Quotes of the Day:
"Preventing war is much better than protesting against the war. Protesting the war is too late."
- Thich Nhat Hanh
“So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.”
- Chief Tecumseh
“Second we find in our prerevolutionary society definite and indeed very bitter class antagonisms, though these antagonisms seem rather more complicated than the cruder Marxists will allow.”
- Crane Brinton
1. 2021 Army-Navy Uniform: The U.S. Army Special Forces Command
2. Pentagon’s military presence review done, but details lacking on new deployments, troop plus-ups or home-port shifts
3. Pentagon Plans to Improve Bases in Guam and Australia to Confront China
4. China's biggest movie is about how a US Marine division held off 12 Chinese divisions
5. CIA releases detailed report about what it was like to give Trump infrequent 'presidential daily briefing'
6. Inside the Data-Driven Operation that Moved Afghan Refugees from Dulles to Safe Havens
7. DoD Concludes 2021 Global Posture Review
8. Analysis | Victory over pandemic may look like victory in War on Terror: Vague
9. Turkey is Collateral Damage in Erdoğan’s Hostage Diplomacy
10. The Human Cost of War: My Own Failure and Our Military’s Mental Health Crisis
11. Why China’s elite tread a perilous path
12. MI6 boss warns of China 'debt traps and data traps'
13. Taliban kill, abduct dozens of ex-officers: rights group
14. Brian Cox on: “Congress Must Make Informed Decisions to Prevent Risk of Systemic Military Justice Failure”
15. The Uncomfortable Reality of the U.S. Army’s Role in a War Over Taiwan
16. Four-star to review 2019 Syria strike that killed dozens of civilians
17. Former Trump Pentagon chief sues to publish material in memoir
18. Afghanistan's women leaders persist despite exile — the US must follow their lead
19. The Brain Is a Battlespace
20. One among most wanted Abu Sayyaf members, 3 others surrender in Sulu
1. 2021 Army-Navy Uniform: The U.S. Army Special Forces Command
Wow. Great video.
I hope we can get that uniform for the Special Warfare Museum at Ft Bragg (since it has reopened).
2. Pentagon’s military presence review done, but details lacking on new deployments, troop plus-ups or home-port shifts
I missed the changes moving the fires brigade HQ and aviation unit to South Korea.
But I hope INDOPACOM does not cut off its nose to spite USFK/USFJ's face. More rotational deployments are fine but if they are talking about reducing force posture in Japan and Korea they be may at the top of a slippery slope.
Excerpts:
Another posture review move came in September, when the Army announced it would move an artillery headquarters from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, to South Korea. A previously rotational attack helicopter unit will also be permanently based in South Korea.
As far as other Indo-Pacific Command moves, the official wouldn’t confirm any findings or recommendations.
Pentagon’s military presence review done, but details lacking on new deployments, troop plus-ups or home-port shifts
The Pentagon announced Monday that it has completed a far-reaching review of U.S. military presence around the world. But it won’t say what it found out, or any details about the recommended next steps, other than that some more reviews are in order.
The review’s results are classified, a senior defense official told reporters on Monday.
“We endeavor to be as transparent as possible, but to avoid giving our adversaries any advantage, we need to protect details on any immediate changes in our posture,” the official said.
At the same time, the official added, there is a good amount of negotiation that still needs to be done with partner nations before moves are made.
“Publicly engaging on these issues before unnecessary consultations have run their course would betray the confidentiality of our bilateral discussions and undermine trust in our relationships,” the official said.
This will be in stark contrast to President Donald Trump’s administration, the official said.
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“On a number of occasions in the previous administration, posture decisions were made or announced without a deliberative process and without due consideration of global trade-offs, risk to strategy, interagency coordination and impact to allies and partners,” the official said. “We saw this in the announcements on Syria and Afghanistan, the approach to Iran and the 25,000 active duty force cap in Germany that the Trump administration implemented.”
Some of this has already been reversed, the official added, as part of the posture review. President Joe Biden in February overturned Trump’s decision to send nearly 12,000 troops home from Europe, the majority of whom are based in Germany.
Any further changes will be coordinated with allies, the official said, declining to offer details on how the review’s results can pump up deterrence against Russia, whose recent activities seem to threaten an invasion of Ukraine.
Another posture review move came in September, when the Army announced it would move an artillery headquarters from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, to South Korea. A previously rotational attack helicopter unit will also be permanently based in South Korea.
As far as other Indo-Pacific Command moves, the official wouldn’t confirm any findings or recommendations.
In the Middle East and Africa, where troop levels have shifted greatly in the past year, the official said only that the plan in Iraq and Syria remains to support efforts to defeat ISIS. For both regions, further posture review is necessary, the official added.
One expected conclusion from the posture review had been a decision on Somalia. The Trump administration abruptly pulled out all troops operating there, alongside the local government, against al-Qaida affiliated al-Shabaab, early this year.
Since then, Africa Command leaders have been flying down to the country for meetings and exercises, while rank-and-file troops have been based in Djibouti and Kenya.
Any decision on Somalia is, for the moment, classified.
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
3. Pentagon Plans to Improve Bases in Guam and Australia to Confront China
Excerpts:
While some details about the repositioning of military capabilities are classified and others have been previously announced, defense specialists said the review’s lack of sizable adjustments to military forces in Asia shows the challenges the U.S. faces in rebalancing resources to confront China while maintaining other global commitments.
...
