PaulMoorcraft - Superpowers, Rogue States and Terrorism: Countering the Security Threats to the West

Superpowers, Rogue States and Terrorism

Countering the Security Threats to the West

Paul Moorcraft

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by

Pen & Sword Military

an imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street

Barnsley

South Yorkshire

S70 2AS

Copyright Paul Moorcraft, 2017

ISBN 978 1 47389 472 3

eISBN 978 1 47389 474 7

Mobi ISBN 978 1 47389 473 0

The right of Paul Moorcraft to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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D r Paul Moorcraft has been a professor, paramilitary policeman, film producer and political pundit as well as a Whitehall warrior and a war correspondent. He is the author of over 30 books of fiction and non-fiction. For five years he was a senior instructor at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, and later the UK Joint Services Command and Staff College. He also taught full-time (consecutively) at ten major universities in the US, UK, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. He also worked in 30 war zones, sometimes for the UK Ministry of Defence but more often as a correspondent for TV, radio and print. Besides awards for fiction, his charity work resulted in a 2015 book: It Just Doesnt Add Up: Explaining Dyscalculia and Overcoming Number Problems for Children and Adults . He is best known as a military historian, however. His most recent books for Pen and Sword include:

Mugabes War Machine (2011).

Total Destruction of The Tamil Tigers: The Rare Victory of Sri Lankas War (2012).

Omar al-Bashir and Africas Longest War (2015).

The Rhodesian War: 50 Years on from UDI (2015) with Peter McLaughlin.

Dying for the Truth: The Concise History of Frontline War Reporting (2016).

The Jihadist Threat: The Re-conquest of Europe? (Updated, revised paperback edition, 2017).

The threat to Europe from the Ottoman Empire.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916.

Islamic State territory in June 2014.

A possible Kurdistan.

The once and future caliphate.

The Baltic states and their big near neighbour.

Disputes in the South China Sea.

US bases and military facilities around the world.

The threat to Europe from the Ottoman Empire.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916.

Islamic State territory in June 2014.

A possible Kurdistan.

The once and future caliphate.

The Baltic states and their big near neighbour.

Disputes in the South China Sea.

US bases and military facilities around the world.

List of illustrations

The Moroccan ambassador to London, sent to persuade Queen Elizabeth I to form an Anglo-Moroccan front against Spain.

Gertrude Bell should be more famous than Lawrence of Arabia for forging the shape of the Middle East.

Memorial in Washington D.C. to commemorate the US dead in the Korean War.

The former KGB HQ in Lukiks Square in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital.

After walking out of Afghanistan, Mujahedin relax in the tribal area between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Ukrainian military museum, near Kiev, shows how intertwined Russian and Ukrainian defence production has been especially in helicopter design.

Palestinian woman sits stoically outside her ruined house during the siege of Jenin, in the West Bank, in May 2002.

The fall of the Berlin Wall did not bring an end of history.

The first Chechen war (199496).

British troops on patrol near Umm Qasr in the first weeks of the occupation of southern Iraq, 2003.

The Americans used cruise missiles to destroy the Al-Shifa medical factory in Khartoum in August 1998.

NATO forces patrolling over Afghanistan.

Islamic State liked to compare their initial advance with the military victories of the first caliphate.

German armoured vehicle in Kabul with NATO forces in 2002.

Islamic State forces celebrating early victories in Raqqa, their capital.

The caliphate was declared on 29 June 2014 by the new caliph, Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi.

GCHQ in Cheltenham, England, is the centre of British cyber warfare and defence.

Islamists often criticised Muslim participation in UK elections because they were considered hostile to Sharia law.

Front cover of Dabiq , the glossy propaganda magazine produced by IS.

Anti-Gaddafi graffito in Tripoli in the uprising during the Arab Spring.

The Eurofighter Typhoon was deployed in combat in Libya and is now operational in the Baltic states.

B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.

HMS Queen Elizabeth , the new Royal Navy carrier, but with no planes to adorn its deck, yet.

Kim Jong-un: Is that the US Navy out there?

Chinas first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning .

Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Michel Houellebecq, controversial French author of Submission .

President Trump has relied on a number of generals, especially H.R. McMaster, his National Security Adviser.

The bogus photo-shopped picture that went viral on the Internet.

This went viral.

The concept design of the Russian T-14 Armata tank.

Introduction