Quotes of the Day:
“There is an often-quoted verse in Sanskrit, which appears in the Chinese Tao-te Ching as well:
‘He who thinks he knows, doesn’t know. He who knows that he doesn’t know, knows. For in this context, to know is not to know. And not to know is to know.’ ”
- Joseph Campbell, The Power Of Myth
"Ought we not, when many most illustrious men have with great care collected and left behind them statues and images, representations not of their minds but of their bodies, much more to desire to leave behind us a copy of our counsels and of our virtues, wrought and elaborated by the greatest genius?"
- Cicero, Pro Archia, XII.30.
"Discipline, however, needs first and foremost leadership, and not regulations. The former can only be provided by example."
- Jorg Muth
1. Biden’s era of ‘strategic competition’
2. China could be ready to mount a 'full-scale' invasion of Taiwan by 2025, island's defense minister says
3. Captured, Killed or Compromised: C.I.A. Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants
4. CIA admits its informants were executed by Iran and China
5. All DoD security clearance holders are now subject to continuous vetting to keep them
6. Opinion | After the deadly error in Afghanistan, maybe drones shouldn’t be used to kill at all
7. What the War in Afghanistan Could Never Do
8. Gordon Chang: Joe Biden Should Offer A Mutual Defense Treaty To Taiwan
9. Tony Abbott in Taiwan to build support among ‘like-minded countries’
10. Japan’s Authorities in a Taiwan Contingency: Providing Needed Clarity
11. FDD | White House Quiet as U.S. Allies Rehabilitate Assad. Congress Should Not Be.
12. FDD | Lawsuit Alleges Ransomware Led to Baby’s Death in Hospital
13. FDD | A Unified and Capable “Quad” Is Bad News for the CCP
14. Researcher or Spy? Maxim Shugaley Saga Points to How Russia Now Builds Influence Abroad
15. America’s ‘pivot to Asia’ finally shifts into gear
16. Nakasone Now Sees Ransomware, Influence Ops As 'National Security' Threats - Breaking Defense
17. Hostage Diplomacy Is Back. It Require a Forceful Response.
18. What’s Next for the Quad?
19. Yesterday's outage made one thing clear – Facebook needs us a lot more than we need it
1. Biden’s era of ‘strategic competition’
PSA for national security practitioners, scholars, and journalists: Terminology shifts for DOD. From "great power competition" to "Strategic Competition."
Also not mentioned is the other major DOD concept: Integrated Deterrence. I think we are going to see Strategic Competition and Integrated Deterrence used widely in DOD.
Biden’s era of ‘strategic competition’
Politico · by Daniel Lippman · October 5, 2021
Presented by Lockheed Martin
Welcome to National Security Daily, your guide to the global events roiling Washington and keeping the administration up at night.
Make sure to join POLITICO on Thursday for our inaugural defense forum, where we’ll talk to the decision-makers in the White House, Congress, military and defense industry who are reshaping American power abroad and redefining military readiness for the future of warfare. Alex is moderating the China panel,
Programming Note: National Security Daily will not publish Monday, Oct. 11. We’ll be back on our normal schedule Tuesday, Oct. 12.
FIRST IN NATSEC DAILY –– Goodbye, “great power competition.” Hello, “strategic competition.”
A Defense Department spokesperson confirmed to our own DANIEL LIPPMAN and LARA SELIGMAN that the Pentagon will use the new phrase to describe its approach toward China — explicitly moving away from the Trump-era framework.
“Strategic competition” aligns more closely with the administration’s thinking on China. The DoD spokesperson, Lt. Col. MARTIN MEINERS, noted how the White House’s Interim National Security Strategic Guidance specifically refers to “strategic competition with China or any other nation.”
Forget the “any other nation”: this phrase is meant to encompass all the areas where Washington and Beijing might face off — namely, in technology, trade and, yes, the military realm.
However, the document also says that “strategic competition does not, and should not, preclude working with China when it is in our national interest to do so.”
The change is a clear pivot away from language used by the Trump administration, which employed the term “great power competition” as the bumper sticker for its national security strategy and rivalry with China (and to a lesser extent, Russia). The moniker was meant to signal a clean break from America’s post-9/11 policy: “Great power competition — not terrorism — is now the primary focus of U.S. national security,” then-Defense Secretary JIM MATTIS said in 2018.
But “strategic competition” as a phrase isn’t new: the Trump administration even used it in its 2018 National Defense Strategy. The difference here is that great-power competition came to define Trump’s Pentagon, whereas now President JOE BIDEN’s DoD wants a different paradigm.
One Republican lawmaker criticized the shift, saying it telegraphed a weaker stance on China that would be harmful for U.S. national security. “By opening the door to cooperation with China, the Biden administration is signaling weakness and that we’re not going to be serious about holding them accountable anymore,” said Rep. JIM BANKS (R-Ind.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee.
Some might also perceive the shift as a tempering of the new administration’s policy toward Beijing, said JERRY HENDRIX, a retired Navy captain and vice president with the Telemus Group.
“Recognizing that we’re in a competition is a good thing overall. It marks a continuation of the previous administration’s policies,” he said. “However, anything that marks a departure of recognition of a hard great-power competition with China could prove problematic in the future, as it could be perceived as a softening of the administration's foreign policy towards China.”
Perhaps. But as if anticipating Hendrix’s critique, Biden’s team has elevated “the Quad” grouping to the leader level and agreed to sell nuclear-powered submarines to Australia — moves all clearly designed to counter Beijing’s aims.
Whether or not there will be more continuity than change depends upon whether his new tag line is just about semantics, said NADIA SCHADLOW, author of former President DONALD TRUMP’s national security strategy.
“China is a great power, with significant military and technological strengths. It is an aspiring regional hegemon in Asia, with a presence around the world. China has enduring national interests that are opposed to ours,” she said. “Does the new tag line suggest otherwise?”
2. China could be ready to mount a 'full-scale' invasion of Taiwan by 2025, island's defense minister says
China could be ready to mount a 'full-scale' invasion of Taiwan by 2025, island's defense minister says
CNN · by Eric Cheung, CNN
(CNN)China could be capable of mounting a "full-scale" invasion of Taiwan by 2025, the island's defense minister said Wednesday -- days after record numbers of Chinese warplanes flew into Taiwan's air defense zone.
"With regards to staging an attack on Taiwan, they currently have the ability. But [China] has to pay the price," Chiu Kuo-cheng, the defense minister, told Taiwanese journalists on Wednesday.
But he said that by 2025, that price will be lower -- and China will be able to mount a "full-scale" invasion.
Chiu's comments came after China sent 150 warplanes, including fighter jets and nuclear-capable bombers, into Taiwan's Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) since October 1.
At a parliament meeting Wednesday, Chiu described cross-strait military tensions as "the most serious" in more than 40 years since he joined the military, Taiwan's official Central News Agency (CNA) reported.
Read More
At the meeting, the Taiwan military submitted a report to lawmakers saying China's anti-intervention and blockade capabilities around the Taiwan Strait will become mature by 2025, according to CNA.
The lawmakers also reviewed an $8.6 billion special defense budget for homemade weapons, including missiles and warships.
The Taiwan Ministry of Defense released this undated file photo of a Chinese J-16 fighter jet when they announced that PLA aircrafts entered their air defense identification zone.
Speaking to journalists after the meeting, Chiu noted that Taiwan has not made any moves to provoke an attack in response to the Chinese air incursions.
"We will make preparations militarily," he said. "I think our military is like this -- if we need to fight, we will be on the front lines."
Taiwan and mainland China have been governed separately since the end of a civil war more than seven decades ago, in which the defeated Nationalists fled to Taipei. However, Beijing views Taiwan as an inseparable part of its territory -- even though the Chinese Communist Party has never governed the democratic island of about 24 million people.
Beijing has refused to rule out military force to capture Taiwan if necessary, and blames what it calls "collusion" between Taiwan and the United States for rising cross-strait tensions.
"The US has been making negative moves by selling arms to Taiwan and strengthening official and military ties with Taiwan, including the launch of a $750 million arms sale plan to Taiwan, the landing of US military aircraft in Taiwan and frequent sailing of US warships across the Taiwan Strait," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said Monday.
China's Foreign Ministry announced Wednesday that senior Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi and US national security Adviser Jake Sullivan will meet in Zurich to "exchange views on China-US relations and relevant issues."
The ministry did not provide the date of the meeting. China's state-run braodcaster CCTV said the Chinese delegation arrived in Zurich on Tuesday.
CNN's Beijing Bureau contributed to reporting.
CNN · by Eric Cheung, CNN
3. Captured, Killed or Compromised: C.I.A. Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants
This is bad, very bad.
Captured, Killed or Compromised: C.I.A. Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants
Counterintelligence officials said in a top secret cable to all stations and bases around the world that too many of the people it recruits from other countries to spy for the U.S. are being lost.
Members of the Taliban at the former C.I.A. Eagle Base in Kabul in September. The agency has devoted much of its attention for the last two decades to terrorist threats and the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, but improving intelligence collection on adversaries like China and Russia is once again a centerpiece of its agenda.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
Oct. 5, 2021
WASHINGTON — Top American counterintelligence officials warned every C.I.A. station and base around the world last week about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said.
The message, in an unusual top secret cable, said that the C.I.A.’s counterintelligence mission center had looked at dozens of cases in the last several years involving foreign informants who had been killed, arrested or most likely compromised. Although brief, the cable laid out the specific number of agents executed by rival intelligence agencies — a closely held detail that counterintelligence officials typically do not share in such cables.
The cable highlighted the struggle the spy agency is having as it works to recruit spies around the world in difficult operating environments. In recent years, adversarial intelligence services in countries such as Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan have been hunting down the C.I.A.’s sources and in some cases turning them into double agents.
Acknowledging that recruiting spies is a high-risk business, the cable raised issues that have plagued the agency in recent years, including poor tradecraft; being too trusting of sources; underestimating foreign intelligence agencies, and moving too quickly to recruit informants while not paying enough attention to potential counterintelligence risks — a problem the cable called placing “mission over security.”
The large number of compromised informants in recent years also demonstrated the growing prowess of other countries in employing innovations like biometric scans, facial recognition, artificial intelligence and hacking tools to track the movements of C.I.A. officers in order to discover their sources.
While the C.I.A. has many ways to collect intelligence for its analysts to craft into briefings for policymakers, networks of trusted human informants around the world remain the centerpiece of its efforts, the kind of intelligence that the agency is supposed to be the best in the world at collecting and analyzing.
Recruiting new informants, former officials said, is how the C.I.A.’s case officers — its frontline spies — earn promotions. Case officers are not typically promoted for running good counterintelligence operations, such as figuring out if an informant is really working for another country.
The agency has devoted much of its attention for the last two decades to terrorist threats and the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, but improving intelligence collection on adversarial powers, both great and small, is once again a centerpiece of the C.I.A.’s agenda, particularly as policymakers demand more insight into China and Russia.
The loss of informants, former officials said, is not a new problem. But the cable demonstrated the issue is more urgent than is publicly understood.
The warning, according to those who have read it, was primarily aimed at front line agency officers, the people involved most directly in the recruiting and vetting of sources. The cable reminded C.I.A. case officers to focus not just on recruiting sources, but also on security issues including vetting informants and evading adversarial intelligence services.
Among the reasons for the cable, according to people familiar with the document, was to prod C.I.A. case officers to think about steps they can take on their own to do a better job managing informants.
Former officials said that there has to be more focus on security and counterintelligence, among both senior leaders and frontline personnel, especially when it comes to recruiting informants, which C.I.A. officers call agents.
“No one at the end of the day is being held responsible when things go south with an agent,” said Douglas London, a former agency operative. “Sometimes there are things beyond our control but there are also occasions of sloppiness and neglect and people in senior positions are never held responsible.”
World wide messages to C.I.A. stations and bases that note troubling trends or problems, or even warnings about counterintelligence problems, are not unheard-of, according to former officials. Still, the memo outlining a specific number of informants arrested or killed by adversarial powers is an unusual level of detail, one that signals the importance of the current problems. Former officials said that counterintelligence officials typically like to keep such details secret even from the broad C.I.A. work force.
Asked about the memo, a C.I.A. spokeswoman declined to comment.
Sheetal T. Patel, who last year became the C.I.A.’s assistant director for counterintelligence and leads that mission center, has not been reluctant to send out broad warnings to the C.I.A. community of current and former officers.
In January, Ms. Patel sent a letter to retired C.I.A. officers warning against working for foreign governments who are trying to build up spying capabilities by hiring retired intelligence officials. (The letter, promptly leaked, also included warnings about talking to journalists.)
Former officials say the broadsides are a way of pushing C.I.A. officers to become more serious about counterintelligence.
A message, in an unusual top secret cable, said that the C.I.A.’s counterintelligence mission center had looked at dozens of cases in the last several years involving foreign informants who had been killed, arrested or most likely compromised.Credit...Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press
The memo sent last week suggested that the agency underestimated its adversaries — the belief that its officers and tradecraft were better than other intelligence services. But the results of the study showed that countries being targeted by the U.S. are also skilled at hunting down informants.
Some former officials believe that the agency’s skills at thwarting adversarial intelligence services have grown rusty after decades of focusing on terrorism threats and relying on risky covert communications. Developing, training and directing informants spying on foreign governments differs in some ways from developing sources inside terrorist networks.
While the memo identified specific numbers of informants that were arrested or killed, it said the number turned against the United States was not fully known. Sometimes, informants who are discovered by adversarial intelligence services are not arrested, but instead are turned into double agents who feed disinformation to the C.I.A., which can have devastating effects on intelligence collection and analysis. Pakistanis have been particularly effective in this sphere, former officials said.
The collapse of the American-backed government in Afghanistan means that learning more about Pakistan’s ties to the Taliban government and extremist organizations in the region is going to become ever more important. As a result, the pressure is once again on the C.I.A. to build and maintain networks of informants in Pakistan, a country with a record of discovering and breaking those networks.
Similarly, the focus by successive administrations on great power competition and the challenges of China and Russia have meant that building up spy networks, and protecting those sources, is more important than ever.
In those countries, technology has also become a problem, former officials said. Artificial intelligence, biometric scans, facial recognition and other technology has made it far easier for governments to track American intelligence officers operating in their country. That has made meeting and communicating with sources far more difficult.
A breach of the classified communications system, or “covcom,” used by the C.I.A. helped to expose the agency’s networks in China and in Iran, according to former officials. In both cases informants were executed. Others had to be extracted and resettled by the agency.
In Iran and China, some intelligence officials believe that Americans provided information to the adversarial agencies that could have helped expose informants. Monica Elfriede Witt, a former Air Force sergeant who defected to Iran, was indicted on a charge of providing information to Tehran in 2019. The Iranians leveraged her knowledge only after determining she could be trusted. Later that year, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a former C.I.A. officer, was sentenced to 19 years in prison for providing secrets to the Chinese government.
Former officials say there is no shortage of examples of where the agency has been so focused on the mission that security measures were not given proper consideration. And in some cases a turned agent can have deadly consequences.
The 2009 bombing at a C.I.A. base in Khost, Afghanistan, that killed seven agency employees was a good example of mission over security, Mr. London said. In that suicide attack, a Jordanian doctor the C.I.A. thought it had convinced to penetrate Al Qaeda had in fact been turned against the United States.
“We were in such a rush to make such a big score,” Mr. London said. “Those were tradecraft mistakes.”
He added it is important to remind the C.I.A.’s work force of the damage that can happen when tradecraft lapses.
“Do your job and don’t be lazy,” he said. “It’s a willingness to say we are not as perfect as we think we are. That’s a positive thing.”
4. CIA admits its informants were executed by Iran and China
A "top secret memo" based on NY Times reporting.