Some shifting of troops or capabilities associated with the review and in keeping with the current strategy have already been announced or have occurred, the officials said.
Those include deployments of aircraft and logistics capabilities to Australia and a permanent deployment of an attack helicopter squadron and an artillery division headquarters in South Korea.
Pentagon Plans to Improve Bases in Guam and Australia to Confront China
A review of U.S. military forces and capabilities world-wide makes adjustments but includes no major reshuffling to take on Beijing
By Gordon Lubold
Nov. 29, 2021 11:30 am ET
WASHINGTON—A Pentagon review of military resources world-wide plans improvements to bases in Guam and Australia to counter China but contains no major reshuffling of forces as the U.S. moves to take on Beijing while deterring Russia and fighting terrorism in the Middle East and Africa.
The review, an unclassified version of which is due to be released later Monday, aims to sharpen the link between U.S.’s vast military capabilities and the Biden administration’s strategic priorities—countering China’s military buildup and more assertive use of power chief among them.
Known as the global posture review, the assessment—whose results haven't been previously reported—plans for improvements to the airfields and other infrastructure at U.S. bases in Guam and Australia, defense officials said.
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While some details about the repositioning of military capabilities are classified and others have been previously announced, defense specialists said the review’s lack of sizable adjustments to military forces in Asia shows the challenges the U.S. faces in rebalancing resources to confront China while maintaining other global commitments.
In the 10 months since President Biden took office, his administration conducted a chaotic end to the U.S. war in Afghanistan and has faced Moscow’s military threats against Ukraine, including a current buildup of Russian troops that U.S. officials said may be a prelude to invasion. China has meanwhile stepped up military intimidation of Taiwan, a U.S. partner.
“The world is even more unsteady than six months ago,” said Mackenzie Eaglen, a senior fellow and specialist in defense strategy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
The pullout from Afghanistan in particular, Ms. Eaglen said, means the U.S. must monitor for terrorism threats and collect intelligence from farther away, making it difficult to shift resources. “That’s part of the reason you can’t significantly change force posture in the Middle East and Europe, because we lost our eyes in Afghanistan,” she said.
The global outlook is fluid, a senior defense official said, but the review achieved some of its objectives, especially on China.
Andersen Air Force Base in Guam in a 2020 handout photo.
PHOTO: US AIR FORCE/REUTERS
“The more you look at any given region, the more complicated the region becomes,” the official said. “But I do think we were able to make some decisions through this that really reinforced our commitment to getting after the Indo-Pacific,” the official said. “We’ve moved the needle.”
The Pentagon review was begun under Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin earlier this year and is one of several national-security and defense-policy blueprints the Biden administration is expected to release in coming months.
Force posture in the Middle East, Europe and Africa will continue to be analyzed, the official and others in the Pentagon said. Afghanistan underwent a separate interagency review, they said, and cyber and nuclear capabilities are also being reviewed under separate initiatives. A China-specific review, of which much of the results are classified, was completed earlier this year.
Another senior defense official said that, despite expectations that it would result in strategic changes, the global posture review didn’t find a need for large adjustments. More changes may follow a new national-defense strategy due early next year, the official said.
“There was a sense at the outset that there was a potential for some major force posture changes,” said the official. “Then, as we got deeper and deeper into the work, we realized in the aggregate that the force posture around the world was about right.”
An Inside Look at the U.S. Strategy in Guam as China Stockpiles Missiles
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An Inside Look at the U.S. Strategy in Guam as China Stockpiles Missiles
The U.S. Army is testing the Iron Dome on Guam. WSJ’s Shelby Holliday got a first-hand look at the missile-defense system, which arrived months after a top military leader called the island’s defenses inadequate against threats from China. Photo: Adam Falk/The Wall Street Journal
The infrastructure improvements touted in the review’s unclassified version will begin next year in Guam, which hosts a large naval and Air Force contingent and thousands of American forces, and in Australia, where Marines deploy on a rotational basis. Both are key in Washington’s strategy to counter China, officials said.
Improvements to airfields in Guam and Australia will expand the ability of the U.S. to ferry troops in and out of the area for deployments or in the event of a conflict, they said.
The officials declined to provide additional specifics on the improvements, saying they were classified.
Some shifting of troops or capabilities associated with the review and in keeping with the current strategy have already been announced or have occurred, the officials said.
Those include deployments of aircraft and logistics capabilities to Australia and a permanent deployment of an attack helicopter squadron and an artillery division headquarters in South Korea.
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Defense officials have also notified Belgium and Germany that the U.S. would maintain its presence at seven sites previously marked for return to their host nations under a base-consolidation plan.
In June, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon was removing eight Patriot antimissile systems from the Middle East in a major realignment of its military presence in the region.
The Patriot systems, which were used to defend U.S. forces and other military capabilities, like jet fighter squadrons, were removed because they were no longer needed as some of the military forces were pulled out, officials said. Many defense specialists and some military officials say the removal of military capabilities in the region sent a sign to Gulf allies and others that the U.S. isn’t committed to the region.
Mr. Austin, in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain last week, attempted to reassure countries in the region. “America’s commitment to security in the Middle East is strong and secure,” Mr. Austin said at a security forum in Bahrain.
4. China's biggest movie is about how a US Marine division held off 12 Chinese divisions
Countering Chinese propaganda.
China's biggest movie is about how a US Marine division held off 12 Chinese divisions
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A Chinese government-sponsored war movie that celebrates how roughly 120,000 communist troops were unable to destroy a vastly smaller force of U.S., British, and South Korean service members has become China’s highest grossing movie ever.
