Quotes of the Day:
"I never learned from a man who agreed with me."
- Robert A. Heinlein
"There are plenty of good reasons for fighting...but no good reason to ever hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive....it's that part of an imbecile that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly."
- Kurt Vonnegut
"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved."
- Helen Keller
1. Will the annual defense authorization bill get passed this year?
2. Beijing Sprints While America Slumbers
3. Ukraine Wants More Exercises, Training with US
4. Choose a side, China tells Taiwan firms as it punishes conglomerate
5. China May Steal Encrypted Data Now to Decrypt In Years to Come, Report Warns
6. Japan’s Revolution on Taiwan Affairs
7. Iran nuclear talks are restarting, but they’re pointless: Biden needs a bipartisan strategy
8. Helping Iran fail in Iraq
9. The US can't deter an attack on Taiwan
10. U.S. warship again transits sensitive Taiwan Strait
11. The General of the Space Force Has Heard Your Jokes
12. Feeding the Bear: A Closer Look at Russian Army Logistics and the Fait Accompli
13. Former Members Of Afghan Special Forces, Commandos Issue Plea To U.S. For Help
14. Four West Point Cadets Named Rhodes Scholars
15. Is Russia about to checkmate US in Europe?
16. The Cost of Sentimentalizing War
17. US added to list of ‘backsliding’ democracies for first time
1. Will the annual defense authorization bill get passed this year?
Not a good sign. We do not need this kind of uncertainty and turmoil in our national security system.
Will the annual defense authorization bill get passed this year?
If Congress is going to pass the annual defense authorization bill for a 61st consecutive year — and that’s a big if — it’s going to take a tremendous amount of work in public and behind closed doors over the next few weeks.
On Friday, the Senate left town for Thanksgiving break without finalizing its draft of the sweeping $740 billion military policy measure, but with plans to do so in the last few days of November.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., wouldn’t speculate on the next steps after that.
“We have to get the bill passed here before we start thinking about that,” Reed said, adding: “I think the one thing that we all feel is that we have to pass the national defense bill.”
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The $740 billion defense authorization bill draft now awaits compromise work with the Senate, with a goal of final passage later this year.
The annual defense authorization bill is important not just for what’s in it but also for what it symbolizes. Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., called it “the biggest and the most important bill of the year” and “must-pass” legislation during a chamber floor speech last week.
Each year the bill includes hundreds of policy provisions related to military pay, Pentagon reforms and equipment purchases. This year’s most controversial proposals incorporate language to dramatically overhaul how military sexual assault cases are handled and a mandate to add women to the list of potential candidates for a future draft.
But even with those hot-button issues, and even with increasing partisan fractures among lawmakers in recent years, the legislation has been approved by lawmakers for 60 straight years, and often by strong bipartisan margins.
In a typical year, the House and Senate pass their respective drafts in the early fall, giving negotiators months to debate the differences in their versions and finish a compromise in early December.
This year, even if the Senate finishes its work by Nov. 30 (which still is in question) lawmakers will have only a few days before the end of the legislative year to complete those negotiations and schedule final chamber votes on the results.
That means giving up on assigning conferees to debate differences in the two drafts. Gone are the traditional ceremonial photo-ops between House and Senate Armed Services Committee members as they start days of closed discussions on hot-button issues.
“Conference is problematic because there’s a lot of steps that you have to go through [to start that],” said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash. “That takes time … and it’s going to be hard if not impossible at this point to get into conference.”
Smith said his staff are already looking at alternative scenarios to include a “ping-pong” process where the two chambers trade amended or substitution drafts of the bill, rather than formally write a third version in the conference committee.
Doing that would require several votes in both chambers, however. Both the House and Senate have to take up a budget extension, legislation to raise the debt ceiling and several other end-of-year packages in coming weeks, making the window for fitting in extra defense bill votes very narrow.
In addition, informal talks between the House and Senate have already begun in behind-the-scenes staff talks in an effort to reconcile differences in the two chambers’ bills, Smith said.
“I’m just trying to get as much resolved as possible, as quickly as possible, so that we’re in a position to vote [on a compromise bill],” he said.
RELATED
The Senate could consider the annual defense authorization bill as soon as Thursday after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., abandoned a controversial push to merge it with sweeping China-focused legislation.
Breaking the authorization bill passage streak would be seen as a major blow to the reputations of Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, even if the reasons for that fall to both parties.
Republicans have already attacked Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in recent weeks for his slow pace on the legislation, calling it an insult to the military and a sign of Democratic leaders’ apathy towards defense issues.
But Republican lawmakers also blocked a bid for quick passage of the bill in the Senate last week, demanding more time to consider amendments.
Inhofe said he still has confidence that the work will get done, but voiced frustration that even small delays now could seriously jeopardize final passage of the measure. Other lawmakers have echoed that concern.
“Don’t mess up the one thing that you can count on the Senate to do in a bipartisan way every year,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va, told reporters during the Halifax International Security Forum, according to Politico. “A Senate that cannot [pass the authorization bill] hardly deserves the title.”
Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.
Joe Gould is the Congress and industry reporter at Defense News, covering defense budget and policy matters on Capitol Hill as well as industry news.
2. Beijing Sprints While America Slumbers
Conclusion:
While ending Washington’s habitual reliance on CRs will not solve all these problems, it would be a good place to start. Beijing clearly understands there is no time to waste. To protect America’s national security interests, we should, too.
Beijing Sprints While America Slumbers
(Photograph by Kurt Wittman/Education Images/Universal Images Group/Getty Images.)
Gen. John Hyten, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked in an interview published last week whether the Chinese hypersonic weapons test this summer should be compared to Sputnik—referring to the 1957 satellite launch by the Soviet Union that shocked Americans regarding the Kremlin’s military-technology prowess. Hyten suggested the comparison was not a good one. “Sputnik created a sense of urgency in the United States,” Hyten said. “The [Chinese] test on July 27 did not create that sense of urgency.”
Hyten’s concerns about a lack of American urgency in responding to a growing threat from Beijing are reinforced by a Department of Defense report released on November 3 that makes clear Beijing is sprinting to field modern forces that can defeat the U.S. military. Instead of responding to this alarming news with urgent action, Washington seems to be slumbering.
Exhibit A: The Pentagon once again started the new federal government fiscal year on October 1 without the annual defense authorization and appropriation that helps America’s service members defend our country.
If the United States hopes to field the modern and capable military forces urgently needed to deter and defeat aggression from the rapidly improving People’s Liberation Army (PLA), there is no time to waste. Unfortunately, wasting valuable time is exactly the effect of tardy defense authorizations and appropriations.
Sprinting Beijing
To understand the intensity and urgency that Beijing is bringing to its military modernization effort, consider just a few things Americans learned in recent weeks.
On October 4 alone, 52 PLA fighter jets, bombers, and other military aircraft aggressively entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone. These increasingly common provocations follow warnings in March from the then-top U.S. commander in the Indo-Pacific, Adm. Philip Davidson, that Beijing could invade or attack Taiwan “in the next six years.”
On October 16, Americans learned that China tested an advanced new hypersonic missile this summer that circles the Earth and is designed to evade U.S. defenses and conduct a nuclear attack against the U.S. homeland.
On November 3, we learned that Beijing is expanding the size of its nuclear arsenal much faster than expected and in 2020 launched more ballistic missiles for testing and training “than the rest of the world combined.”
And on November 7, Americans learned that China built sophisticated, full-scale outlines of a U.S. aircraft carrier and two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers to practice sinking the American vessels.
Slumbering Washington
To respond to these and other challenges, the Department of Defense is attempting to undertake a modernization effort not seen in a generation. But that is difficult to do without timely defense authorizations and appropriations.
When the Pentagon does not receive annual funding on time, it must instead rely on what is called a continuing resolution, or CR. A CR sounds harmless, but nothing could be further from the truth.
CRs essentially copy and paste the defense budget from the previous year. That prevents the Pentagon from starting new programs or expanding ongoing ones. This results in delayed delivery of vital new capabilities, leaving American service members on patrol in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere with antiquated American weapons and equipment while trying to stare down increasingly formidable adversaries.
Indeed, the current CR lasts through December 3, more than two months after the new fiscal year started. To make matters worse, it now appears that the CR may be extended until March of 2022, creating a six-month delay.
Consider the impact on the U.S. Air Force. The Air Force says that a six-month CR will delay 36 new programs and 36 military construction (MILCON) projects and hold up five production increases.
Some of the most concerning delays caused by a six-month CR affect our nation’s nuclear deterrent—the means by which the Department of Defense persuades adversaries they could not survive a nuclear attack on the United States.
The Air Force is responsible for both the land and air legs of the nation’s nuclear triad and for approximately 75 percent of its nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) functions. A six-month CR would stall $10.9 million in funding for the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) program. It would also delay $31 million in funding for a vital supporting MILCON project and would prevent production increases for much-needed modified fuses for America’s existing intercontinental ballistic missiles. The current fuses for the Minuteman III have served three times longer than planned and must be replaced to ensure safe and credible deterrence until the GBSD comes on line.
Regarding the air leg of the nuclear triad, a six-month CR would hold up six B-21 infrastructure MILCON projects. These projects include aircraft maintenance hangars as well as flight simulators and operations facilities that are needed to maintain and fly the B-21, which is anticipated to conduct its first flight next year. A new program for B-52 combat network communications would also be postponed. These delays would be a problem because both the B-21 and the B-52 are essential to deterring a nuclear attack against the United States and its allies.
Moreover, a reliable U.S. nuclear deterrent depends on more than just missiles, bombers, and submarines. It also depends on an NC3 network that knits them together, providing detection, early warning, and command and control of U.S. nuclear forces. This network consists of up to 160 individual systems, some of which are outdated and vulnerable to Russian and Chinese counter-space and cyber capabilities. Yet here, too, a six-month CR would delay $6.9 million needed to improve NC3 technology, viability, and durability, as well as $66 million for an associated MILCON project.
Unfortunately, a six-month CR would also delay key modernization efforts for the Air Force’s conventional forces. These efforts include, for example, a program to advance the open system architecture, radar, sensors, communications and other advanced technologies for the Next-Generation Air Dominance program, which seeks to develop America’s sixth-generation fighter.
While American airmen will have to wait longer for more advanced fighter capabilities thanks to the CR, the Chinese air force seems to be pressing ahead. On October 29, we learned about two new Chinese stealth fighter variants that could challenge American air superiority.
A six-month CR would also put the U.S. Air Force’s Advanced Rapid Response Weapon program on hold. That’s unfortunate because this missile will provide U.S. forces a much-needed hypersonic long-range conventional air-to-surface precision-strike capability that would be essential in defeating China’s increasingly potent air defenses.
Sadly, CRs are not an anomaly. They have actually become the norm. The Department of Defense has received on-time funding only once in the last 13 fiscal years.
A report this year by the Government Accountability Office indicates that the services have responded by adapting their agreements with industry so as not to obligate funding until later in the fiscal year. If the goal is to field new capabilities as quickly as possible, self-imposed delays by Pentagon program managers actually serve to slow U.S. military modernization efforts further and conceal the full damage caused by CRs.
Some may argue that these Air Force modernization programs are unnecessary, but facts simply do not support such an assertion.
The Heritage Foundation’s 2022 Index of U.S. Military Strength assesses the overall condition of the U.S. Air Force as “weak” and predicts that it could “struggle in a war with a peer competitor.” Indeed, Air Force Chief of Staff General Charles Brown testified on June 17, 2021, that the Air Force’s “aircraft fleet is 30 years old on average, and 44% are beyond their designed service life.” The Air Force’s E-3 Sentry fleet, which provides essential airborne early warning and control capabilities, is over 40 years old on average. Indeed, the aircraft’s availability rate has declined to an unacceptable 40 percent.
While ending Washington’s habitual reliance on CRs will not solve all these problems, it would be a good place to start. Beijing clearly understands there is no time to waste. To protect America’s national security interests, we should, too.
Bradley Bowman is senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where Maj. Lauren Harrison is a visiting military analyst. FDD is a nonpartisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy. Follow Bradley on Twitter @Brad_L_Bowman. The views expressed in this commentary are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Defense Department or the Air Force.
3. Ukraine Wants More Exercises, Training with US
Excerpts:
Since 2014, the United States has given Ukraine military equipment and set up a training mission in the Western portion of the country, away from the contact line. U.S. troops have helped Ukraine stand up better special operations units.
“It’s a new branch established in 2016,” said Roman Mashovets, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office. “Before that was Spetsnaz for special reconnaissance and direct action. Now they have a new direction in psyops or [psychological operations] civil affairs, and special reconnaissance direct action. It’s a very new structure and they are still getting a capability for full capacity and full range.”
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Monday that the buildup shows “Russia’s government is playing a dangerous game. The Biden administration must work with our allies to demonstrate to Mr. Putin that further actions to destabilize Europe’s security will bring about devastating consequences for Russia’s economy and its further isolation from the civilized world.”
Ukraine Wants More Exercises, Training with US
Russian military buildup is “atypical,” Ukrainian officials say.
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia—The frozen conflict between Russia and Ukraine has entered a dangerous new phase, according to Ukrainian officials. More Russian troops and arms have been sent to the Ukrainian border, and strategic bomber flights in the region are up as well.
Last week, Ukrainian defense officials went to Washington to ask for more military help. On Saturday at the Halifax Security Forum here, they said they are also looking to train and exercise more with U.S. forces.
“We have a plan for further training of these kinds, and aspirations to put as many training centers in Ukraine as possible,” said Anatolii Petrenko, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister. “Those instructors who train our military take experience from our military as well.”
That amounts to a request for additional U.S. military personnel in Ukraine at a time when Russian forces are massing on the border. While Russia has claimed the large-scale deployments don’t foreshadow an invasion but the Ukrainians say the current buildup and Russia’s recent actions are far from ordinary.
“Just a couple of weeks ago, Russia and Belarus developed a joint military doctrine,” Petrenko said. “They started patrolling [the] Belarus borders with air patrols, including Russian bombers, strategic bombers like Tupolev [Tu]-160, Tupolev [Tu]-22. And this is atypical.”