CIA admits its informants were executed by Iran and China
CIA admits too many informants are being killed in top secret memo to spies around the world as former staff reveal Iran and China executed networks of US spies after agency's classified communications system was breached
- The memo identifies specific numbers of informants who were taken into custody or killed, according to the New York Times
- The message, which was sent to a global network of stations and bases, said that the CIA’s counterintelligence mission center had investigated dozens of cases of informants who were killed, arrested or compromised
PUBLISHED: 16:49 EDT, 5 October 2021 | UPDATED: 17:19 EDT, 5 October 2021
Daily Mail · by Stephen M. Lepore For Dailymail.Com · October 5, 2021
The CIA has admitted that too many informants are being killed, captured or turned in a top secret memo to their spies across the world.
The unusual cable, sent to all CIA stations and bases, said the counterintelligence mission center had analyzed dozens of cases over the last several years.
The memo gave an exact number of informants killed, classified information not usually shared in such cables, according to the New York Times.
Former officials have also disclosed that China and Iran cracked the agency's classified communications system, or 'covcom', and executed informants in those networks while others had to be extracted and resettled.
The memo reprimands spies for poor tradecraft, being overly trusting of sources, underestimating foreign intelligence agencies and 'putting mission over security' by moving too fast and not paying enough attention to potential risks.
Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan have had success in hunting down informants in recent years - and in some cases turning them into double agents.
In Iran and China, some intelligence officials believe that Americans provided information to the adversarial agencies that could have helped expose informants.
The rival counterintelligence agencies are utilizing biometric scans, facial recognition, AI and hacking tools to track CIA officers to discover their sources.
The CIA admitted that their informants were executed by both Iran and China after a top secret memo revealed that too many are being captured and killed
It cited Iran, China, Pakistan and Russia as nations that have been going after American spies and turning them into double agents, if not killing them
The CIA has been pre-occupied over the last two decades with terrorist threats and Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
But old-fashioned intelligence collection is now once again central to the CIA's mission as tension grows with China and Russia.
Monica Elfriede Witt, an ex-Air Force sergeant who defected to Iran, was indicted on a charge of giving up information to Tehran in 2019. The Iranians leveraged her knowledge only once they determined that she could be trusted.
In 2019, former CIA officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee was sentenced to 19 years in prison for providing secrets to the Chinese government, which they then used to arrest and execute at least 20 of his fellow agents.
US officials suspect China shared the information Lee gave them to Russia, who used it to expose, arrest and kill American spies.
Those findings led the CIA to temporarily shut down human spying in China and reevaluate how it communicates with intelligence assets worldwide.
Lee was charged with possessing classified information but not as a spy because officials had a lack of proof and would not wanted to air any evidence they have in a public courtroom, according to NBC News.
In 2020, Iranian forces executed Mahmoud Mousavi-Majd, a man accused of reporting on the movements of that nation's forces in Syria on behalf of the United States and Israel.
He was also accused of spying on Revolutionary Guard commander Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian national hero who was killed in a drone strike by the US earlier in 2020.
Mousavi-Majd, a former translator, was found guilty by Iran of receiving money from both the CIA and Israeli intelligence's Mossad.
'No one at the end of the day is being held responsible when things go south with an agent,' said Douglas London, a former agency operative.
'Sometimes there are things beyond our control but there are also occasions of sloppiness and neglect and people in senior positions are never held responsible.'
Monica Elfriede Witt (pictured above), an ex-Air Force sergeant who defected to Iran, was indicted on a charge of giving up information to Tehran in 2019
In 2019, former CIA officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee (pictured above) was sentenced to 19 years in prison for providing secrets to the Chinese government, which they then used to arrest and execute at least 20 of his fellow agents
In 2020, Iranian forces executed Mahmoud Mousavi-Majd (pictured above), a man accused of reporting on the movements of that nation's forces in Syria on behalf of the United States and Israel
Returning to greater intelligence gathering is a high-level objective for the agency, especially as Congress turns it's focus away from the Middle East and closer to Russia and China
Returning to greater intelligence gathering is a high-level objective for the agency, especially as Congress turns it's focus away from the Middle East and closer to Russia and China.
The agency will also look to learn more about the Pakistan's ties to the Taliban now that the American-back government in Afghanistan has collapsed.
Officials said the messages are a way of pushing intelligence officers to become more serious about counterintelligence.
A CIA spokeswoman declined to comment on the memo.
Daily Mail · by Stephen M. Lepore For Dailymail.Com · October 5, 2021
5. All DoD security clearance holders are now subject to continuous vetting to keep them
My National War College classmate Bill Lietzau.
Excerpts:
For instance, DCSA direct William K. Lietzau told reporters Tuesday, continuous vetting recently picked up an employee with a fugitive arrest warrant for attempted murder and assault.
“The key is that the alert information developed through the DCSA continuous vetting system was received and validated five and a half years before the subject’s next periodic reinvestigation,” he said, meaning DoD might not have know about it for another half-decade.
In that case, automatic scanning of databases caught the event, rather than an investigator having to vet each individual manually.
Similarly, he said, in Jan. 2021 DCSA got a warning about an employee who was under investigation for ties to a terrorist organization, three days after the person had been enrolled in the system. Otherwise, it might have been eight years before a reinvestigation found that potential affiliation.
“This alert identified that the subject was under active investigation by another government agency for potential terrorism activities, including a plan targeting United States facilities, and ties to known or suspected terrorists,” Lietzau said, adding that the threat wasn’t related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
All DoD security clearance holders are now subject to continuous vetting to keep them
Traditionally, the agency that bestows security clearances on government employees re-investigates those candidates on a cyclical basis, checking on their credit reports, criminal histories and so on, once every several years. But a new vetting process means the Defense Department, and employees of dozens of other government agencies, will continuously scan background check databases and have any new events sent straight to investigators.
The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency announced Tuesday that all DoD clearance holders are now part of its continuous vetting program. This means that if an employee comes under criminal investigation, or forecloses on a home, multiple agencies will ping DCSA with the news immediately. At the same time, DCSA software will automatically scan those databases for new information.
Previously, the agency did background checks every five to 10 years on roughly 4 million DoD clearance-holders, which meant that it could be years before an event that would disqualify someone from holding a security clearance was caught.
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Questions remain about what triggers a move to revoke the clearance.
For instance, DCSA direct William K. Lietzau told reporters Tuesday, continuous vetting recently picked up an employee with a fugitive arrest warrant for attempted murder and assault.
“The key is that the alert information developed through the DCSA continuous vetting system was received and validated five and a half years before the subject’s next periodic reinvestigation,” he said, meaning DoD might not have know about it for another half-decade.
In that case, automatic scanning of databases caught the event, rather than an investigator having to vet each individual manually.
Similarly, he said, in Jan. 2021 DCSA got a warning about an employee who was under investigation for ties to a terrorist organization, three days after the person had been enrolled in the system. Otherwise, it might have been eight years before a reinvestigation found that potential affiliation.
“This alert identified that the subject was under active investigation by another government agency for potential terrorism activities, including a plan targeting United States facilities, and ties to known or suspected terrorists,” Lietzau said, adding that the threat wasn’t related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
He did not specify which organizations the examples came from.
RELATED
In order to root out extremism, the military is going to have to define it.
The effort feeds directly into DoD initiatives to monitor extremist affiliations and behavior, including the objective to be better able to intervene. That could eventually include monitoring social media activity.
“We already have several pilot programs we’re working on, to look at the value of social media, and how you can look at it ― whether it’s an event-driven look at social media; whether it’s a regular, continuous look at some social media; or whether it’s a one-time, when they’re investigated, look at social media,” Lietzau said. “There’s different ways you could use some of the social media search capabilities that are out there. We’re still right now analyzing how much value we think there is.”
It will be up to DoD policymakers to decide whose social media might be searched and in what way, he said.
In addition to service members and many DoD civilians, DCSA is working to enroll the rest of the federal government. So far, 30 agencies have signed on, Lietzau said.
Those include VA, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Health and Human Services Department and the General Services Administration.
Eventually, as part of a broader effort subbed Trusted Workforce 2.0, all periodic investigations will be completely replaced by the National Background Investigation Services, a personnel vetting system still under development.
The goal is to have the entire federal government on that system by the end of 2023.
Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members. Follow on Twitter @Meghann_MT
6. Opinion | After the deadly error in Afghanistan, maybe drones shouldn’t be used to kill at all
This was a terrible tragedy of course. And there is more to this OpEd than the headline about drones. But was it caused by the platform that launched the missile? If the Hellfire had been fired by an Apache AH-64 helicopter would we be making the same argument? What about a precision guided munition drop from an F-16 or a B-1 or a B-52? Would we be calling for these platforms to no longer be used for killing? I think we have to look at the systemic and human causes for the tragedy. But I guess this tragedy supports the agenda of outlawing drones. I am surprised to read this OpEd from a retired USAF Lieutenant General. That said he provides some important insights and makes a strong argument for how dangerous our over the horizon counterterrorism operations may be.
Opinion | After the deadly error in Afghanistan, maybe drones shouldn’t be used to kill at all
John Bradley, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant general, is the co-founder, with his wife, Jan, of the Nashville-based nonprofit Lamia Afghan Foundation.
Almost three weeks after a U.S. military drone attack supposedly killed an Islamic State terrorist in Kabul on Aug. 29, the Defense Department acknowledged a tragic error: The victim was a longtime Afghan aid worker. He died along with nine members of his extended family, including seven children.
Zamarai Ahmadi, the 43-year-old aid worker, was desperate to move to the United States with his family as Kabul fell to the Taliban amid the chaotic U.S. withdrawal. I know, because a few days before he died, I filed paperwork seeking his emergency evacuation.
The fact that Ahmadi was killed by the U.S. military even as he sought to gain refuge in the United States underlines how horribly things can go wrong with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for combat operations.
As a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant general, I know about the importance of force protection. The drone strike, three days after a car bomb at the Kabul airport killed 13 U.S. service personnel, was intended to stop another attack. But I also know about targeting and the use of ordnance in combat — and the care with which operations are carried out when the lives of young men and women of the U.S. armed forces are on the line.
Now consider what happened in Kabul. The Defense Department’s reports on the Hellfire missile strike from an MQ-9 Reaper said remote observers had tracked for hours a suspicious white Toyota Corolla. I have visited Kabul many times. I can attest that in the city of 4.4 million people, it often seems that 99 percent of the cars are Toyotas, most of them are Corollas and a large majority are white.
Trying to pinpoint the driver of a particular vehicle in Kabul as a terrorist would require on-the-ground information. In the frenzy of the U.S. pullout, such evidence clearly wouldn’t be forthcoming. Human intelligence about Ahmadi on the day of his death would have shown that he was loading his car with containers of water. U.S. military observers using an unmanned vehicle high above the city thought the containers were explosives.
In the absence of solid information, the observers had no idea who was driving the car. Or that he was seeking emergency evacuation to the United States.
I became involved in Ahmadi’s application process at the request of my friend Steven Kwon, the president and chief executive of Nutrition and Education International. The California-based nonprofit fights malnutrition in Afghanistan by encouraging soybean cultivation and production. I head a nonprofit also focused on aiding Afghanistan and have worked closely with NEI.
Here is what Dr. Kwon, as I always call the food scientist, could have told anyone who asked: Ahmadi, hired by NEI in 2006 as a handyman, hadn’t been to college, but he absorbed so much information from foreign engineers building NEI’s soybean factories that he became instrumental in their construction.
Dr. Kwon says Ahmadi was hard-working — taking English classes at 6 a.m. before work at 8 a.m. — but he was also a cheerful, outgoing person, as well as a talented singer and dancer. He took special joy in bringing food to poor villages, such as the one where he grew up, and feeding children suffering from malnutrition.
Many of NEI’s Afghan workers, including Ahmadi, were frightened by the Taliban’s looming takeover. Dr. Kwon submitted applications for the State Department’s U.S. Refugee Admissions Program Priority 2, or P-2, on their behalf. But that process can take months, and employees who had long worked with Americans, such as Ahmadi, were at heightened risk. As the situation in Kabul deteriorated in August, Dr. Kwon asked me to apply to the Defense Department for the emergency evacuation of Ahmadi and his family, as well as several other longtime NEI employees.
Receipt of the emergency evacuation request was acknowledged by former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan John Bass, who had been dispatched to Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport to help Americans and Afghans scrambling to get out of the country. But as the world knows, thousands of people were left stranded.
Then came the drone strike. Such attacks bear little resemblance to what I know from flying 337 close-air-support combat missions in the Vietnam War, or from training, as a senior officer, with young pilots who would deploy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet although the technology and procedures have changed over time, ultimately the method is the same: Pilots are guided to marked targets by controllers who are working with on-the-ground information and must give the pilots clearance to release ordnance. Deadly mistakes are rare.
The current “over the horizon” U.S. plan for attacking the nation’s enemies from afar makes the death of more noncombatants seem inevitable. As the Defense Department investigates how the terrible error in Kabul occurred, a more expansive government review is in order: Should we, as a people, want these unmanned vehicles to continue expending deadly ordnance on our behalf? Maybe they should be used only for reconnaissance.
7. What the War in Afghanistan Could Never Do
A long read.
Excerpts:
Whether it is anger over the thought of impoverished Taliban fighters outlasting the world’s most expensive and powerful military or fears over the fate of those left under Taliban rule, the lives of Afghans are but chipped tiles in the mosaic of American nationalism. There was little public anguish in the United States over the Trump administration quietly increasing civilian casualties more than 300 percent from 2017 to 2020 by relaxing rules governing air strikes, because those deaths were not understood to illustrate the limits of American power. But when Americans suffered the sting of defeat in a war they had not spent five minutes thinking about over the previous five years, then, and only then, did Afghan lives start to matter to them.
But only to a point. In an echo of the Obama era’s aggressive deportation efforts, the Biden administration has proved exceedingly frightened of the backlash from reversing Trump-era immigration policies, keeping most of them in place without placating a single one of its critics. Soon after the evacuation began, ambitious conservative politicians and media figures began warning of an “invasion” of Afghan refugees. Trump released a statement accusing the Afghans scrambling to flee Taliban rule of being potential terrorists, and weeks later, Republicans in the Senate voted unanimously to block assistance to them. In fact, Afghans are fleeing an American failure, and America should open its doors to them. This nation’s history of providing shelter to people from all over the world is far more consistent than its record of military victory.
In 1869, Frederick Douglass anticipated the growing wave of nativism in the United States by arguing, “In whatever else other nations may have been great and grand, our greatness and grandeur will be found in the faithful application of the principle of perfect civil equality to the people of all races and of all creeds, and to men of no creeds.” America’s mission, he argued, was to become the “perfect national illustration of the unit and dignity of the human family, that the world has ever seen.” If America wants to be great, there are other national missions besides war.
Those who opposed withdrawal cannot plausibly argue that the U.S. military was close to completing its mission, or that another 20 years would have made a difference. But they can use Americans’ wounded pride, and the echo of the sadness and despair they felt on 9/11, to raise the costs for Joe Biden of delivering the bad news. The preoccupation with American “humiliation” in Afghanistan is a form of mourning for something the invasion was never able to do—make Americans feel as strong and invincible as they did the day before the towers fell.
What the War in Afghanistan Could Never Do
Twenty years ago, Americans sought to feel as strong and invincible as they had the day before the towers fell
Even in the context of war, attacking fleeing civilians is a depraved act. The Islamic State’s attack on Kabul’s airport during the American evacuation of Afghanistan, which killed nearly 200 Afghan civilians and 13 U.S. service members protecting the facility, was bound to draw a military response. “The Kabul airport massacre compounds the humiliation of the botched Afghan withdrawal and will further embolden jihadists,” The Wall Street Journal editorialized.