In American military history, the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir is remembered as a titanic struggle fought in the brutal cold in mountainous terrain described by Maj. Gen. Oliver P. Smith, commander of the 1st Marine Division, as “never intended for military operations.”
From Nov. 27 to Dec. 13, 1950, about 30,000 U.S. and allied troops withstood the sledgehammer of 12 Chinese Divisions and then conducted a fighting retreat to Hungnam, where they were evacuated to South Korea. The escape to Hungnam was so perilous that when a reporter asked Smith about ordering a retreat the general responded: “Retreat, hell! We’re not retreating; we’re advancing in a different direction.”
“The Battle at Lake Changjin” portrays the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army as underdogs in a David and Goliath struggle against the mightiest military in the world at the time, led by Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur, according to media reports. (It’s noteworthy that the battle took place at roughly the same time the Chinese military was invading and subduing Tibet.)
Of course, China is not the only country that uses movies to rewrite its history. Hollywood has never let facts get in the way of selling tickets, even when depicting incidents that are supposedly inspired by actual events. “Zero Dark Thirty” allegedly chronicled the hunt for Osama bin Laden but former CIA officers noted the film took a lot of dramatic license. The director, Kathryn Bigelow, is also responsible for “The Hurt Locker,” which has infuriated countless Iraq and Afghanistan veterans as the least accurate portrayal of the Global War on Terrorism in the history of cinema.
Some American media outlets have described “The Battle at Lake Changjin” as China’s take on a major U.S. military defeat, but the reality is more nuanced. Despite taking heavy casualties, American troops and their allies survived the Chinese onslaught, and they were able to save South Korea from being absorbed by the communist North. The survivors of the battle have since been dubbed “The Chosin Few.”
A woman walks by a poster of film ‘The Battle at Lake Changjin’ at a cinema during China’s National Day holiday on October 3, 2021 in Beijing, China. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)
“The ability of the Marines to fight their way through twelve Chinese divisions over a 78-mile mountain road in sub-zero weather cannot be explained by courage and endurance alone,” Pate wrote. “It also owed to the high degree of professional forethought and skill as well as the ‘uncommon valor’ expected of all Marines.”
By the end of the battle, 718 Marines had been killed and another 192 were missing; 3,485 Marines had been wounded in action and 7,338 were listed as “non-battle casualties” which included frostbite and indigestion, according to the Marine Corps’ official history.
Perhaps less well known but no less important are the sacrifices that U.S. soldiers made during the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir. The 31st Regimental Combat Team – also known as Task Force MacLean and later Task Force Faith – blocked the Chinese advance for five days on the eastern side of the reservoir, allowing the Marines to withdraw, according to the Army Historical Foundation.
When the battle began, the unit had about 3,200 troops, including roughly 700 South Korean soldiers. During the withdrawal to the south, the Chinese ambushed the task force and massacred wounded soldiers. Little more than 1,000 survivors eventually made it to friendly lines, of which only 385 were still able to fight. (In 1999, Task Force Faith received a Presidential Unit Citation.)
In light of what actually happened, “The Battle at Lake Changjin” appears to be a hollow and cynical attempt to rewrite history, showing just how much China has learned from Hollywood.
More great stories on Task & Purpose
is the senior Pentagon reporter for Task & Purpose. He has covered the military for 15 years. You can email him at schogol@taskandpurpose.com, direct message @JeffSchogol on Twitter, or reach him on WhatsApp and Signal at 703-909-6488. Contact the author here.
5. CIA releases detailed report about what it was like to give Trump infrequent 'presidential daily briefing'
rawstory.comCIA releases detailed report about what it was like to give Trump infrequent 'presidential daily briefing'
Raw Story · by Sarah K. Burris · November 28, 2021
The CIA released the latest chapter of the ongoing history of Presidential briefings, Micah Zenko tweeted over the weekend. According to the information provided by the U.S. spy agency, Trump didn't much care about national security, while Vice President Mike Pence did the "daily briefing" six days a week. Previous reports cited anonymous sources, but the CIA report detailed the specifics on the record. The report went even deeper into what agents experienced, noting Trump's rants and other issues.
By the time that the 2020 election rolled around, Beth Sanner was the one briefing Trump. The so-called PDB, "Presidential Daily Briefing," actually only took place twice a week under Trump and lasted about 45 minutes, with the overwhelming majority involving Trump's ranting.
"Even during times when President Trump publicly expressed great irritation with the IC—most notably in 2019 when an IC employee filed a whistle-blower complaint concerning the president's efforts to have Ukraine investigate a political opponent, Joe Biden—briefings continued as usual and Trump' s demeanor during the sessions remained the same," said the report. "After the 2020 election, PDB briefings also continued for a period of time. When Sanner briefed the president before he went to Mar-a-Lago for the holidays, he commented that he would see her later. The briefings were to resume on 6 January but none were scheduled after the attack on the Capitol."
By contrast, Pence so regularly held a "presidential daily briefing" that he had briefers to his home and gave them a commemorative medallion as a gift. They offered him a certificate of appreciation as he left office, the report continued.
The report also confessed that no briefing was as bad as Trump's other than Nixon.
