with “safeguard[ing] the security of China’s overseas interests” and tasks the PLA Navy (PLAN) with “gradually shift[ing] its focus from “offshore waters defense” to the combination of “offshore waters defense” with “open seas protection” (China Brief, June 19, 2015).

The first signs of this shift in naval focus are taking place in the Indian Ocean region.

While the PLAN has been participating in multi-national anti-piracy operations off the Horn of Africa since 2008, signs of a more permanent Indian Ocean presence, as well as the use of China’s OBOR architecture and relationships for military purposes have emerged. In 2016, the PRC began construction on its first overseas military base, in Djibouti. In 2014, a PLAN nuclear submarine and military support ship docked in Colombo, Sri Lanka, alarming New Delhi, and in 2015, a Chinese submarine docked in Karachi, demonstrating that the long-standing China-Pakistan partnership also has value for the projection of naval power (Times of India, June 27, 2015).

Chinese island building in the South China Sea should also be viewed in an Indian Ocean context.

Taken together with a new overseas military base in Djibouti, China is effectively building up military infrastructure at both ends of the Indian Ocean, on both ends of the sea-lanes which the Chinese economy has come to depend on.

Additionally, military infrastructure in the South China Sea offers China protection for its major submarine base at Sanya on Hainan island.

South China Sea military infrastructure also offers China an advantage in the event of any military blockade of Malacca such as that which concerned President Hu in 2003.

A pattern may therefore be emerging, of South China Sea military infrastructure as a basing point for PLAN patrolling in the Indian Ocean Region. While OBOR-related infrastructure has been used militarily, China is also expanding its Indian Ocean naval presence by proxy, supplying Pakistan with eight diesel electric submarines, and thus giving India’s neighbor a transformative boost in its undersea capabilities (Tribune [Pakistan], August 31, 2016).

Chinese rhetoric has likely done little to allay Indian concerns about either China’s growing Indian Ocean presence or China’s use of strategic relationships in the region. As Professor Shen Dingli of Fudan University stated earlier this year: “China actually has many ways to hurt India. China could send an aircraft carrier to the Gwadar port in Pakistan. China turned down Pakistan’s offer to station military units in the country.

If India forces China to do that, of course we can put a navy at your doorstep.” Gwadar port, of course, is at the heart of the “One Belt, One Road” initiative.

China’s Maritime Power and India’s Growing Navy

The Indian Navy, in its 2015 maritime security strategy, shows that India’s “Primary Areas of Interest” cover the entire Indian Ocean, from the Cape of Good Hope to Indonesia’s Lombok Straits, including the Straits of Malacca (see map).

Chinese fears of Indian naval capabilities are subtle, but long-standing. While Indian analysts and planners have long had their concerns about Chinese port building in the Indian Ocean, fearing encirclement by a “string of pearls”, Chinese analysis has pointed out a further complication to the “Malacca dilemma” presented by India’s Andaman and Nicobar islands, just west of Malacca.

One Chinese naval analyst has suggested that India could fortify these islands into a “metal chain” that could blockade Malacca, and others have suggested that the Andamans could be used as a “strategic springboard” for India’s “Look East” policy, or for forward basing to reach into the South China Sea.

Chinese strategic concerns aside, India is engaged in a significant naval build up, aiming to have a 200 ship navy by 2027 (Economic Times [India], July 16, 2015).

Moreover, the South Asian nation is actively coordinating with other major democracies that are embroiled in maritime disputes due to Chinese claims in the East and South China Seas in the West Pacific.

In 2015, the annual Malabar naval exercises between India and the United States were upgraded to include Japan as a permanent member. India and Australia also began conducting bilateral naval exercises in 2015. India and the US have established a Joint Working Group on Aircraft Carrier Technology, and India may receive advanced carrier technology from the United States, including use of the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) created for America’s Gerald R. Ford class carriers, on its second indigenous aircraft carrier (The Diplomat, February 24, 2016).

This year, India and the United States discussed cooperation on anti-submarine warfare, and also signed the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) which allows India and the US to use each other’s military facilities for supplies and repairs, all of which demonstrates that US-India defense cooperation is moving forward (Indian Express, August 31, 2016).

The two nations issued a statement called “Joint Strategic Vision for Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean Region” in 2015, which mentioned “safeguarding maritime security and ensuring freedom of navigation…especially in the South China Sea” (Whitehouse.gov, January 1, 2015). The joint vision also mentioned “support for regional economic integration” and “accelerated infrastructure connectivity”, suggesting that it could be further developed as a counter-point to China’s OBOR initiative.