Among Russia’s 100,000 or so troops currently in Ukraine, Petrenko said, many are from the Central Military District or the Western Military District, closest to Ukraine. The heavy naval buildup on the illegally-annexed Crimean peninsula is also a growing worry.
“We are concerned about possible use of missiles, which could impact our civil, critical infrastructure. We are very much concerned about tactical operations emanating from Crimea,” he said.
The Ukrainians are asking for more ground-based air defenses, better air reconnaissance drones, help with offensive cyber operations, and medical support tools.
“We learned the lesson of 2014. You have to save the lives of soldiers. You have to give confidence that if something wrong happens, they will be treated to the best of our ability and they will be returned to their units or their families with complete rehabilitation,” Petrenko said.
Since 2014, the United States has given Ukraine military equipment and set up a training mission in the Western portion of the country, away from the contact line. U.S. troops have helped Ukraine stand up better special operations units.
“It’s a new branch established in 2016,” said Roman Mashovets, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office. “Before that was Spetsnaz for special reconnaissance and direct action. Now they have a new direction in psyops or [psychological operations] civil affairs, and special reconnaissance direct action. It’s a very new structure and they are still getting a capability for full capacity and full range.”
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Monday that the buildup shows “Russia’s government is playing a dangerous game. The Biden administration must work with our allies to demonstrate to Mr. Putin that further actions to destabilize Europe’s security will bring about devastating consequences for Russia’s economy and its further isolation from the civilized world.”
4. Choose a side, China tells Taiwan firms as it punishes conglomerate
I think many of us overlook the economic connectivity between the ROC and PRC.
Choose a side, China tells Taiwan firms as it punishes conglomerate
Taiwan flags can be seen at a square ahead of the national day celebration in Taoyuan, Taiwan, October 8, 2021. REUTERS/Ann Wang
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TAIPEI, Nov 22 (Reuters) - Taiwan firms operating in China need to draw a line between themselves and independence supporters, China's government said on Monday after punishing a major Taiwanese firm ostensibly for business violations.
China, which claims democratically-ruled Taiwan as its own territory, has heaped pressure on the island to accept Beijing's rule. It said earlier this month it would hold those who support the island's formal independence, including companies, criminally liable.
China's official Xinhua news agency said early on Monday that law enforcement agencies across China had punished Taiwan's Far Eastern Group, which has interests ranging from hotels to petrochemicals, for a series of problems, from tax to fire safety, and that the investigation was continuing.
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In a statement late on Monday answering a question on whether the move was linked to the government's targeting of "stubbornly pro-Taiwan independence" forces, China's Taiwan Affairs Office did not draw a direct link, repeating Xinhua's accusations against the company.
But it added in a separate sentence that those who support Taiwan independence threatened peace and stability and harmed the interests of the Chinese people.
"They and their connected companies and financiers must be punished in accordance with the law," it said.
China welcomes Taiwanese companies, but does not allow those who support Taiwan independence to earn money in China, the office added.
"The majority of Taiwanese businessmen and enterprises must distinguish right from wrong, stand firm, draw a clear line with the Taiwan independence separatist forces, and take practical actions to maintain the peaceful development of cross-strait relations," it said.
While the Far Eastern Group has not responded to requests for comment, one of its listed units, Far Eastern New Century Corp (1402.TW), said its textile operations in China had been inspected by law enforcement in the second quarter, who did find problems over tax, fire safety and environmental protection.
It added it had made almost all the changes that had been required, having been fined 36.5 million yuan ($5.72 million).
Taiwan's government has yet to comment. Taiwan says it is already an independent country called the Republic of China, its formal name, and that Beijing has no right to speak for it or pressure its elected representatives.
($1 = 6.3810 Chinese yuan renminbi)
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Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Alex Richardson
5. China May Steal Encrypted Data Now to Decrypt In Years to Come, Report Warns
Excerpts:
In the report, the experts offer three recommendations for strategic stakeholders and chief information security officers to consider. They suggest conducting threat modeling to assess changes to organizational risk, developing an organizational strategy for deploying post-quantum encryption, and educating personnel about quantum computing to help prevent strategic surprises.
“The government is absolutely key in pushing this change across the federal and commercial space,” Beach-Westmoreland said. “Successful mitigation of this issue will be of vital benefit to core U.S. economic and national security interests.”
China May Steal Encrypted Data Now to Decrypt In Years to Come, Report Warns
Quantum computers promise to render today's encryption largely obsolete. A Booz Allen report says it's time to start managing the risks.
Though they are years from being fully realized, quantum technologies are altering the U.S. cyber threat landscape in serious ways and organizations should start acting now to ensure their infrastructure and data will be protected as the field evolves, according to a new report from Booz Allen Hamilton.
In the recently released 32-page document, experts warn that China, specifically, has become a major player in quantum computing and will likely soon collect encrypted American data in hopes to eventually decrypt it when the advanced quantum systems go into operation.
“Quantum computing is a rapidly evolving technology with far-reaching disruptive potential, and China is a leading developer of it,” BAH’s Head of Strategic Cyber Threat Intelligence Nate Beach-Westmoreland told Nextgov. “So, Booz Allen wanted to know how and when Chinese cyber threats might be shaped by this change to help our clients manage their changing risk profile.”
This report is a result of a multi-month collaborative effort, Beach-Westmoreland noted, that blended insights from the firm’s experts in threat intelligence, cybersecurity risk management, and quantum information science.
“Each perspective complemented each other,” he explained. “Quantum scientists cut through the hype and confusion around what quantum computing will enable and when that might happen. Threat analysts identified how different quantum computing capabilities might be used to further Chinese national security, internal security, and economic priorities. Risk advisors saw the actions senior leaders in the government and private sector should be taking now to respond to these threats and future uncertainty, while also seizing on greenfield opportunities.”
Topics covered in the analysis include the state of quantum-computing maturity globally and in China, possible quantum-computing uses and their development timeframes, and the assessed influence of the uses on Chinese threat activity. The ultimate aim is to help readers understand and prepare for real-world risks associated with the advent of quantum.
Quantum computing “processes information in novel ways by exploiting the unusual physics that exist at a very small scale,” the experts explain in the report. They offer analogies to depict the peculiarities and detail certain problems quantum systems may be good at solving.
Discussing the global quantum competitive landscape, the officials note that China was a relatively late adopter compared to the U.S., Europe, Japan and others. But beginning in 2016, the nation unleashed a 13-year plan to become a top global innovator in multiple technology areas, including quantum. That led to multibillion dollar investments to enable breakthroughs in the field—and an $11 billion National Laboratory for Quantum Information Sciences.
The report highlights potential specific technology areas quantum may impact, like secure communications and computational power—as well as China’s advancements in those realms so far.
“China’s quantum experts and government assess that their country is generally behind the United States in many quantum areas, but aims to surpass it by the mid-2020s,” the officials note. “Based on its current trajectory, it is unlikely that China will surpass the U.S. and Europe as the leaders in fundamental research and development, but it could plausibly lead in developing and deploying early quantum-computing use cases.”
Quantum computers are generally forecasted to outperform classical computers at modeling certain systems by the end of this decade and could then accelerate the discovery of new drugs, high-performance materials, fertilizers and more. In the 2020s, the experts note, “Chinese economic espionage will likely increasingly steal data that could be used to feed” those quantum simulations. They added that though chances are small that the nation will be able to break current generation encryption with quantum computers before 2030, “encrypted data with intelligence longevity”—such as biometric markers, covert source identities, Social Security numbers, and weapons’ designs—could be increasingly stolen with aims to eventually be decrypted.
“While quantum may not pose a direct threat to most organizations for at least a decade, deploying certain critical mitigations like post-quantum encryption will also likely take at least a decade,” Beach-Westmoreland told Nextgov. “This demands that strategies be developed and resources be aligned now in order to prepare.”
In the report, the experts offer three recommendations for strategic stakeholders and chief information security officers to consider. They suggest conducting threat modeling to assess changes to organizational risk, developing an organizational strategy for deploying post-quantum encryption, and educating personnel about quantum computing to help prevent strategic surprises.
“The government is absolutely key in pushing this change across the federal and commercial space,” Beach-Westmoreland said. “Successful mitigation of this issue will be of vital benefit to core U.S. economic and national security interests.”
6. Japan’s Revolution on Taiwan Affairs
Conclusion:
In Tokyo, Japanese leaders are likely to continue to see manageable and limited downsides in continued outreach to Taiwan. Tokyo’s embrace of a more prominent role within the liberal international order and increasing realist consensus on China is overcoming specific economic-minded constituencies within the Liberal Democratic Party and Japanese government that favor a more cooperative relationship with Beijing. Future areas of Tokyo-Taipei cooperation, such as Taiwan’s recent bid to join the rebooted Trans-Pacific Partnership and other international forums, are similarly agreeable in both Tokyo and Taipei. Discussions of security cooperation, like joint coast guard exercises, have a reasonable chance of bearing fruit. These meaningful developments can be contextualized within a larger internationalization of the Taiwan issue, giving Japan cover in its bilateral relationship with China. While such actions mean Japan can expect continued aggressive Chinese military actions near Japanese seas and airspace, Tokyo essentially perceives such provocations as inevitable regardless of Japan’s relations with Taiwan. Japan’s revolution on Taiwan affairs is likely to be lasting.
Japan’s Revolution on Taiwan Affairs - War on the Rocks
The most important development for Taiwan’s security might be unfolding right now in Japan. Tokyo’s strategy toward Taiwan is dramatically shifting. Once reluctant to join all but the most anodyne of pro-Taiwan statements with the United States, Japanese officials now increasingly state their desire to “protect Taiwan as a democratic country.” While no formal changes in security policy or diplomatic legalities are likely, Tokyo is signaling that it is willing to support Taiwan’s sovereignty, up to and including joining a military defense of the island against Chinese attack. This is likely giving Chinese Communist Party leaders and military planners much more short-term heartburn than the recently announced submarine and technology sharing deal between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Japan’s Rapidly Shifting Consensus
Until recently, Japan treaded far more carefully than the United States on Taiwan, focusing its language on “hope” for peaceful reconciliation between Beijing and Taipei. While, similarly to the United States, Japan never fully recognized China’s claims over Taiwan, Tokyo preferred to keep its official policies even more ambiguous than Washington’s through the Joint Communiqué of 1972. This document, which restored diplomatic ties between Tokyo and Beijing, contained a Japanese recognition that the “Government of the People’s Republic of China” is the “sole legal Government of China.” Furthermore, Japan never created its own version of America’s Taiwan Relations Act, which provided (and still provides) a baseline of unofficial recognition, engagement, and security guarantees from Washington to Taipei in the aftermath of the former’s recognition of the Chinese Communist Party-state.
Rather, in its dealings with China, Japan typically took an accommodating tone on the topic, repeatedly stating that it “fully respects and understands the stance” that Taiwan is an “inalienable part of the territory of the Peoples’ Republic of China,” while never clearly laying out its own stance. Moreover, while there is a history of stridently anti-Chinese Communist Party Japanese politicians, especially within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, their efforts rarely impacted this delicate balance. Successive Japanese governments even actively worked to stifle any public statements of support for Taiwan within their ranks, prioritizing the growing economic relationship with China over geopolitics. For example, in November 1999, the Japanese Foreign Ministry publicly rebuked the right-wing populist governor of Tokyo, Ishihara Shintaro, for publicly referring to Taiwan as a “state,” denigrating him as a mere “local official” without the ability to speak on behalf of the government. During a 2017 visit to Taiwan by Japanese Deputy Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications Akama Jiro, the state broadcaster Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (commonly known as NHK) stated that the visit did not represent a shift in the government’s views toward Taiwan, and the government instructed Akama to partially focus his visit on disagreements over Taiwanese claims to an exclusive economic zone in the East China Sea, in effect treating Taiwan as a partial proxy for equivalent Chinese claims.
Now, Japan is unmistakably changing its approach. While official policies and legal authorities toward Taiwan have not changed and are unlikely to do so, the intent in, and signaling from, Tokyo is clearly different. Japan’s most recent defense white paper discussed Taiwan as “important for Japan’s security and the stability of the international community” and described cross-strait tensions as requiring a “sense of crisis.” Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party launched party-to-party talks in August with Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party involving discussions of security cooperation via joint coast guard exercises. In addition, Japanese politicians are making several once-unthinkable statements supporting Taiwan, like Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi’s assertion that “the peace and stability of Taiwan are directly connected to Japan.” The statement from the April 2021 meeting between then-Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide and U.S. President Joe Biden included a reference to “the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” the first such reference to Taiwan in a U.S.-Japanese statement since 1969. Perhaps most strikingly, there are increasing calls within the Liberal Democratic Party for Japan to create its own version of a Taiwan Relations Act, which would provide a new basis for Japan’s informal recognition of Taipei and would represent both a legal and policy formalization of a political atmosphere that is increasingly willing to part with decades-old communiques.
The Causes of Tokyo’s Shift
What explains these shifts in Japanese strategic thinking and public opinion? First, Japan has cover as part of a larger internationalization of the Taiwan issue, in which the United States, Australia, and many European states are embracing closer ties with Taipei. This, in turn, is leading to more unambiguous statements and acts of support for Taiwanese sovereignty, ranging widely from international calls for Taiwan’s full inclusion in the World Health Organization to Lithuania’s opening of a Taiwan representative office in its capital, Vilnius. Japan’s outreach to Taiwan still appears relatively moderate compared to these initiatives, placing them out of Beijing’s immediate crosshairs.
Second, Japanese priorities in regional engagement are shifting in line with its increasingly leading role within the liberal international order. Exemplified by Tokyo’s leadership to promote the re-booted Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and the “free and open Indo-Pacific,” Japanese strategists increasingly see national security imperatives as intertwined with regional stability. Once widely derided as a free-rider on a U.S.-backed security system, Japan now actively seeks to promote closer defense ties with liberal and democratic states in Asia as an act of strategy. Within this framework, Taiwan is a top candidate for closer relations as a fellow island democracy close with the United States and facing threats from China. From a broader perspective, Japan’s leadership position also draws it closer to Taiwan on its own terms: Japan’s legitimacy as a leader in the liberal world order necessitates its deeper involvement in the increasingly internationalized Taiwan issue, adding an additional motivation beyond geopolitics.