"For the Intelligence Community, the Trump transition was far and away the most difficult in its historical experience with briefing new presidents,". The only (and imperfect) analogue was the Nixon transition, when the president-elect effectively declined to work with the IC, electing, instead, to receive intelligence information through an intermediary, National Security Advisor-designate Henry Kissinger," the report also explained. "Trump was like Nixon, suspicious and insecure about the intelligence process, but unlike Nixon in the way he reacted. Rather than shut the IC out, Trump engaged with it, but attacked it publicly."
James Clapper also wrote in his book about Trump's inability to focus during briefings as a candidate. After taking over the White House, Clapper left and Trump brought in his own team.
"Clapper recalled, Trump was prone to 'fly off on tangents; there might be eight or nine minutes of real intelligence in an hour's discussion,'" the report recalled. "The irreconcilable difference, in Clapper's view, was that the IC worked with evidence. Trump 'was 'fact-free'—evidence doesn't cut it with him.'"
Raw Story · by Sarah K. Burris · November 28, 2021
6. Inside the Data-Driven Operation that Moved Afghan Refugees from Dulles to Safe Havens
Excerpts:
By Sept. 14, Gen. Weber and his team had moved 55,655 Afghan guests without ever exceeding capacity at the various transit points. Critical to this success was the rapid application of a common data integration platform.
Looking back, Gen. Weber called Allies Welcome the most “heartbreaking, honorable, joyful, and outrageously fulfilling” operation of his career. The military and government should learn from his experience. No big problem in the 21st century should be solved by daily human efforts to enter information into spreadsheets and briefing documents. Agencies should set up commercial cloud-based data tools before a crisis arrives. The government as a whole should work much harder to establish ways to share data through clouds.
Inside the Data-Driven Operation that Moved Afghan Refugees from Dulles to Safe Havens
The main challenge was reconciling and processing disconnected, stove-piped, unavailable, or incorrect data.
When the phone rang for Brig. Gen. Mark Weber on Aug. 22, it wasn’t the order that the chief of staff of the Montana Air National Guard was expecting. Instead of taking charge of logistics movements as Hurricane Ida bore down on Louisiana, Weber was summoned to Washington, D.C., to lead a key part of the largest non-combatant evacuation operation in U.S. history. Kabul had fallen to the Taliban one week earlier, and the U.S. government had seen the trickle of refugees out of Afghanistan turn into a flood. Among other things, his experience would illuminate the need for better data sharing between government agencies.
The overall effort belonged to the Department of Homeland Security, but the Defense Department would be doing much of the heavy lifting. Using military aircraft and commercial airliners contracted through Air Mobility Command and U.S. Transportation Command, Operation Allies Welcome (né Operation Allies Refuge) would fly fleeing Afghans to designated lily pads—temporary receiving and vetting locations throughout the Middle East and Europe—from which they would then be transferred to longer-term safe havens throughout the United States.
Gen. Weber’s task would be moving refugees from Dulles International Airport in Virginia to the eight U.S. military bases serving as safe havens. His team would direct the flow of aircraft and ground vehicles provided by the Air Force and Army components of U.S. Northern Command.
He might have expected to fly to Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, where the 601st Air Operations Center usually coordinates logistics and mobility for humanitarian assistance and disaster response in North America. Instead, he and his team swiftly established a mobility command-and-control facility in the conference room of a hotel near Dulles, where an aircraft full of Afghan refugees was already inbound. Weber and his small staff of service members would live and work 16-hour days (or more) for the next three weeks. The team would soon learn that their main challenge would be primarily one of reconciling and processing disconnected, stove-piped, unavailable, or incorrect data.
It was critical that the number of incoming guests never exceed the capacity at Dulles or at the safe havens.
His team needed to know the number of Afghan guests per flight, the capacity of each safe haven, the visa status of each guest, the schedule of inbound and outbound flights, and more. These data, however, existed among various databases located in systems which were not compatible with one another, such as Department of State’s flight tracker and refugee list, DOD’s dataset of flight status for mobility aircraft, Army North’s refugee tracker, Customs and Border Protection’s Arrival and Departure Information System, Northern Command passenger data, Flightradar24’s lists of participating commercial flights, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather data, and DHS’s dataset of refugee information—some classified, some not. Weber’s team strived to manually compile data, poring through rows of disparate spreadsheets, sticky notes, and disconnected databases to keep tabs on the number of incoming guests and the remaining capacity at each location.
The team had to gather data from 15 government and non-government agencies on four continents. The compilation was necessary for the timing and coordination of aircraft and ground transportation to ensure a smooth flow of guests, some still departing Afghanistan, some flowing through lily pads, and some already en route to Dulles. Getting it wrong could have cascading effects. An underestimation could overtax the available beds, food, and medical capacities at safe havens, which would be followed by a refugee surplus at Dulles that could bottleneck operations. Overestimating the number would force aircraft to leave partially empty to prevent ramp and processing congestion.
Building the Plane as It Flies
On the first day of operations, USTRANSCOM reported eight Civil Reserve Air Fleet aircraft—airliners activated for military transport during a crisis—inbound for Dulles with a total of 2,000 seats. But how many refugees would be in those seats? The team had no access to the exact passenger manifests. No common dataset existed between the Homeland Security, Defense, and State departments. The only way to learn just how many people were coming into Dulles was to spend hours making calls to lily pad locations, safe havens across the United States, and government agencies.
Once they had solid figures, Weber’s team would coordinate with the Army team that was organizing bus transport to safe havens. Army logisticians would call each safe haven daily and sift line-by-line through passenger lists to confirm how many people were on buses and aircraft at that moment, how many might be coming in the next 24 hours, and how many people each safe haven could accept over the next day.
