Global Politics

Assad regime

2013-03-12T03:24:00.001-07:00

The Ba'ath Party government came to power in 1964 after a successful coup d'état. In 1966, another coup overthrew the traditional leaders of the party, Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar. In 1970, the Defense Minister Hafez al-Assadseized power and declared himself President, a position he would hold until his death in 2000. Since then, the secular Ba'ath Party has remained the dominant political authority in a virtual single-party state in Syria, and Syrian citizens may only approve the President by referendum and – until the government-controlled multi-party 2012 parliamentary election – could not vote in multi-party elections for the legislature.
In 1982, at the height of a six-year Islamist armed insurgency throughout the country, Hafez al-Assad conducted a scorched earthpolicy against Islamist-held quarters inside the town of Hama to quell an uprising by the Sunni Islamist community, including theMuslim Brotherhood, Salafists and others. This ruthless crackdown became known as the Hama massacre, which left tens of thousands – both armed insurgents and civilians – dead, although estimates of the death toll still vary.
The issue of President Hafez al-Assad's succession prompted the 1999 Latakia protests, when violent protests and armed clashes erupted following the 1998 Syrian People's Assembly elections. The violent events were an explosion of a long-running feud between Hafez al-Assad and his influential younger brother Rifaat. Two people were killed in fire exchanges between Syrian police and Rifaat's supporters during a police crackdown on Rifaat's port compound in Latakia. According to opposition sources, denied by the government, the protests resulted in hundreds dead and injured. Hafez al-Assad died one year later, from pulmonary fibrosis. He was succeeded by his son Bashar al-Assad, who was appointed after a constitutional amendment lowered the age requirement for President from 40 to his then age of 34.
Bashar al-Assad, who speaks English fluently and whose wife is a British-born and British-educated Sunni Muslim, initially inspired hopes for democratic and state reforms; a "Damascus Spring" of intense social and political debate took place from July 2000 to August 2001. The period was characterized by the emergence of numerous political forums or salons, where groups of like-minded people met in private houses to debate political and social issues. Political activists such as Riad Seif, Haitham al-Maleh, Kamal al-Labwani, Riyad al-Turk and Aref Dalila were important in mobilizing the movement. The most famous of the forums were the Riad Seif Forum and the Jamal al-Atassi Forum. The Damascus Spring ended in August 2001 with the arrest and imprisonment of ten leading activists who had called for democratic elections and for a campaign of civil disobedience. Opposition renewed in October 2005 when Syrian Christian activist Michel Kilo collaborated with other leading opposition figures to deliver the Damascus Declaration, which criticized the Syrian government as "authoritarian, totalitarian and cliquish" and called for democratic reforms.

Syrian civil war

2013-03-12T03:09:00.004-07:00

The Syrian civil war, also commonly known as the Syrian uprising, is an ongoing armed conflict in Syria between forces loyal to the Syrian Ba'ath Party government and those seeking to oust it. The conflict began on 15 March 2011 with nationwide demonstrations, as part of the wider protest movement known as the Arab Spring. Protesters demanded the resignation of President Bashar al-Assad, whose family has held the presidency in Syria since 1971, as well as the end to nearly five decades of Ba'ath Party rule.
In April 2011, the Syrian Army was deployed to quell the uprising, and soldiers were ordered to open fire on demonstrators. After months of military sieges, the protests evolved into an armed rebellion. Opposition forces, mainly composed of defected soldiers and civilian volunteers, became increasingly armed and organized as they unified into larger groups. However, the rebels remained fractured, without organized leadership. The Syrian government characterizes the insurgency as an uprising of "armed terrorist groups and foreign mercenaries". The conflict has no clear fronts, with clashes taking place in many towns and cities across the country.
The Arab League, United States, European Union, Arab States of the Persian Gulf, and other countries condemned the use of violence against the protesters. The Arab League suspended Syria's membership because of the government's response to the crisis, but granted the Syrian National Coalition Syria's seat on 6 March 2013. The Arab League also sent an observer mission in December 2011, as part of its proposal for peaceful resolution of the crisis. A further attempt to resolve the crisis was made through the appointment of Kofi Annan as a special envoy. On 15 July 2012, the International Committee of the Red Cross assessed the Syrian conflict as a "non-international armed conflict" (the ICRC's legal term for civil war), thus applying international humanitarian law under the Geneva Conventions to Syria.
On 2 January 2013, the United Nations stated that the war's death toll had exceeded 60,000; on 12 February, this figure was updated to 70,000. According to various opposition activist groups, between 50,000 and 63,735 people have been killed, of which about half were civilians, but also including 26,110–27,900 armed combatants consisting of both the Syrian Army and rebel forces, up to 2,505 opposition protesters and 1,000 government officials. By October 2012, up to 28,000 people had been reported missing, including civilians forcibly abducted by government troops or security forces. According to the UN, about 1.2 million Syrians have been displaced within the country. To escape the violence, as many as 1 million Syrian refugees have fled to neighboring countries. In addition, tens of thousands of protesters have been imprisoned and there were reports of widespread torture and psychological terror in state prisons. International organizations have accused both government and opposition forces of severe human rights violations. However, human rights groups report that the majority of abuses have been committed by the Syrian government's forces, and UN investigations have concluded that the government's abuses are the greatest in both gravity and scale.

Yuan

2013-03-12T02:15:00.004-07:00

The world's second-biggest brewer, is to expand further into high-growth regional markets in China after a local joint venture agreed to buy Kings way Brewery (0124.HK) assets for 5.38 billion yuan ($863 million).
Asia's $258 billion beer market is growing twice as fast as the rest of the world, leading to rising competition and expectations of more industry deals in the region this year.
CR Snow, a brewing joint venture between SAB Miller and conglomerate China Resources Enterprise (0291.HK), will see its capacity rise 8.5 percent with the acquisition of seven breweries that Kings way put up for sale early last year.
Four are in Guangdong province, one of China's fastest-growing and most affluent regions, SABMiller said on Tuesday. The other breweries are in Sichuan, Shaanxi and Tianjin.
SABMiller said last month lager sales fell in China in the final three months of 2012 as the country's coldest winter in 28 years hit demand and, as a consequence, the group's growth.
"The acquisition of Kingway (assets) gives us greater access to high growth and attractive regional markets in China, thereby enhancing CR Snow's competitive position," SAB Asia Pacific managing director Ari Mervis said.

Kingway, which is to change its name to Guangdong Land Holdings Ltd, said at a news conference in Hong Kong it was to focus on property development and investment in China.
Kingway said in January 2012 it planned to sell brewing operations in southern China as its profit was being hit by competition and rising costs.
Beijing Yanjing (000729.SZ), China's fourth-largest domestic brewer, had been in advanced talks to strike a deal with Kingway last year, after beating Anheuser-Busch InBev NV (ABI.BR), the world's biggest brewer, in the final round of bidding, sources previously told Reuters. That agreement failed.
The price of the Kingway deal includes a small portion of loans and debt, the companies said.
J.P. Morgan (JPM.N) acted as financial adviser to the buyer.
SABMiller shares were up 0.9 percent at 1530 GMT, outpacing a 0.6 percent gain in the broader London market .FTSE. SABMiller has a 49 percent stake in the CR Snow joint venture.

($1 = 6.2328 yuan)

Is North Korea a Global Threat?

2013-03-12T02:07:00.002-07:00

North Korea (officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea or ( DPRK) declared in 2009 that it had developed a nuclear weapon, and is widely believed to possess a small stockpile of relatively simple nuclear weapons. The CIA assesses that North Korea also has a substantial arsenal of chemical weapons. North Korea was a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but withdrew in 2003, citing the failure of the United States to fulfill its end of the Agreed Framework, a 1994 agreement between the states to limit North Korea's nuclear ambitions, begin normalization of relations, and help North Korea supply some energy needs through nuclear reactors. The IAEA has met with Ri Je Son, The Director General of the General Department of Atomic Energy (GDAE) of DPRK, to discuss nuclear matters. Ri Je Son was also mentioned in this role in 2002 in a United Nations article.
On October 9, 2006, the North Korean government issued an announcement that it had successfully conducted a nuclear test for the first time. Both the United States Geological Survey and Japanese seismological authorities detected an earthquake with a preliminary estimated magnitude of 4.3 in North Korea, corroborating some aspects of the North Korean claims.On January 6, 2007, the North Korean government further confirmed that it had nuclear weapons.
In April 2009, reports surfaced that North Korea has become a "fully fledged nuclear power", an opinion shared by IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei. On May 25, 2009, North Korea conducted another nuclear test, which is believed to have been the cause of a magnitude 4.7 seismic event. Although there is no official information about the test's location, it is believed that it happened at the site of the first nuclear test at Mantapsan, Kilju County, in the north-eastern part of North Korea. North Korea is assumed to have at least six nuclear weapons, but its military uranium enrichment program could boost the stockpile to as many as 48 weapons by 2015.
On February 11, 2013, the USGS detected a magnitude 5.1 seismic disturbance, reported to be a third underground nuclear test. North Korea has officially reported it as a successful nuclear test with a lighter warhead, and yet delivers more force than before without mentioning the exact yield. South Korean sources put the yield estimation at 6 to 7kt of TNT while experts pointed a 5.1 magnitude of earthquake should be yielding an equivalent of about 20kt of TNT instead
North Korea restart its plutonium reactor and reprocessing plant and resume construction of two larger reactors. In January 2003 North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. North Korea probably already has enough processed plutonium to build four to five nuclear bombs. In the future, North Korea potentially could produce many more nuclear weapons each year. North Korea also has an active ballistic missile program to produce longer-range missiles capable of hitting Japan, including U.S. bases in Okinawa. North Korea sells these missiles to different countries .The North Korean government has created a tragedy, preventing economic development and starving its people while at the same time funding a massive military force armed with missiles and weapons of mass destruction . North Korea has an active chemical weapons program capable of producing and delivering various chemical agents as well as one of the most robust offensive biological weapons programs on earth. In addition, U.S. intelligence suggests that North Korea has produced enough plutonium for at least one, and possibly two, nuclear weapons and continues its efforts to produce nuclear weapon.