Sensitive technology sharing, establishment of new naval partnerships, and assistance in the build-up of India’s naval capacity all show an embrace of Indian aspirations as a naval power by major maritime democracies.

However, India’s naval presence goes beyond the U.S.-Japan-India trilateral. Indian naval outreach in Southeast Asia has also intensified. In 2015, India signed the Joint Vision Statement on Defence Cooperation with Vietnam, and this year two Indian warships, a stealth frigate and a corvette, visited Cam Ranh Bay (Indian Navy, May 30, 2016). India inaugurated naval exercises with Indonesia in 2015, and the Indian Navy has trained Vietnamese submariners at Visakhapatnam (Indian Navy, May 10, 2015; Times of India, October 28, 2014).

Indian maritime security outreach in the Indian Ocean itself is also underway, with Modi’s visit to the Seychelles, Mauritius and Sri Lanka in 2015, where an Indian-led initiative on maritime surveillance has begun, which is meant to establish radar stations in these Indian Ocean island nations.

Conclusions

 China’s geopolitical challenge is breaking out of what it sees as encirclement or containment, both by foreign militaries and by geography itself. As the country is economically dependent on global sea-borne trade, and as its interests proliferate to every continent, the importance of naval power will be paramount. Liu Huaqing, China’s most influential naval strategist, envisioned a Chinese navy capable of reaching the First Island Chain by 2000 and the Second Island Chain by 2020.

The corresponding rise of the Chinese navy and the proliferation of anti-access/area-denial capabilities that threaten the US Navy in the West Pacific continues to occupy the attention of the US defense and policy-makers.

However, China’s most vital economic interests may in fact lie in the Indian Ocean Region, and here, China expands its military footprint both at far greater risk geographically than it does in pursuing “near seas” operations, and also in the presence of another major power engaged in its own determined naval rise.

The PRC will continue to do all it can to circumvent its confounding geographical puzzle in Malacca, including showing great interest in a future waterway—the Arctic’s Northern Sea Route.  As Chinese leaders employ the full range of the nation’s resources: diplomacy, financial power, engineering capabilities, and of course the building of a substantial blue-water navy and submarine fleet, China’s strategic presence in the Indian Ocean will continue to grow, contributing in turn to India’s own emphasis on naval power.

There is little doubt that sea power in this century will be defined by the rise of the Chinese and Indian navies.

Jonathan Ward has recently completed his DPhil at the University of Oxford, specializing in China-India relations, with a dissertation on the China-India Border War of 1962. He studied Philosophy, Russian and Chinese at Columbia University in New York City as an undergraduate, and continued his language studies at Beijing University in China and St. Petersburg State University in Russia. From 2006 – 2011 he lived and traveled extensively in Russia, China, Latin America, and the Middle East, and speaks Russian, Chinese, Spanish and Arabic. He consults on China-India relations, the Indian Ocean Region, and Maritime Asia for Oxford Analytica, and is a Research Associate at Oxford’s Changing Character of War Programme.

Additional source cited: Winner Holmes and Yoshihara, Indian Naval Strategy in the Twenty-first Century, Routledge 2009.

https://jamestown.org/program/sino-indian-maritime-competition/

This is the first of a three part series by Danny Lam on the way ahead for the “One China Policy.

2017-01-15 By Danny Lam

President Xi Jinping of People’s Republic of China will be promoting “free trade” at Davos later this month.   If it is the case that Chinese President is acting in good faith and has the capacity to deliver, it represents an incredible opportunity for the world to reap the benefits of free trade since the original “opening” of China by Deng Xiaoping.

“One China Policy” is the rallying cry of the Beijing based PRC regime and their western “China expert” priesthood.     By that, they mean that Beijing should be the sole channel through which foreign relations between the Chinese civilization and the rest of the world should be conducted to the exclusion of other authorities irrespective of whether Beijing have the capacity to contract.

Imagine being able to negotiate with President Xi’s Beijing and gain access to a market of 1.3 billion people in one stop!

For centuries, the West uncritically accepted such “One China” policies, dealing with the Republic of China, and before that, the Ching Dynasty and its predecessor the Yuan Dynasty, as if the regime had the legitimacy and authority to conduct business for “China” regardless of the facts on the ground.