Dozens of data-gathering phone calls soon turned into hundreds of hour-by-hour calls to every possible staging location, government agency, and safe haven to create a comprehensive data set, valid only for that snapshot in time. Compiled data, however, is only as good as the derived sources. The team found that often, through an abundance of caution, some locations would only report regularly approved numbers, not the most accurate moment-by-moment numbers. One location, not wanting to report inaccurate numbers, only released the approved figures on its available capacity, which could be up to four hours out-of-date, leading to a stale dataset with the potential for compounding errors in the aggregate data.
A Data-Centric Approach
After three days, Weber’s team and others had successfully processed thousands of guests without a shortfall in capacity. The agility of State, Defense, DHS, DoD, and non-governmental organizations was on full display. But ad hoc human-based data gathering was not a sustainable solution. It turned out that a solution existed: a growing team of Air Force, Army, and Joint Staff data experts were quietly combining the disparate refugee data sets into a cloud-based commercial software tool that could reveal the total picture of the operations.
A year earlier, as the DOD adapted to operations under COVID-19 restrictions, the Air Force had been struggling to keep tabs on the readiness of its force and the availability of aircraft for missions. This personnel and maintenance data existed in disconnected local systems or in paper documents that airmen spent thousands of hours each day compiling for briefing slides that were outdated the moment they were compiled. Learning of an Army effort to combine stove-piped soldier and equipment data in the cloud, the Air Force followed suit. The results were immediate: real-time access for commanders into the health and readiness of their force with increasing data sets coming into the platform each week.
The Joint Staff took notice, and began to integrate these data capabilities with those in the Army, and similar cloud-based efforts at USNORTHCOM. A coalition of data-centric warfighting capabilities was coming together under Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks’ new data decrees for the Department and an announcement of a data accelerator program. One year later, as DoD was tasked to support arriving Afghans, the USNORTHCOM Commander told his team to help. Within 30 minutes of notification to the software company, data engineers were on a train from New York to D.C. After 36 hours of data mapping and integrations work, the cloud-based system went live, providing constantly updated metrics on incoming guests and available capacity. While the software initially integrated data from only a few agencies, new data sources were added each day. The result was a growing repository of live, interagency, and open-source data that could be curated for the needs of any agency involved in the operation. Rather than stale spreadsheet data gathered by humans every eight hours, the software increasingly automated the information gathering and drove updates down to every three seconds with data that soon became the authoritative source.
The cloud-based software was useful for more than accurate predictions about capacity requirements, but also proved vital for finding information when challenges arose. A week into the operation, when a deaf Afghan boy was inadvertently separated from his family during his many movements, Weber’s team was able to quickly isolate his location by using cloud-based data and reunite him with his family.
By Sept. 14, Gen. Weber and his team had moved 55,655 Afghan guests without ever exceeding capacity at the various transit points. Critical to this success was the rapid application of a common data integration platform.
Looking back, Gen. Weber called Allies Welcome the most “heartbreaking, honorable, joyful, and outrageously fulfilling” operation of his career. The military and government should learn from his experience. No big problem in the 21st century should be solved by daily human efforts to enter information into spreadsheets and briefing documents. Agencies should set up commercial cloud-based data tools before a crisis arrives. The government as a whole should work much harder to establish ways to share data through clouds.
7. DoD Concludes 2021 Global Posture Review
An interagency effort:
The Department conducted the GPR with participation from Office of the Secretary of Defense components, the Military Departments, the Joint Staff, the Combatant Commands, the National Security Council staff, the U.S. State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, along with close consultation with dozens of allies and partners worldwide.
DoD Concludes 2021 Global Posture Review
Following several months of analysis and close coordination across the U.S. government, the Department of Defense released the results of the Global Posture Review (GPR) today.
The conclusion of the review comes at a key inflection point following the end of operations in Afghanistan and ongoing development of the National Defense Strategy. Nested within the Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, the GPR assessed DoD’s posture across major regions outside the United States and developed near-term posture adjustments, posture planning guidance and analysis on long-term strategic issues.
Through these assessments, the GPR will help strengthen posture decision-making processes, improve DoD’s global response capability, and inform the draft of the next National Defense Strategy.
In the Indo-Pacific, the review directs additional cooperation with allies and partners to advance initiatives that contribute to regional stability and deter potential Chinese military aggression and threats from North Korea. These initiatives include seeking greater regional access for military partnership activities; enhancing infrastructure in Australia and the Pacific Islands; and planning rotational aircraft deployments in Australia, as announced in September. The GPR also informed Secretary Austin’s approval of the permanent stationing of a previously-rotational attack helicopter squadron and artillery division headquarters in the Republic of Korea, announced earlier this year.
In Europe, the GPR strengthens the U.S. combat-credible deterrent against Russian aggression and enables NATO forces to operate more effectively. Based on an initial GPR assessments and a recommendation from Secretary Austin, in February 2021 President Biden rescinded the 25,000 active duty force cap in Germany established by the previous administration.
Additionally, Secretary Austin announced in April that DoD would permanently station an Army Multi-Domain Task Force and a Theater Fires Command, a total of 500 Army personnel, in Germany.
In the Middle East, the GPR assessed the department’s approach toward Iran and the evolving counterterrorism requirements following the end of DoD operations in Afghanistan. In Iraq and Syria, DoD posture will continue to support the Defeat-ISIS campaign and building the capacity of partner forces. Looking ahead, the review directs DoD to conduct additional analysis on enduring posture requirements in the Middle East.