Political climates in Japan and China ratchet up island dispute

2013-03-11T22:34:00.000-07:00

President Obama’s preoccupation with ending what he calls “a decade of war,” it’s hard to believe that the United States could be dragged into a military conflict in the western Pacific over a group of tiny, uninhabited islands claimed by both Japan and China. Probably, it won’t be. Yet thanks to a disturbing confluence of events in those countries and Mr. Obama’s own commitments, the chance that it will happen is rising.

The Senkaku Islands, called the Diaoyu by China, have been under Japanese administration since 1895; for decades, China agreed to leave its claim to them on a back burner. But Japan’s nationalization in September of three of the islets — undertaken in an attempt to head off an attempt by a nationalist politician to gain hold of them — provided China’s military and Communist leadership with a pretext for rabble-rousing.

In recent weeks Beijing’s provocations have escalated from dispatching surveillance ships to the islands to scrambling warplanes in response to Japan’s. China’s state-controlled media have been whipping up something like war fever, with one paper declaring that a military fight is “more likely” and the country “needs to prepare for the worst.” Disturbingly, this provocative and dangerous campaign has been overseen by the new Communist leadership under Xi Jinping, which has ample motive to divert attention from domestic problems.
The political climate in Tokyo, too, gives cause for concern. The new Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, is a nationalist who has packed his cabinet with politicians who share his aims of boosting Japanese defense spending and standing up to China. Japan has refused negotiations over the islands, declaring that there is nothing to discuss.
The Obama administration has been trying to defuse the dispute, dispatching a senior State Department official to Tokyo last week to call for “cooler heads to prevail.” But Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has also reiterated a position the administration first adopted two years ago: A security treaty binding the United States to defend Japan against attack applies to the islets. That public stance may have been intended to deter China from provoking a crisis, but it also magnifies the stakes for Washington. Should China attempt to seize control of the territory, Mr. Obama could have to choose between backing Japan in a military confrontation and a climb-down that would undermine the “pivot to Asia” he has placed at the center of his foreign policy.

Fortunately, there were signs of a cooling-off this week. Mr. Abe dispatched an emissary to Beijing with a letter for Mr. Xi. The Japanese leader, who has been invited to Washington for a meeting with Mr. Obama next month, should be looking for ways to ease tensions without rewarding Beijing’s belligerence. With U.S. help, it ought to be possible to return the issue of the Senkaku's to the back burner, where it belongs.

History of Indian and Pakistani war.

2013-03-11T22:21:00.003-07:00

Indo-Pakistani War of 1947
This is also called the First Kashmir War. The war started in October 1947 when it was feared by the Pakistan that Maharajah of the princely state of Kashmir and Jammu might accede to India as choice was given to him on the matter to accede to any of the newly independent nations. Tribal forces from Pakistan attacked and occupied the princely state, resulting in Maharajah signing the Agreement to the accession of the princely state to India. The United Nations was invited by India to mediate the quarrel resulting in the UN Security Council passing Resolution 47 on 21 April 1948. The war ended in December 1948 with the Line of Control dividing Kashmir into territories administered by Pakistan (northern and western areas) and India (southern, central and northeastern areas).

Indo-Pakistani War of 1965
This war started following Pakistan's Operation Gibraltar, which was designed to infiltrate forces into Jammu and Kashmir to precipitate an insurgency against rule by India. India retaliated by launching an attack on Pakistan. The five-week war caused thousands of casualties on both sides and was witness to the largest tank battle in military history since World War II. The outcome of this war was a strategic stalemate with some small tactical victories for both sides. The war concluded after diplomatic intervention by the Soviet Union and USA and the subsequent issuance of the Tashkent Declaration.

Indo-Pakistani War of 1971
The war was unique in that it did not involve the issue of Kashmir, but was rather precipitated by the crisis created by the political battle between Sheikh Mujib, Leader of East Pakistan and Yahya-Bhutto, leaders of West Pakistan brewing in erstwhile East Pakistan culminating to the declaration of Independence of Bangladesh from the state system of Pakistan. Following Operation Searchlight and the 1971 Bangladesh atrocities, about 10 million Bengali in East Pakistan took refuge in neighboring India. India intervened in the ongoing Bangladesh liberation movement. After a large scale pre-emptive strike by Pakistan, full-scale hostilities between the two countries commenced. Within two weeks of intense fighting, Pakistani forces in East Pakistan surrendered to the joint command of India and Bangladesh forces following which the People's Republic of Bangladesh was created. This war saw the highest number of casualties in any of the India-Pakistan conflicts, as well as the largest number of prisoners of war since the Second World War after the surrender of more than 90,000 Pakistani military and civilians.

Indo-Pakistani War of 1999
Commonly known as Kargil War, this conflict between the two countries was mostly limited. Pakistani troops along with Kashmiri insurgents infiltrated across the Line of Control (LoC) and occupied Indian territory mostly in the Kargil district. The Pakistani government believed that its nuclear weapons would deter a full-scale escalation in conflict but India launched a major military campaign to flush out the infiltrators. Due to Indian military advances and increasing foreign diplomatic pressure, Pakistan was forced to withdraw its forces back across the LoC.

Iran's Nuclear Program

2013-03-11T22:17:00.004-07:00

an and the West have been at odds over its nuclear program for years. But the dispute has picked up steam since November 2011, with new findings by international inspectors, tougher sanctions by the United States and Europe against Iran’s oil exports, threats by Iran to shut the Strait of Hormuz and threats from Israel signaling increasing readiness to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.
In late August 2012, international nuclear inspectors reported that Iran had already installed three-quarters of the nuclear centrifuges it needs to complete a deep-underground site for the production of nuclear fuel.
The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency detailed how Iran used the summer to double the number of centrifuges installed deep under a mountain near the holy city of Qum, while cleansing another site where the agency has said it suspects that the country has conducted explosive experiments that could be “relevant” to the production of a nuclear weapon.
The report was followed by new efforts by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to step up pressure on the Obama administration to establish “red lines” of intolerance for Iran’s nuclear activities. In September, during a speech at the United Nations, Mr. Netanyahu warned that Iran’s capability to enrich uranium must be stopped before the spring or early summer of 2013. The speech suggested that Israel would not take military action on its own before then.
Israel has been pushing the United States to take military action to damage Iran’s program before it reaches the point at which it has the capability to make an atomic bomb, or to give Israel a green light to launch its own airstrike.
President Obama has rejected the Israeli call for a red line at that point. But in a speech to the United Nations on Sept. 25, he repeated his position that the United States would work to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons. Mr. Obama’s Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, has been sharply critical of the president for not taking a tough enough line on Iran, and for not supporting Israel strongly enough.
Iran Has Agreed to Talks, Say U.S. Officials
In October, The New York Times reported that the United States and Iran had agreed in principle for the first time to one-on-one negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, according to Obama administration officials, setting the stage for what could be a last-ditch diplomatic effort to avert a military strike on Iran.
Iranian officials have insisted that the talks wait until after the presidential election, a senior administration official said, telling their American counterparts that they want to know with whom they would be negotiating.
In November, a new report by U.N. inspectors asserted that Iran was set to sharply expand its uranium enrichment in an underground plant after installing all the centrifuges it was built for. The report also showed that Iran’s stockpile of its most sensitive nuclear material — which could relatively quickly be processed further to bomb-grade uranium — had grown and was getting closer to an amount that could be sufficient for a nuclear weapon.
The report also said that satellite photographs show Iran has worked for months to alter another site that the agency has long suspected may have been used for weapons-related experiments.

Sanctions Are Having a Deep Impact on Iran
Through the fall of 2012, new reports emerged of the deep impact that current sanctions are having on the Iranian economy, as Iran’s currency sunk sharply.
As the country’s economic woes deepened, Iranian officials worked to drum up interest in what they called a “nine-step plan” to defuse the nuclear crisis by gradually suspending the production of the uranium that would be easiest for them to convert into a nuclear weapon. But the plan requires so many concessions by the West, starting with the dismantling of all the sanctions that are blocking oil sales and setting off the collapse of the Iranian currency, that American officials have dismissed it as unworkable.
On Oct. 15, the European Union toughened its sanctions on Iran, banning trade in sectors like finance, metals and natural gas, and making business transactions in many other areas far more cumbersome.

Background: Iran’s Nuclear History
Iran’s first nuclear program began in the 1960s under the shah. It made little progress, and was abandoned after the 1979 revolution, which brought to power the hard-line Islamic regime. In the mid-1990s, a new effort began, raising suspicions in Washington and elsewhere. Iran insisted that it was living up to its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but in 2002, an exile group obtained documents revealing a clandestine program. Faced with the likelihood of international sanctions, the government of Mohammad Khatami agreed in 2003 to suspend work on uranium enrichment and allow a stepped-up level of inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency while continuing negotiations with Britain, France and Germany.
In August 2005, Mr. Khatami, a relative moderate, was succeeded as president by Mr. Ahmadinejad, a hard-line conservative. The following January, Iran announced that it would resume enrichment work, leading the three European nations to break off their long-running talks. Under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has the right to enrich uranium, but the atomic energy association called for the program to be halted until questions about the earlier, secret program were resolved.