Third, Tokyo’s increasingly hawkish consensus on China is eclipsing traditionally dovish constituencies, ranging from pacifists to big business, who prioritized functional economic and diplomatic ties with Beijing. With Sino-Japanese ties already strained by the U.S. alliance, confrontations in the East China Sea, and fraught disputes over historical memory, these factions worked hard to ensure that relations could remain cordial and functional by keeping Japan out of disputes over Taiwan. However, with perceptions of strategic mistrust increasingly overcoming these imperatives, Tokyo is more willing to take stances on regional and international issues that will draw ire from China, including Taiwan. Even current Prime Minister Kishida Fumio, a noted foreign policy dove throughout his long political career, embraced a tough line on China upon taking office. While serving as foreign minister from 2012 to 2017, Kishida prioritized moderation and balance in Japan’s dealings with China and was widely considered a dovish counterbalance to the more hardline Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. As a more junior member, he even based his political brand in opposing his party’s hawkish right wing, writing in 2005 that “balance in the trilateral Japan-US-China relationship is essential.” Nevertheless, upon winning the Liberal Democratic Party’s leadership contest in September 2021, Kishida pivoted to a more hawkish position, criticizing Chinese human rights violations and pledging to expand Japan’s long-distance strike capabilities. With the Japanese public growing increasingly skeptical of China in the face of regular military provocations, this hawkish consensus is likely to continue to grow in influence.
Indeed, the pro-Taiwan shift is not only evident in the government halls of Tokyo, but among the Japanese people. Polling suggests that support for Taiwan is even popular amongst the still pacifist-leaning Japanese population, with 74 percent of respondents in an April 2021 poll by Nikkei and TV Tokyo supporting active Japanese engagement toward “stability in the Taiwan Strait.” An earlier poll in January 2021 found 67 percent of Japanese respondents describing Taiwan as a “trustworthy ally” in global affairs. It is worth noting that the feeling is mutual in Taiwan, where 58 percent of respondents in a November 2021 poll agreed that Japan would send troops for Taiwan’s defense against a Chinese invasion. This matches a more extensive history of relative “Japanophilia” in Taiwanese politics, making the state a notable outlier in a region deeply immersed in anti-Japanese views. Far from the “Japan-bashing” frequently practiced in Korea and China, President Tsai Ing-wen is known for occasionally tweeting to her 1.7 million followers in Japanese, something nearly unthinkable in any other former colony of the Japanese Empire. Several Japanese and Taiwanese commentaries on Tsai’s unlikely re-election victory in 2020 even mentioned her courting of Taiwan’s “pro-Japan young people” as part of her political appeal. Japanese politicians often return the favor, with tweets celebrating Taiwan’s national day and of Japanese politicians eating Chinese-boycotted Taiwanese pineapples garnering widespread attention. These warm and longstanding cultural and political ties only smooth the path toward closer defense relations.
What About Formal Policies and Laws?
Of course, security policy is hardly the result of tweets about pineapples. Prospects for any formal change to policies or laws toward Taiwan appear highly unlikely, despite supportive talk for some reforms within the Liberal Democratic Party. However, those focusing on the unlikelihood of Japanese legal or policy changes should consider the analogous case of the United States. Washington has also not committed to any significant changes in security policies or legal authorities despite an increasingly hawkish consensus and meaningful shifts in strategic thinking toward Taiwan. While it is true that recent statements from Japanese leaders should not be perceived as pledges to defend Taiwan, such ambiguity is also the cornerstone of the Washington’s policy. Thus, a lack of legal or policy changes should not be conflated with a continuity of Japan’s previous posture toward the Taiwan issue. Rather, the combination of political statements, shifting public opinion, and Tokyo’s acceptance of a more broadly confrontational relationship with China do represent a revolution for Japan’s role in Taiwan’s security. Regardless of policies and legalities, the Japanese security establishment appears willing to defend Taiwan to an unprecedented extent.
Take, for example, the idea of a Japanese version of the Taiwan Relations Act, mentioned above. America’s Taiwan Relations Act, signed in 1979 as a counterbalance to the decision to recognize the People’s Republic of China and end formal recognition of Taiwan’s government, still acts as the primary legal basis for a hypothetical American defense of Taiwan. The act commits the United States to “provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character” and provides an ambiguous but meaningful commitment to defend the island from “any resort to force or other forms of coercion” from China. Despite calls for a clarification of this “strategic ambiguity,” the 1979 law appears likely to remain the main legal basis for Washington’s continued support for Taipei. Regardless of the law’s non-committal language, however, an increasing and bipartisan consensus is forming in the United States to diplomatically engage with Taipei and defend Taiwan with military force, even if laws and policies still call for ambiguity. Similarly, despite hopes for a Japanese version of the Taiwan Relations Act in hawkish factions of the Liberal Democratic Party, prospects for such a law passing the Diet are dim. Nevertheless, the Japanese consensus is similarly fundamentally shifting without any likely legal formalization or change in explicit security policy, a fact that should not be misunderstood as a lack of seriousness or commitment by Tokyo. As for the legal authorities for a defense of Taiwan, the move by then-Prime Minister Abe Shinzo to expand the definition of the pacifist Article 9 of the constitution to include “collective self-defense” of partners appears to provide Tokyo all the justification it would need to defend Taiwan. This is especially true if Japanese strategists and public opinion supported such an action.
Likely Regional Responses
Beijing will undoubtedly bristle at any deepening relations between Taipei and Tokyo, especially security ties. Japan’s statements on Taiwanese issues are a particularly jarring for Chinese leaders, who still associate any Japanese involvement with the imperial and colonial era of the early 20th century. Indeed, the Chinese Communist Party often conflates “separatist” Taiwanese movements with Japan itself. Victor Gao, the vice president of the party-backed Center for China and Globalization, told Le Monde newspaper in October 2021 that “separatist” Taiwanese were mostly made up of the “10% of the 23 million Taiwanese [that] are in fact of Japanese descent.” Any further engagement with Taipei almost ensures that the ongoing campaign of air defense identification zone incursions and “gray zone” activities in disputed waters in the East China Sea are here to stay. Moreover, economic retaliation, along the lines of Chinese actions taken against South Korean business giant Lotte after a dispute over missile defense systems, remains in the cards for any Japanese business that crosses Beijing’s commercial red lines. Nevertheless, Tokyo’s increasingly hawkish security community sees such actions as par for the course in today’s geopolitical climate.
On the other hand, this trend offers nothing but upside for strategists in Washington and Taipei. Any credible military defense of Taiwan always depended on free U.S. military access to Japanese-based forces and materiel. For decades, this forced U.S. and Taiwanese leaders and planners to ask whether Japan would risk potential Chinese attacks by allowing such access in wartime. A Japan that is not only willing to allow a war to be fought from its territory, but also to join in with its own forces, could provide a decisive edge for Washington and Taipei’s deterrence efforts. A shared warfighting scenario of the defense of Taiwan could also provide the U.S.-Japanese alliance with a renewed unified purpose and direction besides Japan’s immediate territorial defense, an admittedly more far-fetched scenario. However, while Japan still maintains a more ambiguous policy and legal stance than the United States, Washington should refrain from pushing its ally to go even further. The strategy of “strategic ambiguity” that provides political flexibility within set legal and policy boundaries works for the United States and should be allowed to work for Japan.
In Tokyo, Japanese leaders are likely to continue to see manageable and limited downsides in continued outreach to Taiwan. Tokyo’s embrace of a more prominent role within the liberal international order and increasing realist consensus on China is overcoming specific economic-minded constituencies within the Liberal Democratic Party and Japanese government that favor a more cooperative relationship with Beijing. Future areas of Tokyo-Taipei cooperation, such as Taiwan’s recent bid to join the rebooted Trans-Pacific Partnership and other international forums, are similarly agreeable in both Tokyo and Taipei. Discussions of security cooperation, like joint coast guard exercises, have a reasonable chance of bearing fruit. These meaningful developments can be contextualized within a larger internationalization of the Taiwan issue, giving Japan cover in its bilateral relationship with China. While such actions mean Japan can expect continued aggressive Chinese military actions near Japanese seas and airspace, Tokyo essentially perceives such provocations as inevitable regardless of Japan’s relations with Taiwan. Japan’s revolution on Taiwan affairs is likely to be lasting.
Ryan Ashley is an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force with extensive operational experience in East Asia and Japan and a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas’ Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs focusing on Japanese security relations with Southeast Asia. He is also a lecturer with the Air Force Special Operations School, where he teaches courses on Japanese politics, culture, and security. He has previously published on East Asian security and international relations with the National Interest, Military Times, and the Diplomat. The views expressed here are those of the author’s and do not represent those of the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any part of the U.S. government.
7. Iran nuclear talks are restarting, but they’re pointless: Biden needs a bipartisan strategy
Excerpts:
The policy review should be quick, ideally 30 to 60 days, and start with a review of the Islamic Republic’s motivations. Is Tehran increasing its nuclear activities as leverage for sanctions removal and a return to the 2015 nuclear deal? Or does Iran look at North Korea, which tested its first nuclear weapon more than 15 years ago, as an example to follow?
The answers to those questions will determine whether a return to the 2015 nuclear deal or any agreement that provides Tehran much-needed sanctions relief is advisable. If Tehran is only interested in pursuing a financial lifeline for limited nuclear concessions, then the “longer and stronger” deal that Biden initially advocated is not possible. Removing all leverage for an expiring deal — or one that’s even worse — is not in America’s interests.
Some experts will say there’s no time for such a review. But Biden has already spent nine months waiting for Iran to become a cooperative negotiating partner — he can spare 30 to 60 days to get his approach right. If he doesn’t, Tehran will follow Pyongyang’s path to a nuclear weapon.
Iran nuclear talks are restarting, but they’re pointless: Biden needs a bipartisan strategy
President Joe Biden’s Iran policy is failing, and the indirect negotiations restarting in Vienna Nov. 29 won’t yield a win.
Biden assumed that goodwill gestures and proactive concessions would bring Tehran to the table. Instead, Iran is patiently moving toward a nuclear weapon — or at least a turnkey nuclear option — narrowing the president’s decision space.
Out of ideas, Biden should quickly assemble a high-powered, bipartisan team of outside advisers — think Condoleezza Rice and Leon Panetta — to craft a new policy that can unify Washington while Tehran signals it’s preparing to sprint for a bomb.
Iran has produced uranium enriched up to 60 percent purity, a short distance to the 90 percent needed for nuclear weapons. It’s also producing uranium metal, an important step in nuclear-weapon development.
In February, Tehran announced it would no longer adhere to the Additional Protocol, which allows the International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct short-notice nuclear-site inspections. It also halted IAEA access to surveillance and other electronic data collected at its declared nuclear sites. Meanwhile, it’s stonewalling IAEA investigations into its undeclared nuclear activities.
In short, Tehran’s actions are not remotely consistent with a peaceful nuclear program. For Biden, the inconvenient truth is Iran has taken its most troubling and aggressive steps after he took office.
An often-overlooked element of good policy-making is evaluation. Is the policy achieving its intended goal? It’s obvious Biden’s Iran policy is not.
That may be the only thing on which people on both sides of the issue agree. The administration’s friends say this is because former President Donald Trump poisoned the well with his hostile rhetoric, relentless sanctions and the targeted killing of Qassem Soleimani. Just keep negotiating, they say, and Tehran will come around.
Those excuses are just an exercise in passing the buck.
When Biden entered office, Iran was hurting from his predecessor’s “maximum-pressure campaign,” yet the White House refused to apply the leverage it inherited. Robert Malley, Biden’s chief negotiator, declared in April that we saw “the result of the maximum-pressure campaign. It has failed.”
What did Biden get in exchange for his good will? Nothing. His team isn’t even allowed in the same room with Iranian negotiators. Tehran received sanctions relief without any commitments.
Now the Islamic Republic wants “more for less”: an arrangement where America provides even greater sanctions relief in exchange for nuclear restrictions far less stringent than in the 2015 nuclear deal.
Diagnosing the problem with Biden’s Iran policy is easy; developing a solution is more difficult.
see also
The IAEA board of governors meeting this week is an important opportunity. The Biden administration should pursue Tehran’s censure for covering up clandestine nuclear work throughout the deal’s existence. It’s resisted in the past, worried that Iran would become less cooperative at the negotiating table, but the talks are moribund, so it’s time Biden signaled that Washington is done waiting. When the board passed a June 2020 censure resolution, Iran (briefly) complied with the IAEA’s requests for information and access.
More important, the president should use the delay Tehran’s stonewalling has created to order a policy review co-led by a Democrat not in his administration and a Republican who wasn’t in the Trump administration. Several candidates come to mind: Robert Gates and Leon Panetta, former defense secretaries, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former CIA Director David Petraeus and former Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.).
The policy review should be quick, ideally 30 to 60 days, and start with a review of the Islamic Republic’s motivations. Is Tehran increasing its nuclear activities as leverage for sanctions removal and a return to the 2015 nuclear deal? Or does Iran look at North Korea, which tested its first nuclear weapon more than 15 years ago, as an example to follow?
The answers to those questions will determine whether a return to the 2015 nuclear deal or any agreement that provides Tehran much-needed sanctions relief is advisable. If Tehran is only interested in pursuing a financial lifeline for limited nuclear concessions, then the “longer and stronger” deal that Biden initially advocated is not possible. Removing all leverage for an expiring deal — or one that’s even worse — is not in America’s interests.
Some experts will say there’s no time for such a review. But Biden has already spent nine months waiting for Iran to become a cooperative negotiating partner — he can spare 30 to 60 days to get his approach right. If he doesn’t, Tehran will follow Pyongyang’s path to a nuclear weapon.
Anthony Ruggiero is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and served as senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense on the National Security Council.
8. Helping Iran fail in Iraq
Excerpts:
It is unlikely that Iraqi militias could fly drones out of bases inside Iran without Tehran’s knowledge. It is also unlikely that Iraq’s militias could use the IRGC base in Syria, usually used to house militias from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Afghanistan, without Iranian clearance. Tehran’s Iraqi proxies could have assassinated Kadhimi in several ways without obtaining Iranian clearance. Using explosive drones could not have been one of them.