In Africa, analysis from the review is supporting several ongoing interagency reviews to ensure DoD has an appropriately-scoped posture to monitor threats from regional violent extremist organizations, support our diplomatic activities and enable our allies and partners.
Finally, in Central and South America and the Caribbean, the GPR reviewed the role of DoD posture in support of national security objectives, including humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and counter-narcotics missions. DoD posture will continue to support U.S. Government efforts on the range of transnational challenges and partnership activities in the region.
The Department conducted the GPR with participation from Office of the Secretary of Defense components, the Military Departments, the Joint Staff, the Combatant Commands, the National Security Council staff, the U.S. State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, along with close consultation with dozens of allies and partners worldwide.
8. Analysis | Victory over pandemic may look like victory in War on Terror: Vague
Sadly, this is probably accurate.
Analysis | Victory over pandemic may look like victory in War on Terror: Vague
Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. On this day in 1952, President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower traveled to Korea, keeping a campaign promise to visit in person in an attempt to find an end to the Korean War. The conflict was suspended with an armistice in 1953.
The big idea
Victory over the pandemic could look like victory in the war on terrorism: Vague
President Biden’s definition of victory over the pandemic used to be fairly simple: Smother the virus, revive the economy, get things back to normal, or at least something approximating what we used to think of as normal. But the rise of the delta variant and its omicron successor have thwarted Biden and raised anew the question of just what counts as defeating the coronavirus.
The answer carries sweeping ramifications, not least for Democratic prospects of rescuing their wafer-thin majorities in Congress in the 2022 midterm elections, which would be defined by voter frustration that the president has fallen short on both fronts if they were held today.
White House officials declined to spell out how Biden now defines the end of the pandemic, which has claimed nearly 780,000 lives on U.S. soil. They may be looking back warily at the president’s July 4 speech, in which he declared “independence from a deadly virus” right as the delta variant began its deadly surge and Republicans ramped up their opposition to various tactics for mitigating covid's spread.
An instructive comparison
But the administration could, perhaps, draw on lessons from the so-called “war on terrorism” and a curious stretch of the 2004 presidential race in which rah-rah-U-S-A-U-S-A sloganeering briefly gave way to a nuanced understanding of the conditions that would qualify as victory.
In August 2004, President George W. Bush acknowledged in an interview with NBC’s Today Show that he couldn’t predict a “definite end” to the war that began on 9/11. And the commander in chief known the world over for his black-and-white rhetoric gave a remarkably gray-shaded answer to the question of whether the United States could ever decisively win.
“I don’t think you can win it,” Bush said. “But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world — let’s put it that way.”
The Republican’s camp quickly backpedaled from that assessment.
Victory over extremists, the former senator and future secretary of state told Matt, means getting back to a place “where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance.”
“I know we’re never going to end prostitution. We’re never going to end illegal gambling,” the former prosecutor told the Times. “But we’re going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn’t on the rise. It isn’t threatening people’s lives every day, and fundamentally, it’s something that you continue to fight, but it’s not threatening the fabric of your life.”
Cue GOP expressions of outrage, Kerry backpedaling, etc. But it’s hard to look back from the perspective of 2021 and not think Kerry and Bush were on to something. Terrorism hasn’t vanished from the earth. al-Qaeda, its offshoots, and ISIS are still out there. America still dedicates billions and billions of dollars to battling extremists.
But the proportion of Americans who list terrorism as their uppermost concern has — apart from notable spikes after major attacks — fallen sharply since 9/11. (Gallup found 83 percent of voters in 2020 said “terrorism and national security” were important, but that number doesn’t differentiate between voters who fear China’s rise and those focused on ISIS.)
At an anecdotal level, when is the last time you consciously thought of the risk of terrorist attack as you took part in the security theater that is removing your shoes at the airport?
Omicron
It’s too soon to say how dangerous the omicron variant will be. The past two years have primed experts for a prepare-for-the-worst strategy, and if the worst doesn’t materialize, so much the better.
“Experts cautioned that the flurry of activity to fight omicron may turn out to be largely unnecessary, as researchers learn in the coming days whether current vaccines can ward off the variant or successfully limit symptoms,” my colleagues Dan Diamond, Joel Achenbach, Chico Harlan and Lesley Wroughton reported this weekend.
And, as my colleagues Annie Linskey and Fenit Nirappil reported today: “[A]fter nearly 21 months of covid-19 restrictions, there is little appetite in the country for the kinds of school closures, indoor gathering bans and restaurant restrictions that defined the early days of the pandemic, according to health officials, who say that the political will to push for unpopular — but effective — mitigation measures is waning.”
(An administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, placed special emphasis on getting the tens of millions of unvaccinated Americans to get their shots, emphasizing: “We must use the tools we know work and will save American lives.”)
Which gets us back to what constitutes victory over coronavirus, if such a thing is possible.
“The pandemic will end at different times for different people,” Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told The Daily 202. “For most people, it’ll end when they wake up one day and realize ‘you know, I haven’t thought about covid in weeks.’ It’ll come to everyone at a different time, depending on their circumstances.”
“That day is coming, and I think that day is coming sometime next year,” said Jha, who emphasized the world has many more tools to battle covid now than it did in 2020.