Days later, the U.S. executed a drone strike on what it said was an ISIS operation that threatened the final evacuations out of Kabul—a strike General Mark Milley called “righteous.” Several weeks later, General Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. apologized, acknowledging that the strike had killed 10 civilians. “I offer my profound condolences to the family and friends of those who were killed,” McKenzie said on September 17. In early September, Ahmad Fayaz, a relative of one of those killed, told The Washington Post that the U.S. “always says they are killing [the Islamic State], al-Qaeda or the Taliban, but they always attack civilian people and children … I don’t think they are good people.”
The two events were themselves a microcosm of two decades of war, in which the U.S. military responded to a genuine threat with a heavy hand that undermined whatever goodwill it was trying to generate. “When comparing the Taliban with the United States and its Western allies, the vast majority of Afghans have always viewed the Taliban as the lesser of two evils,” the former U.S.-military interpreter Baktash Ahadi wrote in The Washington Post. They were also the first acts of a war that will continue past the Afghanistan withdrawal, a war more modest in objectives, but one in which the U.S. maintains the authority to use lethal force anywhere in the world.
The U.S. reliance on airpower has been motivated by an attempt to strike what it believes to be enemy targets while avoiding American casualties. That reliance has also meant that, far more frequently than the U.S. acknowledges, innocent people pay the price for American security concerns. It also provides the opportunity for swift retaliation, not simply to meet military objectives but to stave off what the Journal described as “humiliation.”
The Pentagon’s most recent error involves the inherent difficulties of determining who and where their enemy is. But it’s also a reflection of an American foreign policy preoccupied with “humiliation” and its avoidance. Ironically, it is this very obsession with humiliation that has led the U.S. to wage indefinite wars in pursuit of impossible objectives, employing self-defeating means. The compulsion to win grand, sweeping victories that exemplify American strength and power has prevented realistic judgments about what is achievable. And when politicians prove unable to present their voters with the triumphs that were promised, they choose to lie instead, maintaining the illusion until the wars can be passed on to a successor. At least, until Joe Biden made a different choice.
The realities of the withdrawal seem to have come as a shock to much of the country. Biden and Donald Trump did not agree on much, but Biden’s decision to honor Trump’s withdrawal deal with the Taliban drew the ire of the defense establishment, whose retired luminaries flocked to broadcast outlets where reporters echoed their criticisms. Afghanistan coverage on cable news in August 2021, Matt Gertz writes, exceeded that of any full year since 2010, when then-President Barack Obama ordered an increase in troops. Trump, for his part, described the exit he himself had negotiated as “the greatest foreign policy humiliation” in American history.
Biden drew harsh and sometimes justified criticism for the withdrawal itself, as the U.S. evacuated more than 100,000 people but, U.S. officials acknowledge, left some Afghan allies and U.S. citizens behind. These legitimate criticisms, though, have become a vehicle for those who planned and administered nearly two decades of stalemate and Taliban revival to cast the withdrawal itself as the debacle, in an effort to hide their own years of failure preceding it. Humiliation, in this case, has many parents, but none wish to claim paternity.
People all over the world were justly horrified by the Taliban’s rapid advance, and what seems like the certain reimposition of a cruel and authoritarian system that will deprive Afghans, women in particular, of their fundamental human rights. Irrespective of its early protestations, the Taliban remains repressive and authoritarian, intent on forcing its austere interpretation of religious law on the Afghan population through brutal means. Unlike the civilian casualties of the past two decades, more recent images of suffering in Afghanistan—crowds chasing planes on the runway, masses of Afghans fleeing the Taliban’s return, the hard faces of Taliban fighters as they grip their firearms—are far more readily accessible to American eyes.
But there is also a detectable undercurrent of imperial narcissism—where the suffering of Afghans is primarily important because of how it makes Americans feel about not being invincible. It is sometimes difficult to discern whether people are afraid for Afghans, or are simply nostalgic for the fantasy that the United States, or the West generally, could remake whole societies through force of arms.
A New York Times analysis—the label denoting opinion pieces by reporters on the news side—offered that the “political danger for Mr. Biden may be that the chaotic exit provides fodder for a broader Republican argument that he is not up to the job and has left the United States humiliated on the world stage.” The NBC News host Chuck Todd argued, “Yes, Americans in both parties supported an end to this 20-year ‘forever war.’ But they also want security, and no one likes to see America humiliated.” Yascha Mounk contended in The Atlantic that Biden would pay for the “scenes of national humiliation now playing on television and social media,” invoking the specter of “humiliation” four times in a single essay.
The right-wing pundit Hugh Hewitt, who supported the withdrawal when Trump supported it and opposed it once Biden began executing it, lamented, “My adult life has included fall of Saigon, Iran hostage crisis, Beirut bombing, KA007, Iran-Contra affair, 9/11, escape of bin Laden, the Iraq WMD and occupation, JCPOA, Putin and Georgia and Ukraine, Hong Kong. This is the worst, not in loss of life, but in deep damage to soul.” Even if the war in Afghanistan could not be won, it seems that Biden was wrong to withdraw because of the damage that has been done to American self-esteem.
As Mounk argues, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan aided Trump’s rise by allowing him to portray American leadership as feckless. It does not follow, though, that foreign wars should be pursued indefinitely so that America’s political leadership can continue to feign competence, or that doing so would prevent someone like Trump from exploiting the sense of humiliation that results from the failure of American colonial projects.
In fact, the causality is backwards. As Spencer Ackerman writes, it was precisely two decades of war nationalism and the state of exception they produced that eroded American democracy. Those conditions also set the stage for a racist demagogue whose primary criticism of American wars was that they were incompetently managed because feckless American elites were insufficiently murderous. And yet not even the war-crime enthusiast Trump could slaughter his way to victory in Afghanistan—another national humiliation Trump rushed to ameliorate with an exit toward the end of his term.
This reaction—the fixation on humiliation above any of the material realities of the mission in Afghanistan—may be difficult to understand for Americans who were not alive on 9/11. In the immediate aftermath of al-Qaeda’s act of mass murder, millions of Americans were seized with a sense of missionary purpose.
“Does anybody but me feel upbeat, and guilty about it?” David Brooks wrote in The Weekly Standard less than a month after the carnage in Manhattan and Washington, D.C. “I feel upbeat because the country seems to be a better place than it was a month ago. I feel guilty about it because I should be feeling pain and horror and anger about the recent events. But there’s so much to cheer one up.”
Real American values had been revived by the War on Terror. “To me this whole event has been like a national Sabbath, stripping away the hurly-burly of normal life and reminding people of nation, faith, and ideals,” Brooks wrote. He exulted that even “the most reactionary liberals amongst us are capable of change,” noting that Bruce Springsteen recently had sung a tribute to the NYPD, despite previously having written a song criticizing the killing of Amadou Diallo, who was shot 41 times by police who said they believed he was armed; he had been holding his wallet.
Although the country remained closely divided—George W. Bush’s reelection was narrow—the years after 9/11 felt to many Americans like a period of conservative cultural and political dominance. During the Obama administration, when Glenn Beck held his “9/12 March,” it was an expression of nostalgia for national unity on right-wing terms. The sense of purpose and unity was also attractive to liberal hawks, who were drawn to the sense of national mission and the opportunity to marginalize radicals who embarrassed them and, in their view, weakened the Democratic Party’s political fortunes.
A few years earlier, Brooks had written about the need for a “National Greatness Conservatism,” calling for Americans to embrace a new “national mission” along the lines of “settling the West, building the highway system, creating the post-war science faculties, exploring space, waging the Cold War, and disseminating American culture throughout the world.” In other corners of the right, this neoconservative idealism took on a darker cast.
Writing in The Atlantic, Christopher Hitchens sneered that left-wing war skeptics were “the sort who, discovering a viper in the bed of their child, would place the first call to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.” Shortly after the invasion of Afghanistan, he announced in The Nation that “the United States of America has just succeeded in bombing a country back out of the Stone Age.” In National Review in 2002, during the run-up to the Iraq War, Jonah Goldberg approvingly quoted his colleague Michael Ledeen, who said that “every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.” That the people who live in those countries might object, or might have the capacity to resist such arbitrary demonstrations of American power, was an afterthought.
After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration undertook the task of remaking the world in America’s image, at gunpoint. The War on Terror was the New Cold War, the New New Deal. To express skepticism about this national mission—not even opposition, but merely skepticism—was to side with the terrorists, to be the kind of person who would not lift a finger to save their own child. It was to abandon America, and Americans.
As a national mission, this crusade was far less successful than the New Deal, or even the Cold War. The New Deal expanded the American welfare state and empowered workers against their bosses. The Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Two decades and four administrations later, the War on Terror finds jihadist groups arguably more widespread, dangerous, and influential than they were prior to 9/11.
The roots of its failure are not simply conceptual but lie in the zeal that could not suffer scrutiny or recognize error. Al-Qaeda had not only murdered thousands of people here at home, but questioned American resolve and American strength. Simply protecting the country, defeating those responsible on the battlefield, or even destroying al-Qaeda’s leadership would not be enough.
American leaders sought to purge the fear and humiliation many felt with violence, by turning Afghanistan into a utopia where groups like al-Qaeda could not exist. “Our War on Terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there,” Bush told Congress and the nation nine days after the attacks. “It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.” America’s new purpose, he said, was to “answer these attacks and rid the world of evildoers.”
Acting on that impulse, the Bush administration was not satisfied with simply defeating the Taliban in 2001. It drew up plans to invade Iraq in order to continue the glorious national mission, but it also sowed the seeds in Afghanistan for the Taliban’s revival. “From the very beginning, the U.S. had the idea that there’s only unconditional surrender; there was no surrender with amnesty,” the former New Yorker correspondent Anand Gopal told MSNBC’s Zeeshan Aleem. “You had a one-sided war in those years, between 2001 and 2004, where the U.S. was fighting an enemy that didn’t exist, and innocent people were the ones who were suffering. That really is what created the Taliban’s resurgence.”
Even if you believe Gopal’s description is oversimplified—the Taliban was still launching cross-border attacks from Pakistan in those years—there’s a great deal of evidence for the argument that American policy strengthened the Taliban after its initial defeat.
A comprehensive report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) shows that the operation was a failure almost from the beginning, an attempt to impose America’s will on a nation whose economic, cultural, and political dynamics American leadership never respected or understood. Although the most crucial mistakes were likely made during the Bush administration, devastating errors were made across four administrations, both Democratic and Republican.
The U.S. attempt to revive the Afghan economy with foreign aid created a weak state dependent on outside support, but failed to reduce unemployment or poverty. Reconstruction projects were unused, abandoned, or destroyed. The cash infusion, combined with corruption, “created new grievances and exacerbated old ones, as some groups benefited from the war and others were alienated and driven toward the insurgency,” the SIGAR report said; the winners “committed major crimes with impunity, creating a kind of mafia rule.” U.S. projects “unwittingly supported one powerbroker or interest group at the expense of another, thereby stoking local conflicts and creating an opportunity for insurgents to form an alliance with the disaffected party.” American leaders relied on “strongmen and warlords to build a nascent bureaucracy,” an approach that undermined the Afghan government’s legitimacy rather than establishing it. In a classic example of bureaucratic failure, “evaluations intentionally obfuscated the truth,” because no one wanted to lose funding or support for their assignment.
In one telling anecdote from 2009, according to SIGAR, General Stanley A. McChrystal ordered the construction of two large diesel generators to provide electricity to 650,000 Kandahar residents, believing that “expanding access to electricity would improve the Afghan government’s legitimacy.” But the fuel costs proved too high to sustain, and the “resulting widespread power outages exposed the project as a bridge to nowhere.” The reporter Azmat Kahn wrote in 2015 that despite American claims, more than 1,000 U.S.-built schools in Afghanistan had been abandoned but were still being funded, with cash ending up “in the pockets of brutal warlords and reviled strongmen, which sometimes soured the local population on the U.S. and the Afghan government.” The Afghan army would collapse 12 years later in the face of the Taliban advance, when deprived of U.S. military and contractor support. Everything the U.S. built in Afghanistan was a sandcastle.
As the Afghan government foundered, commentators ignored these fatal flaws, indulging the fantasy that the war might have been successful if the military had simply killed more of the enemy. The Soviet Union pursued its invasion of Afghanistan with unrestrained brutality—that didn’t work, either. According to Craig Whitlock’s 2021 book, The Afghanistan Papers, by 2018 the Taliban had “swollen to about 60,000 fighters, up from 25,000 seven years earlier,” and had gained so much territory that the U.S. “stopped tracking territorial control altogether.” By July 2018, the U.S. estimated that the Taliban controlled or contested half of Afghanistan. This happened despite the Trump administration removing Obama-era restraints on air strikes.
Few asked why, if the American presence was so unconditionally benevolent, the Taliban managed to rise from the ashes of its early defeat. A farmer south of Kabul told the journalist Emran Feroz last year that he hoped the peace talks would be successful, because “we can live in poverty but not without peace.”
This backlash to the failure of the national mission undertaken after 9/11 explains why American leaders lied to the public for so long about the progress of the war. No president wanted to be the president who lost Afghanistan, and no general wanted to be the general who brought American forces home from a defeat. “For those millions of Americans who demanded vengeance for 9/11, and then for the United States’ compounded misfortunes in seeking it, the Forever War brought only the pain and humiliation of attaining neither peace nor victory,” Spencer Ackerman writes. So the war continued. It fell to Biden to deliver the bad news.
No one has made a compelling or coherent case for how the U.S. could actually have succeeded in Afghanistan after 20 years of failure. We have instead been treated to nonsense arguments that low American casualties during talks with the Taliban was the new normal, and that the risk for an American service member during a deployment to Afghanistan was comparable to being stationed in South Korea. But there are also no improvised explosive devices in Seoul, and soldiers don’t get to take their families with them to Kandahar. Afghanistan was not an easy assignment like being stationed in Berlin, where you get a housing allowance that will easily pay for a luxury apartment if you are not assigned on-base housing.
This argument elides the steep casualty rate of the Afghan army, and the inevitability that American force would eventually be needed to repel the Taliban advance, which would mean more American casualties. The only alternative to withdrawal was a resumption and escalation of the war the leaders of the U.S. government have quietly known for years was not winnable.
Last week, General Mark Milley testified that contrary to Biden’s public assertions, he advised the president to maintain a residual force in Afghanistan. But he also acknowledged that the U.S.-backed Afghan government could never have survived on its own, testifying, “the end state probably would have been the same no matter when you did it.”
Few American leaders—except for those with relatives in Afghanistan—and few American families, except for those whose loved ones deployed over and over to fight a battle their leaders knew they could not win, were concerned about the fate of Afghanistan until Biden injured their pride by withdrawing. Then, people unwilling to wear a mask inside or get vaccinated to protect others from a disease killing 1,000 Americans a week were suddenly seized with an eagerness to send other people’s fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters back to an unwinnable war so they could avert the shame of defeat, the realization that the national mission to forever purge the trauma of 9/11 through military might could not succeed.
Americans grow up being taught that America is invincible; the most popular film franchise of the current moment is a 12-year monument to commercial filmmaking in which a blue-eyed World War II veteran clad in an American flag leads a posse of demigods back through time to undo an allegorical representation of 9/11. Ardent nationalists are unused to accepting trade-offs or limitations on American power, and many prefer leaders who will paper over such trade-offs with belligerent fictions about American omnipotence.
Whether it is anger over the thought of impoverished Taliban fighters outlasting the world’s most expensive and powerful military or fears over the fate of those left under Taliban rule, the lives of Afghans are but chipped tiles in the mosaic of American nationalism. There was little public anguish in the United States over the Trump administration quietly increasing civilian casualties more than 300 percent from 2017 to 2020 by relaxing rules governing air strikes, because those deaths were not understood to illustrate the limits of American power. But when Americans suffered the sting of defeat in a war they had not spent five minutes thinking about over the previous five years, then, and only then, did Afghan lives start to matter to them.