The Bush Response
The United Nations Security Council voted in December 2006 to impose sanctions on Iran for failing to heed calls for a suspension. In Washington, administration hawks, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, were reported to favor consideration of more aggressive measures, including possible air strikes, while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pushed for more diplomacy.
President George W. Bush sided with Ms. Rice, but declared that the United States would not negotiate directly with Iran until it suspended the nuclear research program. Months of inconclusive talks about talks followed.
The situation was muddied in December 2007 when American intelligence agencies issued a new National Intelligence Estimate that concluded that the weapons portion of the Iranian nuclear program remained on hold. That document said that Iran would probably be able to produce a nuclear weapon between 2010 and 2015, while cautioning that there was no evidence that the Iranian government had decided to do so, contradicting the assessment made in 2005. The estimates given by American military officials in April 2010 are roughly in line with the 2007 estimate. But in June, in the run up to a Security Council vote on sanctions, American officials made clear to their diplomatic counterparts that they now think that Iran has revived elements of its program to design nuclear weapons that the 2007 assessment concluded had gone dormant.
In 2008, President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex and told the Israelis that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran’s suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, according to senior American and foreign officials.
The White House denied Israel’s request to fly over Iraq to reach Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz, American officials said, and the Israelis backed off their plans, at least temporarily. But the tense exchanges also prompted the White House to step up intelligence-sharing with Israel and brief Israeli officials on new American efforts to subtly sabotage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

The Obama Response
After years of conflict between Iran and President George W. Bush, President Obama spent his first years in office trying to engage Iran diplomatically, only to see Tehran back away from a tentative agreement to ship some uranium out of the country for enrichment.
On Sept. 9, 2009, American intelligence agencies concluded that Iran had created enough nuclear fuel to make a rapid, if risky, sprint for a nuclear weapon. But new intelligence reports delivered to the White House said that the country has deliberately stopped short of the critical last steps to make a bomb.
In late September 2009, Mr. Obama, along with Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, revealed the existence of a secret underground plant near Qom. American officials said they had been tracking the project for years, but that the president decided to make public the American findings after Iran discovered that the secrecy surrounding the project had been breached.
Talks were then held between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France — as well as Germany, and led by the European Union‘s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana. At the talks, Iran agreed in principle to export most of its enriched uranium for processing, a step that would have bought more time for negotiations by reducing the amount of potential bomb-making material in Iran’s hands for up to a year.
The news raised a tumult in Iran, with conservative politicians arguing that the West could not be trusted to return the uranium. Shortly after the accord was announced, Iran began raising objections and backtracking. On Oct. 29, Iran told the U.N.’s chief nuclear inspector that it was rejecting the deal.

A 2010 Report Raises Questions
In February 2010, the United Nations’ nuclear inspectors declared for the first time that they had extensive evidence of “past or current undisclosed activities” by Iran’s military to develop a nuclear warhead, an unusually strongly worded conclusion likely to accelerate Iran’s confrontation with the United States and other Western countries.
The report, the first under the new director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, also concluded that the nation’s weapons-related activity apparently continued “beyond 2004.”
Following the agency’s announcement, Russia said that it was “very alarmed” by Iran’s unwillingness to cooperate with the I.A.E.A. And in late March, a Russian official disclosed that Russian and Chinese envoys had pressed Iran’s government to accept a United Nations plan on uranium enrichment during meetings in Tehran earlier in the month but that Iran had refused, leaving “less and less room for diplomatic maneuvering.”
Questions of Iran’s sincerity were again raised by its announcement on May 17 of an agreement negotiated by Turkey and Brazil that could offer a short-term solution to its ongoing nuclear standoff with the West, or prove to be a tactic aimed at derailing efforts to bring new sanctions against Tehran.
The deal called for Iran to ship 2,640 pounds of low enriched uranium to Turkey, where it would be stored. In exchange, after one year, Iran would have the right to receive about 265 pounds of material enriched to 20 percent from Russia and France.
The next day, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that a deal had been struck with other major powers, including Russia and China, to impose new sanctions on Iran, a sharp repudiation of the agreement between Iran and Turkey.
A New Round of SanctionsIn June 2010, after months of lobbying by the Obama administration and Europe, the U.N. Security council voted to impose a new round of sanctions on Iran, the fourth such move. But the measures did little to overcome widespread doubts that they — or even the additional steps pledged by American and European officials — would accomplish the Council’s longstanding goal: halting Iran’s production of nuclear fuel.
The new resolution, hailed by President Obama as delivering “the toughest sanctions ever faced by the Iranian government,” took months to negotiate and major concessions by American officials, but still failed to carry the symbolic weight of a unanimous decision. Twelve of the 15 nations on the council voted for the measure, while Turkey and Brazil voted against it and Lebanon abstained.
After the Obama administration imposed additional sanctions on more than a dozen Iranian companies and individuals with links to the country’s nuclear and missile programs, the European Union followed suit with what it called “inevitable” new measures against Tehran.
The main thrust of the sanctions is against military purchases, trade and financial transactions carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which controls the nuclear program and has taken a more central role in running the country and the economy.
The United States had sought broader measures against Iran’s banks, insurance industry and other trade, but China and Russia were adamant that the sanctions not affect Iran’s day-to-day economy.
In late November, a trove of diplomatic documents obtained by Wikileaks showed deep concern among Iran’s neighbors over its nuclear program and revealed that American officials believed Tehran had obtained advanced missiles from North Korea that could let it strike at Western European capitals and Moscow. It also provided a detailed look at how President Obama had assembled support for tough sanctions that had eluded President George W. Bush.
In January 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that international sanctions had slowed Iran’s nuclear program, and the restrictions seem to have disrupted sectors of the economy, particularly banking and export-related industries.

A Nuclear ‘Trigger’
An I.A.E.A. report issued in February 2011 listed seven outstanding questions about work Iran apparently conducted on warhead design. The documents in the hands of the agency raise questions about work on how to turn uranium into bomb fuel, how to cast conventional explosives in a shape that can trigger a nuclear blast, how to make detonators, generate neutrons to spur a chain reaction, measure detonation waves and make nose-cones for missiles.
The report gave new details for all seven of the categories of allegations. The disclosure about the atomic trigger centered on a rare material — uranium deuteride , a form of the element made with deuterium, or heavy hydrogen. Nuclear experts say China and Pakistan appear to have used the material as a kind of atomic sparkplug.
The report said it had asked Iran about evidence of “experiments involving the explosive compression of uranium deuteride to produce a short burst of neutrons” — the speeding particles that split atoms in two in a surge of nuclear energy. In a bomb, an initial burst of neutrons is needed to help initiate a rapid chain reaction.
Harold M. Agnew, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, said the compression of uranium deuteride suggested work on an atomic trigger.
The agency’s disclosure about Iran’s alleged use of uranium deuteride also suggests another possible connection between Tehran’s program and Abdul Qadeer Khan, the rogue Pakistani engineer who sold nuclear information.
A famous photograph of Dr. Khan, whom Pakistan has released from house arrest in Islamabad, shows him in front of the schematic diagram of an atom bomb on a blackboard. A pointer to the bomb’s center is labeled uranium deuteride.
The report may also gave fresh charges on the design of missile warheads. Documentary evidence, it said, suggested that Iran had conducted “studies involving the removal of the conventional high explosive payload from the warhead of the Shahab-3 missile and replace it with a spherical nuclear payload.”
The Shahab-3 is one of Iran’s deadliest weapons, standing 56 feet tall. In parades, Iran has draped them with banners reading, “Wipe Israel off the map.”

A U.N. Report Rekindles the Nuclear Debate
In November 2011, the International Atomic Energy Agency released a trove of evidence that they said makes a “credible” case that “Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device” at Parchin and that the project may still be under way.
The report, the harshest judgment that United Nations weapons inspectors had ever issued in their decade-long struggle to pierce the secrecy surrounding the Iranian program, rekindled a debate among the Western allies and Israel about whether increased diplomatic pressure, sanctions, sabotage or military action could stop Iran’s program.
In an effort to thwart Iran’s nuclear program, the United States and the European Union took significant steps to cut Iran off from the international financial system, announcing coordinated sanctions aimed at its central bank and commercial banks. In addition, the United States also imposed sanctions on companies involved in Iran’s nuclear industry, as well as on its petrochemical and oil industries, adding to existing measures that seek to weaken the Iranian government by depriving it of its ability to refine gasoline or invest in its petroleum industry.
In retaliation for the sanctions, Iran vowed to block the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil transit point. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the United States would “take action and reopen the strait,” which could be accomplished only by military means, including minesweepers, warship escorts and potentially airstrikes.
By February 2012, the sanctions imposed by the West appeared to be taking a toll. Iran’s economy was showing further signs of strain, with the government looking for ways to avoid the use of dollars in international oil trade, new reports of problems importing food, and a Gallup poll suggesting a majority of Iranians were worried about financial pain from the penalties already imposed. In addition, a flurry of aggressive gestures — attacks on Israelis attributed to Iran; President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s renewed posturing over Iran’s latest nuclear advance; and the threats of cutting off oil sales from six European countries — suggested that Iranian leaders were responding frantically, and with increasing unpredictability, to the sanctions.

Another Report Says Iran Close to Producing Nuclear Fuel
On Feb. 24, United Nations nuclear inspectors reported that Iran was moving rapidly to produce nuclear fuel at a deep underground site that Israel and the United States have said is virtually invulnerable to attack.
The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency indicated that for the first time Iran had begun producing fuel inside the new facility in a mountain near the holy city of Qum. The agency’s inspectors found in their visits over the past three months that Iran has tripled its production capacity for a type of fuel that is far closer to what is needed to make the core of a nuclear weapon.
American officials insist that Iran’s progress has been halting at best, and the report also shows that despite Iran’s repeated boasts, it is still having trouble deploying significant amounts of next-generation equipment to make fuel. The United States also argues that Iran’s program has a number of vulnerabilities should it decide to develop a bomb. American intelligence officials say they do not believe Iranian leaders have made that decision, though Israeli and British intelligence disagree.
On Feb. 28, Iran called for negotiations on a treaty banning nuclear weapons and condemned their production or possession as “a great sin.