Unfortunately, this ended badly when the West discovered, ex post facto, that Chinese regimes they are dealing with in fact, do not possess the Western attributes of a legitimate regime: “monopoly on the legitimate use of violence over a defined territory” (Gewaltmonopol des Staates) that is central to the definition of a legitimate regime in the West from Bodin, Hobbes to Weber.

The PRC regime based in Beijing is no different.   Beijing had a tenuous hold on power that for much of its history, and today, does not enjoy a monopoly on violence in territories Beijing claims as its own.

Today, the PRC does not exercise jurisdiction in any Western sense in territories held by Taiwan (ROC), or in territories it claims like Arunachal Pradesh, Aksai Chin, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, over and above maritime territories claimed by PRC that including the South China Sea, East China Sea, Japan, etc.

The PRC Regime tacitly acknowledge that territories that Beijing regard as exercising “indisputable sovereignty” like the South China Sea can, in fact, be both in name and in fact under the dejure and defacto jurisdiction of other sovereign states or other entities, and that the PRC is powerless to enforce its sovereignty claims against armed foreign vessels operating in its “indisputably sovereign” territory.

In other words, the PRC regime do not necessarily exercise sovereignty in the Western sense in territories Beijing considers as theirs with “indisputable” sovereignty, let alone the capacity to enforce trade deals it makes on behalf of their “local” governments.

Since the Beijing regime does not consider a monopoly on violence a necessary and essential feature of “indisputable sovereignty”, there is no reason for Western analysts to project onto the Beijing regime Western notions of what sovereignty means and abide by Western rules that Beijing in fact, does not subscribe to themselves.

Few Western observers recognize that the PRC in fact practices many “one China” policies that no Westphalian state would have accepted.

The PRC has accepted the international recognition of the existence of Taiwan, the Republic of China exercising jurisdiction over Taiwan; and, a similar arrangement for Hong Kong, codified by United States laws like the Hong Kong Policy Act (P.L. No. 102-383m 106 Stat. 1448), and the WTO membership of “Chinese, Taipei” and “Hong Kong, China” that gave international legal recognition to them as a distinct jurisdictions from Beijing that have their own membership and voting rights.

Beyond these examples, the PRC regime’s monopoly on legitimate power is internally constrained by their proclamation of “autonomous regions” that include vast stretches like Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Guangxi, Xinjiang, and “Special Economic Zones” that include many cities and provinces.

Ostensibly, Beijing is a “unitary state” that has no formal, constitutional division of powers between the central government and local authorities like Provinces and in theory, Beijing is supreme.

The reality is Beijing is a very weak center that more often than not, in most matters, act on a quasi-advisory basis to local authorities as long as they display the symbols of obedience and acknowledgement of PRC rule such as displaying the PRC flag.

Beijing’s power to appoint a handful of top officials to “local” governments is not sufficient to ensure that the local authorities do not do their own thing when the Beijing appointees are not looking — which is most of the time.

There is no clear federal or constitutional boundary as to what are the divisions of power between the Beijing regime and the “local” governments or “autonomous regions”.

In practice, it is as much what the “local” or “autonomous” authority can get away with.

That brings us to the problem as to just what powers Beijing have to, a) negotiate on behalf of their “local” authorities, b) enforce any obligations assumed by Beijing (e.g. removing local tariffs and trade barriers).

It is not at all clear that an agreement or treaty signed with the Beijing regime is any more binding than a treaty signed with the Republic of China like the United Nations Charter of 1945 or the GATT signed in 1947.   Any sensible observer would have recognized that GATT signed with the ROC made no sense in 1947 when the ROC was not in control of large swaths of China.   Yet GATT negotiators had no problem with ROC’s accession to GATT.

The West is now in the process of repeating this mistake.

The recent behavior of the PRC in the South China Sea suggests that UNCLOS signed by Beijing in 1982 and ratified in 1996 in fact, are not binding on either Beijing or the Southern Chinese Provinces or Theater Military Commands.   If these deals that are fundamental and core to freedom of navigation upon which free trade rest are not adhered to by the PRC, why should such petty issues as “free trade” obligations by the PRC be adhered to by highly autonomous local governments?

A deal made with Beijing cannot be assumed to be either enforceable at the local authority level or via Beijing.

At least not in the relevant timeframe for commercial deals of months and at most, a few years, and without resorting to military force as was done in the past. To presume the PRC, especially Beijing’s regime will uphold their side of the bargain in a trade deal requires a leap of faith akin to ecclesial beliefs when the authority to negotiate and abide by contractual, or treaty obligations is clearly not effectively monopolized by the Beijing regime over the vast territories it claims sovereignty.