Further evidence of Iranian involvement in the attack on Kadhimi could be inferred from Iraqi politics. Elections were held on Oct. 10 and saw the defeat of the pro-Iran bloc, which shrank from 48 seats to 16 in Iraq’s 329-seat Parliament. The anti-militia blocs can form a ruling coalition that excludes Iran’s Iraqi proteges from the Cabinet and has promised to disband the pro-Iran militias.
To undo their humiliating defeat and keep their militias intact, Tehran’s proxies held a sit-in in Baghdad, protesting the election as fraudulent and demanding a recount or a repeat.
...
So far, Iraq has proven to be far more difficult for Tehran to control, a lesson Washington should heed. Before the United States withdraws the remaining 2,500 military advisers in Iraq, it is worth remembering that the country is not lost to Iran yet and that, with global support, Baghdad can beat Iran and disband its militias. All Washington needs to do is have some faith in anti-Islamic Iran Iraqis, and some patience in maintaining the currently costless U.S. policy on Iran in Iraq.
Helping Iran fail in Iraq
Hours after the failed Nov. 7 assassination attempt on Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al Kadhimi, pro-Iran militias in Iraq claimed responsibility but denied that Tehran had ordered the attack. Not only was Tehran kept in the dark, they insisted, but its deployment of a top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander to Baghdad after the failed attempt was to urge calm.
However, judging by how Tehran organizes its proxies, their use of explosive drones, Iraq’s political context, Iranian statements after the attack, and the history of pro-Iran militias around the region, there is little doubt that the assassination order came from Iran.
Iran has been building and exporting its militia model throughout the region since 1979, often by exploiting opportunities to plant and grow local armed groups that pledge allegiance to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. War usually offers Iran a great opportunity to recruit followers and form militias.
In 2014, Sunni remnants of Saddam Hussein’s intelligence agency, rebranding themselves as the Islamist terrorist group ISIS, took over the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, the Najaf-based top Shiite authority, issued an edict, fatwa, that allowed Iraqis to form militias to defend their country against the Islamic State onslaught. Tehran’s proxies stepped into the chaos.
But the pro-Iran militias predate the rise of ISIS and go as far back as the Iraqi war with Iran (1980-1988), when Tehran organized Iraqi exiles and prisoners of war into battalions that fought alongside the Iranian army against their own country. After the downfall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the exiles returned to Iraq and brought with them their militias that attacked U.S. troops and engaged in bloody rounds of fighting with other armed groups inside Iraq.
Sistani’s edict in 2014 legitimized all these groups. Militiamen were placed on Iraqi payroll. Once ISIS was defeated, the militias should have disbanded, but Tehran had other ideas. It rebranded them as “resistance” to the continuing American presence in Iraq, a move that alienated Sistani, who ordered his followers to retreat to their previous role as guards of the holy shrines. From then on, Tehran’s proxies in Iraq became known as the “loyalist militias,” meaning loyal to Khamenei. Such allegiance means that the hierarchy in these organizations operates along the lines of Takleef Sharii (from the Islamic religious law, Shariah). Disobeying an order from a superior becomes tantamount to religious sacrilege. This is why it is highly unlikely that any of the Iranian militias decided on an operation as significant and sensitive as killing the prime minister of Iraq without a Takleef Sharii from Iran.
But even if Tehran’s proxies wanted to act alone, to use explosive drones would have required the militias to fly them out of one of three bases. A study from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point found that “the broader logistical system that supports drone attacks [in Iraq] uses three lines of supply.” Two bases are located in “Iran’s Ahvaz and Kermanshah regions,” and a third is “between Albu Kamal in Syria and the launch areas near Al-Asad Air Base, east of the Euphrates River.”
It is unlikely that Iraqi militias could fly drones out of bases inside Iran without Tehran’s knowledge. It is also unlikely that Iraq’s militias could use the IRGC base in Syria, usually used to house militias from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Afghanistan, without Iranian clearance. Tehran’s Iraqi proxies could have assassinated Kadhimi in several ways without obtaining Iranian clearance. Using explosive drones could not have been one of them.
Further evidence of Iranian involvement in the attack on Kadhimi could be inferred from Iraqi politics. Elections were held on Oct. 10 and saw the defeat of the pro-Iran bloc, which shrank from 48 seats to 16 in Iraq’s 329-seat Parliament. The anti-militia blocs can form a ruling coalition that excludes Iran’s Iraqi proteges from the Cabinet and has promised to disband the pro-Iran militias.
To undo their humiliating defeat and keep their militias intact, Tehran’s proxies held a sit-in in Baghdad, protesting the election as fraudulent and demanding a recount or a repeat.
Iranian attempts to “stop the steal ” hit two main obstacles. The first was the global consensus that the election was free and fair, and the second was Prime Minister Kadhimi’s impeccable credibility as an honest broker.
Unlike his predecessors, Kadhimi was the first incumbent chief executive not to run for election, a move that boosted his credibility, and by extension that of the election. Iran needed Kadhimi out of the way. If a civil war broke out because of the assassination, that would be even better. War can reset politics and end only with holding a new round of elections.
To the militias’ misfortune, the assassination attempt failed and the world denounced it. Feeling the heat, Iran rushed to distance itself while instructing its militias to tell Reuters that Tehran had not ordered them to try to kill the premier.
Yet even in their statements denouncing the plot, Tehran and its Iraqi proxies warned Iraqis of a “civil war” — code word for a bloodbath should the anti-Iran coalition proceed with forming a cabinet that pursues disarming militias.
The behavior of Tehran and its proxies in Iraq took a page from the playbook of Hezbollah in Lebanon. The party lost parliamentary elections in 2005 and 2009, but through a combination of stalling government and using violence against rivals, Hezbollah eventually prevailed in the 2018 election.
The tenure of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud had ended in 2007 when Hezbollah shut down Parliament to prevent its rival majority coalition from electing one of its own. When the elected government decided to dismantle Hezbollah’s illegal underground communication network, the party started a civil war on May 7, 2008, forcing the global community to scramble to restore stability. Settlement led to the election of a “consensus president.” Hezbollah therefore knocked out its rival candidate, while also imposing an electoral law that it thought would give it an election victory.
So confident was Hezbollah of winning that its chief Hassan Nasrallah delivered a speech, on the eve of the election, in which he said that winners will form a cabinet and losers will stay out of it and sit in the opposition. Hezbollah lost the 2009 election and Nasrallah walked back his statement. He insisted, instead, on a “national unity” cabinet that included Hezbollah’s losing coalition. The unarmed majority conceded to the demands of Hezbollah and its formidable militia.
In 2014, the term of the “consensus” President Michel Suleiman ended, and the majority was planning, again, to elect one of its own. This time, Hezbollah shut down Parliament for two years while threatening its main opponent in exile, Saad Hariri, with assassination if he returned to Lebanon. The majority conceded and elected the party’s candidate Michel Aoun. Next, Hezbollah imposed yet another electoral law, this time securing its electoral victory in 2018.
As in Lebanon, Iran’s militias in Iraq are not in a hurry. Through a combination of stalling government and using violence against rivals, including assassinations and a full-scale civil war if need be, Tehran’s proxies are patiently culling their opponents and imposing their will. If left unchecked, Iran could turn Iraq into another one of its satellite countries.
But not so fast. Iraq might prove to be a harder nut to crack than Lebanon. To start with, Lebanon’s Shiite population that Iran has subsumed, using funds and arms, numbers 1 million. In Iraq, the Shiites count around 20 million, which means that it would take Iran 20 times as much money to buy the Iraqi Shiite community, a sum it could never afford.
Second, unlike impoverished and resourceless Lebanon, Iraq is the fourth-largest oil producer in the world, bringing its treasury some $50 billion annually and allowing the Iraqi state to be one of the largest employers in the world. As such, the Iraqi government has been able to outbid Tehran in trying to buy Shiite loyalty.
Third, unlike Lebanon, which has no claims to Shiite history, the southern Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala are the most revered in the Shiite world, giving the Iraqi Shiite religious authorities, such as Sistani, much more prestige over the Qom-based Iranian Shiite clerics, such as Khamenei.
Since 2003, Iran has been trying to transform Iraq into another satellite state like Lebanon. The attempt on Kadhimi’s life resembled the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. A U.N. tribunal indicted five Hezbollah leaders on charges related to Hariri’s killing.
In Yemen, too, Iran instructed its proxy militia to kill former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in 2017, when he was on his way to break ranks with Tehran and join its opponents.
So far, Iraq has proven to be far more difficult for Tehran to control, a lesson Washington should heed. Before the United States withdraws the remaining 2,500 military advisers in Iraq, it is worth remembering that the country is not lost to Iran yet and that, with global support, Baghdad can beat Iran and disband its militias. All Washington needs to do is have some faith in anti-Islamic Iran Iraqis, and some patience in maintaining the currently costless U.S. policy on Iran in Iraq.
Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington, D.C.-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy. He tweets @hahussain .
9. The US can't deter an attack on Taiwan
Excerpts:
In fact, we have now reached a point in the nuclear relationship where the so-called “stability-instability paradox” has begun to kick in. The stability-instability paradox holds that as two states achieve rough nuclear parity (or at least the ability to inflict mutual assured destruction on one another), they feel more confident in engaging in conventional military competition and even conflict.
As this is now undeniably the case between the United States and China, all that really matters going forward is the U.S. conventional deterrent — the ability to deny China success on the conventional battlefield. And that deterrent is simply no longer fit for purpose.
Does this mean that the PRC will “liberate” Taiwan anytime soon? Probably not. The PLA is not yet ready to launch a full-scale amphibious assault and will likely not be ready for a few years. But it does mean that Washington cannot count on the policies and platitudes of the past to deter Beijing for much longer. It means that when it comes to Taiwan, the United States must decide: take steps now to restore deterrence or prepare to see Taiwan “liberated” in the not too distant future.
The US can't deter an attack on Taiwan
The Hill · by Andrew Latham, Opinion Contributor · November 22, 2021
If the United States can’t deter Beijing, it is likely that sometime within the next six years Taiwan will be “liberated” by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). And as things currently stand, the U.S. can’t deter Beijing. So within the next six years, Taiwan will be “liberated.”
Although it can be complicated in practice, deterring a conventional attack of the kind Beijing is likely to launch against Taiwan is in theory very simple. All that the United States needs to do is raise the anticipated cost of a Chinese conventional attack to the point where it exceeds the benefits Beijing might realistically hope to gain from such an attack.
Confronted with such a cost-benefit calculus, China’s leadership would have a powerful disincentive to use military force to attack Taiwan. It would, in other words, be effectively deterred.
And for most of the period since Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist forces retreated to the island in 1949, the combined forces of Taiwan and the United States have done just that.
Three factors were key to deterring China from attacking Taiwan. First, with U.S. support, Taiwan’s armed forces during this period were sufficiently strong to deny the PLA any realistic possibility of conducting a successful amphibious assault on Taiwan. The combination of Chinese military weakness – the PLA was neither organized nor equipped for serious amphibious operations – and Taiwanese-American conventional military strength meant that Beijing was dissuaded from even attempting to use military force to compel Taiwan to return to the fold.
Second, for most of this period Beijing’s level of motivation was in any case relatively low. To
be sure, the recovery of all the nation’s historical territory, including Taiwan, has been part of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) raison d’être since the founding of the People’s Republic. But for the most part – and especially during the period of “peaceful rise” diplomacy initiated by Deng Xiaoping – this was a background aspiration rather than a pressing concern.
Finally, cross-strait conventional deterrence was effectively backstopped by U.S. nuclear
weapons. As China became wealthier and more militarily capable, deterrence was upheld by the possibility that any attempt to use conventional military force to liberate Taiwan might escalate to the point where the U.S. would be forced to use nuclear weapons to defend the island.
Given the United States’s overwhelming nuclear superiority during this era, and the credibility this lent to its implicit nuclear threat, this meant that the potential costs to Beijing of any cross-strait invasion were simply so high that no anticipated political benefit could justify the risk.
Fast forward to today. Now, none of these conditions remain in place. Consider the changed conventional military balance. Beijing did not like having to back down during the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1996 when the United States sent two carrier strike groups to Taiwan to deter Chinese aggression. It has spent the quarter-century since then modernizing its military so that it would never find itself in a similar situation again.
These modernization efforts were aimed specifically at enabling the Chinese air force, navy, army and strategic rocket force to blockade Taiwan, deny U.S. forces access to the region and ultimately to launch amphibious operations against the island. No one seriously doubts that these efforts have paid dividends or that China’s military is now capable – or very nearly capable – of conducting high-tempo, full-spectrum operations against U.S. forces in the region. And no one doubts they could easily defeat Taiwan’s meager military.
The result: a dramatic shift of the correlation of conventional forces in China’s favor. Indeed, so dramatic has this shift been that Chinese President Xi Jinping and China’s top brass now believe that China can prevail militarily, even if the U.S. intervenes, and do so at an acceptable military cost.
Next consider changes in the perceived benefits to Beijing of successfully liberating Taiwan.
Viewed from the perspective of China’s internal politics, those benefits are considerable. Xi and the Party have both increasingly staked their legitimacy – and in Xi’s case, his legacy – on the project of national rejuvenation, a project that includes reaching a certain level of economic prosperity, but also political goals such “moving to the center stage” of world politics and reunifying the nation that was “split” by foreign imperialism and civil war.
This being the case, the political cost of allowing Taiwan to remain outside the fold, now that China is relatively wealthy and powerful and thus able to compel its return, is growing. Indeed, if Chinese public opinion is any indicator, the political benefits of forcibly compelling Taiwan’s reunification now clearly exceed the costs. Doing nothing – the official policy for most of the period before China’s rise and Xi’s accession – is a decreasingly viable option.
Taken together, these two sets of developments – benefits and incentives rapidly rising, costs and disincentives substantially declining – would seem to have shifted Beijing’s cost-benefit calculus decisively in the direction of invasion. The needle, to put it bluntly, would seem to have swung sharply in the direction of “attack.”
Not to worry, though, one might argue. Any such invasion would have the potential to draw the United States into the conflict, and that in turn carries with it the risk of escalation to the point of nuclear war. Given that existential risk, surely the needle remains firmly pointed in the direction of “don’t attack.”