Speculation Rises About an Israeli Attack
Speculation that Israel might attack Iran intensified in early 2012 as tensions between the countries escalated.
Tensions flared in February when Israeli officials blamed Iran in two separate attacks. On Feb. 13, Israeli Embassy personnel were targeted by bombers in the capitals of Georgia and India, injuring four people, including an Israeli diplomat’s wife. The embassy blasts used methods that were similar to attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists in recent years, for which Iran has blamed Israel. The next day, a series of explosions rocked a residential neighborhood in Bangkok, wounding several people. Thai authorities found a cache of bombs in a rented house and captured two men who carried Iranian passports. Evidence was accumulating that the bombings were part of a single plot, for which Israel has blamed Iran. Iranian officials have denied any involvement.
Should Israel decide to launch a strike on Iran, its pilots would have to fly more than 1,000 miles across unfriendly airspace, refuel in the air en route, fight off Iran’s air defenses, attack multiple underground sites simultaneously — and use at least 100 planes.
That was the assessment of American defense officials and military analysts close to the Pentagon, who said that an Israeli attack meant to set back Iran’s nuclear program would be a huge and highly complex operation. They described it as far different from Israel’s “surgical” strikes on a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007 and Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981.
In a sign of rising American concern, Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in Jerusalem on Feb. 19, and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey warned on CNN that an Israeli strike on Iran right now would be “destabilizing.” Similarly, the British foreign secretary, William Hague, told the BBC that attacking Iran would not be “the wise thing” for Israel to do “at this moment.”

Enforcing Sanctions Amid Threats of Retaliation
In late January 2012, the 27 nations of the Union Under the deal, E.U. members agreed not to sign new oil contracts with Iran and to end existing ones by July 1, according to a statement from European foreign ministers. The embargo covered imports of crude oil, petroleum products and petrochemical products. It also covered the export of key equipment and technology for the sector. The assets of the Iranian central bank within the E.U. were frozen with limited exemptions to permit the continuation of legitimate trade.
In early February, the Obama administration moved to enforce tightened sanctions, freezing all property of the Central Bank of Iran, other Iranian financial institutions and the Iranian government in the United States. The new restrictions also raised new warnings to financial institutions in other nations that they could face big penalties in the United States if they did business with Iran’s central bank. In addition, the Senate Banking Committee unanimously approved a new regimen of anti-Iran sanctions that would for the first time threaten to punish the global financial telecommunications network that nearly all banks rely on to conduct their daily business. Expulsion from the network — the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication — would deny to Iran many billions of dollars in revenue from abroad that is routinely routed into its domestic banking system.
In response to the sanctions, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, vowed to retaliate, warning that the United States in particular would face severe damage to its interests if any strike were carried out against its nuclear sites.
The pointed remarks by Mr. Khamenei were the most public response by him to mounting tension between Western powers and Iran. They came amid increasing concern among American officials that Israel may soon strike at Iran's nuclear facilities. In early February, The Washington Post reported that Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta believed there was a “strong likelihood” that Israel would strike Iran in April, May or June.

A Scientist's Death Deepens Fury at Israel and the U.S.
In January 2012, as tensions increased over Iran's nuclear program and belligerence toward the West mounted, Iran reported that an Iranian nuclear scientist died in what was termed a “terrorist bomb blast” in northern Tehran when an unidentified motorcyclist attached a magnetic explosive device to the scientist's car. It was the fourth such attack reported in two years and, as after the previous incidents, Iranian officials indicated that they believed the United States and Israel were responsible.
The next day, Iran expressed deepening fury at Israel and the United States over the scientist's death, and signaled that its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps might carry out revenge assassinations.
Israeli officials, who regard Iran as their country's main enemy, have not categorically denied any role in the killing, which came against a backdrop of growing pressure on Iran over its disputed nuclear program.
A Second Uranium Enrichment SiteAlso in January 2012, Iran's top nuclear official announced defiantly that the country was on the verge of starting production at its second major uranium enrichment site. The new facility is buried deep underground on a well-defended military site and is considered far more resistant to air strikes than the existing enrichment site at Natanz, limiting what Israeli officials, in particular, consider an important deterrent to Iran's nuclear aims
The opening of the plant does not significantly affect estimates of how long it could take Iran to produce a nuclear weapon, if that is its true intention. The new facility has been inspected regularly, and unless the Iranians barred inspectors or managed to deceive them, any effort to produce uranium at bomb-grade levels would most likely be detected. American officials have estimated that they would have six months to a year to react, if needed, before the enrichment was completed.
But if it came to that, satellite photographs showed that the new plant is surrounded by anti-aircraft guns, and the mountainous setting was designed to make a bombing campaign nearly impossible.
The C.I.A., according to current and former officials, has repeatedly tried to derail Iran’s uranium enrichment program by covert means, including introducing sabotaged parts into Iran’s supply chain.
In addition, the agency is believed to have encouraged some Iranian nuclear scientists to defect, an effort that came to light in 2010 when a scientist, Shahram Amiri, who had come to the United States, claimed to have been kidnapped by the C.I.A. and returned to Iran. (Press reports say he has since been arrested and tried for treason.) A former deputy defense minister, Ali-Reza Asgari, disappeared while visiting Turkey in 2006 and is widely believed to have defected, possibly to the United States.

After Rounds of Talks, Little Progress
In March 2012, the United States and other global powers announced that they had accepted an offer to resume talks about Iran’s nuclear program that broke off in stalemate more than a year before.
In mid-April, diplomats from Iran, the United States and other world powers met in Istanbul. The talks went surprisingly well and were something of a turning point in the American thinking about Iran. At the meeting, Iranian negotiators seemed more flexible and open to resolving the crisis, even though no agreement was reached.
In May, a round of talks was held in Baghdad, but they ended with no clear signs of progress. During the talks, Iran was known to be unhappy about proposals to address urgent concerns, including a freeze on its enrichment of uranium that could be converted to bomb-grade fuel, because of what the Iranians suggested was an insufficient easing of punishing sanctions.
The Baghdad talks began a day after Tehran signaled willingness to allow potentially intrusive international inspections of secret military facilities, raising expectations that it was searching for a diplomatic solution to the standoff, although Western officials discounted the likelihood of an imminent breakthrough. And in fact, after follow up talks, the International Atomic Energy Agency expressed disappointment at what it said were new hurdles raised by Iran.
In June, diplomats from Iran and six world powers met in Moscow. After two days of fruitless talks, negotiators for the United States and other major powers did not even schedule another high-level meeting with Iran, committing only to a lower-level session in July to go over the technical details of a proposal to suspend the enrichment of uranium that Iran has already rejected in principle.
Dennis B. Ross, a former senior White House adviser on Iran, said he believed the negotiations had become a trap, allowing Iran to continue enriching nuclear fuel while the two sides failed to agree on even interim measures to slow the Iranian program. The major powers, he said, should scrap the step-by-step approach in favor of a comprehensive deal that would test Iran’s sincerity, but could also hasten a military confrontation.
Other critics were even blunter, labeling the talks a “charade” and demanding that Congress pass another round of sanctions against Iran. Before the talks, 44 Republican and Democratic senators sent a letter to President Obama urging him to abandon the negotiations if the Moscow meeting failed to produce any concessions from Iran.

Hoping That New Sanctions Will Change Iran’s Course
In the summer of 2012, the Obama administration and its European allies imposed sweeping new sanctions meant to cut Iran off from the global oil market. Many experts regard it as the best hope for forcing Iran to change its course.
In late June, the United States imposed sanctions that could punish any foreign country that buys Iranian oil. However, it issued six-month exemptions to 20 importers of Iranian oil who had significantly cut their purchases, including China, which has openly opposed the pressure on Iran.
On July 1, the European Union put in place a complete embargo of oil imports from Iran, which was the Continent’s sixth-biggest supplier of crude in 2011.
Even before these steps, Iran conceded that its oil exports were down 20 to 30 percent. Its currency had plunged more than 40 percent against the dollar since 2011. But so far the escalating sanctions, which the Bush administration started and the Obama administration has intensified, have failed in their central goal of forcing Iran’s mullahs to stop enriching uranium.
Iran responded to the new sanctions with a series of defiant steps, announcing legislation intended to disrupt traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital Persian Gulf shipping lane, and testing missiles in a desert drill clearly intended as a warning to Israel and the United States.

A Target of Cyber attacks
Over the last few years, Iran has become the target of a series of notable cyber attacks, some of which were linked to its nuclear program. According to an article in The New York Times in June 2012, during President Obama‘s first few months in office, he secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on Iran’s computer systems at its nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyber weapons.
The best known of the cyberweapons was Stux net, a computer worm, or malicious computer program, that turned up in industrial programs around the world in 2009. Stuxnet, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, appears to have wiped out nearly 1,000 of the 5,000 centrifuges Iran had spinning at the time to purify uranium.
In May 2012, a data-mining virus called Flame had penetrated the computers of high-ranking Iranian officials, sweeping up information from their machines. In a message posted on its Web site, Iran’s Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center warned that the virus was potentially more harmful than Stuxnet. In contrast to Stuxnet, Flame appeared to be designed not to do damage but to secretly collect information from a wide variety of sources.