But only to a point. In an echo of the Obama era’s aggressive deportation efforts, the Biden administration has proved exceedingly frightened of the backlash from reversing Trump-era immigration policies, keeping most of them in place without placating a single one of its critics. Soon after the evacuation began, ambitious conservative politicians and media figures began warning of an “invasion” of Afghan refugees. Trump released a statement accusing the Afghans scrambling to flee Taliban rule of being potential terrorists, and weeks later, Republicans in the Senate voted unanimously to block assistance to them. In fact, Afghans are fleeing an American failure, and America should open its doors to them. This nation’s history of providing shelter to people from all over the world is far more consistent than its record of military victory.
In 1869, Frederick Douglass anticipated the growing wave of nativism in the United States by arguing, “In whatever else other nations may have been great and grand, our greatness and grandeur will be found in the faithful application of the principle of perfect civil equality to the people of all races and of all creeds, and to men of no creeds.” America’s mission, he argued, was to become the “perfect national illustration of the unit and dignity of the human family, that the world has ever seen.” If America wants to be great, there are other national missions besides war.
Those who opposed withdrawal cannot plausibly argue that the U.S. military was close to completing its mission, or that another 20 years would have made a difference. But they can use Americans’ wounded pride, and the echo of the sadness and despair they felt on 9/11, to raise the costs for Joe Biden of delivering the bad news. The preoccupation with American “humiliation” in Afghanistan is a form of mourning for something the invasion was never able to do—make Americans feel as strong and invincible as they did the day before the towers fell.
8. Gordon Chang: Joe Biden Should Offer A Mutual Defense Treaty To Taiwan
Very provocative headline and proposal. (especially to China!). Provocativeness aside, Gordon subtly raises a key point about propaganda from our adversaries. Sometimes we must take their words at face value. We must understand the the themes and messages they are developing and their intent for influence of various target audiences. But we should never discount propaganda by calling it "propaganda." They are transmitting messages and we must understand those messages.
Excerpts:
To its credit, the Biden administration has moved closer to Taiwan, stepping up contacts with the island’s government. There has also been an uptick in U.S. Navy and Coast Guard patrols in the Taiwan Strait, most notably on August 27 when both USS Kidd, an Arleigh Burke destroyer, and USCG Munro, a Coast Guard cutter, transited in opposite directions. At the moment, four big decks—American carriers Carl Vinson and Ronald Reagan, the U.K.’s HMS Queen Elizabeth, and Japan’s JS Ide—are exercising near Okinawa.
The Biden administration has also lent rhetorical support. “The United States is very concerned by the People’s Republic of China’s provocative military activity near Taiwan, which is destabilizing, risks miscalculations, and undermines regional peace and stability,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement on Sunday.
At the moment, it does not appear that Xi Jinping will be moved by such sentiments as he has words of his own, such as those in a Monday Global Times editorial titled “Time to Warn Taiwan Secessionists and their Fomenters: War Is Real.”
Many—perhaps most—Global Times commentaries are overheated, and some think threats like this are merely bluster. Taiwan’s not-easily-intimidated government, however, feels Beijing is serious and conflict is coming. Joseph Wu, Taiwan’s foreign minister, over the weekend told Australia’s ABC News that Taipei is preparing for war and asked for Canberra’s assistance.
Wu is right to take China’s harsh words at face value.
And the United States should also do the same. That means it’s time for Washington to ditch its policy of “strategic ambiguity”—the policy of not making any commitments—to one of “strategic clarity”—committing to the defense of Taiwan. Ambiguity worked in a period far more benign than now. With China so aggressive, only a clear declaration can have an effect.
Gordon Chang: Joe Biden Should Offer A Mutual Defense Treaty To Taiwan
The previous records were 38 planes on Friday and 39 planes Saturday. Sunday was quiet: Only 16 Chinese aircraft intruded.
Many will say that China is only huffing and puffing, wasting aviation fuel with the provocative flights. Friday, after all, was National Day, marking the 72nd anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic. Beijing was not going to let the day go without some event asserting pride.
The let-them-blow-off-steam strategy has in fact worked to keep the peace for some time, but now circumstances have changed. There are two reasons why old policy approaches should now be abandoned.
First, Xi Jinping and others in the Chinese capital now seem to believe the United States is in terminal decline and will not oppose their attempts to break apart neighbors. Deterrence, in short, is failing.
Failing deterrence was especially evident when Yang Jiechi, China’s top diplomat, met Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in Anchorage in the middle of March. “So let me say here that, in front of the Chinese side, the United States does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength,” Yang said in opening remarks.
Moreover, as Afghanistan was falling Beijing’s main propaganda narrative was that the U.S could not hope to counter a magnificent China because it could not even deal with the Taliban. This narrative appears to reflect thinking in the Chinese capital.
Beijing at the same time also went after Taiwan’s ruling party, the Democratic Progressive Party. “The DPP authorities need to keep a sober head, and the secessionist forces should reserve the ability to wake up from their dreams,” an editorial from Global Times, which is controlled by People’s Daily, stated. “From what happened in Afghanistan, they should perceive that once a war breaks out in the Straits, the island’s defense will collapse in hours and the U.S. military won’t come to help.”
Worse, China’s leaders seem to think the U.S. military is generally incapable. “It cannot win a war anymore,” Lu Xiang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences told the Global Times as the Taliban captured Kabul.
Second, China is coming apart at the seams. There is a debt crisis Beijing cannot solve—think Evergrande, the failing property developer—plus worsening food shortages, a stagnating economy, rolling power outages, a deteriorating environment, and a continuing COVID-19 epidemic. To make matters worse, the country is on the edge of a demographic collapse, the steepest in history in the absence of war or disease.
These developments are roiling the political system as ruler Xi Jinping is being held accountable for policy failures. Because of his almost unprecedented accumulation of power, he has few others to blame. China’s supremo now has a low threshold of risk and many reasons to pick on, say, Taiwan to deflect elite criticism and popular unhappiness.
Mao started the Cultural Revolution to vanquish enemies in Beijing. Xi Jinping is doing the same thing. Unlike Mao, however, Xi has the power to plunge the world into war, and he apparently feels the need to have an enemy to explain away failures. The world, therefore, is at risk.
To its credit, the Biden administration has moved closer to Taiwan, stepping up contacts with the island’s government. There has also been an uptick in U.S. Navy and Coast Guard patrols in the Taiwan Strait, most notably on August 27 when both USS Kidd, an Arleigh Burke destroyer, and USCG Munro, a Coast Guard cutter, transited in opposite directions. At the moment, four big decks—American carriers Carl Vinson and Ronald Reagan, the U.K.’s HMS Queen Elizabeth, and Japan’s JS Ide—are exercising near Okinawa.
The Biden administration has also lent rhetorical support. “The United States is very concerned by the People’s Republic of China’s provocative military activity near Taiwan, which is destabilizing, risks miscalculations, and undermines regional peace and stability,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement on Sunday.
At the moment, it does not appear that Xi Jinping will be moved by such sentiments as he has words of his own, such as those in a Monday Global Times editorial titled “Time to Warn Taiwan Secessionists and their Fomenters: War Is Real.”
Many—perhaps most—Global Times commentaries are overheated, and some think threats like this are merely bluster. Taiwan’s not-easily-intimidated government, however, feels Beijing is serious and conflict is coming. Joseph Wu, Taiwan’s foreign minister, over the weekend told Australia’s ABC News that Taipei is preparing for war and asked for Canberra’s assistance.
Wu is right to take China’s harsh words at face value.
And the United States should also do the same. That means it’s time for Washington to ditch its policy of “strategic ambiguity”—the policy of not making any commitments—to one of “strategic clarity”—committing to the defense of Taiwan. Ambiguity worked in a period far more benign than now. With China so aggressive, only a clear declaration can have an effect.
To make such a declaration credible, the U.S. should offer a mutual defense treaty to Taiwan. To keep the peace, Beijing has to know the U.S. will use force to back its commitment. In the meantime, the U.S. should be deploying military assets to Taiwan and in its waters. Yes, that might provoke China, but China is already on the march, emboldened by what it perceives as American feebleness. A strong America is much less provocative than a weak-looking one.
So why should the U.S. not continue to let Beijing blow off steam? Because ignoring China, in the new environment, is making the Chinese think they can act even more dangerously. After all, each day they are sending more planes near Taiwan.
9. Tony Abbott in Taiwan to build support among ‘like-minded countries’
Excerpts:
Bonnie Glaser, the director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said the risk of conflict over Taiwan was down to short-term and long-term factors.
“The People’s Liberation Army has a window of opportunity. Over the past several decades US military advantages have eroded. Today the US military is not able to intervene quickly or effectively to prevent a Chinese invasion of Taiwan,” she told Harvard’s Fairbanks Centre for Chinese Studies.
“But as long as there is no danger of Taiwan declaring independence and being supported by the international community, China can accept the uneasy status quo for a long time.
“[China’s] strategy I would argue is aimed at inducing a sense of despair. Among the Taiwanese people so that they eventually conclude that their only viable future [is] to join the mainland. China wants to win without fighting.”
“They should remember that if Taiwan were to fall, the consequences would be catastrophic for regional peace and the democratic alliance system,” she said.
Tony Abbott in Taiwan to build support among ‘like-minded countries’
October 6, 2021 — 3.27pm
Singapore: Tony Abbott will use a series of meetings with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-Wen and the head of her National Security Council to bolster Australia’s relationship with the threatened democratic island.
Australia’s former prime minister is the highest-level visitor to Taipei since Malcolm Turnbull spoke at the Yushan Forum last year. Turnbull and former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd have become increasingly vocal in their international criticism of their successor, Scott Morrison, making Abbott a valuable diplomatic asset for the Coalition government.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott. Credit:Getty Images
Abbott is officially visiting in a “private capacity” but his meetings with Tsai and the top brass of the foreign affairs and security establishment will allow him to act as an interlocutor with the Morrison government as it attempts to navigate an already fraught relationship with Beijing.
Sources with knowledge of his trip who were not authorised to speak publicly said, “where helpful”, Abbott – like Bob Hawke and Paul Keating who used their post-prime ministerial life to bolster Australia’s relationship with China – “wants to try and do the same with like-minded countries”. Abbott used other high-profile visits to the United Kingdom in 2019 to lobby for its pivot to the Indo-Pacific, and India in August to restart talks for a stalled Australia-India free trade deal.
A spokesman for the Taiwanese Foreign Ministry said Abbott “is a firm friend of our country and has spoken for Taiwan many times”.
“Former prime minister Abbott’s visit to Taiwan should help to enhance Taiwan’s role in the international community and in the Indo-Pacific region,” the spokesman said.
No serving ministers have been on an official visit to Taipei since Australia recognised Beijing in the 1970s. Australia has a representative office in Taiwan but not an embassy. This facilitates sub-ministerial contact between bureaucrats on issues such as trade and occasional international dialogue between trade ministers.
The system has been in place for decades to avoid antagonising the Chinese Communist Party, which regards its neighbour as an “inalienable part of China” since a rival government was established in Taiwan in 1949 after decades of civil war.
Taiwan’s application to join the giant regional trade network – the Trans-Pacific Partnership – is expected to be a key part of Abbott’s speech at Friday’s Yushan Forum. Abbott has publicly supported Taiwan’s application to join the network – a move which could also enhance informal engagement between Taiwanese and Australian ministers.
“Given that China is not a member of the TPP, is unlikely to become a member of the TPP, and is already in a state of high dudgeon against Australia and many other countries, I don’t see that China is going to be any more upset than it already is,” Abbott told an Australian trade committee hearing last week.
Helicopters fly over President Office with Taiwan National flag during the National Day celebrations in Taipei, Taiwan, last year.Credit:AP
The aerial harassment, which has been sandwiched between a surge in nationalism for China’s National Day on October 1 and Taiwan’s own national day on October 10, forced Taiwan to scramble scores of planes in response and an intervention from US President Joe Biden on Wednesday AEDT.
Biden said he had spoken to Xi Jinping about Taiwan. “We agree we’ll abide by the Taiwan agreement,” he said, referring to his September call with the Chinese President. “We made it clear that I don’t think he should be doing anything other than abiding by the agreement.”
The statement appeared to refer to the US One-China Policy and its Taiwan Relations Act which predicates the US recognition of China’s position on Taiwan on the basis that any disputes over the island be resolved by peaceful means. Taiwan officially maintains a position of ambiguity in an attempt to keep the peace – operating separately from China, while not formally declaring international independence.
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen speaks with military personnel last week during Taiwan’s five-day Han Guang military exercise designed to prepare the island’s forces for an attack by China.Credit:Taiwan Presidential Office
Bonnie Glaser, the director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said the risk of conflict over Taiwan was down to short-term and long-term factors.
“The People’s Liberation Army has a window of opportunity. Over the past several decades US military advantages have eroded. Today the US military is not able to intervene quickly or effectively to prevent a Chinese invasion of Taiwan,” she told Harvard’s Fairbanks Centre for Chinese Studies.
“But as long as there is no danger of Taiwan declaring independence and being supported by the international community, China can accept the uneasy status quo for a long time.
“[China’s] strategy I would argue is aimed at inducing a sense of despair. Among the Taiwanese people so that they eventually conclude that their only viable future [is] to join the mainland. China wants to win without fighting.”
“They should remember that if Taiwan were to fall, the consequences would be catastrophic for regional peace and the democratic alliance system,” she said.
10. Japan’s Authorities in a Taiwan Contingency: Providing Needed Clarity
Excerpts:
If it is not already doing so, Japan should also seek internal legal clarity on whether and under what circumstances Taiwan could count as a foreign country for the purposes of Japanese security law. Sharing this information privately with the United States and seeking U.S. views on the same would be a useful follow-up action. Understandably, Japan may want to condition its views on Taiwan’s status based on how other members of the international community proceed. Such nuances could be included in Japanese information sharing with the United States.
Additionally, a Taiwan contingency is likely to require quick thinking and decision-making. This will be important not only for U.S.-Japanese coordination, but also for Japan domestically. Most of the authorities granted to the Self-Defense Forces in 2016 remain unutilized and the internal coordination processes required legally for their deployment untested. To this end, it may be useful for Japanese authorities to translate the results of their own Taiwan review and any subsequent consultations with the United States into an internal exercise to ensure that national and local officials are able to act quickly and seamlessly. Relatedly, the Japanese government should work to increase the understanding of Diet members regarding various potential Taiwan scenarios, given the Diet’s approval role.
Some might argue that the lack of clarity surrounding Japan’s designations of survival-threatening situations and important influence situations is helpful as a form of deterrence. If the issue were simply about Japan’s intentions, as in the case of permission regarding U.S. use of bases for a military defense of Taiwan, such an argument might hold water. However, in the case of Japan’s legal authorities for addressing a Taiwan contingency, the key question relates to Japan’s options rather than its intentions. By creating a space for confusion by U.S. military planners and Japan’s own decision-makers, the ambiguities and conditionalities related to the application of these designations to Taiwan undermine deterrence and give China an advantage that these allies need not concede. Remedying this confusion will help strengthen deterrence and ensure that a Taiwan contingency remains purely hypothetical.
Japan’s Authorities in a Taiwan Contingency: Providing Needed Clarity - War on the Rocks
A Chinese military intervention against Taiwan represents a major security threat for Japan. So it is not surprising that a Japanese poll found 74 percent of respondents supportive of their government engaging to advance peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. Tokyo’s potential role in a military contingency involving Taiwan has also been in the spotlight, however, following increased Chinese and U.S. tensions over the island and a series of comments by senior Japanese officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso.