“If we have to tweak our vaccines, we’ll tweak our vaccines. If we have to make other adjustments, we’ll make other adjustments. We can now get to a point where we can manage the virus, rather than have the virus really dominate our society,” he added.
“It's not just going away. It won’t just disappear,” said Jha. “But we can manage it.”
That sounds familiar.
9. Turkey is Collateral Damage in Erdoğan’s Hostage Diplomacy
Excerpts:
The Turkish president and his senior aides frequently breach the constitution to condemn suspects even before prosecutors can come up with an indictment. During the trial of Die Welt’s Turkey correspondent Deniz Yucel, Erdoğan not only smeared him as a “spy” and “terrorist,” but vowed never to release him as long as he was president. Meanwhile, his government was also busy demanding military technology from Germany in exchange for Yucel’s freedom, which prompted the German journalist Arnd Henze to warn Berlin in a Tagesschau piece not to offer such concessions.
Ultimately, the Turkish president’s calculated cruelty hurt not only the Oknins and the other political hostages who have preceded them but also Turkey’s global image, struggling economy, and more importantly its people. It is time for Erdoğan’s Turkey to end the insane and uncivilized practice of using foreign nationals as bargaining chips.
Turkey is Collateral Damage in Erdoğan’s Hostage Diplomacy
His erratic policies scare away tourists and foreign capital.
Mordy and Natalie Oknin, an Israeli couple visiting Istanbul, filmed a video last week to dispel fears among Israelis too scared to visit Turkey. Natalie said, “There is nothing to fear. It is fun in Turkey, safe in Turkey, you can speak Hebrew openly. They love us Israelis.” Her husband added, “Come, everything is okay.” Shortly after, however, the Oknins ended up in solitary confinement for six days on spurious charges of espionage and were able to return home only following backchannel talks between Ankara and Jerusalem. The swift resolution of the latest episode of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s hostage diplomacy should not gloss over the harm it does to the detained victims and its collateral damage to Turkey.
What got the Oknins into trouble with Turkish authorities was their visit to one of Istanbul’s tourist attractions, the Camlica telecommunications tower. Erdoğan inaugurated the building in May amid great fanfare, bragging that it symbolizes “the country’s vision in the modern era.” As the Israeli couple enjoyed the tower’s restaurant and observation deck, they also took photos of another nearby tourist attraction, Erdoğan’s Istanbul residence. Fast forward four days: Turkey’s interior minister implicated the Oknins by stating his expectation that the Oknins would be charged with “political and military espionage” for taking the photos.
Just as with North Carolina pastor Andrew Brunson, who spent two years in Turkish prisons on similar bogus charges while Erdoğan used him as a pawn to extract concessions from Washington, Turkey’s pro-government media pronounced the Oknins guilty. Yeni Akit, a newspaper known for its incendiary antisemitic coverage, not only branded the couple as “Israeli spies,” but also targeted Turkish journalists who highlighted the ludicrous nature of the accusations. In 2018, the same daily smeared Brunson as “Spy Brunson” and the “USA’s terrorist priest.”
Erdogan’s hostage diplomacy became a mainstay of his foreign policy after a failed July 2016 coup attempt. In a report we wrote for Foundation for Defense of Democracies in 2018, we documented the victimization of more than 50 Western nationals or permanent residents by dubious political charges and lengthy pretrial detention. These include three U.S. foreign service nationals, the term for local staff the State Department employs abroad.
While Americans, Europeans, and Israelis have become ensnared in Turkey’s Kafkaesque courts, Ankara does not inflict such abuse on visitors from Iran, Russia, and Venezuela. Chinese nationals have enjoyed similar immunity unless they happened to be exiled Uyghur dissidents criticizing Beijing’s genocidal campaign in Xinjiang. This underscores that the fate of Brunson, and other Western nationals who also became scapegoats, is no accident.
Erdogan’s blatant attempts to use hostages as bargaining chips prompted one of us (Edelman) to urge the Trump administration, in a Washington Post op-ed, not to swap Brunson for Reza Zarrab, the confessed ringleader of a multibillion dollar scheme to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran, which Erdoğan personally facilitated, per Zarrab’s testimony in federal court. Trump did not trade Zarrab to free Brunson, yet Erdoğan succeeded in leveraging Brunson to free a Hamas suspect from Israeli custody, a favor Trump reportedly sought from the then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Besides the lives shattered by Erdoğan’s kangaroo courts, Turkey and its citizens are the collateral victims of Erdoğan’s hostage diplomacy. The Turkish lira lost another 5 percent against the dollar during the six-day detention of the Oknins, exacerbating a meltdown in Turkey’s national currency that has seen it lose 40 percent of its value since January, making it the worst-performing major emerging market currency this year. This tumble, along with double-digit inflation, are caused by Erdoğan’s erratic decisions that scare away not only individuals but also foreign capital from what was once seen as an attractive emerging market.
Erdogan’s hostage diplomacy also hits Turkey’s tourism sector, an important source of foreign currency for a country that suffers from a chronic current account deficit. The Jerusalem Post’s Herb Keinon warned Israelis recently “Don't go to Turkey,” and urged Israel to “embark on a campaign in other countries – the US, the UK, Germany – warning of what awaits tourists to Turkey if they take a selfie in front of a building about whose sensitivity they are unaware.” Turkey’s tourism workers must have watched the Oknin drama with dread, wondering how many would lose their jobs to Erdoğan’s latest episode of hostage diplomacy.