Inspectors Report New Centrifuges
The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the last to be issued before the American presidential election, lays out in detail how Iran has used the summer to double the number of centrifuges installed deep under a mountain near the holy city of Qum, while cleansing another site where the agency has said it suspects that the country has conducted explosive experiments that could be “relevant” to the production of a nuclear weapon. Based on satellite photographs, the I.A.E.A. said the cleanup has been so extensive that it would “significantly hamper” the ability of inspectors to understand what kind of work took place there.
The report confirmed that a recent boast by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that Iran had added nearly 1,000 centrifuges to the underground site was accurate. But it left open the question of what, exactly, Mr. Khamenei and other Iranian leaders intended to do with those machines, and whether, by racing ahead with construction, they were seeking negotiating advantage or trying to gain the capability to build a bomb before sanctions, sabotage or military action could stop them.
On Aug. 30, Ayatollah Khamenei reiterated his position that Iran is not seeking an atomic bomb, and he criticized what he called the hypocrisy of the American-Israeli campaign against Iran. In a speech to the 120-member Nonaligned Movement meeting in Tehran, the ayatollah also reminded the delegates that the United States is the only country that has ever used a nuclear weapon and that Israel has its own unacknowledged stockpile of nuclear weapons.
With senior Obama administration officials warning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet that a military strike on Iran’s nuclear sites would be counterproductive, the report offers arguments for both sides in the debate.
The Israelis in favor of military action, led by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the most outspoken proponent of moving quickly against the Iranian program, will point to evidence that Iran has now installed over 2,100 of the roughly 2,800 centrifuges destined for the underground site, called Fordow. For Mr. Barak, that is evidence that the “zone of immunity” he has warned about — the point at which Iran will be able to produce nuclear fuel from a site invulnerable to attack — will be reached in a matter of weeks.
But American officials urging caution will find plenty in the report to bolster their view as well. Only a third of the centrifuges at Fordow are actually operating, the inspectors reported, leaving open the question of whether Iran has run into technical difficulties or has made a political decision not to tempt its adversaries by rushing ahead in moving production of fuel to its best-protected facility. And while the agency’s statistics show that Iran has, since February, doubled its stockpile of fuel enriched to 20 percent purity — a level that bomb experts say could be converted to bomb grade in a matter of months — it still does not possess enough of that fuel to produce a complete nuclear weapon. Most of its stockpile is composed of a lower-enriched fuel that would take considerably longer to make useful in a weapon.
The progress cited in the report could make it harder to win a diplomatic deal. Under an offer that the United States and its Western allies, along with Russia, presented to Iran privately in late spring 2012, Tehran would be allowed to retain some enrichment capability if it turned over its entire stockpile of 20 percent-enriched uranium and answered the questions posed by international inspectors about evidence that it has worked on a weapon. Though Iranian officials have privately expressed some interest in the plan, the deal has gone nowhere, and no new negotiating sessions are scheduled, American officials say.

Cyber War

2013-03-05T00:08:00.002-08:00

Cyberwarfare refers to politically motivated hacking to conduct sabotage and espionage. It is a form of information warfare sometimes seen as analogous to conventional warfare although this analogy is controversial for both its accuracy and its political motivation.
U.S. government security expert Richard A. Clarke, in his book Cyber War (May 2010), defines "cyberwarfare" as "actions by a nation-state to penetrate another nation's computers or networks for the purposes of causing damage or disruption."^:The Economist describes cyberspace as "the fifth domain of warfare," and William J. Lynn, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, states that "as a doctrinal matter, the Pentagon has formally recognized cyberspace as a new domain in warfare . . . [which] has become just as critical to military operations as land, sea, air, and space."
In 2009, President Barack Obama declared America's digital infrastructure to be a "strategic national asset," and in May 2010 the Pentagon set up its new U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM), headed by General Keith B. Alexander, director of the National Security Agency (NSA), to defend American military networks and attack other countries' systems. The EU has set up ENISA (European Network and Information Security Agency) which is headed by Prof. Udo Helmbrecht and there are now further plans to significantly expand ENISA's capabilities. The United Kingdom has also set up a cyber-security and "operations centre" based in Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British equivalent of the NSA. In the U.S. however, Cyber Command is only set up to protect the military, whereas the government and corporate infrastructures are primarily the responsibility respectively of the Department of Homeland Security and private companies.
In February 2010, top American lawmakers warned that the "threat of a crippling attack on telecommunications and computer networks was sharply on the rise." According to The Lipman Report, numerous key sectors of the U.S. economy along with that of other nations, are currently at risk, including cyber threats to public and private facilities, banking and finance, transportation, manufacturing, medical, education and government, all of which are now dependent on computers for daily operations. In 2009, President Obama stated that "cyber intruders have probed our electrical grids."
The Economist writes that China has plans of "winning informationised wars by the mid-21st century". They note that other countries are likewise organizing for cyberwar, among them Russia, Israel and North Korea. Iran boasts of having the world's second-largest cyber-army.James Gosler, a government cybersecurity specialist, worries that the U.S. has a severe shortage of computer security specialists, estimating that there are only about 1,000 qualified people in the country today, but needs a force of 20,000 to 30,000 skilled experts. At the July 2010 Black Hat computer security conference, Michael Hayden, former deputy director of national intelligence, challenged thousands of attendees to help devise ways to "reshape the Internet's security architecture", explaining, "You guys made the cyberworld look like the north German plain."

Methods of attack

Cyberwarfare consists of many different threats:

Espionage and national security breaches

Cyber espionage is the act or practice of obtaining secrets (sensitive, proprietary or classified information) from individuals, competitors, rivals, groups, governments and enemies also for military, political, or economic advantage using illegal exploitation methods on internet, networks, software and or computers. Classified information that is not handled securely can be intercepted and even modified, making espionage possible from the other side of the world. Specific attacks on the United States have been given codenames like Titan Rain and Moonlight Maze. General Alexander notes that the recently established Cyber Command is currently trying to determine whether such activities as commercial espionage or theft of intellectual property are criminal activities or actual "breaches of national security."

Sabotage

Computers and satellites that coordinate other activities are vulnerable components of a system and could lead to the disruption of equipment. Compromisation of military systems, such as C4ISTAR components that are responsible for orders and communications could lead to their interception or malicious replacement. Power, water, fuel, communications, and transportation infrastructure all may be vulnerable to disruption. According to Clarke, the civilian realm is also at risk, noting that the security breaches have already gone beyond stolen credit card numbers, and that potential targets can also include the electric power grid, trains, or the stock market.
In mid July 2010, security experts discovered a malicious software program called Stuxnet that had infiltrated factory computers and had spread to plants around the world. It is considered "the first attack on critical industrial infrastructure that sits at the foundation of modern economies," notes The New York Times.

Denial-of-service attack

Main article: DoS

In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users. Perpetrators of DoS attacks typically target sites or services hosted on high-profile web servers such as banks, credit card payment gateways, and even root nameservers.

Electrical power grid

The federal government of the United States admits that the electric power transmission is susceptible to cyberwarfare. The United States Department of Homeland Security works with industry to identify vulnerabilities and to help industry enhance the security of control system networks, the federal government is also working to ensure that security is built in as the next generation of "smart grid" networks are developed. In April 2009, reports surfaced that China and Russia had infiltrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national security officials. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) has issued a public notice that warns that the electrical grid is not adequately protected from cyber attack. China denies intruding into the U.S. electrical grid. One countermeasure would be to disconnect the power grid from the Internet and run the net with droop speed control only. Massive power outages caused by a cyber attack, could disrupt the economy, distract from a simultaneous military attack, or create a national trauma.
Howard Schmidt, Cyber-Security Coordinator of the US, commented on those possibilities:

It’s possible that hackers have gotten into administrative computer systems of utility companies, but says those aren’t linked to the equipment controlling the grid, at least not in developed countries. [Schmidt] has never heard that the grid itself has been hacked.

Motivations

Military

In the U.S., General Keith B. Alexander, first head of the recently formed USCYBERCOM, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that computer network warfare is evolving so rapidly that there is a "mismatch between our technical capabilities to conduct operations and the governing laws and policies. Cyber Command is the newest global combatant and its sole mission is cyberspace, outside the traditional battlefields of land, sea, air and space." It will attempt to find and, when necessary, neutralize cyberattacks and to defend military computer networks.
Alexander sketched out the broad battlefield envisioned for the computer warfare command, listing the kind of targets that his new headquarters could be ordered to attack, including "traditional battlefield prizes – command-and-control systems at military headquarters, air defense networks and weapons systems that require computers to operate."
One cyber warfare scenario, Cyber ShockWave, which was wargamed on the cabinet level by former administration officials, raised issues ranging from the National Guard to the power grid to the limits of statutory authority.
The distributed nature of internet based attacks means that it is difficult to determine motivation and attacking party, meaning that it is unclear when a specific act should be considered an act of war.
Other cyberwarfares caused from political motivations can be found worldwide. In 2008, Russia began a cyber attack to Georgian government website, which was carried out along with military operation in South Ossetia. In 2008, Chinese 'nationalist hackers' attacked CNN as CNN announced on Chinese repression on Tibet.

Civil

Potential targets in internet sabotage include all aspects of the Internet from the backbones of the web, to the Internet Service Providers, to the varying types of data communication mediums and network equipment. This would include: web servers, enterprise information systems, client server systems, communication links, network equipment, and the desktops and laptops in businesses and homes. Electrical grids and telecommunication systems are also deemed vulnerable, especially due to current trends in automation.

Private sector

Computer hacking represents a modern threat in ongoing industrial espionage and as such is presumed to widely occur. It is typical that this type of crime is underreported. According to McAfee's George Kurtz, corporations around the world face millions of cyberattacks a day. "Most of these attacks don’t gain any media attention or lead to strong political statements by victims." This type of crime is usually financially motivated.