Although Japan’s response in a Taiwan contingency would ultimately reflect the nature of the threat, the U.S. approach, and the broader international reaction, Japan’s constitution and security legislation create legal limits on Tokyo’s ability to defend Taiwan. Yet these limits remain little explored with respect to various Taiwan scenarios, within either Japanese or U.S. policy circles. Because Japan’s security legislation is so complex, particularly after changes that entered into force in 2016 to expand the authorities of the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), a potential Japanese response to a Taiwan contingency is much less clear than it may appear on the surface.
This article briefly outlines the range of Japanese responses to a Chinese invasion or blockade of Taiwan and then examines two sets of key authorities — those related to an “important influence situation” and to a “survival-threatening situation.” The article argues that the authorities under a survival-threatening situation are less likely to be applicable to a defense of Taiwan than recent commentary might suggest. Both the survival-threatening situation and the important influence situation, moreover, present ambiguities and conditionalities that Japanese and U.S. planners should clarify together. Doing so would eliminate potential confusion, ensuring that the U.S.-Japanese alliance can function smoothly in relation to Taiwan and thus strengthening the deterrence that is key for the peace and stability that Japan so strongly desires.
What’s On the Books
Absent a direct attack on Japan, Japanese action can take various forms, depending on the circumstances. Perhaps most pertinently, Japan would have the option to allow the United States to use U.S. bases in Japan for a military response to a Taiwan attack, based on prior consultation requirements relating to “the use of facilities and areas in Japan as bases for military combat operations to be undertaken from Japan.” Historically, Japan has maintained public ambiguity about its willingness to provide acquiescence for such a request in relation to Taiwan.
Japan can also respond to an important influence situation, which comprises contingencies short of armed attack on Japan that, if left unaddressed, could develop to threaten Japan’s peace and security. In such a situation, Japan can provide support for U.S. and other forces responding to the contingency. Japanese support may include search and rescue activities, ship inspections, and logistics support, with the last encompassing such elements as use of facilities, supply chains, transportation, communication, and repair and maintenance.
Additionally, there is one scenario short of a direct armed attack against Japan where the country is permitted to use force in self-defense, per the asterisk we placed earlier. This involves the survival-threatening situation, which refers to “a situation where an armed attack against a foreign country that is in a close relationship with Japan occurs and as a result threatens Japan’s survival and poses a clear danger to fundamentally overturn people’s right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.” In such a scenario, Japan could undertake similar military operations to those designed to respond to an attack against Japan, including in collaboration with the United States or other countries. This is effectively collective self-defense, but it is a narrower species of collective self-defense than traditional interpretations because Japan can only come to the defense of another nation if its own survival is directly jeopardized and not simply because that nation happens to be an ally or friend.
Both the important influence situation and survival-threatening situation designations are part of a controversial package of security legislation, passed in 2015 to attendant public protests and sharp divisions within the Diet, that entered into force in 2016. Opponents of the legislation feared it could be used to drag Japan into U.S. military adventurism. The administration of then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, meanwhile, argued that it was necessary to address changing regional and global security environments and had built-in limitations.
Realistically, the Japanese government — like any government — will try to do whatever it believes is necessary for the country’s security and build the requisite argument to back that. However, such an argument will need to pass muster with the Diet, which is required to approve military operations under the security legislation. As a result, the government will need to provide a solid legal basis and clearly identify why the specific proposed response is needed, especially if it involves a Japanese use of force. This is important given the presence of parties in the Diet with restrictive views on the use of force and collective self-defense, including the ruling party’s main coalition partner.
When an Attack on Taiwan Threatens Japan’s Survival
The applicability of the survival-threatening situation designation for a defense of Taiwan is thus interesting to examine, particularly given Aso’s direct reference to the term when he noted that “if a major problem took place in Taiwan, it would not be too much to say that it could relate to a survival-threatening situation.” One significant point that remains unknown is whether Taiwan qualifies as a foreign country for the purposes of Japan’s relevant security laws, since Japan does not officially recognize Taiwan as a separate county from China, despite its relations with Taipei. How much this technicality might matter in an actual crisis likely depends on the mood in the Diet, but in Japan’s rule-conscious political culture, the question might present a legal conundrum. Leaving the issue of Taiwan’s status as a foreign country aside, the intentions behind the designation are also worth examining.
Indeed, an attack on the United States in a Taiwan contingency may be more likely to spur a survival-threatening situation designation than an attack on Taiwan itself. For example, U.S. ships under missile attack by Chinese forces could request Japanese assistance — a scenario similar to one the advisory panel contemplated (in the general case) in its justification of the need for collective self-defense permissions. Abe himself warned that a failure to protect U.S. ships when requested could unravel the very fabric of the U.S.-Japanese security alliance upon which the country’s security rests. The likelihood of such an outcome would obviously depend on the nature and severity of the specific case, but the example underscores the U.S.-centric focus the Abe administration seemingly intended for designating a survival-threatening situation.
Regardless of the original intent, the language describing a survival-threatening situation is flexible enough to apply directly to Taiwan if the Japanese cabinet determined such a course to be necessary. As noted, however, a solid case would be needed to secure Diet approval for military operations under the law. According to guidance suggested by the advisory panel, the clearest case could be made if there were a high probability that an attack on Taiwan would lead to a direct attack against Japan. Although such a scenario may appear open-ended, only a few specific cases would likely qualify without ambiguity. Examples help illustrate the point.
Take an attempted Chinese invasion of Taiwan. This action alone would send extremely worrying signals to Tokyo about Beijing’s intent and self-restraint, and, if successful, could facilitate a Chinese attack on Japanese territory or supply chains. Such a scenario would doubtless put the Self-Defense Forces on high alert. However, absent a causal and temporal link between the attack on Taiwan and an attack on Japan — such as clear indications that China intended to attack Japan from Taiwanese territory once it gained control — it would be difficult to argue that a Japanese use of force in defense of Taiwan was necessary to protect Japan from attack. Even use of force for the defense of Japan itself, as noted earlier, would only be allowed if China initiated an attack on Japan, not merely because it might now be in a better position to initiate one.
Imagine, instead, if there were clear information or intelligence that China planned to use the invasion of Taiwan as a necessary part of a sequenced attack on Taiwan and Japan — one focused, perhaps, on the Chinese-claimed and Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands, or even on other islands in Japan’s Okinawa prefecture. In such a scenario, an attack on Taiwan could constitute, in effect, the initiation of an attack on Japan, closely connecting an armed attack against Taiwan with a direct threat to Japan’s survival. The defense of Taiwan could thus be seen as integral to the defense of Japan. Although variations on the situation might also qualify, this is the basic scenario under which a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would likely present a survival-threatening situation for Japan.
If China were to opt to blockade Taiwan, it might also be possible to apply the survival-threatening situation designation, but again, likely only in a very narrow range of circumstances. First, Japan would need to consider the blockade to constitute an armed attack — for example, in the gravity of its scale and effects on Taiwan. Second, per the guidance of the advisory panel, the blockade would need to critically impact Japan or its citizens, perhaps by strongly harming Japan’s economy. For Japan to need to use force to defend Taiwan due to such effects, however, the blockade would need to critically impact Japan through its impact on Taiwan specifically. Since Taiwan is Japan’s fourth-largest export marketand eighth-largest import territory of origin, this could be plausible if a blockade were to go on long enough. Again, there could be variations to this scenario, but very few exist that would meet the pass-through criterion.
All in all, the potential cases under which an attack on Taiwan would threaten Japan’s survival in accordance with relevant security laws appear very limited. There is one caveat here worth exploring. The advisory panel also suggested that a case might be a made for a survival-threatening situation if the “international order itself could be significantly affected” as the result of an attack on a foreign country. This notion could introduce some flexibility for Japanese decision-makers. China’s successful reunification with Taiwan by force would certainly affect the regional order and, in turn, U.S. power in the region. There may be debate within Japan about whether such a scenario would significantly impact the international order itself, however.
Ultimately, Tokyo is unlikely to authorize use of force in defense of Taiwan unless it feels it absolutely must, because this will bring it into direct conflict with China. However, the lack of specificity still leaves a range of scenarios for U.S. military planners to consider and/or eliminate, even leaving aside the question of the international order. Moreover, an understanding of both Japanese law and Japanese interpretations of international law is required, making this a complex task.
When an Attack on Taiwan Could Develop to Threaten Japan’s Security
If a contingency involving Taiwan did not rise to the level of a survival-threatening situation, it would nonetheless present serious concerns and risks for Japan. This is where the important influence situation designation comes in. The examples of a potential important influence situation provided by the Abe government and the advisory panel are again telling and boil down to U.S. forces responding to an attack by one regional country against another. One example involves “a situation where an armed attack against another country occurs in Japan’s neighboring area and the United States is exercising the right of collective self-defense in support of said country,” and “if such a situation is left untouched, the conflict would enlarge, and eventually, Japan itself would be affected by the conflict.” This example presents circumstances very similar to a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Although all the available examples of an important influence situation involve an actual armed attack on a third country, the occurrence of an armed attack is not an explicit requirement to define such a situation, so it is likely that a blockade of Taiwan would qualify, even one not devastating enough to constitute an armed attack. This is useful when considering that a quasi-blockade or “quarantine” limited to military materiel may be a more effective strategy for China than a full blockade, according to a special report from the Council on Foreign Relations. It is certainly plausible that a blockade or quarantine of Taiwan would fit the criteria for a situation that, if left unaddressed, could develop to threaten Japan’s security.
The pertinent aspect of an important influence situation with respect to Japanese support activities, however, is that it requires a U.S. response to support. The nature and circumstances of that response would likely be determinative. This is particularly relevant because Japanese and U.S. interpretations of collective self-defense and the legal use of force differ. It is unlikely that Japan would be able to provide support activities for a U.S. response that it did not see as consistent with international law. Take, for example, a Chinese quarantine of Taiwan. If the United States were to respond to the quarantine by dispatching warships to the area to monitor the situation, Japan could likely refuel or supply these ships or provide other relevant support activities.
In contrast, imagine a quarantine case in which the United States decided to respond with force. If Japan did not categorize the quarantine as serious enough to constitute an armed attack, Tokyo might not consider a U.S. use of force in defense of Taiwan as a legitimate example of collective self-defense under the United Nations Charter, constraining its ability to act. It is, of course, unclear that the United States itself would respond with force in such a scenario, but the case is meant to illustrate conditionalities at play in Japanese support authorities. It also shows that the important influence situation designation is not wholly free from the issue of Taiwan’s status as a foreign country, even though the language in the law does not reference the term. Here, Taiwan’s status would certainly play into the perceived legality of a U.S. use of force under international law.
Ultimately, an important influence situation designation is more flexible than a survival-threatening situation designation, and thus more likely to apply to a Taiwan contingency. However, the relevant variable for an important influence situation is the nature not only of the threat itself, but also of the U.S. response. In this regard, the more information Japan has about U.S. intentions and options, the better clarity it can generate about its own possible responses.
Providing Needed Clarity
The ambiguities and conditionalities surrounding the applicability of the survival-threatening situation and important influence situation designations to Taiwan point to the need for U.S. and Japanese officials to think through the many potential scenarios in a Taiwan contingency and clarify to each other, privately, their potential responses. This would not require either partner to commit itself to any specific course of action. It would simply clarify which response options are actually on the table and how such options may be both shaped and constrained. According to government sources, Japan is already conducting an internal review of its options for a Taiwan contingency, a necessary first step for such consultation.
If it is not already doing so, Japan should also seek internal legal clarity on whether and under what circumstances Taiwan could count as a foreign country for the purposes of Japanese security law. Sharing this information privately with the United States and seeking U.S. views on the same would be a useful follow-up action. Understandably, Japan may want to condition its views on Taiwan’s status based on how other members of the international community proceed. Such nuances could be included in Japanese information sharing with the United States.
Additionally, a Taiwan contingency is likely to require quick thinking and decision-making. This will be important not only for U.S.-Japanese coordination, but also for Japan domestically. Most of the authorities granted to the Self-Defense Forces in 2016 remain unutilized and the internal coordination processes required legally for their deployment untested. To this end, it may be useful for Japanese authorities to translate the results of their own Taiwan review and any subsequent consultations with the United States into an internal exercise to ensure that national and local officials are able to act quickly and seamlessly. Relatedly, the Japanese government should work to increase the understanding of Diet members regarding various potential Taiwan scenarios, given the Diet’s approval role.
Some might argue that the lack of clarity surrounding Japan’s designations of survival-threatening situations and important influence situations is helpful as a form of deterrence. If the issue were simply about Japan’s intentions, as in the case of permission regarding U.S. use of bases for a military defense of Taiwan, such an argument might hold water. However, in the case of Japan’s legal authorities for addressing a Taiwan contingency, the key question relates to Japan’s options rather than its intentions. By creating a space for confusion by U.S. military planners and Japan’s own decision-makers, the ambiguities and conditionalities related to the application of these designations to Taiwan undermine deterrence and give China an advantage that these allies need not concede. Remedying this confusion will help strengthen deterrence and ensure that a Taiwan contingency remains purely hypothetical.
Image: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Natalie M. Byers
11. FDD | White House Quiet as U.S. Allies Rehabilitate Assad. Congress Should Not Be.
Excerpts:
Before taking office, Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed deep regret for the American failure “to prevent a horrific loss of life” in Syria during the Obama administration. After his confirmation, Blinken committed to “putting human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy.” The president and his administration should vindicate that commitment by making clear to Washington’s allies that the United States rejects their efforts to rehabilitate Assad, whose atrocities continue unabated. There should be no waiver for Syrian participation in regional energy deals; instead, the administration should enforce the Caesar Act aggressively. If the United States wants to help Lebanon secure additional energy imports, it should find a way to do so without benefitting Assad.
Bipartisan pressure from Congress will likely be necessary to reorient the administration’s policy. The Caesar Act passed in 2019 with overwhelming bipartisan support. Congress deliberately made Caesar sanctions mandatory, rather than discretionary, to emphasize the need for vigorous enforcement. Yet the law may become a dead letter if Congress is not prepared to speak out when the president is drifting toward acceptance of Assad’s impunity.
FDD | White House Quiet as U.S. Allies Rehabilitate Assad. Congress Should Not Be.
fdd.org · by David Adesnik Senior Fellow and Director of Research · October 5, 2021
King Abdullah of Jordan spoke by phone on Sunday with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the first public contact between the two leaders since the conflict in Syria began in 2011. Their call marks the culmination of increasingly high-level contacts between the Syrian regime and its neighbors over the past two months, driven by a perception that the Biden administration tacitly supports Assad’s rehabilitation.
The Jordanian king met with President Joe Biden at the White House in July, where Abdullah reportedly pushed for a “road map to restoring Syrian sovereignty and unity.” Also in July, Arab diplomats began to press the Biden administration to let Syria participate in a multi-state deal to export gas and electricity to Lebanon, an arrangement that would require Biden to waive human rights sanctions mandated by the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019.
The following month, the United States informed the Lebanese government that it would approve the energy deal, including Syrian participation. Whereas its predecessor had enforced the Caesar Act aggressively, designating more than 100 individuals and entities in the latter half of 2020, the Biden administration has sanctioned only a handful of targets, none of which are economically significant.
A flurry of high-level meetings took place after the United States indicated in August that it would waive sanctions. Beirut sent a delegation of ministers to Syria during the first week of September, the first official Lebanese visit in a decade. The Jordanian minister of energy then hosted his Lebanese, Syrian, and Egyptian counterparts in Amman. In mid-September, the Syrian defense minister met with the Jordanian army chief for the first time since the war began. On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, the Syrian foreign minister met with his Egyptian and Jordanian counterparts. Jordan also reopened its main border crossing with Syria, while Royal Jordanian Airlines, the state carrier, announced plans to resume flights to Damascus, suspended since the beginning of the war.