And that leads us to the final, and decisive, shift in the strategic correlation of forces — changes in the nuclear balance. As China has expanded its nuclear missile force and otherwise taken steps to realize strategic parity with the U.S., Washington’s nuclear backstop has become less credible (that’s the whole point of China’s nuclear buildup).
In fact, we have now reached a point in the nuclear relationship where the so-called “stability-instability paradox” has begun to kick in. The stability-instability paradox holds that as two states achieve rough nuclear parity (or at least the ability to inflict mutual assured destruction on one another), they feel more confident in engaging in conventional military competition and even conflict.
As this is now undeniably the case between the United States and China, all that really matters going forward is the U.S. conventional deterrent — the ability to deny China success on the conventional battlefield. And that deterrent is simply no longer fit for purpose.
Does this mean that the PRC will “liberate” Taiwan anytime soon? Probably not. The PLA is not yet ready to launch a full-scale amphibious assault and will likely not be ready for a few years. But it does mean that Washington cannot count on the policies and platitudes of the past to deter Beijing for much longer. It means that when it comes to Taiwan, the United States must decide: take steps now to restore deterrence or prepare to see Taiwan “liberated” in the not too distant future.
Andrew Latham is a professor of international relations at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., and a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities, a Washington, D.C., think tank.
The Hill · by Andrew Latham, Opinion Contributor · November 22, 2021
10. U.S. warship again transits sensitive Taiwan Strait
U.S. warship again transits sensitive Taiwan Strait
The USS Milius (DDG69) guided-missile destroyer arrives to join the Forward Deployed Naval Force (FDNS) at the U.S. naval base in Yokosuka, Japan May 22, 2018. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo
TAIPEI, Nov 23 (Reuters) - A U.S. warship again sailed through the sensitive Taiwan Strait on Tuesday, part of what the U.S. military calls routine activity but which always riles China whose government believes Washington is trying to stir regional tensions.
The U.S. Navy said the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer Milius conducted a "routine Taiwan Strait transit" through international waters in accordance with international law.
"The ship's transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific. The United States military flies, sails, and operates anywhere international law allows," it added.
There was no immediate response from China.
Last month, the Chinese military condemned the United States and Canada for each sending a warship through the Taiwan Strait, saying they were threatening peace and stability in the region.
China claims democratically ruled Taiwan as its own territory, and has mounted repeated air force missions into Taiwan's air defence identification zone (ADIZ) over the past year or so, provoking anger in Taipei.
The United States like most countries has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan but is its most important international backer and arms supplier.
Beijing calls Taiwan the most sensitive and important issue in its relations with Washington.
U.S. Navy ships have been transiting the strait roughly monthly, to the anger of Beijing. U.S. allies occasionally also send ships through the strait, including Britain in September.
Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Peter Cooney
11. The General of the Space Force Has Heard Your Jokes
Respect for General Raymond. He handles this well.
The General of the Space Force Has Heard Your Jokes
Gen. John W. Raymond discusses being memeified, Steve Carell, and how his military branch plans to keep your smartphone from being turned into a stupid phone.
The General of the Space Force Has Heard Your Jokes | The New Yorker
The U.S. Space Force—the sixth military service branch, which turns two years old next month—provides resources to protect and defend America’s satellites from the likes of the Chinese and the Russians. Space Force members also operate the Global Positioning System satellite constellation, providing G.P.S. services, for free, to everyone on the planet. All extremely important stuff. Yet the Space Force is considered something of a joke—the subject of late-night gibes and Internet memes. Critics have derided it as a vanity project of President Trump, a campaign-rally applause line somehow made real. Last year, when Trump unveiled the Space Force logo, which bears a striking resemblance to “Star Trek” ’s Starfleet insignia, Twitter lit up. (“Ahem,” tweeted the original “Star Trek” cast member George Takei. “We are expecting some royalties from this . . .”) Also undercutting the serious nature of the service: the Netflix comedy series “Space Force,” which stars Steve Carell as the branch’s bullheaded leader.
If any of this bothers General John W. (Jay) Raymond, the inaugural head of the Space Force, he doesn’t let on. The memeification of the force? “To me, it means that there’s a lot of excitement about space,” he said recently, sitting in a meeting room in Columbia University’s International Affairs Building. The four-star general, who is based at the Pentagon, was visiting between rounds of the Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge, a largely virtual competition in which thirty-two student teams from across the globe made policy recommendations in reaction to a hypothetical cyber-warfare scenario. (This one began with a breach made in “U.S. space sector ground stations’ systems,” an attack apparently undertaken by “Chinese state-sponsored actors.”) The event at Columbia, a partnership with a think tank called the Atlantic Council, was organized by the Digital and Cyber Group, which is run by graduate students at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).
Raymond, who is fifty-nine, with a head shaved bald, pointed to a space-operations badge pinned to his jacket. He noted that the delta symbol at its center had been used by the Air Force—from which the Space Force sprung—years before “Star Trek” ’s 1966 début. Raymond explained that the branch “was not a President Trump thing” but had been under discussion for decades, and came about owing to bipartisan support in Congress. The service now has close to thirteen thousand members, known as “guardians.” “Everybody said we stole it from ‘Guardians of the Galaxy,’ ” Raymond said. “Well, no.” The term derives from the Air Force Space Command motto from 1983, “Guardians of the High Frontier.”
Raymond comes from a military family going back to 1865. His great-great-grandfather, great-grandfather, grandfather, and father all went to West Point and had careers in the Army. Raymond broke with tradition by attending Clemson University on the R.O.T.C. program and joining the Air Force. Still, he’s a little bit rock and roll: at the Patriot Fest 2017 concert at Peterson Air Force Base, in Colorado, he sat in on drums with the country duo Thompson Square, for a performance of its hit “Are You Gonna Kiss Me or Not.”
Raymond made his way to speak to about thirty people gathered in an auditorium, including a half-dozen members of the Digital and Cyber Group, who were wearing matching space-graphic masks that made it look as though they had turquoise nebulae for noses. “The average person in the United States probably doesn’t understand just how reliant their day-to-day life is on space capabilities,” Raymond told those assembled. “If you use your smartphone, you’re using space. Your smartphone would be called a ‘stupid phone’ without space.”
He sat for a Q. & A. with SIPA’s dean, Merit E. Janow, who asked about China’s recent test of a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile, a development said to have taken U.S. intelligence by surprise. “What keeps me awake at night is the speed at which China is moving,” Raymond said. The Chinese, he’d noted earlier, have a satellite (the Shijian-17), equipped with a robotic arm, that has the potential to grab other satellites and disable them. Even scarier is a bit of Russian technology that Raymond described as a “nesting doll”: a satellite that releases a smaller satellite armed with a projectile capable of taking out our own orbital tech.
Afterward, a student approached Raymond with a question about whether we were entering a space arms race. “That’s why the Space Force was so important to create—to move fast and stay ahead of that,” Raymond said. Then the student pivoted to a less dire topic: “Have you watched Steve Carell’s ‘Space Force’?”
He had. “The only thing is, they picked the wrong actor,” he said. “They should have picked Bruce Willis.” He expressed curiosity about an unexplained plot point. “In Season 1, ‘my wife’ is in jail for, like, forty years,” he said. “Nobody knows why. So I keep teasing my wife: ‘What did you do?’ ”
12. Feeding the Bear: A Closer Look at Russian Army Logistics and the Fait Accompli
Conclusion:
Deciphering Russia’s intentions right now is increasingly difficult. It’s military buildup on the border with Ukraine could be preparation for an invasion or it could be yet another round of coercive diplomacy. Nevertheless, thinking through Russia’s military logistics capabilities could give NATO some insights into what Moscow might be planning to do next — and what the Western alliance might do to protect its interests.
Feeding the Bear: A Closer Look at Russian Army Logistics and the Fait Accompli - War on the Rocks
Russia’s military buildup along the border with Ukraine has clearly gotten the attention of policymakers from Kiev to Washington, D.C. CIA Director Bill Burns flew to Moscow to try to avert a crisis, while U.S. intelligence officials are reportedly warning NATO allies that a Russian invasion of large parts of Ukraine can’t be ruled out.
The possibility of Russian aggression against Ukraine would have huge consequences for European security. Perhaps even more concerning would be a Russian attack against a NATO member itself. Moscow might want to undermine security in the Baltic states or Poland, for instance, but could the Russian government successfully carry out a large-scale invasion of those countries? If recent wargames are any indication, then the answer is a resounding yes — and it could do so pretty easily. In a 2016 War on the Rocks article, David A. Shlapak and Michael W. Johnson projected that the Russian army would overrun the Baltic states in three days.
Most of these wargames, such as RAND’s Baltic study, focus on fait accompli, an attack by the Russian government aimed at seizing terrain — then quickly digging in. This creates a dilemma for NATO: launch a costly counter-attack and risk heavy casualties and possibly a nuclear crisis or accept a Russian fait accompli and undermine faith in the credibility of the alliance. Some analysts have argued that these seizures are much more likely to be small in size, limited to one or two towns. While that scenario should, of course, be studied, the concern about the feasibility of a fait accompli in the form of a major invasion still stands.
While the Russian army definitely has the combat power to achieve these scenarios, does Russia have the logistics force structure to support these operations? The short answer is not in the timelines envisioned by Western wargames. In an initial offensive — depending on the fighting involved — Russian forces might reach early objectives, but logistics would impose requirements for operational pauses. As a result, a large land grab is unrealistic as a fait accompli. The Russian army has the combat power to capture the objectives envisioned in a fait accompli scenario, but it does not have the logistic forces to do it in a single push without a logistical pause to reset its sustainment infrastructure. The Russian Aerospace Forces (with a sizable tactical bomber and attack aircraft force) and attack helicopters can also pick up fire support to alleviate artillery ammunition consumption.
NATO planners should develop plans focusing on exploiting Russian logistic challenges rather than trying to address the disparity in combat power. This involves drawing the Russian army deep into NATO territory and stretching Russian supply lines to the maximum while targeting logistics and transportation infrastructure such as trucks, railroad bridges, and pipelines. Committing to a decisive battle at the frontier would play directly into Russian hands, allowing a shorter supply to compensate for their logistic shortfalls.
Railroads and Russian Logistics Capabilities
Russian army logistics forces are not designed for a large-scale ground offensive far from their railroads. Inside maneuver units, Russian sustainment units are a size lower than their Western counterparts. Only brigades have an equivalent logistics capability, but it’s not an exact comparison. Russian formations have only three-quarters the number of combat vehicles as their U.S. counterparts but almost three times as much artillery. On paper (not all brigades have a full number of battalions), Russian brigades have two artillery battalions, a rocket battalion, and two air defense battalions per brigade as opposed to one artillery battalion and an attached air defense company per U.S. brigade. As a result of extra artillery and air defense battalions, the Russian logistics requirements are much larger than their U.S. counterparts.
Maneuver formation U.S. sustainment formation Russian sustainment formation Battalion Company Platoon Regiment Battalion/Squadron Company Brigade Battalion Battalion Division Brigade Battalion Corps Brigade None Combined Arms Army N/A BrigadeAdditionally, the Russian army doesn’t have sufficient sustainment brigades — or material-technical support brigades, as they call them — for each of their combined arms armies. A look into Military Balance, published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, shows 10 material-technical support brigades supporting 11 combined arms armies, one tank army, and four army corps. Russia’s Western and Southern Commands each have three armies and only two material-technical support brigades to support them. Russia’s general staff likely accepted this risk because these commands have the most developed rail infrastructure. In defensive operations, a Russian brigade can pull directly from the railhead. A trump card the Russians have are their 10 railroad brigades, which have no Western equivalents. They specialize in railroad security, construction, and repair, while rolling stock is provided by civilian state companies.
The reason Russia is unique in having railroad brigades is that logistically, Russian forces are tied to railroad from factory to army depot and to combined arms army and, where possible, to the division/brigade level. No other European nation uses railroads to the extent that the Russian army does. Part of the reason is that Russia is so vast — over 6,000 miles from one end to the other. The rub is that Russian railroads are a wider gauge than the rest of Europe. Only former Soviet nations and Finland still use the Russian standard — this includes the Baltic states. There are several railheads prior to Baltic capitals, but it will still take several days to reach and establish railhead operations. Forward railhead operations are more than just cross-loading cargo from train onto truck. It involves receiving and sorting cargo, repackaging for specific units, and storing excess on the ground. Due to the hazardous nature of military cargo, the ground needs to be prepared so that cargo can be stored in safe, distributed environments. This process can take one to three days. The site also needs to be outside the range of enemy artillery and secured from partisans. A single lucky shell or an rocket propelled grenade can result in a major explosion and have a disproportionate effect on the tempo of an entire division. This is assuming the key bridges, such as one at Narva on the Russian-Estonian border, aren’t destroyed and have to be repaired. Poland only has one wide gauge rail line, which runs from the Krakow region to Ukraine and can’t be used by Russian forces, without capturing Ukraine first. There are no wide gauge lines running from Belarus to Warsaw. Rail traffic moving across borders usually stops to cross-load cargo or uses adjustable railroad carriages and switches engines (which cannot adjust). In times of war, it is highly unlikely that the Russian army would capture enough Western train engines to support their army, forcing them to rely on trucks. This means that Russian army rail sustainment capability ends at the borders of the former Soviet Union. Trying to resupply the Russian army beyond the Russian gauge rail network would force them to rely mostly on their truck force until railroad troops could reconfigure/repair the railroad or build a new one.
Russia’s truck logistic support, which would be crucial in an invasion of Eastern Europe, is limited by the number of trucks and range of operations. It is possible to calculate how far trucks can operate using simple beer math. Assuming the existing road network can support 45 mph speeds, a single truck can make three trips a day at up to a 45-mile range: One hours to load, one hour to drive to the supported unit, one hours to unload, and another hour to return to base. Repeating this cycle three times equals 12 hours total. The rest of the day is dedicated to truck maintenance, meals, refueling, weapons cleaning, and sleeping. Increase the distance to 90 miles, and the truck can make two trips daily. At 180 miles, the same truck is down to one trip a day. These assumptions won’t work in rough terrain or where there is limited/damaged infrastructure. If an army has just enough trucks to sustain itself at a 45-mile distance, then at 90 miles, the throughput will be 33 percent lower. At 180 miles, it will be down by 66 percent. The further you push from supply dumps, the fewer supplies you can replace in a single day.