Cyberwarfare by country

The Internet security company McAfee stated in their 2007 annual report that approximately 120 countries have been developing ways to use the Internet as a weapon and target financial markets, government computer systems and utilities.

Cyberwarfare in the United States

Main article: Cyberwarfare in the United States

Cyberwarfare in the United States is the United States military strategy of proactive cyber defence and the use of cyberwarfare as a platform for attack. The new United States military strategy, makes explicit that a cyberattack is casus belli just as a traditional act of war.
In January 2012, Mike McConnell, the former director of national intelligence at the National Security Agency under President George W. Bush told the Reuters news agency that the U.S. has already launched attacks on computer networks in other countries. McConnell did not name the country that the U.S. attacked but according to other sources it may have been Iran. In June 2012 the New York Times reported that President Obama had ordered the cyber attack on Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities.
In August 2010, the U.S. for the first time warned publicly about the Chinese military's use of civilian computer experts in clandestine cyber attacks aimed at American companies and government agencies. The Pentagon also pointed to an alleged China-based computer spying network dubbed GhostNet that was revealed in a research report last year.The Pentagon stated:

"The People's Liberation Army is using "information warfare units" to develop viruses to attack enemy computer systems and networks, and those units include civilian computer professionals. Commander Bob Mehal, will monitor the PLA's buildup of its cyberwarfare capabilities and will continue to develop capabilities to counter any potential threat."

The United States Department of Defense sees the use of computers and the Internet to conduct warfare in cyberspace as a threat to national security. The United States Joint Forces Command describes some of its attributes:

Cyberspace technology is emerging as an "instrument of power" in societies, and is becoming more available to a country's opponents, who may use it to attack, degrade, and disrupt communications and the flow of information. With low barriers to entry, coupled with the anonymous nature of activities in cyberspace, the list of potential adversaries is broad. Furthermore, the globe-spanning range of cyberspace and its disregard for national borders will challenge legal systems and complicate a nation's ability to deter threats and respond to contingencies.

In February 2010, the United States Joint Forces Command released a study which included a summary of the threats posed by the internet:

With very little investment, and cloaked in a veil of anonymity, our adversaries will inevitably attempt to harm our national interests. Cyberspace will become a main front in both irregular and traditional conflicts. Enemies in cyberspace will include both states and non-states and will range from the unsophisticated amateur to highly trained professional hackers. Through cyberspace, enemies will target industry, academia, government, as well as the military in the air, land, maritime, and space domains. In much the same way that airpower transformed the battlefield of World War II, cyberspace has fractured the physical barriers that shield a nation from attacks on its commerce and communication. Indeed, adversaries have already taken advantage of computer networks and the power of information technology not only to plan and execute savage acts of terrorism, but also to influence directly the perceptions and will of the U.S. Government and the American population.

American "Kill switch bill"

On 19 June 2010, United States Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) introduced a bill called "Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010", which he co-wrote with Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) and Senator Thomas Carper (D-DE). If signed into law, this controversial bill, which the American media dubbed the "Kill switch bill", would grant the President emergency powers over parts of the Internet. However, all three co-authors of the bill issued a statement that instead, the bill "[narrowed] existing broad Presidential authority to take over telecommunications networks".

American battlefield use of cyberwarfare

The United States has used cyberattacks for tactical advantage in Afghanistan.

Cyberwarfare in China

Main article: Cyberwarfare in the People's Republic of China

See also: Chinese intelligence activity abroad, Chinese intelligence operations in the United States, and Chinese Information Operations and Information Warfare

This section contains close paraphrasing of a non-free copyrighted source, http://epublications.bond.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1110&context=cm (Duplication Detector report). Ideas in this article should be expressed in an original manner. More details may be available on the talk page. (February 2013)

Diplomatic cables highlight US concerns that China is using access to Microsoft source code and 'harvesting the talents of its private sector' to boost its offensive and defensive capabilities.
Most reports about China’s cyber warfare capabilities have yet to be confirmed by the Chinese government; however, China continues to be held responsible for a string of cyber-attacks on a number of public and private institutions in the United States, India, Russia, Canada, and France. The Chinese government denies any involvement in cyber-spying campaigns. The administration maintains the position that China is not the threat but rather the victim of an increasing number of cyber-attacks.
China’s development of cyber capabilities have been correlated with the country’s overall economic, political, and social development as a newly industrialized nation. Alongside its development China has pursued the acquisition of foreign military technology and many recent news reports link China’s technological capabilities to the beginning of a new‘cyber cold war.’
From 1995 through 2008 the Chinese government has allegedly been involved in a number of high profile cases of espionage against the United States. The target of these cases had been ‘Aerospace engineering programs, space shuttle design, C4ISR data, high-performance computers, Nuclear weapon design, cruise missile data, semiconductors, integrated circuit design, and details of US arms sales to Taiwan’.
Many of the organizations which have supposedly been the target of a security breach are Northrop Grumman, NASA, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Sun Microsystems, and various defence installations. It is believed that China utilizes a ‘decentralized network of students, business people, scientists, diplomats, and engineers from within the Chinese Diaspora,’ to gather information.
China’s cyber-attacks have not been exclusive to the United States. In 2007, an executive of a Russian rocket and space technology corporation was given an 11 year sentence for passing sensitive information to the China government. ‘An alleged agent who defected in Belgium claimed hundreds of Chinese spies were working within Europe’s industries. These allegations coincided with an arrest in France for illegal database intrusion of the automotive components manufacturer Valeo.’ Furthermore, Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin defected to Australia claiming there were over 1,000 Chinese informants within Australia (Luard 2005; Isachenkov 2007).
The acquisition of foreign military technology can help China catch up and begin working at a comparable level to other developed nations and in particular with the United States. China’s 2006 white paper on national defence emphasizes ‘informationization’ of the military. “Informationization” (xinxihua) means improving the PLA’s ability to use the latest technologies in command, intelligence, training, and weapon systems.
The Chinese government’s move towards information technology can be seen with the use of ‘new space-based surveillance and intelligence gathering systems, Anti-satellite weapon, anti-radar, infrared decoys, and false target generators. Informationization includes increased education of soldiers in cyber warfare; improving the information network for military training, and has built more virtual laboratories, digital libraries and digital campuses.’
The Chinese government is currently undergoing a process to legitimize and shape the legal framework of the use of cyber warfare in military operations. The government, in partnership with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, is engaging in a debate to define cyber warfare by pursuing comprehensive re-structuring policies which the Chinese government refers to as ‘preparing for local wars under conditions of informationization’ (China's National Defense 2006).

Cyberwarfare in India

This section contains close paraphrasing of a non-free copyrighted source, http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/india-cyber-security-at-risk/1/191786.html (Duplication Detector report). Ideas in this article should be expressed in an original manner. More details may be available on the talk page. (February 2013)

This diagram shows the steady increase of cyber related security incidents in India from 2004-2011

A government-private sector plan being overseen by National Security Advisor (NSA) Shivshankar Menon began in October 2012, and intends to beef up India's cyber security capabilities in the light of a group of experts findings that India faces a 4.7-lakh shortfall of such experts despite the country's reputation of being an IT and software powerhouse.
On July 12, 2012, several high-level officials experienced a major cyber attack. This included officials from the Ministry of External Affairs, Ministry of Home Affairs, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP). It is reported that several pieces of sensitive information had been compromised and there was also a breach in the main National Informatics Centre email server, which links all the departments in the Indian government. An investigation put the total number of accounts affected at roughly 12,000. The responsibility of preventing cyber attacks had fallen under the jurisdiction of the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), which was established in 2004 as a subsidiary of the Department of Information Technology. The number of reported cyber security breaches has grown from 23 in 2004 to 13,301 in 2011.
In July 2012, the government split CERT-In in order to better distribute serious threats and minor issues. ‘CERT-In now protects cyber assets in non-critical areas while a new body called the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) protects assets in sensitive sectors such as energy, transport, banking, telecom, defence and space.’
Information Technology Secretary J. Satyanarayana admits that more work needs to be done in research and development; however, he states that the NCIIPC department is in the final stages of completing the national cyber security policy. The policy proposes an increase in the production of domestic security solutions rather than depending on of foreign technology and products. ‘The government also plans to appoint a National Cyber Security Coordinator in the National Security Council to coordinate with all agencies dealing with cyber security.’ As an added measure M.S. Vijayaraghavan, an adviser to the National Technical Research Organisation, states that all cyber security agencies are working in isolation. "If there is a synchronised attack on multiple critical infrastructure facilities, they are not in a position to join the dots and respond in a well-coordinated way."
Overall, India has not suffered any significant economic or physical damage from cyber attacks; however, the government owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India is at constant risk of security breach. "The company faces up to 10 targeted attacks a day but manages to block them all," says Executive Director S.P. Dharne.