The State Department sent mixed messages about these developments. When a reporter asked on September 28 about the resumption of flights by Royal Jordanian, a department spokesperson said, “When it comes to commercial travel and Jordan, we certainly welcome this announcement.” A second correspondent then pressed for clarification regarding whether “the U.S. [is] supporting a rapprochement between the two countries,” eliciting a response that there had been no change in official policy.
A follow-up email to the press flatly rejected any prospect of normalizing U.S. relations with the Assad regime, adding, “nor do we encourage others to do so.” Yet a lack of encouragement is very different from actively opposing the rapid move toward normalization now underway. In Amman, Beirut, Cairo, and other regional capitals, there is a growing conviction that the United States has abandoned its efforts to isolate Assad.
Before taking office, Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed deep regret for the American failure “to prevent a horrific loss of life” in Syria during the Obama administration. After his confirmation, Blinken committed to “putting human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy.” The president and his administration should vindicate that commitment by making clear to Washington’s allies that the United States rejects their efforts to rehabilitate Assad, whose atrocities continue unabated. There should be no waiver for Syrian participation in regional energy deals; instead, the administration should enforce the Caesar Act aggressively. If the United States wants to help Lebanon secure additional energy imports, it should find a way to do so without benefitting Assad.
Bipartisan pressure from Congress will likely be necessary to reorient the administration’s policy. The Caesar Act passed in 2019 with overwhelming bipartisan support. Congress deliberately made Caesar sanctions mandatory, rather than discretionary, to emphasize the need for vigorous enforcement. Yet the law may become a dead letter if Congress is not prepared to speak out when the president is drifting toward acceptance of Assad’s impunity.
David Adesnik is research director and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he contributes to FDD’s Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP). For more analysis from David and CEFP, please subscribe HERE. Follow David on Twitter @adesnik. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_CEFP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by David Adesnik Senior Fellow and Director of Research · October 5, 2021
12. FDD | Lawsuit Alleges Ransomware Led to Baby’s Death in Hospital
Excerpts:
U.S. lawmakers are taking steps to limit the proliferation, and mitigate the impact, of malicious cyberattacks, including those involving ransomware. Recent efforts by the Senate Homeland Security Committee are particularly germane to this case. Members of the committee drafted incident reporting bills that require organizations to disclose known cyberattacks to DHS no later than 72 hours after initial detection. The bills also mandate detailed reporting of ransomware payments.
Incident reporting not only would warn patients like Teiranni Kidd of potential disruptions in care, but would also help the U.S. government share information with other hospitals experiencing similar vulnerabilities that cybercriminals could exploit.
Hospitals experience an average of 15 days of downtime when recovering from a ransomware attack. Depending on which servers the ransomware impacted, those 15 days of inoperative systems can do lasting damage to a patient’s wellbeing. Incident reporting laws would help keep other hospitals from falling victim to ongoing and imminent threats, while providing federal agencies with intelligence to better combat cyberattacks and hold hackers accountable.
FDD | Lawsuit Alleges Ransomware Led to Baby’s Death in Hospital
fdd.org · by RADM (Ret) Mark Montgomery CCTI Senior Director and Senior Fellow ·Cara Cancelmo is a CCTI intern
October 5, 2021
A ransomware attack in 2019 severely hindered an Alabama hospital’s ability to treat and ultimately save a baby born with a severe brain injury, according to a lawsuit first disclosed publicly by The Wall Street Journal last week. The alleged developments show ransomware can inflict not only economic blackmail and disruption but also devastating effects on people’s everyday lives, even in the places responsible for keeping Americans safe.
Springhill Medical Center in Mobile, Alabama, announced on July 16, 2019 — about a week after its initial discovery of the ransomware attack — that it was the victim of a “network security incident.” The hospital would not name the hackers. However, Alan Liska, a senior intelligence analyst at the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, said the Russian Ryuk gang likely executed the attack. Springhill continued seeing a normal volume of patients during that time despite coping with a number of disabled critical technologies, including equipment monitoring fetal heartbeats in 12 delivery rooms.
The medical malpractice lawsuit, filed in January 2020 by Teiranni Kidd in the Circuit Court of Mobile County, alleges the hospital did not inform her of the cyberattack prior to her admission for the birth of her child. The hack prevented routine fetal heart rate information from reaching the nurse’s station and ultimately Kidd’s attending obstetrician, Dr. Katelyn Parnell, the lawsuit says. The court is scheduled to hold a trial in November 2022. If evidence supports Kidd’s claim, this case will mark the first confirmed death resulting from a ransomware attack. The episode also constitutes the first ransomware-related death case that has reached a U.S. court.
Springhill argued the responsibility to disclose complications from the cyberattack fell solely on Parnell. CEO Jeffrey St. Clair denied responsibility, stating the hospital remained open because doctors “concluded it was safe to do so.” Yet in text messages submitted as evidence, Parnell questioned why she did not know about the faulty heart rate monitor and called the baby’s death “preventable.”
A case of this nature was only a matter of time. According to a report from the Ponemon Institute, 43 percent of healthcare organizations have fallen victim to ransomware attacks within the past two years. Of that 43 percent, 70 percent encountered delays in procedures and testing, and 20 percent saw increased mortality rates.
Cyber breaches and disruptions have long interfered with hospitals’ ability to treat patients effectively. During an attack, the time it takes to access an EKG can increase by more than two minutes — potentially the difference between life and death for a heart attack patient. The 30-day mortality rate, an “outcome-of-care” measure used to determine a hospital’s ability to prevent complications, increases in the aftermath of a cyberattack, according to a March 2021 study by the CyberPeace Institute.
U.S. lawmakers are taking steps to limit the proliferation, and mitigate the impact, of malicious cyberattacks, including those involving ransomware. Recent efforts by the Senate Homeland Security Committee are particularly germane to this case. Members of the committee drafted incident reporting bills that require organizations to disclose known cyberattacks to DHS no later than 72 hours after initial detection. The bills also mandate detailed reporting of ransomware payments.
Incident reporting not only would warn patients like Teiranni Kidd of potential disruptions in care, but would also help the U.S. government share information with other hospitals experiencing similar vulnerabilities that cybercriminals could exploit.
Hospitals experience an average of 15 days of downtime when recovering from a ransomware attack. Depending on which servers the ransomware impacted, those 15 days of inoperative systems can do lasting damage to a patient’s wellbeing. Incident reporting laws would help keep other hospitals from falling victim to ongoing and imminent threats, while providing federal agencies with intelligence to better combat cyberattacks and hold hackers accountable.
Mark Montgomery is senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI) at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and serves as a senior advisor to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission. Cara Cancelmo is a CCTI intern. For more analysis from the authors and CCTI, please subscribe HERE. Follow Mark on Twitter @MarkCMontgomery. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_CCTI. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by RADM (Ret) Mark Montgomery CCTI Senior Director and Senior Fellow · October 5, 2021
13. FDD | A Unified and Capable “Quad” Is Bad News for the CCP
Excerpts:
After the summit, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson lashed out, saying the Quad “will find no support and is doomed to fail.”
That response is fairly predictable. After all, Beijing prefers to deal with Indo-Pacific countries bilaterally in order to exploit power asymmetries as part of a divide-and-conquer approach. An increasingly effective Quad will make bullying more difficult for Beijing.
The photos from the Quad Leaders’ Summit last month sent a powerful message to Beijing, but if the four democracies are going to defend their shared interests in the Indo-Pacific against an increasingly aggressive CCP, a strong follow-up to the summit will be crucial.
FDD | A Unified and Capable “Quad” Is Bad News for the CCP
fdd.org · by Bradley Bowman CMPP Senior Director · Zane Zovak is a research analyst October 5, 2021
The Australian, Indian, Japanese, and American heads of state met at the White House last month for the first-ever in-person “Quad” Leaders’ Summit. Pictures of the four leaders standing shoulder-to-shoulder likely created significant heartburn for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which knows that an increasingly unified and capable Quad will make it more difficult for Beijing to bully its neighbors and promote authoritarianism.
The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or “Quad,” first arose in response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. It met again in 2007 but then remained dormant until 2017, when it reconvened with a renewed emphasis on maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific by promoting the rule of law. While the Quad tends not to mention China in its statements, Beijing’s aggressive behavior has clearly been the primary driver of the Quad’s increasing unity and activity.
Last month’s Quad summit focused on a number of combined efforts that extend well beyond the traditional security sphere. A fact sheet released by the White House in conjunction with the summit highlighted the Quad’s efforts to increase the global availability of COVID-19 vaccines, promote high-standards infrastructure, combat climate change, and foster people-to-people exchanges.
However, a careful reading of official statements by Quad leaders along with associated press releases underscores the Quad’s vital and growing security cooperation in defense of a free and open Indo-Pacific. This includes cooperation in areas such as cybersecurity, semiconductor supply chains, and space.
To be sure, each of these areas has major commercial and civilian applications. Beijing’s explicit policy of military-civil fusion, however, makes such distinctions with respect to China virtually meaningless and even unhelpful. Moreover, in a potential military conflict with China, cyber and space would likely be prominent domains of warfare, and U.S. and partner weapon systems will depend on trusted semiconductors.
Perhaps that is why concerns related to China’s activities in these areas are not exclusive to the Quad. In the NATO Brussels Summit Communique this past June, all 30 members of the alliance expressed concern about the need to maintain a “technology advantage” and called on China to “act responsibly” in the space and cyber domains.
Accordingly, during the summit last month, the Quad released a joint statement of “Principles on Technology Design, Development, Government, and Use,” emphasizing the Quad’s “shared democratic values and respect for universal human rights.” That was a not-so-subtle swipe at the CCP, which has increasingly used and exported technology as a means of authoritarian control, religious oppression, and censorship.
After the summit, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson lashed out, saying the Quad “will find no support and is doomed to fail.”
That response is fairly predictable. After all, Beijing prefers to deal with Indo-Pacific countries bilaterally in order to exploit power asymmetries as part of a divide-and-conquer approach. An increasingly effective Quad will make bullying more difficult for Beijing.
The photos from the Quad Leaders’ Summit last month sent a powerful message to Beijing, but if the four democracies are going to defend their shared interests in the Indo-Pacific against an increasingly aggressive CCP, a strong follow-up to the summit will be crucial.
Bradley Bowman is senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP) at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where Zane Zovak is a research analyst. They also contribute to FDD’s China Program. For more analysis from the authors, CMPP, and the China program, please subscribe HERE. Follow Bradley on Twitter @Brad_L_Bowman. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_CMPP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Bradley Bowman CMPP Senior Director · October 5, 2021
14. Researcher or Spy? Maxim Shugaley Saga Points to How Russia Now Builds Influence Abroad
Excerpts:
The 55-year-old typically casts himself as a researcher who gets caught up in events beyond his control. He was imprisoned in Tripoli for over a year on espionage charges during a sojourn there and became the subject of an action movie, “Shugaley,” that premiered on Russian television while he was locked up.
Yet Mr. Shugaley, who sports a cropped military haircut and favors dark T-shirts, works under the direct supervision of Mr. Prigozhin. Together, they form one of most effective pairings of freelancers advancing Mr. Putin’s strategic foreign-policy objectives, according to U.S. and other Western officials.
Researcher or Spy? Maxim Shugaley Saga Points to How Russia Now Builds Influence Abroad
Jailed in Libya, the field researcher has since turned up across Africa and now Afghanistan as the Kremlin’s friends pursue Russia’s strategic goals
WSJ · by Jared Malsin and Thomas Grove
“All roads are open for full-scale cooperation, which is why I am here,” Mr. Shugaley wrote in a message to The Wall Street Journal from Kabul, and suggested the situation was ripe to develop a broader political and economic relationship with the Taliban.
From Libya to Madagascar and now Afghanistan, the unusual career path of Mr. Shugaley provides an insight into how Moscow seeks to make friends and influence governments in places where America’s sway is fading.
Taliban fighters patrol Kabul, where Maxim Shugaley met with leaders of the Islamist group after they seized the city in the summer.
Photo: Rahmat Gul/Associated Press
The 55-year-old typically casts himself as a researcher who gets caught up in events beyond his control. He was imprisoned in Tripoli for over a year on espionage charges during a sojourn there and became the subject of an action movie, “Shugaley,” that premiered on Russian television while he was locked up.
Yet Mr. Shugaley, who sports a cropped military haircut and favors dark T-shirts, works under the direct supervision of Mr. Prigozhin. Together, they form one of most effective pairings of freelancers advancing Mr. Putin’s strategic foreign-policy objectives, according to U.S. and other Western officials.
The Mueller investigation into the 2016 U.S. presidential election found that Mr. Prigozhin, a former restaurateur known as “Putin’s cook” who secured hundreds of millions of dollars in Russian government contracts, funded the St. Petersburg troll farm that tried to skew the outcome. U.S. intelligence agencies say he maintains close ties to their Russian counterparts, his primary lever being the Wagner paramilitary force that has deployed mercenaries in Syria, Libya and Ukraine, according to U.S. officials. The Treasury Department last year added to its sanctions on Mr. Prigozhin, saying he is believed to be the financier behind Wagner, which it described as a proxy for the Russian Defense Ministry.
Yevgeniy Prigozhin, an influential Kremlin ally known as “Putin’s cook,” serves food to Vladimir Putin at his restaurant in 2011.
Photo: Misha Japaridze/Press Pool
More recently Wagner has expanded operations to Sudan and the Central African Republic, people close to Wagner say. The government of Mali has also inquired about its security services as France prepares to draw down the number of troops it has in the Sahel region, Russian officials have said.
Russians close to the Defense Ministry have said Mr. Prigozhin has funded and organized the group, though he denies any links.
Mr. Shugaley, now president of Mr. Prigozhin’s Foundation for the Protection of National Values, has helped spread Russian soft power in places where U.S. influence is receding, intelligence officials and analysts say, in a way that can’t be traced back directly to the Kremlin.
“Maxim Shugaley is both an independent agent and an assistant and facilitator of Russian state activity,” said Samuel Ramani, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a U.K.-based think tank.
Mr. Shugaley’s weeklong visit to Afghanistan included more than 100 interviews with Afghans about attitudes toward the Taliban and the deposed American-backed government. He met with Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid and began work on a plan with Taliban approval to open a branch office of Mr. Prigozhin’s think tank.
“It was important for me to understand whether there are prerequisites for the Taliban to form a full-fledged state,” Mr. Shugaley said. “I can say that most people have positive expectations.”
Mr. Prigozhin recounted conversations with Mr. Shugaley in which the researcher described what he called the growing excitement in Afghanistan accompanying the return of the Taliban.
“They’ve kicked out the cursed Americans, who are running around like rats, thinking their ship is sunk,” Mr. Prigozhin said in a statement in August. “Maxim is having meetings and enjoying strolls through the city streets.”
Mr. Shugaley’s mission in Afghanistan follows a pattern set in 2018, when he began working with Mr. Prigozhin.
He was sent to Africa as a part of what U.S. officials and analysts say was an effort to promote Russia’s interests and counter the influence of the U.S. and France. A British Broadcasting Corp. documentary exposed him offering suitcases full of cash to buy the loyalty of political candidates in Madagascar. Mr. Shugaley maintains he was there to observe the country’s elections.
He again made headlines when he and his translator were arrested in Libya in May 2019.
This time he was accused of offering to help Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, the son of late dictator Moammar Gadhafi, make a political comeback. Libyan officials said Mr. Shugaley conducted opinion surveys to gauge public support for a presidential run by the younger Gadhafi, part of a broader Russian effort to build political support in oil-rich Libya, where Moscow had signed billions of dollars of deals that were lost when Gadhafi was toppled.