The Russian army does not have enough trucks to meet its logistic requirement more than 90 miles beyond supply dumps. To reach a 180-mile range, the Russian army would have to double truck allocation to 400 trucks for each of the material-technical support brigades. To gain familiarity with Russian logistic requirements and lift resources, a useful starting point is the Russian combined arms army. They all have different force structures, but on paper, each combined army is assigned a material-technical support brigade. Each material-technical support brigade has two truck battalions with a total of 150 general cargo trucks with 50 trailers and 260 specialized trucks per brigade. The Russian army makes heavy use of tube and rocket artillery fire, and rocket ammunition is very bulky. Although each army is different, there are usually 56 to 90 multiple launch rocket system launchers in an army. Replenishing each launcher takes up the entire bed of the truck. If the combined arms army fired a single volley, it would require 56 to 90 trucks just to replenish rocket ammunition. That is about a half of a dry cargo truck force in the material-technical support brigade just to replace one volley of rockets. There is also between six to nine tube artillery battalions, nine air defense artillery battalions, 12 mechanized and recon battalions, three to five tank battalions, mortars, anti-tank missiles, and small arms ammunition — not to mention, food, engineering, medical supplies, and so on. Those requirements are harder to estimate, but the potential resupply requirements are substantial. The Russian army force needs a lot of trucks just for ammunition and dry cargo replenishment.
For fuel and water sustainment, each material-technical support brigade has a tactical pipeline battalion. These have lower throughput than their Western equivalents but can be emplaced within three to four days of occupying new terrain. Until then, fuel trucks are required for operational resupply. One might argue that the Russian army has the range to reach its objectives on their original tank of fuel, especially with auxiliary fuel drums they are designed to carry. That is not entirely correct. Tanks and armored vehicles burn through fuel when maneuvering in combat or just idling while stationary. This is the reason why the U.S. Army uses “days of supply” to plan fuel consumption, not range. If a Russian army operation lasts 36 to 72 hours as the RAND study estimates, then the Russian army would have to refuel at least once before tactical pipelines are established to support operations.
Sustaining Logistics Is the Hard Part
A Scenario in the Baltics
There are serious logistic challenges with large-scale fait accompli operations in the Baltics. Small scale fait accompli operations are feasible with small forces without a logistical challenge but on a large scale are far more challenging. Fait accompli requires Russian forces to overrun Baltic states and eliminate all resistance in less than 96 hours — before NATO’s Very High Readiness Task Force can reinforce the defenders. This force won’t stop a Russian attack, but it commits NATO to a land war, negating the very purpose of fait accompli.
Logistics are the key stumbling block in the fait accompli timeline. The railroad is wide gauge and usable, but the timeline is too short for captured railheads to be put back into operation. A dozen NATO air-launched cruise missiles fired over Germany can destroy key rail bridges at Narva, Pskov, and Velikie Lugi, shutting down rail traffic into the Baltics for days until those bridges are repaired. Logistic planners in Russian Western Command have to plan for a scenario in which Baltic states choose to fight a battle in their capital. Historically, urban combat consumes massive amounts of ammunition and takes months to conclude. During the two most prominent examples, the battles of Grozny in the Chechen wars and the Battle of Mosul in 2016, defenders tied down four to 10 times their numbers for up to four months. At Grozny, Russians were firing up to 4,000 shells a day — that’s 50 trucks a day.
Even in a Baltic scenario, Russian planners have to consider the risk that Poland, which can muster four divisions, will launch an immediate counter-attack, trying to catch the Russian army off-balance. The Russian army would have large forces tied to sieges of Tallinn and Riga while fending off a Polish counter-attack from the south. The ammunition consumption would be massive. During the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, some Russian forces expended an entire basic load of ammunition in 12 hours. Assuming the same rates, the Russians would have to replace substantial amounts of ammunition every 12 to 24 hours.
Herein lies the dilemma. Overwhelming local forces in the Baltics before NATO troops arrive does not give Russia time to establish railheads, forcing reliance on trucks. At 130 miles, they can only do one trip a day, generating a truck shortage. Russian planners could commit fewer maneuver forces and risk failing to overwhelm defenders. Alternatively, they could take a logistics pause for two to three days and give the Baltic states time to mobilize and NATO’s Very High Readiness Joint Task Force time to arrive. Meanwhile, they would be taking attrition from local partisans, NATO airstrikes, maintenance breakdowns, and loitering munition as seen in the latest Nagorno-Karabakh War. Either way, fait accompli fails, and conflict degenerates into protracted war, which Russia is likely to lose. Russian logistics can only support a large-scale fait accompli if NATO forces fight a decisive battle at the frontier. The bulk of supply consumption would take place close to Russian depots. Russian air forces can alleviate the logistic strain by taking on fire support. What’s uncertain is how long the Russian air force would provide close air support in the face of NATO airpower, given NATO’s ability to conduct standoff air-to-air engagements with long-range missiles from beyond the effective range of Russian air defense in Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg. A similar picture exists at sea. The combination of airpower, diesel submarines, and shore-based anti-ship missiles is likely to deny the Baltic Sea to surface fleets of both sides.
The Russian army has ample combat power to capture the Baltic states, but it won’t be a rapid fait accompli unless the Russian government scales down the size of the territory it wishes to seize. Using Van Jackson’s 2×2 “Variations of Fait Accompli” diagram as a conceptual framework, we can fully appreciate the Russian dilemma. The logistic forces can only support a gradual fait accompli, which won’t shatter NATO unity, instead giving NATO time to mobilize and seal off the land grab. Even if NATO chooses not to reconquer the territory right away, its member states would likely impose crippling economic sanctions until Russia caves in. On the other hand, the decisive fait accompli, such as the conquest of a full member state, may achieve the objective of shattering NATO unity, but it can’t be logistically supported by the Russian army. It also runs a major risk of miscalculation by assuming that all thirty member states have to declare NATO Article 5. On paper, that’s true, but in practice, only the United States (to provide combat power), Germany, and Poland (to secure access) have to honor Article 5, and Russia would find itself in a major conflict that can escalate beyond the nuclear threshold.
A Polish Scenario
The Russian army’s logistic challenges are different in a Polish scenario. There are fewer time constraints but greater difficulties due to the distances involved and lack of wide gauge railroads, which end at the Belarusian border. The closest railhead to Poland is Grodno and Brest in Belarus. The first is located 130 miles and the second 177 miles from Warsaw. For an army that is stretched to sustain 90 miles, that is a long supply line to support.
Kaliningrad could be considered as another option, but it is not practical, as it is landlocked by NATO members. The combination of NATO airpower, naval forces, and Polish land-based anti-ship missiles make resupply by sea unlikely. According to Military Balance, there is a Russian corps with major depots but no supporting logistics units to push supplies out. Maneuver forces would have to pull these supplies using organic logistic formations, a range of about 45 miles. The garrison there can hold out in isolation for a long time but cannot conduct ground offensive operations. The Russian army will be able to reach Warsaw but cannot capture it without a logistic pause to halt, reconfigure/repair the railroad, and build tactical pipelines and frontline depots. Instead of pausing for a couple of days as in the Baltic scenario, the pause in the Polish scenario could take up to a couple of weeks. This gives NATO breathing space to build combat power.
The logistics are also useful to assess a Ukrainian conflict as Russian forces are again massing on the border. The best means of interpreting the seriousness of Russian intentions is to track the buildup of logistic forces and supply dumps rather than count battalion tactical groups that have moved to the border. The size and scale of logistic preparation tell us exactly how far and deep is Russian army planning to go.
Russian Strategic Reserves
Russia could reinforce its Western Joint Strategic Command (Western Military district) from other parts of the country to increase logistic power, but not by much. As Michael Kofman has pointed out, NATO has the ability to horizontally escalate the conflict by holding most Russian theaters at risk. The Russian General Staff cannot ignore this threat. As a result, Russia’s Central Command and parts of the Eastern Command are the only joint commands not facing an external threat and are able to reinforce Western Command. However, the sustainment forces they provide would be consumed by the additional combat forces that come with it. There are no extra trucks in the Russian army that are not tied to supporting engaged forces.
One of the strengths of the Russian army in a war in the Baltics or Poland would be its ability to mobilize reservists and civilian trucks. Russia still has a massive mobilization capacity built into its national economy, a legacy of World War II and the Cold War. However, mobilizing civilians to fight a war has major economic and political costs. To maintain political stability at home, the Russian people would have to genuinely believe they are defending their country. They will not tolerate husbands, sons, and fathers going off to a war on Putin’s whim. The last time the Russian government heavily relied on conscripts and reservists was during the First Chechen War (1994–1996). Within two months, a major antiwar movement appeared, spearheaded by soldiers’ mothers.
Russia and the Fait Accompli
The Russian army will be hard-pressed to conduct a ground offensive of more than 90 miles beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union without a logistics pause. For NATO, it means it can worry less about a major Russian invasion of the Baltic states or Poland and a greater focus on exploiting Russian logistic challenges by drawing Russian forces further away from their supply depots and targeting chokepoints in the Russian logistic infrastructure and logistic force in general. It also means that Russia is more likely to seize small parts of enemy territory under its logistically sustainable range of 90 miles rather than a major invasion as part of a fait accompli strategy.
From the Russian perspective, it does not appear that they are building their logistic forces with fait accompli or blitzkrieg across Poland in mind. Instead, the Russian government has built an ideal army for their strategy of “Active Defense.” The Russian government has built armed forces highly capable of fighting on home soil or near its frontier and striking deep with long-range fires. However, they are not capable of a sustained ground offensive far beyond Russian railroads without a major logistical halt or a massive mobilization of reserves.
Deciphering Russia’s intentions right now is increasingly difficult. It’s military buildup on the border with Ukraine could be preparation for an invasion or it could be yet another round of coercive diplomacy. Nevertheless, thinking through Russia’s military logistics capabilities could give NATO some insights into what Moscow might be planning to do next — and what the Western alliance might do to protect its interests.
Lt. Col. Alex Vershinin commissioned as a second lieutenant, branched armor, in 2002. He has 10 years of frontline experience in Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan, including four combat tours. Since 2014, he has worked as a modeling and simulations officer in concept development and experimentation field for NATO and the U.S. Army, including a tour at the U.S. Army Sustainment Battle Lab, where he led the experimentation scenario team.
13. Former Members Of Afghan Special Forces, Commandos Issue Plea To U.S. For Help
Former Members Of Afghan Special Forces, Commandos Issue Plea To U.S. For Help
A former high-ranking member of Afghan special forces and commando units has issued a plea urging U.S. officials to move remaining members of the force to the United States to avoid a “humanitarian catastrophe.”
The former high-ranking member, who ask not to be identified by name, sent a statement to RFE/RL on November 23.
The United States and its allies evacuated tens of thousands of at-risk Afghans after the Taliban toppled the Western-backed government in Kabul in August following the withdrawal of U.S. and other coalition troops.
As of late October, there were some 53,000 Afghans staying at eight military bases in the United States and receiving medical care and other assistance before resettlement around the country.
But thousands more people want to leave the war-torn country, with those who worked closely with Western militaries seen to be in particular danger from potential Taliban retaliation.
In their statement to RFE/RL, the special forces and commandos said the troops, part of “an elite military force and the best fighting force in Afghanistan,” worked with U.S. and NATO special forces and international partners for common goals and “to eliminate international terrorism for the past 20 years.”
“We fought side by side against the Taliban and other terrorist groups in Afghanistan, and we lost hundreds of our elite comrades in the fight against the Taliban.”
The statement added that after the “escape of political leaders” and the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, the organization disintegrated, with many members left destitute and in danger.
It said the Taliban is seeking out members of the force and is likely to execute those who are caught.
The statement urged U.S. officials to help move those remaining in Afghanistan “to the United States with their families and fulfill your historic responsibility to your Afghan colleagues.”
It warned that a “humanitarian catastrophe” could occur if the forces in Afghanistan are not transferred to the United States, where many of their family members have already been transported.
On November 19, the German Foreign Ministry said that its special representative for Afghanistan, Jasper Wieck, and Ambassador-designate Markus Potzel met with high-ranking officials from the Taliban government in Kabul.
German officials said the Taliban committed to a previously announced general amnesty for anyone affiliated with the toppled internationally backed government and former security forces. They also repeated a pledge for free passage for all Afghans who want to leave the country.
"We have taken note of the pledges. Further engagement depends on their implementation," the Foreign Ministry said.
RFE/RL's Radio Azadi is one of the most popular and trusted media outlets in Afghanistan. Nearly half of the country's adult audience accesses Azadi's reporting on a weekly basis.
14. Four West Point Cadets Named Rhodes Scholars
Very impressive. Congratulations.
FOUR WEST POINT CADETS NAMED RHODES SCHOLARS
By West Point Public Affairs - November 22, 2021
RELEASE NO: 25-21
SHOW CAPTION
WEST POINT, N.Y. – Four U.S. Military Academy cadets were among the 32 U.S. Rhodes Scholarship awardees named Sunday. Class of 2021 cadets Hannah Blakey, Krista Flinkstrom, Veronica Lucian, and Holland Pratt will study at the University of Oxford in the fall of 2022. This is the first time in West Point’s history to have four women Rhode Scholars awarded concurrently. The last time West Point had four American Rhodes scholars was in 1959.
“These cadets epitomize what it means to be a soldier-scholar. Their studies span numerous disciplines, illustrating the diverse intellectual capital that West Point provides for the Nation,” said Dean of the Academic Board, Brig. Gen. Shane Reeves. “We are immensely proud of all they’ve accomplished and the bright future ahead of them. Their success is a win for the whole team. As we celebrate this historic Rhodes cohort, we also celebrate the tremendous team that supported them through this process and their four years at West Point.”