Why should the world be constrained by a “one China” policy making deals when Beijing themselves do not believe in it or rely on it in their exercise of power?

Editor’s Note: If you wish to comment on this article, you can do so here:

Beijing’s Many “One China Policies”

2017-01-15 According to a story published on the UK MoD website on January 11, 2107, Typhoons from RAF Coningsby will be based in Romania for three months in summer 2017.

This is part of the upcoming UK contributions to NATO.

UK forces have taken command of NATO’s Response Force’s Land Component and its flagship Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF), committing thousands of troops to be on standby and ready to deploy within days.

Defence Minister Earl Howe witnessed the handover to the UK’s Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC) at an official ceremony at its headquarters at Imjin Barracks, Gloucester. This includes the VJTF, a force that comprises of 3,000 British troops standing ready, supported by NATO allies, to respond to any threat to the alliance.

As the UK takes over from Spain, the 20th Armoured Brigade will lead VJTF with the 1st Battalion The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, 26 Regiment Royal Artillery, 35 Engineer Regiment and 1 Logistic Support Regiment also contributing troops.

The US, Denmark, Spain, Norway and Poland will support the UK brigade, adding capabilities such as armoured infantry companies, aviation and mechanised infantry.

Further projecting our global influence, the Royal Air Force has also taken the lead in the air component of the NATO Response Force.

Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said:

“With the Alliance’s second biggest and rising Defence budget, Britain is at the heart of NATO. In heading up the VJTF, the UK is taking another leading position in NATO and is sending a clear message that Britain is stepping up to our global defence commitments.

The UK’s Armed Forces stand ready, at a moment’s notice, to defend our allies and protect the British national interest.

Leading the NATO Very High Readiness Joint Task Force is the first of a stream of activity which will see the UK stepping up its leading role in NATO.”

Attending the official ceremony Defence Minister Earl Howe added:

“Witnessing today’s handover, it’s clear to see that our forces are ready to take the lead in the NATO alliance, one of the most important guarantors of British security.”

The UK will also deliver one of four battalions to NATO’s enhanced Forward Presence in the Baltic States and Poland, with a battalion being sent to Estonia from early 2017 and a company deployed to Poland.

In October, the Defence Secretary announced that the UK would commit RAF Typhoon aircraft to the NATO Southern Air Policing mission, offering reassurance to the Black Sea allies.

Deployed from RAF Coningsby, the Typhoons will be based at Mihail Kogălniceanu Airbase, Romania for three months in summer 2017.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-steps-up-to-take-command-of-nato-task-force

According to an article published on October 26, 2016 by Irinia Popescu on Romania Insider:

The British Royal Air Force (RAF) will send Typhoon fighter jets to Romania in 2017, UK Defense Secretary Michael Fallon announced on Wednesday, October 26.

The Typhoons will be based at the Mihail Kogalniceanu Airbase in southeast Romania for up to four months next year.

“The Defence Secretary said that the UK will commit RAF Typhoon aircraft to the NATO Southern Air Policing mission to offer reassurance to the Black Sea allies. Deployed from RAF Coningsby, the Typhoons will be based at Mihail Kogalniceanu Airbase, Romania, for up to four months in 2017,” reads a statement from British Ministry of Defense.

The Typhoon aircraft will participate in missions of air police and will counter any infringement of the NATO airspace in the southeast, reports local Digi24.

The UK’s announcement comes as NATO Defense Ministers meet on October 26-27 in Brussels to discuss the plans for a strengthened NATO presence in the eastern part of the Alliance and in the Black Sea region, and Russia’s recent military activity along NATO’s borders.

UK becomes the second NATO ally that sends military equipment to Romania. US will also deploy an armored battalion in Romania in early 2017, part of its commitment to increase military presence in Eastern Europe.

Romania also hosts American troops and military gear at its Mihail Kogalniceanu airbase, close to the Black Sea port of Constanta. Romania also hosts a NATO anti-ballistic missile system at the Deveselu military base.

A NATO command center is already functional in Bucharest and a multinational NATO brigade will also be created in Craiova, southern Romania.

NATO warships have also rotated in the Black Sea regularly in the past two years, also part of the Alliance’s efforts to keep an eye on Russia’s operations in the region, after the annexation of Crimea. US destroyer USS Carney made a stop in Romania’s Constanta port on Tuesday, October 25. The destroyer is equipped with the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System.