Saif al-Islam Gadhafi appeared before Libyan judges in 2014, following the fall of his father’s regime.
Photo: MAHMUD TURKIA/AFP/Getty Images
Mr. Shugaley reported directly to Mr. Prigozhin’s organization while in Libya, according to Libyan officials and emails seen by the Journal. The officials said he admitted during questioning to entering the country on false pretenses and making plans to interfere with elections that are now planned for December this year. Mr. Shugaley said his meetings with Mr. Gadhafi were purely for research purposes.
“Everyone is afraid he is going to wreak revenge if he comes to power because of what happened to his father and his family,” Mr. Shugaley said.
During his year and a half in prison in Tripoli, Mr. Shugaley could hear explosions nearby as fighting raged between the internationally recognized government in the capital and Russian-backed opposition forces. The war ended with a cease-fire in mid-2020 and, after pressure from the Russian government, Mr. Shugaley was released last December.
Fighters for Libya’s Government of National Accord battled the Russian-backed Libyan National Army in Tripoli during the country’s civil war.
Photo: Xinhua/Zuma Press
The action film “Shugaley” dramatized his ordeal and that of his translator, often in graphic detail. Mr. Prigozhin’s Internet Research Agency also launched a campaign to secure Mr. Shugaley’s freedom, at one point securing the support of Charlie Sheen and other actors on the celebrity video platform Cameo.
Mr. Prigozhin later gave Mr. Shugaley 18 million rubles, or about $250,000, on his return to Russia, Mr. Shugaley said. Mr. Prigozhin acknowledged the payout last year.
Within months, Mr. Shugaley was back on the road, traveling to Sudan and the Central African Republic, where hundreds of Russian mercenaries are supporting the government in its fight against rebel forces. United Nations investigators have accused the Russian forces of torture, summary executions and looting.
Mr. Shugaley conducted opinion polls to assess attitudes to Russia and France, and organized news conferences and film screenings, including one in a stadium, to try to improve the Russian forces’ image.
“Some of the Western press are portraying the Russian advisers as monsters,” he said.
Since then, Mr. Shugaley has continued his travels, despite sanctions applied by the U.S. Treasury Department on the foundation that employs him. The U.S. previously sanctioned Mr. Prigozhin and another person connected with the foundation, Alexander Malkevich, for what it said was their role in manipulating elections and spreading disinformation. But Mr. Shugaley is able to keep going, traveling freely and often operating in corners of the world that the U.S. justice system finds hard to reach.
“I’m luckily not sanctioned, at least not yet,” Mr. Shugaley said.
Maxim Shugaley now serves as president of Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s Foundation for the Protection of National Values.
Photo: Katya Rezvaya for The Wall Street Journal
WSJ · by Jared Malsin and Thomas Grove
15. America’s ‘pivot to Asia’ finally shifts into gear
Excerpts:
“I think the Biden administration is committed internally to putting flesh on the pivot,” says one former State Department official, noting that the architect of the plan, Kurt Campbell, Obama’s assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, is now the National Security Council Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific.
The retired official says the September 23 signing of the AUKUS agreement between the three Western allies is the first tangible sign of Washington confronting China and moving away from its earlier fixation with the Middle East and Afghanistan.
That and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, involving the US, Australia, India and Japan, show Washington-led alliances quietly circumventing the conflicted 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), in an effort to blunt Beijing’s expansionism in the South China Sea.
America’s ‘pivot to Asia’ finally shifts into gear
Concept first articulated under Obama is coming to life under Biden in a firmer and clearer policy towards China
JAKARTA – With Afghanistan in the rear-view mirror, the United States, Britain and Australia forming a new security arrangement and the US boosting forces and exercises in the region, the so-called “pivot to Asia” first conceived under the Barack Obama administration may finally be shifting into high gear under President Joe Biden.
Out is the general confusion of the Donald Trump presidency; in appears to be a much clearer and firmer policy towards China, whose bullying tactics in the South China Sea have some countries struggling to hold the middle ground.
“I think the Biden administration is committed internally to putting flesh on the pivot,” says one former State Department official, noting that the architect of the plan, Kurt Campbell, Obama’s assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, is now the National Security Council Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific.
The retired official says the September 23 signing of the AUKUS agreement between the three Western allies is the first tangible sign of Washington confronting China and moving away from its earlier fixation with the Middle East and Afghanistan.
That and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, involving the US, Australia, India and Japan, show Washington-led alliances quietly circumventing the conflicted 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), in an effort to blunt Beijing’s expansionism in the South China Sea.
But it has led to growing anxiety across Southeast Asia over what might come next. “ASEAN has to take a hard look at how it positions itself,” Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam vice-president Nguyen Sung Son told a recent discussion. “ASEAN centrality is etched in stone, so we know they are trying to get around it.”
For the moment, Washington is likely to move more slowly in North Asia, where the Japanese government is undergoing a leadership change and South Korea is engaged in the latest exchanges in its never-ending efforts to improve relations with North Korea.
The Hawaii-based Indo-Pacific (INDOPACOM) commander Admiral John Aquilino has reportedly called off a scheduled visit this month to Singapore, but diplomatic sources say they still expect him to make the US position clearer in a significant policy announcement in the coming days.
China’s defense strategy is perceived by American planners to be based on its submarine fleet and a growing naval surface-to-surface missile capability. In contrast, US strategy remains largely built around its carrier-based air superiority.
A formation of Dongfeng-17 missiles takes part in a military parade during the celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. Photo: Xinhua / Mao Siqian
According to one senior US military officer, if the US can’t find closer bases for its aircraft, China will maintain an advantage over the shorter term. That’s why the Philippines could become a larger part of its calculations with the mercurial and China-friendly President Rodrigo Duterte ending his term next May.
The US currently has two Nimitz-class carriers, the USS Carl Vinson and the USS Ronald Reagan, and the powerfully armed helicopter carrier USS America, based out of Yokosuka and Sasebo, Japan, with a third carrier also assigned to the Western Pacific.
Only last week, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Chase and Huang Xueping, deputy director of China’s office for military co-operation, ended two days of talks stressing the need to keep communication channels open.
It was the first meeting between the two adversaries since President Biden took office in January, but the signing of AUKUS, under which Washington will help Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines, has done little to stem rising tensions in the region.
Nor has the overlapping presence in the South China Sea of the two carrier battle groups and mass intrusions by 145 Chinese J-6 and Su-30 fighters and nuclear-capable H-6 bombers into Taiwan’s air defense zone between October 1-4.
Indonesia also seemed powerless to deter a month-long incursion by a Chinese research ship and two Coast Guard ships into its economic exclusion zone in the North Natuna Sea which finally ended when the flotilla pulled out on September 28 without any formal protest from Jakarta.
US ambassador to Indonesia Sung Kim, whose brief also covers North Korea, took the opportunity last week to tell foreign reporters: “We object to any country taking expansionist, aggressive and excessive activities and behavior in our oceans.”
Kerry Brown, professor of Chinese studies at King’s College, London, weighed in as well. “China can’t hide its power, but the last two years have been a masterclass in how to lose friends and fail to influence people,” he said. “Despite this, it will not change the reality that China is, and will continue to be, the great rising power of the region.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping inspects a joint military exercise in the South China Sea in April 2018. Photo: Xinhua
Indonesia seeks to be even-handed in its dealings with the two superpowers, worried it will be forced to choose sides if the rivalry takes a serious turn. But like others in the region, its response to AUKUS was restrained and only focused on fears of nuclear proliferation and the possibility of a regional arms race.
Beijing’s reaction was directed at the broader implications of a pact that goes beyond Australia’s eventual acquisition of nuclear submarines and covers everything from cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence and quantum technologies to extended US access to Australian bases.
Western cyber experts believe the new arrangement will allow for the development of new encryption technologies and help the partners detect and ward off potential Chinese threats to undersea fiberoptic cables that are part of both military and civilian communication networks.
In a webinar organized by the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia, the Foreign Ministry’s director-general for Asia and Africa, Abdul Kadir Jailani, called for a “deeper conversation” between ASEAN and the AUKUS partners over what he called a “dangerous precedent.”
Looking to the long-term impact of the security pact, Vietnam’s Son said it was important for the 10-nation regional grouping to ask “why this is happening over ASEAN’s head.” Touching on the bloc’s future role, he asked: “Can it be as an honest broker or a mediator?”
Pointing to the pace of Beijing’s arms spending, William Choong, a senior fellow at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), described AUKUS as “a kind of natural reaction to Chinese assertiveness” and an effort to restore the balance of power in the region.
For all of ASEAN’s diplomatic efforts to retain an even hand with the two superpowers, the long-standing relationship between the US and Indonesian and Philippine militaries, in particular, remains based on what Kim describes as “strong mutual respect.”
In Indonesia, more than 1,500 US troops and a 2,100-strong Army Strategic Reserve (Kostrad) force recently carried out their largest-ever land exercise, one of 230 joint military activities that allow the two countries to maintain a high level of interoperability.
US and Indonesian troops during a joint exercise in 2019. Image: Youtube
The US contingent comprised forward elements of the 82nd Airborne Division who flew from Guam in a fleet of giant C-17 transport aircraft for the maneuvers, which ranged across South Sumatra, East Kalimantan and North Sulawesi.
Three months earlier, US Air Force F-16 fighter jets from Japan’s Misawa airbase took part in the annual Cope West exercise with the Pekanbaru, Sumatra-based F-16 squadron whose main mission is patrolling Indonesia’s northern maritime border.
Forthcoming naval exercises between the two countries are planned for Surabaya, headquarters of the navy’s 2nd Fleet and well away from the southern reaches of the South China Sea.
Indonesia’s only recent military exercise with the Chinese was last May when two-guided missile frigates from each country engaged in drills north of Jakarta, reportedly designed to “improve coordination during emergencies at sea.”
With Duterte in the final eight months of his presidency, there are signs the Philippines and the US may restore some of the more active elements of their 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) when it comes up for renewal next April.
Although the US cannot re-establish permanent military bases, it is permitted to rotate troops into the Philippines on extended stays and to operate facilities at such bases as Subic Bay and the Antonio Bautista Air Base on Palawan, strategically located at the heart of the South China Sea, to replenish and supply visiting ships and aircraft.
Under pressure from his own military, Duterte recently reinstated the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), which he had earlier threatened to cancel in an apparent effort to appease China, despite the conflict between the two countries over the Spratly Islands.
16. Nakasone Now Sees Ransomware, Influence Ops As 'National Security' Threats - Breaking Defense
"Now?" I think the headline does a disservice to the general. I cannot believe he is only now acknowledging influence operations as a national security threat.
I think his emphasis on partnering with the private sector is important. Cyber threats are unlike most of the historical threats we have faced and require a close public private partnership.
Excerpts:
Even in areas long considered stomping grounds for foreign hackers, like cyberespionage, Nakasone said that “the SolarWinds incident was a turning point in our nation.” SolarWinds was a widespread spying campaign detected in late 2020 and attributed to Russian actors. Mandiant CEO Kevin Mandia, who moderated the panel with Nakasone and whose company revealed the campaign, joked, “SolarWinds was a turning point in my sleep patterns and diet.”
Much of Nakasone’s speech reflected on the founding, history, and continuing evolution of CYBERCOM over the past decade, while also touting the NSA’s achievements and capabilities. He said that signals intelligence (SIGINT) is the NSA’s “superpower.”
He said a key to CYBERCOM’s and NSA’s success in recent years stems from “cultural” changes at the organizations and in its relationship to the private sector. “We aim to convey that, ‘Hello, we are from the government, and we’re here to help’ is not a scary idea,” he joked. The quote alludes to former President Ronald Reagan’s 1986 observation that, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”
Nakasone said his organizations are seeking “full-spectrum partnership” with the private sector through CYBERCOM’s DreamPort and NSA’s Cybersecurity Collaboration Center. Partnerships require trust, and trust is required for outcomes, the general observed.
Nakasone Now Sees Ransomware, Influence Ops As 'National Security' Threats - Breaking Defense
"We aim to convey that, 'Hello, we are from the government, and we're here to help' is not a scary idea," the general joked, alluding to a famous quote by former President Reagan.
WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 14: Paul Nakasone, director of the National Security Agency (NSA) listens to a question during a hearing with the House Armed Services Subcommittee. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON: The head of US Cyber Command and the National Security Agency said his idea of “national security” issues for the US in cyberspace has expanded, specifically now including ransomware attacks and online influence operations.
“When I was here two years ago, if someone asked me about ransomware, I would say that’s criminal activity, and the FBI handles ransomware,” Gen. Paul Nakasone said on Tuesday at the 2021 Mandiant Cyber Defense Summit. But now, “when ransomware affects critical infrastructure, it’s a national security issue,” he said, referencing the Colonial Pipeline incident and other ransomware attacks earlier this year.
Ransomware attacks may be primarily carried out by criminal gangs, but Nakasone said when they’re protected by the nation-states in which they live, that’s also a national security issue. Speaking alongside Nakasone and other Intelligence Community leaders last month, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate said, “There is no evidence to suggest Russia is cracking down on ransomware operators [inside Russia]. We’ve seen no action. I’d say nothing has changed.”
Nakasone also said he “thinks a lot about influence operations,” and the government entities he now leads consider it “important for us.” He referenced nation-states’ use of social media, as well as emerging techniques such as deepfakes, adding, “That’s the piece I think about. How can we stay ahead of that?”
Nakasone’s comments on influence operations came after Mandiant recently published research on a purported large-scale Chinese influence operation involving hundreds of inauthentic accounts working in seven languages across 30 social media platforms and over 40 additional websites.
Even in areas long considered stomping grounds for foreign hackers, like cyberespionage, Nakasone said that “the SolarWinds incident was a turning point in our nation.” SolarWinds was a widespread spying campaign detected in late 2020 and attributed to Russian actors. Mandiant CEO Kevin Mandia, who moderated the panel with Nakasone and whose company revealed the campaign, joked, “SolarWinds was a turning point in my sleep patterns and diet.”
Much of Nakasone’s speech reflected on the founding, history, and continuing evolution of CYBERCOM over the past decade, while also touting the NSA’s achievements and capabilities. He said that signals intelligence (SIGINT) is the NSA’s “superpower.”
He said a key to CYBERCOM’s and NSA’s success in recent years stems from “cultural” changes at the organizations and in its relationship to the private sector. “We aim to convey that, ‘Hello, we are from the government, and we’re here to help’ is not a scary idea,” he joked. The quote alludes to former President Ronald Reagan’s 1986 observation that, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”
Nakasone said his organizations are seeking “full-spectrum partnership” with the private sector through CYBERCOM’s DreamPort and NSA’s Cybersecurity Collaboration Center. Partnerships require trust, and trust is required for outcomes, the general observed.
17. Hostage Diplomacy Is Back. It Require a Forceful Response.
Quite a recommendation:
It may seem an overreaction, but the correct response to a state policy of kidnapping is a travel ban for American citizens and an air travel ban for U.S. carriers. Right now, the Department of State warns Americansnot totravel to Iran due to the risk of kidnapping and arbitrary arrest and to reconsider travel to China due to arbitrary enforcement of local laws. But those warnings are clearly insufficient. If China, Iran, and others view American citizens as pawns to be taken in exchange for policy or political concessions or for human exchanges, it’s time to deny them that option. Will it be hard on U.S. businesses to stop sending Americans to China? Difficult for diplomats and researchers to travel to Iran? You bet. Will it be tough on U.S. carriers who travel routes to China (U.S. carriers are banned from flying to Iran)? Indeed it will. But it will be harder on the perpetrators. That is the price of being a state that behaves like a terrorist group. The choice is theirs, or should be.