About the Recipients
Cadet Hannah Blakey, a native of Detroit, Michigan, is a Persian and French major with an interest in marginalized and at-risk communities. Dedicated to serving others, Blakey is one of three Cadets-in-Charge of the Elevation initiative mentorship club and is a preschool and kindergarten Sunday school teacher. Blakey has conducted several formal interviews and conversations with Persian-speaking refugees to better understand the cultural and economic factors that impact forced migration and refugees in Persian-speaking regions. The catalyst for this interest was a three-week cultural immersion experience in Uzbekistan in the summer 2019. She lived with an Uzbek host family and studied Persian at the Samarkand Institute of Foreign Languages. Blakey holds multiple records on West Point’s Division I track team, and she serves as the Brigade Executive Officer in the
Corps of Cadets. At Oxford, Blakey plans to earn a Master of Science in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies and a Master of Science in Evidence-Based Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation. Blakey intends to branch Aviation and to use her Rhodes Scholarship experience to improve international partnerships and inform policy changes among the U.S. Army and Persian-speaking nations.
Cadet Krista Flinkstrom is an Economics major with premedical concentration and was born and raised in Stow, Massachusetts. Her academic interests lie in the nexus of global health, economics, and gender. Flinkstrom has focused on challenging herself academically and developing military proficiency on West Point’s Sandhurst Black and Gold team. She has enjoyed the opportunity to attend Airborne school and be the Golf Company executive officer at Cadet Basic Training. This past summer, Flinkstrom worked as an intern with the Development Finance Corporation in Washington D.C., where she helped design its forthcoming gender-based investment strategy. This year, she is the Academics Officer for her cadet company of 115 cadets. Flinkstrom plans to commission into the Engineering branch and to attend Sapper School. At Oxford, she will earn a Master of Science in Economics for Development and a Master of Science in Global Health and Epidemiology.
Cadet Veronica Lucian was raised in New Jersey and Delaware as the oldest of five children. The daughter of a lawyer and homemaker, she quickly learned the importance of hard work and dedication, as well as the value of leadership and compassion. A Life Science major with a minor in Nuclear Science, Lucian has done extensive materials research during her undergraduate career. Her scientific work appears in Matter. Lucian is a soloist for the West Point Glee Club and has sung for distinguished guests and public officials, including the Vice President of the United States. She is the founder of a Women’s Mentorship Group at West Point, which provides an informal avenue for women to collaborate with senior army leaders and to understand career opportunities in the U.S. Army. In June 2019, Lucian earned her Airborne wings, and she plans to commission into the Army Medical Corps. As a Rhodes Scholar, Lucian will read for a Master of Science in Materials at Oxford. After Oxford, she will serve in the U.S. Army as a joint researcher and trauma surgeon, bringing hope and healing to vulnerable populations throughout the world.
Cadet Holland Pratt currently serves as the First Captain of the Corps of Cadets. From Spokane, Washington, Pratt is a Military History major with a Middle Eastern Regional Studies minor. Inspired by her family’s suffering in the Holocaust, Holland’s research focuses on the coordination between military, civilian, and international organizations to prevent and respond to mass atrocities. Recently, she developed a Myanmar Situation Assessment for the United States’ Indo-Pacific Command region. Holland has already begun to prepare for crisis prevention as a leader in West Point’s Mass Atrocity Prevention Practicum, a simulation experience focused on humanitarian crises. Pratt intends to play a formative role in clarifying the military’s role in preventing and resolving mass atrocities by establishing a Standard Operating Procedure to clarify objectives and to identify ways and means among civilian agencies, the U.S. military, and allied forces in the international community. After West Point, she hopes to commission as an officer in the Armor Branch. As a Rhodes Scholar, Pratt will earn a Master of Science in Global Governance and Diplomacy and a Master of Science in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies from Oxford University.
Rhodes Scholars are chosen not only for their outstanding scholarly achievements, but for their character, commitment to others and to the common good, and for their potential for leadership in whatever domains their careers may lead. The Rhodes Trust, a British charity established to honor the will and bequest of Cecil J. Rhodes, provides full financial support for Rhodes Scholars to pursue a degree or degrees at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom in partnership with the Second Century Founder, John McCall MacBain and other generous benefactors.
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15. Is Russia about to checkmate US in Europe?
Excerpts:
Over time, Russia will get what it wants from Europe or, like the Scythians of old, it will burn the house down to prevent the Americans from getting it. My Ukrainian friend’s comments, then, take on new meaning.
He knew something we Americans, blissfully isolated by two oceans from the ravages of European geopolitics, detached from any historical perspective, will likely never comprehend: While we may have all the watches, the Russians have all the time when it comes to Eastern Europe.
The United States cannot be the world’s policeman in today’s geopolitical environment – not unless it seeks to risk nuclear world war. The real threat lies to the East, from China.
Washington must embrace a more realistic European policy as it relates to Russia. War cannot be the answer there. Whether it be in two months or two years, Russia will checkmate America in Europe, because Russia has played its hand there better than the Americans have.
Is Russia about to checkmate US in Europe?
Unwise moves in the past by Washington in Ukraine and elsewhere are jeopardizing its game plan today
asiatimes.com · by More by Brandon J Weichert · November 22, 2021
While we were grabbing drinks at a bar near Capitol Hill, a Ukrainian friend of mine living in Washington during the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 ruefully quipped to me, “Russia will devour Ukraine no matter what the West says. It’s just a question of how long it’ll take.”
For Russia, Ukraine is a vital component of its defensive perimeter. For the United States, Ukraine is an abstract idea. It is a symbol of democratic resistance to authoritarianism, a lucrative addition to the ailing European Union, and a potential new base to place NATO military assets nearer to an increasingly assertive Russia.
But Moscow’s leaders believe Ukraine is an existential component of their national survival. Russian leaders have long viewed Ukraine in the same way that many American leaders have viewed Mexico or Canada: an essential buffer zone protecting the core of their nation from more aggressive powers beyond their territory.
Ukraine was not always part of Russia. For centuries, it was home to Crimean Tatars who notoriously looted and raided neighboring Russia. Finally, under the reign of Catherine the Great, the Ukrainian threat to Russia was ended and the region colonized by Russians.
Ever since that time, Ukraine has existed as an extension of Russian power.
West missed once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
The chance to dislodge Russia from Ukraine and Eastern Europe was a momentary one that occurred in the aftermath of the Cold War. Western leaders opted instead unilaterally to disarm the post-Soviet government of Ukraine, assuming that Russia would never again pose a threat to the West.
That is why, in 1994, then-US president Bill Clinton ignorantly urged newly liberated Ukraine to mothball its arsenal of Soviet-era nuclear weapons, the third-largest nuclear arsenal in the world at that time, rather than help Ukraine secure and modernize that arsenal. Kiev was reluctant to abandon its nuclear weapons, correctly believing that those nukes would serve as a deterrent against any future Russian invasion of their land.
The Clinton administration, however, persisted in total de-nuclearization in the aftermath of the Cold War. To sweeten the deal with Kiev, Clinton gave assurances to Ukraine’s leaders that, in exchange for them surrendering their nuclear arsenal to the West, the United States would defend Ukraine in the event of a Russian invasion.
American leaders have never been known for being well versed in history. But this assurance from Washington to Kiev was the kind of guarantee that have started world wars in the past.
Promises made, promises broken
Twenty years later, these promises were tested, when Russian forces swooped into the Crimean Peninsula and annexed the territory during a period of political upheaval in Ukraine.
Since the 19th century, Russia had maintained a naval base in Sevastopol, a key port on the Black Sea. It was the height of arrogance on the part of Western leaders to believe that Russia would simply abandon its port in Sevastopol because the new US-backed government in Kiev wanted it to.
Russian leaders feared that the Western-backed government of Ukraine, which rose to power on a wave of controversy during the Maidan protests in 2014, would take Ukraine completely out of Russia’s orbit and make it part of the European Union-NATO alliance structures, thereby becoming another American proxy on Russia’s doorstep.
After Russia moved swiftly to secure its naval base by annexing Crimea, Moscow spent the next seven years working assiduously to dislodge the West from Ukraine by supporting separatist forces in the east of the country, which was home to a large Russian diaspora.
Flashing red: Russian invasion coming soon
This month, US intelligence officials warned their counterparts in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization about an ongoing Russian military buildup along the border with Ukraine. After news of that warning broke, American astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) were ordered to take refuge in their SpaceX capsule after Russia suddenly launched an anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon that destroyed a derelict Soviet-era satellite in low-Earth orbit.
The massive debris field that test had generated directly threatened the lives of the American (and a few Russian) astronauts on board and risked destroying the ISS.
As I reported in the aftermath of the event, the Russian ASAT test was directly tied to events occurring in Europe – specifically, a Russian fear that any potential invasion of Ukraine would be met by NATO defenders.
The ASAT test was an attempt to deter Western military intervention against the inevitable Russian invasion. In fact, unconfirmed reports from Ukraine indicate that Russian special-forces operatives have been spotted operating in the contested areas of eastern Ukraine, supporting separatist paramilitary forces, and likely laying the groundwork for a Russian invasion.
Germany steps up – but to what end?
Surprisingly, Berlin stepped into the fray when German regulators suspended the completion of a long-running, controversial gas-pipeline deal with Moscow. Nord Stream 2, a massive pipeline that would link cheap Russian natural gas to a gas-starved Europe (through Germany), was the dream of Russian policymakers looking to restore Russia’s ailing economy since the twilight years of the old Soviet Union.
The Germans wanted the pipeline. The Russians desired the pipeline. European energy consumers needed the pipeline. But the Americans had repeatedly opposed the pipeline, fearing the geopolitical ramifications of allowing for Europe to become dependent on Russia for its energy needs.
Strangely, President Joe Biden’s administration removed critical sanctions the previous administration of Donald Trump had imposed on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline during a particularly tense moment in Russo-American relations this year. The removal of those US sanctions allowed Germany to approve the long-desired pipeline that was set to go online soon.
If Biden wanted to deter a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine, he had a bizarre way of doing that.
With the German regulatory delay, the pipeline might not be active until 2022. And with gas prices in Europe already soaring, the question remains: For how long can Germany withhold the final approval of NS2? Berlin cannot stand on its own against Russia and it is unlikely that the Biden administration can offer anything other than platitudes to Germany.
And the US appears incapable of formulating any strategy for stopping the Kremlin’s expansion into Eastern Europe short of risking all-out war with nuclear-armed Russia, which is something that neither Biden nor any other Western leader will countenance. Ultimately, Moscow understands this, which is why the recent German move will have no lasting impact on preventing a Russian attack on Ukraine.
Russia’s fait accompli in Ukraine
Russia has several advantages over the United States in Europe. The first is proximity. Russia is simply closer to the countries in question than the US is.
The second is geo-economics. Since the 1990s, Europe has become increasingly dependent on cheap Russian energy sources.
The third is a problem of attention. Whereas Russia can focus like a laser on breaking Europe’s alliance with the United States apart, Washington must manage affairs not only in Europe, but in the Greater Middle East, in the Indo-Pacific, and closer to home, in Latin America. All Moscow needs to do is wait out the distracted and overstretched Americans – which it will do – while the Biden administration flits from one international crisis to another.
Over time, Russia will get what it wants from Europe or, like the Scythians of old, it will burn the house down to prevent the Americans from getting it. My Ukrainian friend’s comments, then, take on new meaning.
He knew something we Americans, blissfully isolated by two oceans from the ravages of European geopolitics, detached from any historical perspective, will likely never comprehend: While we may have all the watches, the Russians have all the time when it comes to Eastern Europe.
The United States cannot be the world’s policeman in today’s geopolitical environment – not unless it seeks to risk nuclear world war. The real threat lies to the East, from China.
Washington must embrace a more realistic European policy as it relates to Russia. War cannot be the answer there. Whether it be in two months or two years, Russia will checkmate America in Europe, because Russia has played its hand there better than the Americans have.
asiatimes.com · by More by Brandon J Weichert · November 22, 2021
16. The Cost of Sentimentalizing War
Excerpts:
If the cumulative frustrations of Vietnam and the post-9/11 wars produced a nation more reluctant to go abroad in search of monsters to slay, would that mean that the Good War myth was finally losing its authority? Samet is doubtful. She fears that the Second World War will go the way of the American Civil War, “an epic past that we can no longer retrieve,” national remembrances of which have amounted to a “theme park” of mendacity and nostalgia only partially redressed by the recent push to dismantle Confederate statuary. It may be only a matter of time, she thinks, before “we transform utterly those who fought it into symbols of an erstwhile greatness bought by blood.”
Samet could take heart from the current renderings of our 9/11 wars, yet she remains vigilant. “In a climate in which the pressures to sentimentalize are so strong and victory and defeat are so difficult to measure,” she writes, “it seems a moral imperative to discover another way to read and write about a war.” Her retrospective on the Good War is another such way, and a worthwhile one. Time can indeed sand down the jagged edges of a war, and sentiment can reshape it into something unrecognizable. Still, sentiment always distorts, whether it comes late or early, and time enables every new generation to rethink and redefine a conflict with a more dispassionate and informed gaze—as this book itself proves
The Cost of Sentimentalizing War
The Cost of Sentimentalizing War | The New Yorker
The terrorist strikes of September 11, 2001, supposedly launched a new kind of American war, with unfamiliar foes, unlikely alliances, and unthinkable tactics. But the language deployed to interpret this conflict was decidedly old-school, the comfort food of martial rhetoric. With the Axis of Evil, the menace of Fascism (remixed as “Islamofascism”), and the Pearl Harbor references, the Second World War hovered over what would become known as the global war on terror, infusing it with righteousness. This latest war, President George W. Bush said, would have a scope and a stature evoking the American response to that other attack on the U.S. “one Sunday in 1941.” It wouldn’t be like Desert Storm, a conflict tightly bounded in time and space; instead, it was a call to global engagement and even to national greatness. “This generation will lift the dark threat of violence from our people and our future,” Bush avowed.
Elizabeth D. Samet finds such familiarity endlessly familiar. “Every American exercise of military force since World War II, at least in the eyes of its architects, has inherited that war’s moral justification and been understood as its offspring: motivated by its memory, prosecuted in its shadow, inevitably measured against it,” she writes in “Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). A professor of English at West Point and the author of works on literature, leadership, and the military, Samet offers a cultural and literary counterpoint to the Ambrose-Brokaw-Spielberg industrial complex of Second World War remembrance, and something of a meditation on memory itself. It’s not simply that subsequent fights didn’t resemble the Second World War, she contends; it’s that the war itself does not resemble our manufactured memories of it, particularly the gushing accounts that enveloped its fiftieth anniversary. “The so-called greatness of the Greatest Generation is a fiction,” she argues, “suffused with nostalgia and with a need to return to some finest hour.” Those who forget the past may be condemned to repeat it, but those who sentimentalize the past are rewarded with best-seller status.