Cyberwarfare in Iran

In June 2010 a cyber-worm called ‘Stuxnet’ had infiltrated the Iranian nuclear facility in Natanz. Struxnet had allegedly infected over 60,000 computers, and although it was not exclusive to Iran, the virus had destroyed over 1000 nuclear centrifuges at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, ‘setting Tehran's atomic programme back by at least two years.’ ‘German expert Ralph Lagner describes Stuxnet as a military-grade cyber missile that was used to launch an “all-out cyber strike against the Iranian nuclear program”.
The first Stuxnet attack was against an Iranian company by the name of Fararo Paya. The government of Iran has confirmed that Stuxnet infected a number of personal computers but denies that there was any significant extent of damage caused. The repercussions of this have led to Iran being able to ‘quickly harness the intellectual capital of the global computer security community through effectively crowdsourcing solutions to the worm’. Iran is now a ‘force to be reckoned with’ in terms of cyberwarfare capabilities.
There is great speculation that Stuxnet was a joint American-Israeli project, however no government has claimed responsibility. A cyber-attack on Iran’s nuclear programme seems to be a comparable alternative to the alleged U.S.-Israeli air strikes designed to hinder Iran’s nuclear weapons development. ‘Western analysts say Iran has launched increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks in a growing confrontation with its adversaries, including the United States, Israel and Gulf Arabs, at a time of rising pressure on Tehran to curb its nuclear program.’ Iran’s government however strongly denies these allegations and claims that its nuclear development program is only for the purposes of power production.
Iranian officials also deny the allegations of Iran’s involvement in hacking into a number of American banks in late 2012 stating that resources dedicated to improving their cyber defence capabilities were in response to a number of cyber-attacks instigated by Stuxnet.

Cyberwarfare in the UK

Government Communications Headquarters in the United Kingdom

MI6 reportedly infiltrated an Al Qaeda website and replaced the recipe for a pipe bomb with the recipe for making cupcakes.

Cyber counterintelligence

Cyber counter-intelligence are measures to identify, penetrate, or neutralize foreign operations that use cyber means as the primary tradecraft methodology, as well as foreign intelligence service collection efforts that use traditional methods to gauge cyber capabilities and intentions.

On 7 April 2009, The Pentagon announced they spent more than $100 million in the last six months responding to and repairing damage from cyber attacks and other computer network problems.

On 1 April 2009, U.S. lawmakers pushed for the appointment of a White House cyber security "czar" to dramatically escalate U.S. defenses against cyber attacks, crafting proposals that would empower the government to set and enforce security standards for private industry for the first time.

On 9 February 2009, the White House announced that it will conduct a review of the nation's cyber security to ensure that the Federal government of the United States cyber security initiatives are appropriately integrated, resourced and coordinated with the United States Congress and the private sector.

In the wake of the cyberwar of 2007 waged against Estonia, NATO established the Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCD CoE) in Tallinn, Estonia, in order to enhance the organization’s cyber defence capability. The center was formally established on 14 May 2008, and it received full accreditation by NATO and attained the status of International Military Organization on 28 October 2008. Since Estonia has led international efforts to fight cybercrime, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation says it will permanently base a computer crime expert in Estonia in 2009 to help fight international threats against computer systems.

One of the hardest issues in cyber counterintelligence is the problem of "Attribution". Unlike conventional warfare, figuring out who is behind an attack can be very difficult. However Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has claimed that the United States has the capability to trace attacks back to their sources and hold the attackers "accountable".

Controversy over terms

There is debate on whether the term "cyberwarfare" is accurate. In October 2011, for instance, the Journal of Strategic Studies, a leading journal in that field, published an article by Thomas Rid, "Cyber War Will Not Take Place." An act of cyber war would have to be potentially lethal, instrumental, and political. Then not one single cyber offense on record constitutes an act of war on its own. Instead, all politically motivated cyber attacks, Rid argued, are merely sophisticated versions of three activities that are as old as warfare itself: sabotage, espionage, and subversion.
Howard Schmidt, an American cybersecurity expert, argued in March 2010 that "there is no cyberwar... I think that is a terrible metaphor and I think that is a terrible concept. There are no winners in that environment." Other experts, however, believe that this type of activity already constitutes a war. The warfare analogy is often seen intended to motivate a militaristic response when that is not necessarily appropriate. Ron Deibert, of Canada's Citizen Lab, has warned of a "militarization of cyberspace."
The European cybersecurity expert Sandro Gaycken argued for a middle position. He considers cyberwar from a legal perspective an unlikely scenario, due to the reasons lined out by Rid (and, before him, Sommer), but the situation looks different from a strategic point of view. States have to consider military-led cyber operations an attractive activity, within and without war, as they offer a large variety of cheap and risk-free options to weaken other countries and strengthen their own positions. Considered from a long-term, geostrategic perspective, cyber offensive operations can cripple whole economies, change political views, agitate conflicts within or among states, reduce their military efficiency and equalize the capacities of high-tech nations to that of low-tech nations, and use access to their critical infrastructures to blackmail them.

Incidents

On 21 November 2011, it was widely reported in the U.S. media that a hacker had destroyed a water pump at the Curran-Gardner Township Public Water District in Illinois. However, it later turned out that this information was not only false, but had been inappropriately leaked from the Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center.

On 6 October 2011, it was announced that Creech AFB's drone and Predator fleet's command and control data stream has been keylogged, resisting all attempts to reverse the exploit, for the past two weeks. The Air Force issued a statement that the virus had "posed no threat to our operational mission".

In July 2011, the South Korean company SK Communications was hacked, resulting in the theft of the personal details (including names, phone numbers, home and email addresses and resident registration numbers) of up to 35 million people. A trojaned software update was used to gain access to the SK Communications network. Links exist between this hack and other malicious activity and it is believed to be part of a broader, concerted hacking effort.

Operation Shady RAT is an ongoing series of cyber attacks starting mid-2006, reported by Internet security company McAfee in August 2011. The attacks have hit at least 72 organizations including governments and defense contractors.

On 4 December 2010, a group calling itself the Pakistan Cyber Army hacked the website of India's top investigating agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The National Informatics Center (NIC) has begun an inquiry.

On 26 November 2010, a group calling itself the Indian Cyber Army hacked the websites belonging to the Pakistan Army and the others belong to different ministries, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Finance, Pakistan Computer Bureau, Council of Islamic Ideology, etc. The attack was done as a revenge for the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

In October 2010, Iain Lobban, the director of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), said Britain faces a "real and credible" threat from cyber attacks by hostile states and criminals and government systems are targeted 1,000 times each month, such attacks threatened Britain’s economic future, and some countries were already using cyber assaults to put pressure on other nations.

In September 2010, Iran was attacked by the Stuxnet worm, thought to specifically target its Natanz nuclear enrichment facility. The worm is said to be the most advanced piece of malware ever discovered and significantly increases the profile of cyberwarfare.

In May 2010, In response to Indian Cyber Army defacing Pakistani websites, 1000+ Indian websites were defaced by PakHaxors, TeaMp0isoN, UrduHack & ZCompany Hacking Crew, among those were the Indian CID website, local government of Kerala, Box Office of Indian, Brahmos missile website, Indian HP helpdesk, Indian Institute of Science, and The Indian Directorate General of Shipping.

In July 2009, there were a series of coordinated denial of service attacks against major government, news media, and financial websites in South Korea and the United States. While many thought the attack was directed by North Korea, one researcher traced the attacks to the United Kingdom.

Russian, South Ossetian, Georgian and Azerbaijani sites were attacked by hackers during the 2008 South Ossetia War.

In 2007 the website of the Kyrgyz Central Election Commission was defaced during its election. The message left on the website read "This site has been hacked by Dream of Estonian organization". During the election campaigns and riots preceding the election, there were cases of Denial-of-service attacks against the Kyrgyz ISPs.

In September 2007, Israel carried out an airstrike on Syria dubbed Operation Orchard. U.S. industry and military sources speculated that the Israelis may have used cyberwarfare to allow their planes to pass undetected by radar into Syria.

In April 2007, Estonia came under cyber attack in the wake of relocation of the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn. The largest part of the attacks were coming from Russia and from official servers of the authorities of Russia.In the attack, ministries, banks, and media were targeted.

In the 2006 war against Hezbollah, Israel alleges that cyber-warfare was part of the conflict, where the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) intelligence estimates several countries in the Middle East used Russian hackers and scientists to operate on their behalf. As a result, Israel attached growing importance to cyber-tactics, and became, along with the U.S., France and a couple of other nations, involved in cyber-war planning. Many international high-tech companies are now locating research and development operations in Israel, where local hires are often veterans of the IDF's elite computer units. Richard A. Clarke adds that "our Israeli friends have learned a thing or two from the programs we have been working on for more than two decades."

Efforts at prohibition

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (members include China and Russia) defines cyberwar to include dissemination of information "harmful to the spiritual, moral and cultural spheres of other states". In September 2011, these countries proposed to the UN Secretary General a document called "International code of conduct for information security".The approach was not endorsed by western countries as it entailed too many hints on political censorship of the internet.
In contrast, the United States' approach focuses on physical and economic damage and injury, putting political concerns under freedom of speech. This difference of opinion has led to reluctance in the West to pursue global cyber arms control agreements However, American General Keith B. Alexander did endorse talks with Russia over a proposal to limit military attacks in cyberspace.
A Ukrainian professor of International Law, Alexander Merezhko, has developed a project called the International Convention on Prohibition of Cyberwar in Internet. According to this project, cyberwar is defined as the use of Internet and related technological means by one state against political, economic, technological and information sovereignty and independence of any other state. Professor Merezhko's project suggests that the Internet ought to remain free from warfare tactics and be treated as an international landmark. He states that the Internet (cyberspace) is a "common heritage of mankind.

Portugal–Spain relations

2013-03-04T23:41:00.002-08:00

History

Reconquista

Portugal became an independent kingdom in 1139, when Afonso Henriques proclaimed himself king of Portugal on 25 July 1139, after defeating the Moors at the Battle of Ourique. He was recognized as such in 1143 by King Alfonso VII of León and Castile, and in 1179 by Pope Alexander III.
Spain, in its modern form, is widely believed to have begun by the Union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon in 1479, although the unification of Spain and creation of one nation state only took place during the Age of Enlightenment. Until then Spain was a geographic location referring to the Iberian peninsula, and the kingdoms united under the same king were collectively known as the Spains although this was not the official name. It was only in the constitution of 1812 that was adopted the name "Españas" (Spains) for the Spanish nation and the use the title of "king of the Spains". The constitution of 1876 adopts for the first time the name "Spain" for the Spanish nation and from then on the kings would use the title of "king of Spain".
Much of the Iberian Peninsula had come under the control of the Moors, a series of wars were launched and the reconquista saw the new Castilian Kingdom acquire the remainder of the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula.