Hostage Diplomacy Is Back. It Require a Forceful Response.
It has risen from being a tool of terrorists in the modern era to one used by governments.
(Photograph by Jin Liwang/Xinhua/Getty Images.)
Some may have missed the triumphant return to China of Huawei “princess” Meng Wanzhou, the Chinese telecom megalith’s chief operating officer and daughter of its founder and CEO, in the waning days of September. The result of negotiations that began under the Trump administration, Meng’s return to China triggered the reciprocal release of two Canadian hostages arrested close to three years ago by the Beijing government, almost certainly for the express purpose of forcing an exchange.
Meng had been charged with financial fraud (specifically, “conspiracy to commit bank fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, bank fraud and wire fraud”), and was awaiting extradition to the U.S. from Canada; in order to secure her release, she admitted to infractions of U.S. law. The two Canadians were charged with "spying on national secrets" and providing intelligence for "outside entities." But the details of the case against them are irrelevant, window dressing adorning a larger trend—hostage taking as a tool of statecraft.
There’s little new about sovereign kidnapping. In the book of Genesis, Abraham’s nephew, Lot, is taken by the four kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, requiring the patriarch to gather “318 trained men” and undertake a rescue. Teddy Roosevelt shot to victory in 1904 on the back of a hostage rescue earlier that year, a showdown with the pirate Raisuli and the sultan of Morocco over an “American” kidnapped for ransom. (American is in quotes because later documents revealed the “American” in question was not a citizen, Teddy’s claims notwithstanding.) Jimmy Carter collapsed in defeat in 1980 in some part because of a failed attempt to rescue Americans taken hostage after the Islamic Revolution in Iran.
In short, kidnapping and hostage-taking is a thing. But it is more recently that it has risen from being a tool of terrorists in the modern era to a regularly used tool of governments. And as with many such instruments of coercion, it finds its modern origins in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The most prominent intra-governmental hostage crisis of the modern era began with the overthrow of the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran and the taking of 52 hostages inside the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979. The crisis would bring down Carter and usher in an era of U.S.-Iran hostility that continues to this day.
That 444-day hostage crisis kicked off an era of hostage taking centered mostly in the war-torn Lebanese capital of Beirut. And though those kidnappings were horrific, with some Americans held for years, some killed, most were perpetrated by government-backed terrorist groups, not governments themselves. No longer.
The government of Iran now holds four American hostages—Emad Shargi, Morad Tahbaz, and Baquer and Siamak Namazi. Like the U.S. hostages taken and already released—Wang Xiyue (see his Dispatch interview here) and the Washington Post’s Jason Rezaian, Iran’s demands were not specific; these human pawns were leverage, their convictions performance art rather than substantive. None were engaged in espionage; Wang Xiyue was researching 19th century history, Rezaian was the Washington Post’s Tehran bureau chief; the Namazis were businessmen -- Baquer Namazi was enticed to Iran to help liberate his son only to be himself arrested -- and Shargi was, most recently, a businessman.
Nor has Iranian hostage taking been confined to dual Iranian-American nationals and luckless researchers. In several cases, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGC-N) has taken military hostages on the high seas. Nine U.S. sailors and a naval officer were detained in January 2016, Iranian forces seized 15 British servicemen in 2007, three small British Royal Navy boats with eight sailors aboard were taken in 2004.
Never one to shy away from lifting others’ intellectual property, the Chinese government has obviously appreciated the effectiveness of Iranian hostage diplomacy. Nor are the two Canadians who were held, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, alone. Though the Michaels—as they are known—were clearly arrested explicitly for the purpose of securing Meng’s release, others have been taken for more generic leverage purposes. 115 other Canadians remain incarcerated in China, some for legitimate reasons (drug trafficking among them), others for political reasons.Nor have all Beijing’s hostages been arrested; in some instances, the Chinese have “merely” confined their victims inside China, denying exit visas and confiscating travel documents. Estimates suggest that at least two dozen U.S. citizens have been barred from leaving China over the past three years. (Coincidentally, two such American hostages were also released the same weekend as the Michaels and Meng.
Students Cynthia and Victor Liu had been denied exit visas for three years in order to lure their father, a Chinese banker accused of corruption, back to the mainland. Their mother remains in prison on trumped up charges. The Biden administration denies any connection.)
These are the most prominent tales of modern day hostage diplomacy, but others have gotten in on the game as well. The increasingly dictatorial Erdogan regime in Turkey arrested an American pastor, Andrew Brunson, in 2016, on charges so bizarre they appeared a joke (including allegations of connections to an alleged coup plotter because of a picture of a particular rice dish on his phone; a CIA operative—part of a “Mormon gang” inside the intel agency; an Israeli agent; and a “brainwasher” who used the American national anthem to indoctrinate Turkish students). Erdogan demanded the extradition of a political opponent from the United States in exchange. Unusually, he lost that game, and Brunson was released in 2018.
Is there a moral to these stories, a policy lesson for the United States? Indeed there is. In the wake of a rash of kidnappings and terrorist attacks on U.S. troops and the U.S. embassy in Beirut in the 1980s, the Reagan administration imposed a travel ban for American citizens going to Lebanon. Opposed tooth and nail for reasons ranging from the burden on dual nationals to the difficulty of access for aid workers and diplomats, the ban was nonetheless lifted only in 1997. Did it send a message to the Lebanese government about the need to protect American citizens? It did, and despite the continued presence of groups from Hezbollah to al-Qaeda and affiliates, Lebanon is now in general a safer place for Americans to travel. Is the same true of Iran and China?
It may seem an overreaction, but the correct response to a state policy of kidnapping is a travel ban for American citizens and an air travel ban for U.S. carriers. Right now, the Department of State warns Americansnot totravel to Iran due to the risk of kidnapping and arbitrary arrest and to reconsider travel to China due to arbitrary enforcement of local laws. But those warnings are clearly insufficient. If China, Iran, and others view American citizens as pawns to be taken in exchange for policy or political concessions or for human exchanges, it’s time to deny them that option. Will it be hard on U.S. businesses to stop sending Americans to China? Difficult for diplomats and researchers to travel to Iran? You bet. Will it be tough on U.S. carriers who travel routes to China (U.S. carriers are banned from flying to Iran)? Indeed it will. But it will be harder on the perpetrators. That is the price of being a state that behaves like a terrorist group. The choice is theirs, or should be.
18. What’s Next for the Quad?
Excerpts:
This year’s summit has demonstrated the leaders’ ambitions. Regular leaders’ summits will be needed to maintain the pace and focus. Fulfilling the Quad’s agenda will take effort, and institutionalizing these forums will take time.
In addition, future leaders of the United States, Australia, India, and Japan—all four are democracies with regular elections—will need to perceive the Quad as valuable. To build its momentum, the Quad will have to produce results while the current four leaders are in charge. The first new face to appear at the next Quad summit will be a different Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, who takes charge next week.
What’s Next for the Quad?
This year’s summit has demonstrated the leaders’ ambitions. Regular leaders’ summits will be needed to maintain the pace and focus.
For the first time, the leaders of the four countries that make up the Quad—the United States, Australia, India, and Japan—met together in person. Their September meeting at the White House solidified the group’s commitment to collaborating on a range of issues, including COVID-19 vaccines, climate change, and security in the Indo-Pacific. Now comes the difficult task of following through.
What is the most important takeaway from the Quad summit?
The most important takeaway is that all four leaders pledged to coordinate their strategic goals for the long-term benefit of their nations. Clearly, U.S. President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga see their countries’ futures as intertwined and believe they are stronger together.
What challenges could the Quad face in following through on its commitments?
The leaders committed to donating 1.2 billion COVID-19 doses globally, forming a green-shipping network, establishing a semiconductor supply-chain initiative, and creating a working group on space, among other measures.
This is an ambitious agenda and implementing it will require deliberate and consistent attention. Coordinating policy across four nations and realizing the leaders’ goals call for innovative mechanisms. Existing mechanisms for collaboration will need to be built upon.
For example, the Quad’s vaccination goals will likely be implemented through the global initiative known as COVAX, as well as through bilateral channels. Supply-chain resilience will require private-sector coordination, as well as cross-national coordination.
The Quad leaders recognize the institutional changes they need to initiate now to realize the long-term capability to work together. One innovation announced at this summit was the Quad Fellowship led by the philanthropic initiative Schmidt Futures that will bring talent from all four countries together to work on leading-edge technologies.
Were there any new signals about the defense side of the partnership?
The Quad leaders have emphasized the broader economic and technological, rather than defensive, dimensions of strategy. This reflects the strengths of the Quad countries as well as concerns about growing economic competition with China. China’s willingness to use its economic leverage for strategic gain has persuaded the Quad leaders that they need to build more resilient and innovative economies that are not vulnerable to Beijing’s pressure.
The countries have pursued defensive partnerships outside of the Quad, including through the new AUKUS deal. But clearly, there is overlap in what analysts think of as the new domains of strategic competition where technological capabilities matter: cyber, space, and maritime awareness.
What’s next?
This year’s summit has demonstrated the leaders’ ambitions. Regular leaders’ summits will be needed to maintain the pace and focus. Fulfilling the Quad’s agenda will take effort, and institutionalizing these forums will take time.
In addition, future leaders of the United States, Australia, India, and Japan—all four are democracies with regular elections—will need to perceive the Quad as valuable. To build its momentum, the Quad will have to produce results while the current four leaders are in charge. The first new face to appear at the next Quad summit will be a different Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, who takes charge next week.
This piece, first published by the Council on Foreign Relations, is used with permission.
19. Yesterday's outage made one thing clear – Facebook needs us a lot more than we need it
Interesting analysis.
Excerpts:
In the final quarter of 2019, just before the pandemic took hold, only 65% of journeys on Britain’s heavily regulated railways were on time and 3.4% of trains were cancelled altogether. To put that in context, if Facebook were regulated as ‘critical infrastructure’ and achieved a similar level of success, it would mean the company’s services being down for almost a fortnight a year.
Perhaps these services would be even worse if they were not regulated. But even if we believe that WhatsApp and Instagram are ‘critical infrastructure’, at least in the short run, it is not totally obvious that regulating them like railways or electricity will make their service more customer-friendly and reliable.
Facebook, as my colleague Dirk Auer points out, will bear a lot of the cost of the outage itself — it doesn’t make money when people aren’t using it. Meanwhile, users will mostly return, aware that they have other options if these interruptions start to happen more often. And that might be the real lesson from the outage: that Facebook needs us a lot more than we need it.
Yesterday's outage made one thing clear – Facebook needs us a lot more than we need it - CapX
capx.co · by Sam Bowman · October 5, 2021
When Facebook and its other services disappeared from the internet on Monday night, it seemed to confirm many people’s worst fears about the company. The outage, some said, demonstrated how indispensable Facebook had made itself to our lives – and hence, they argued, how important it was to regulate it or break it up.
The monopoly argument
Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower, argued that Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram going down at the same time demonstrated ‘why breaking up a certain monopoly into at least three pieces might not be a bad idea’. This is by no means a fringe view – indeed, is the crux of the lawsuit brought by the US Federal Trade Commission against Facebook: that it monopolises the market for ‘personal social networking services’ and has used the acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram to achieve that monopoly. Snowden’s point was also echoed by EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager, who said the outage showed ‘we need alternatives & choices in the #tech market, and must not rely on a few big players’.
My experience was a bit different. Although I do use WhatsApp for a lot of my ‘personal social networking services’, as the kids say, I switched to other services immediately after it went down with the minimum of fuss. Apps like Signal, Slack, Google Talk, iMessage, Twitter, and even good old SMS were perfectly adequate stand-ins. Far from highlighting how reliant on Facebook I am, the outage demonstrated just how easy it would be for me to abandon the company altogether if I wanted to, because there are so many capable competitors that my friends and family already use. The much-feared ‘network effects’ – the stickiness to a single service that comes from having all your contacts and group chats in that one, and not others – were hardly a problem at all, because it’s simple to have more than one service on your phone at a time.
I wasn’t stuck for entertainment either. I sometimes scroll Instagram for fun, but on Monday I used TikTok and YouTube instead – as I assume lots of these services’ billions of users did too. Of course, they are not identical to Instagram, but all of them are vying for my time and attention (and, of course, advertisers’ money).
The fact that I, and many others, could and easily did switch to alternatives should make us question Snowden’s claims, and the FTC’s. Most of what Facebook offers, in terms of either communication or entertainment, has plenty of healthy competition that is easy for users to switch to. The outage proved it.
A far more serious concern was the dependence on WhatsApp in developing countries, highlighted by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, among others:
“If Facebook’s monopolistic behavior was checked back when it should’ve been (perhaps around the time it started acquiring competitors like Instagram), the continents of people who depend on WhatsApp & IG for either communication or commerce would be fine right now. Break it up.”
Part of the reason for this reliance is the same as in rich countries: WhatsApp is a good service with a healthy network, and it’s cheaper than using SMS. In these cases, the points above still apply: even if WhatsApp is the market leader, the fact that we can switch away from it fairly easily means that it faces competition in the market. If outages became more common, people would probably choose alternatives.
But in some developing countries, WhatsApp enjoys a special advantage over its rivals: you do not need to pay for data to use it. Facebook’s ‘Free Basics’ project (and its successors, Facebook Connectivity and Discover), which gives mobile users access to some websites and apps without them having to pay for data, is available in 65 countries. Of course, these apps include Facebook’s own, and they have become particularly widely used in many of these countries as a result. In other cases, local mobile networks offer contracts that do not charge for use of Facebook services.
Clearly, outages are vastly more disruptive and damaging for people reliant on Facebook for their entire ability to access the internet. But does this mean that, without Facebook’s dominance, ‘the continents of people who depend on WhatsApp & IG for either communication or commerce would be fine right now’?
Hardly. The project is already reported to have brought limited internet access to 100 million people. Without it, many of them would not have access to the internet at all at any time, or would have to spend more of what little they have to get online. I doubt many of these users , individually or collectively, would prefer to never have internet access than to have it but lose access for seven hours, once.
Similarly, contra Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, it is plausible that the only reason it is commercially viable for Facebook to offer Free Basics is because its suite of services gives it sufficient scale to make the programme viable. It is possible that breaking it up, as she suggests, would end the service altogether for the people who rely on it.
The ‘critical infrastructure’ argument
Others argued that the outage simply demonstrated that Facebook is critical infrastructure for our lives, as important as the electricity grid or a broadband network. And so, even if we could switch away from it in the medium run – as I did quite easily, but may take others more time – in the short run, surely we need to regulate this critical infrastructure to ensure that it works while we rely on it?
This is a line of thought that struggles to survive a brief look at the state of regulated infrastructure in countries like Britain. About half the country experienced broadband outages between July 2020 and July 2021, for an average of two days per household.
In the final quarter of 2019, just before the pandemic took hold, only 65% of journeys on Britain’s heavily regulated railways were on time and 3.4% of trains were cancelled altogether. To put that in context, if Facebook were regulated as ‘critical infrastructure’ and achieved a similar level of success, it would mean the company’s services being down for almost a fortnight a year.
Perhaps these services would be even worse if they were not regulated. But even if we believe that WhatsApp and Instagram are ‘critical infrastructure’, at least in the short run, it is not totally obvious that regulating them like railways or electricity will make their service more customer-friendly and reliable.
Facebook, as my colleague Dirk Auer points out, will bear a lot of the cost of the outage itself — it doesn’t make money when people aren’t using it. Meanwhile, users will mostly return, aware that they have other options if these interruptions start to happen more often. And that might be the real lesson from the outage: that Facebook needs us a lot more than we need it.
capx.co · by Sam Bowman · October 5, 2021
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.