The mythology of the Second World War features six main elements, by Samet’s tally: that the United States joined the war in order to rid the world of tyranny and Fascism; that “all Americans were absolutely united” in their commitment to the fight; that “everyone” in the country sacrificed; that Americans got into the war reluctantly and then waged it decently; that the war was tragic but ended on a happy note; and, finally, that “everyone has always agreed” on the first five points.
The word choices here—“all,” “absolutely,” “everyone,” and “always”—do stretch the myths to the point of easy refutability, but some of the best-known popular chronicles clearly display the tendencies Samet decries. “Citizen Soldiers,” Stephen Ambrose’s 1997 book about Allied troops in Europe, presents the reticence of American G.I.s in describing their motivations as a kind of self-conscious idealism and aw-shucks humility. “They knew they were fighting for decency and democracy and they were proud of it,” Ambrose writes. “They just didn’t talk or write about it.” But, without such oral or written records, can one really divine such noble impulses? Samet dismisses Ambrose’s œuvre, including the nineteen-nineties best-sellers, “Band of Brothers” and “D-Day,” as “less historical analysis than comic-book thought bubble.” Obsessed with notions of masculinity and chivalry, Ambrose indulges in “a fantasy that American soldiers somehow preserved a boyish innocence amid the slaughter,” she writes. If anything, the boyish innocence may belong to Ambrose himself, who admits that he grew up venerating veterans of the Second World War, a youthful hero worship that, Samet notes, “tends to overwhelm the historian’s mandate.”
For a more accurate account, Samet highlights a multivolume study, “The American Soldier,” by the sociologist Samuel Stouffer and a team of collaborators. During the war, they studied the ideological motives of American troops, and concluded that, “beyond acceptance of the war as a necessity forced upon the United States by an aggressor, there was little support of attempts to give the war meaning in terms of principles and causes.” Samet finds this real-time depiction of a nonideological American soldier to be credible. In the words of the military sociologist Charles C. Moskos, who studied the motivations of soldiers in the Second World War and in Vietnam, each man fights a “very private war . . . for his own survival.” Or, as John Hersey put it in a later foreword to “Into the Valley,” his narrative of U.S. marines battling on Guadalcanal, the soldiers fought “to get the damn thing over and go home.”
Samet argues that Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster movie “Saving Private Ryan,” from 1998, is “wholly unrepresentative” of Second World War attitudes toward the individual soldier. She contrasts the 1949 film “Twelve O’Clock High,” in which a brigadier general (played by Gregory Peck) insists that his men place collective loyalties above personal ones. After one pilot breaks formation, during a sortie over Nazi Europe, in order to assist a fellow-aviator at risk of being shot down, Peck lashes out, “You violated group integrity. . . . The one thing which is never expendable is your obligation to this group. . . . That has to be your loyalty—your only reason for being.” By focussing on the fate of a single survivor, Samet writes, Spielberg’s film “effectively transforms the conflict from one characterized by mass mobilization and modern industrial warfare to something more old-fashioned, recalling the heroism of ancient epics,” in which individual glories and tragedies take narrative precedence over the wider war.
Samet is particularly harsh on Tom Brokaw’s “The Greatest Generation,” also from 1998, with its “explicitly messianic agenda” of showing us a cohort so packed with honor and honesty and self-sacrifice that it was, as the newsman writes, “birthmarked for greatness.” In a section titled “Shame,” Brokaw acknowledges the racism that was so “pervasive in practice and in policy” in this greatest of eras, but he responds with uplifting sketches of members of racial minorities who manage to overcome it. (“It is my country, right or wrong,” one of them concludes. “None of us can ever contribute enough.”) Samet dissents, stressing, for instance, that the conflict in the Pacific, “begun in revenge and complicated by bitter racism” against the Japanese, has been overshadowed by the less morally troubling sagas of European liberation.
“Unity must always prevail,” Samet writes of the war myths. “Public opinion must turn overnight after Pearl Harbor, while the various regional, racial, and political divisions that roiled the country must be immediately put aside as Americans rally toward a shared cause.” A more complicated reality emerges in Studs Terkel’s 1984 “ ‘The Good War’ ” (the title includes quotation marks because the notion of a good war seemed “so incongruous,” Terkel explained), an oral history that amasses the recollections of wartime merchant marines, admirals, U.S.O. entertainers, G.I.s, and nurses. Their views on the war span “the sentimental and the disillusioned, the jingoistic and the thoughtfully patriotic, the nostalgic and the dismissive,” Samet writes.
To investigate cultural attitudes toward G.I.s in the aftermath of the war, she considers such novels as John Horne Burns’s “The Gallery” (1947), in which American soldiers in Italy engage in black-market transactions with locals; and such movies as “Suddenly” (1954), in which Frank Sinatra portrays a veteran turned contract killer who hopes that his war record will win him sympathy. (“I’m no traitor, Sheriff. I won a Silver Star.”) In other noir films of the era, returning G.I.s are loners disillusioned not just with the war and the years taken from them but also with what their country seemed to have become in their absence: hard, greedy, indifferent. Samet even scours military handbooks, including a 1945 one, memorably titled “112 Gripes About the French,” which admonished American G.I.s that they “didn’t come to Europe to save the French,” or “to do anyone any favors,” so they should stop stomping through the Continent as though expecting everyone’s gratitude. Not exactly “Band of Brothers,” is it?
There is a before-and-after quality to the Second World War in American political writing. The adjective “postwar” still clings to this one conflict, as if no American soldiers had wielded weapons in battle since. But if memories of one conflict shape attitudes toward the next, Samet writes, then the Good War legend has served “as prologue to three-quarters of a century of misbegotten ones.” There’s plenty of support for this quandary. In “A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam” (1988), Neil Sheehan identified the “disease of victory,” wherein U.S. leaders, particularly in the military ranks, succumbed to postwar complacency and overconfidence. Samet recalls the reflections of Rear Admiral Gene La Rocque, a Second World War veteran who retired during Vietnam, and who told Terkel that “the twisted memory” of the Good War “encourages the men of my generation to be willing, almost eager, to use military force anywhere in the world.”
Memories of the Good War also helped shape the views of military life held by the men who fought in Vietnam. Samet takes up Philip Caputo’s Vietnam memoir, “A Rumor of War,” showing how the author’s notions of war and service were influenced by youthful fantasies of the Second World War. “Like thousands of boys,” she writes, “he imagined himself performing heroic feats in the style of John Wayne.” Caputo, a decorated Marine Corps infantry lieutenant, described the looming threat of “moral and emotional numbness” during his service, and how war transforms callousness into savagery. In his memoir, earnestness mingles with bitterness: “In the patriotic fervor of the Kennedy years, we had asked, ‘What can we do for our country?’ and our country answered, ‘Kill VC.’ ”
The war in Vietnam, Samet suggests, still functions as a counterweight to the legacy of Good War mythology in America’s national-security discussions. President George H. W. Bush, in expelling Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991, believed that he had also exorcised the demons of that bad war. “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all,” he exulted in a White House speech. This past summer, amid worries that Kabul 2021 would resemble Saigon 1975, President Biden declared, “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States.” (He was technically correct; the landing pad used to evacuate Embassy personnel a few weeks later was next door.)
Yet the enduring power of Vietnam in the American imagination may have a paradoxical effect: its badness bolstered a sense of the Second World War’s goodness. Decades after George H. W. Bush was shot down in the Pacific by Japanese forces and rescued by an American submarine, the old bomber pilot justified Desert Storm in explicitly Second World War terms. His collection of correspondence, “All the Best, George Bush,” includes various letters from 1990 and 1991—to King Hussein of Jordan, to Cardinal Law of Massachusetts, to his children—invoking the enemies and the stakes of the Second World War in arguing for action against Saddam Hussein. For the record, Kuwait was Poland, Saddam was Hitler, and Bush would not be Chamberlain.
The U.S. exit from Afghanistan and the coinciding twentieth anniversary of Al Qaeda’s 2001 attacks have precipitated a spate of memory-mongering over the global war on terror. Samet identifies several verdicts already in contention: that it was a “tragic coda to the American Century,” a two-decade transition from end-of-history swagger to end-of-empire fatalism; a “valiant crusade” undone, as ever, by insufficient political will to carry on; or a regrettable misstep by a country that really should know better. She is particularly skeptical of the notion that liberating Afghan women was a vital part of the original U.S. mission. “How easily consequence is becoming justification,” she scoffs. “How flattering it will be one day to reimagine it as an original objective.” The search “for a kind of honor amid the ruins” shapes the literature of Iraq and Afghanistan, Samet writes, a tendency that she also finds in works that revisit Vietnam, such as Errol Morris’s 2003 documentary, “The Fog of War,” in which Robert McNamara, L.B.J.’s Secretary of Defense, says, “We all make mistakes.” It’s not much as regrets go, though it tops the Rumsfeldian “Stuff happens” response to the looting that took place in Baghdad in 2003.
“We search for a redemptive ending to every tragedy,” Samet writes. “We find no solace in the inconclusive.” The writings we have so far from the post-9/11 era do not, in truth, appear to be particularly redemptive or sentimental; they are, in the main, pitiless. We’ve been offered a painful roster of bureaucratic stasis and missed warnings, while the narratives of how the United States waged the war reveal a nation that betrayed its values in a conflict allegedly waged in their defense. The centerpieces of the fight against terrorism were the unnecessary war in Iraq and the failed one in Afghanistan, with little vindication to be found in either. These initial interpretations reflect a refusal to let the defining conflict of this early twenty-first century fade into the safety of nostalgia, or be twisted too soon, or too long, by remembrance.
If the cumulative frustrations of Vietnam and the post-9/11 wars produced a nation more reluctant to go abroad in search of monsters to slay, would that mean that the Good War myth was finally losing its authority? Samet is doubtful. She fears that the Second World War will go the way of the American Civil War, “an epic past that we can no longer retrieve,” national remembrances of which have amounted to a “theme park” of mendacity and nostalgia only partially redressed by the recent push to dismantle Confederate statuary. It may be only a matter of time, she thinks, before “we transform utterly those who fought it into symbols of an erstwhile greatness bought by blood.”
Samet could take heart from the current renderings of our 9/11 wars, yet she remains vigilant. “In a climate in which the pressures to sentimentalize are so strong and victory and defeat are so difficult to measure,” she writes, “it seems a moral imperative to discover another way to read and write about a war.” Her retrospective on the Good War is another such way, and a worthwhile one. Time can indeed sand down the jagged edges of a war, and sentiment can reshape it into something unrecognizable. Still, sentiment always distorts, whether it comes late or early, and time enables every new generation to rethink and redefine a conflict with a more dispassionate and informed gaze—as this book itself proves.
17. US added to list of ‘backsliding’ democracies for first time
US added to list of ‘backsliding’ democracies for first time
‘Visible deterioration’ in US civil liberties began in at least 2019, says international thinktank
The US has been added to an annual list of “backsliding” democracies for the first time, the International IDEA thinktank has said, pointing to a “visible deterioration” it said began in 2019.
Globally, more than one in four people live in a backsliding democracy, a proportion that rises to more than two in three with the addition of authoritarian or “hybrid” regimes, according to the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.
“This year we coded the United States as backsliding for the first time, but our data suggest that the backsliding episode began at least in 2019,” it said in its report.
Alexander Hudson, a co-author of the report, said: “The United States is a high-performing democracy, and even improved its performance in indicators of impartial administration (corruption and predictable enforcement) in 2020. However, the declines in civil liberties and checks on government indicate that there are serious problems with the fundamentals of democracy.”
The report says: “A historic turning point came in 2020-21 when former president Donald Trump questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election results in the United States.”
In addition, Hudson pointed to a “decline in the quality of freedom of association and assembly during the summer of protests in 2020” after the police killing of George Floyd.
International IDEA bases its assessments on 50 years of democratic indicators in about 160 countries, assigning them to three categories: democracies (including those that are “backsliding”), “hybrid” governments and authoritarian regimes.
The organisation’s secretary general, Kevin Casas-Zamora, said: “The visible deterioration of democracy in the United States, as seen in the increasing tendency to contest credible election results, the efforts to suppress participation (in elections), and the runaway polarisation ... is one of the most concerning developments.”
He warned of a knock-on effect, noting: “The violent contestation of the 2020 election without any evidence of fraud has been replicated, in different ways, in places as diverse as Myanmar, Peru and Israel.”
The number of backsliding democracies has doubled in the past decade, accounting for a quarter of the world’s population. In addition to “established democracies” such as the US, the list includes EU member states Hungary, Poland and Slovenia.
Two countries that were on the list last year – Ukraine and North Macedonia – were removed this year after their situations improved. Two others, Mali and Serbia, left the list because they were no longer considered democracies.
While Myanmar moved from a democracy to an authoritarian regime, Afghanistan and Mali entered this category from their previous label of hybrid governments.
For the fifth consecutive year, in 2020, countries veering towards authoritarianism outnumbered those experiencing democratisation. International IDEA expects this trend to continue for 2021.
For 2021, according to the group’s provisional assessment, the world counts 98 democracies – the lowest number in many years – as well as 20 hybrid governments including Russia, Morocco and Turkey, and 47 authoritarian regimes including China, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Iran.
Adding backsliding democracies to the hybrid and authoritarian states, “we are talking about 70% of the population in the world”, Casas-Zamora said. “That tells you that there is something fundamentally serious happening with the quality of democracy.”
The report says the trend towards democratic erosion has “become more acute and worrying” since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Some countries, particularly Hungary, India, the Philippines and the USA, have (imposed) measures that amount to democratic violations – that is, measures that were disproportionate, illegal, indefinite or unconnected to the nature of the emergency,” it says.
Casas-Zamora said: “The pandemic has certainly accelerated and magnified some of the negative trends, particularly in places where democracy and the rule of law were ailing before the pandemic.”
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