Overseas expansion

During the 15th century, both kingdoms, Portugal and Castile, built increasingly large fleets of ships and began to explore the world beyond Europe, sending explorers to Africa and Asia. Following the Castilian discovery of the American continent in 1492, both states began acquiring territory in the New World. Portugal acquired its most potentially important colony, Brazil (much of the South American continent), as well as a number of possessions in Africa and Asia as a result of the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, while Castile took the rest of South America and much of the North American continent. Although the Treaty of Tordesillas attempted to clarify their empires, many subsequent treaties were needed to establish the modern boundaries of Brazil, and the 1529 Treaty of Zaragoza was needed to demarcate their Asian possessions.

Iberian Union

In 1578, king Sebastian of Portugal died in the Battle of Alcácer Quibir against the Moroccans and the Turks. Having no heirs, he was succeeded by his great-uncle Henry of Portugal, who reigned until his death (31 January 1580).
Henry also lacked heirs, and his death triggered a succession crisis, where the main claimants to the throne were Philip II of Spain and Anthony, Prior of Crato. Philip was crowned king in 1581, beginning a personal union between the two nations known as the Iberian Union. After a three years war with Anthony and his foreign allies, resistance crumbled and the union was consolidated.
The Iberian Union would last until 1640, when the Portuguese Restoration War was initiated against Spain, and Portugal regained its independence under the Braganza dynasty.

18th century

During the wars of the 18th century, which were often fought by the major powers to maintain the European balance of power, Spain and Portugal usually found themselves on opposite sides. The Portuguese, courtesy of their long-standing alliance, aligned themselves with Great Britain, while Spain, through the Bourbon Family Compact, allied themselves to France. In 1762, during the Seven Years War, Spain launched an unsuccessful invasion of Portugal.
In 1777, there was a conflict between the two states over the borders of their possessions in South America.

Napoleonic era

Main article: Peninsular War

In 1807, the king of Spain and his French allies invaded Portugal, using a route that crossed through Spanish territory. However, the French decided to take over both countries, overthrowing the King of Spain and forcing the Portuguese royal family to escape to the Portuguese colony of Brazil. Spain and Portugal subsequently became allies for the first time in centuries and, allied to a British army under Sir Arthur Wellesley, drove the French back across the border in 1813 after a prolonged, brutal conflict known as the Peninsular War.
After the fall of Napoleon, both countries came close to war a number of times during the early 19th century. Both lost their American colonies shortly after the end of the Peninsular War, which severely weakened their global power.

1930s

The 1930s saw similar right-leaning, authoritarian and nationalist regimes emerge in both countries. In Portugal, António de Oliveira Salazar established his Estado Novo in 1933. In 1936, Francisco Franco launched a rebellion against the Spanish government, and after three years of civil war, his nationalists were triumphant.
Both states remained neutral in World War II, though Spain was more predisposed to Nazi Germany, Portugal also maintained a friendly relationship with Nazi Germany, supplying it with many key resources such as tungsten. Yet in virtue of the 14th century alliance Portugal had with England, it was also supplying Britain with all sorts of produce, and whilst the Germans had to pay immediately, Britain had an open account for most of the war.

Post World War II

When World War II came to a close in 1945, with the Allies victorious, the two states of Portugal and Spain became increasingly isolated with their governments rooted in the old war was the authoritarian dictatorship, rather than the democracy that was spreading through the rest of Western Europe.
While the other European colonial powers, such as France, Britain, and the Netherlands, gave up their colonial empires in the post-war years, both Spain and Portugal clung to their possessions around the globe. Portugal fought a costly colonial war in Africa, and in 1961 saw its territory of Goa invaded by India. Despite their apparent mutual self-interest, there was very little co-operation between Spain and Portugal when it came to defending their empires.

End of isolation

Further information: Carnation Revolution

Further information: Expansion of the European Union

In 1974, the dictatorship of the Estado Novo was brought to an end by a left-wing military coup known as the Carnation Revolution. This left Spain increasingly isolated from the rest of Europe, which lasted until the death of Franco a year later, after which Spain returned to being a constitutional monarchy and embraced parliamentarism. The PREC that had followed the Carnation Revolution in Portugal came to an end in 1976, and Portugal also became a democracy.
The two states gave independence to their former colonies, liberalized their economies, and began the process of applying for membership of the European Economic Community. In 1986, the two states formally entered the Community, which was later merged into the European Union.

Present

Current relations between Spain and Portugal are healthy. They cooperate in the fight against drug trafficking and forest fires (common in the Iberian Peninsula in summers), for example. These close relations are facilitated by similar governments; such as the conservative government of José María Aznar & José Manuel Durão Barroso and the social democratic government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero & José Sócrates. Sócrates even claims that he has one of the best personal relations with Zapatero among international political relation.
These two countries had a bid to jointly host the 2018 World Cup, but it was lost to Russia.

Later disputes

There is an unsettled territorial dispute regarding the municipality of Olivenza/Olivença and the smaller town and municipality of Táliga, both currently administered as a part of the province of Badajoz, in the Spanish autonomous community of Extremadura. Olivenza/Olivença had been under continuous Portuguese sovereignty since prior to 1297 when it was occupied by the Spanish in 1801 and formally ceded by Portugal later that year by the Treaty of Badajoz. Spain claims de jure sovereignty over Olivenza/Olivença on the grounds that the Treaty of Badajoz still stands and has never been revoked, despite that Spain also signed the Treaty of Vienna in 1817, restoring Olivenza/Olivença to Portugal. Portugal claims de jure sovereignty over Olivenza/Olivença on the grounds that the Treaty of Badajoz was revoked by its own terms (Which stated: The breach of any of its articles would lead to its cancellation) when Spain invaded Portugal in the Peninsular War of 1807, and foremost, due to the fact that Spain signed the Treaty of Vienna in 1815, which recognizes Olivenza/Olivença as Portuguese territory.
Recently, Spain has also initiated a diffuse dispute regarding Portugal's Exclusive Economic Zone in the territorial waters of the Savage Islands (a small archipelago north of the Canary Islands), under Portuguese sovereignty. Spain objects on the basis that the Savage Islands do not have a separate continental shelf,according to the article 121 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The status of the Savage Islands as islands or rocks is thus at the core of the current dispute, mainly due to Spanish aspirations for fishing and mineral exploration. Today the Savage Islands constitute a natural reserve whose inhabitants are a small Portuguese Marine Corps combat detachment,^[3] and two wardens of Madeira's Natural Park. Over the years the Portuguese authorities have seized some Spanish fishing boats and crew around the area for illegal fishing and theft of light beacons and navigation buoys.

Washington confirms Chinese hack attack on White House computer

2013-02-22T02:53:00.002-08:00

"This [White House Communications Agency] guy opened an email he wasn't supposed to open," the source said.

That email contained a spear phishing attack from a computer server in China, the law enforcement source told FoxNews.com. The attack was first reported by the conservative blog Free Beacon. Spear phishing involves the use of messages disguised to appear as valid; in fact, they contain targeted, malicious attempts to access sensitive or confidential information.

By opening the email, which likely contained a link to a malicious site or some form of attachment, the agency member allowed the Chinese hacker to access a system, explained Anup Ghosh, founder and CEO of security company Invincea.

"The attack originated in the form of a spear phish, which involves a spoofed inbound email with either a link to a malicious website or a weaponized document attachment such as a .pdf, Microsoft Excel file or Word document," he told FoxNews.com.

'Free Beacon claimed that the U.S. government’s most sensitive networks were breached in the incident, which took place early last month.

“One official said the cyberbreach was one of Beijing’s most brazen cyberattacks against the United States,” the report said.

The law enforcement source told FoxNews.com he was notified of the successful phishing incident but did not know what information was actually accessed. A White House official downplayed that report, saying that the system involved was not a sensitive nuclear system, and no evidence indicated that information was actually taken.

“In this instance the attack was identified, the system was isolated, and there is no indication whatsoever that any exfiltration of data took place. Moreover, there was never any impact or attempted breach of any classified system,” he said.

The attempted hacking of U.S. military networks used by the White House is a common occurrence, but success is rare.

Due to the volume of these attempts on secure computers, law enforcement, military, and members of other agencies with access to those systems and other White House secure networks have strict rules about email and Internet usage, the law enforcement official explained to FoxNews.com.

Chinese hackers are often cited as the cause of such incidents, Ghosh said.

"Over the past 24 months, China has been aggressively targeting America’s corporations for their intellectual property and our government agencies and departments for critical national security information," he told FoxNews.com.

The incident underscores the real cybersecurity challenge today: people.

"The cybersecurity industry is woefully behind the curve in terms of protecting the network from spear-phishing attacks against employees," Ghosh said. "Today, training is the primary solution to this problem ... and training simply does not work."

"The White House, every Fortune 1,000 and Global 2,000 organization -- medium-sized business, small businesses, consumers -- ALL are at risk from spear-phishing attacks."

Technologies need to be developed to protect against such attacks, Ghosh said, and government and private companies will remain at risk until computer users are placed in some form of "protective bubble" when they encounter untrusted content.

America is on the losing end of an aggressive cyberconflict waged by nation states, organized cybercriminals and hacktivists, he said.

"We need to give this critical priority -- it needs to be a discussion at every level of our government and we must rapidly adopt new technologies to protect our nation from this threat."