This time around, Israel’s backchannel diplomacy at the highest levels moved Erdoğan to intervene to release the Oknins ahead of their December court date, for which Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid thanked “the President of Turkey and his government for their cooperation” in a statement. Israeli President Isaac Herzog phoned Erdoğan to convey his appreciation “for his personal involvement and contribution.” Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Erdoğan sought a public expression of gratitude from the Israeli leaders to help secure the release of the Oknins. This is yet another reminder of the Turkish president’s absolute control over Turkey’s legal system, for good or ill.
The Turkish president and his senior aides frequently breach the constitution to condemn suspects even before prosecutors can come up with an indictment. During the trial of Die Welt’s Turkey correspondent Deniz Yucel, Erdoğan not only smeared him as a “spy” and “terrorist,” but vowed never to release him as long as he was president. Meanwhile, his government was also busy demanding military technology from Germany in exchange for Yucel’s freedom, which prompted the German journalist Arnd Henze to warn Berlin in a Tagesschau piece not to offer such concessions.
Ultimately, the Turkish president’s calculated cruelty hurt not only the Oknins and the other political hostages who have preceded them but also Turkey’s global image, struggling economy, and more importantly its people. It is time for Erdoğan’s Turkey to end the insane and uncivilized practice of using foreign nationals as bargaining chips.
Eric S. Edelman, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey (2003-2005), is a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Aykan Erdemir is senior director of the Turkey program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former member of the Turkish parliament. Twitter: @aykan_erdemir
10. The Human Cost of War: My Own Failure and Our Military’s Mental Health Crisis
The Human Cost of War: My Own Failure and Our Military’s Mental Health Crisis
Our military culture and expectations justifiably require unrelenting standards and there is very little space for human vulnerability, especially in SOF and those in leadership roles. Without changes to our culture and a new approach to mental health, help will remain out of reach for many. I know because I suffered in the dark and when I could no longer maintain the warrior, leader and family expectations, I made poor choices and failed terribly. I hope my story can add to our understanding and help service-members faced with the same issues make better choices and live a better life.
Col. Owen Ray (Ret), Former Special Forces Officer
COL Owen Ray is a recently retired Army Special Forces Officer who led airborne and Special Operations forces for nearly 25 years with multiple deployments in support of Operations Inherent Resolve, Freedom’s Sentinel, Enduring Freedom – Afghanistan and Philippines, Operation Iraqi Freedom and Joint Task Force – INDOPACOM. COL Ray’s last assignment was as the Chief of Staff for I Corps at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.
EXPERT PERSPECTIVE – As I watched our abrupt departure from Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover and marked the 20th Anniversary of 9/11, I felt anger and grief. For many veterans of the last 20 years, it is hard to reconcile the sacrifices without the benefit of victory or even progress. For those who have spent their entire career and most of their adult life at war, the personal cost in terms of mental, physical, and family health is neither well understood nor adequately addressed.
The recent recognition of the military and veteran suicide crisis by the White House and Department of Defense is a welcome start but we need to change how we approach the problem. Recent CDC suicide statistics showed a 3% decline in the overall US suicide rate in 2020, however military rates continue to rise. The 2021 Department of Defense report on suicides reflects a 41% increase in active-duty suicide rates between 2015 and 2020, killing 580 service members in 2020 alone. Most alarming is a recent assessment by Thomas Howard Suitt with Brown University’s “Costs of War” project, that notes since 9/11, we have lost 7,057 to combat but likely an estimated 30,177 to suicide. The crisis is likely to get worse as the wars close and servicemembers struggle to transition to an unknown and sometimes alien civilian life. Too many continue to suffer in silence, compromised by decades in conflict, failing home fronts, hopelessness, guilt and shame that can accompany a warrior life.
The Fall
On December 26, 2020, I stood on my balcony with a pistol to my head, intending to end my life as police surrounded my house. I had a mental and emotional breakdown that would traumatize my entire family, let my friends, teammates and command down and bring dishonor to myself.
I was married with three wonderful kids, a well-respected member of our small suburban community and a highly successful Special Forces Officer of nearly 25 years. My career was marked with resounding achievement and success – early promotions, selected to command at every tactical level in Special Forces, a graduate degree from Harvard and selected to serve as the Military Aide to President Obama – carrying the nuclear football for more than two years.
Behind the public façade I so ardently protected was a dumpster fire of mental, emotional and physical deterioration and a family struggling. I was suffering complete mental exhaustion from the cumulative impact of untreated mental and physical health issues, operational and career stress across a career in SOF, including eight deployments. I was consumed by the war within and completely unaware of my own deterioration.
In the aftermath of that horrible night, I was devastated, confused and struggled to understand what, why and how this happened. I was criminally charged (and still face trial), vilified by the media and lost my freedom, my career, and worst of all, my family. Months later, and after extensive inpatient treatment, I was diagnosed with severe and chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Depression, Insomnia, and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).
I struggled through the years, compensating as so many of us do, by compartmentalizing emotions and numbing with alcohol. Work, mission and deployments provided focus, familiarity, comfort and, ultimately success. Home, however, was unfamiliar. I no longer fit in nor had a role, and seemingly always felt failure. My downward spiral accelerated after returning from an extremely difficult deployment directing the fight against ISIS in 2018. I came home different and the life I returned to changed.
This was the second long deployment in two years after spending a tough year in Afghanistan and my marriage was irreparably damaged. Over the next two years, I would deploy two more times and lost four more Soldiers as well as numerous friends and teammates. I became increasingly depressed, negative, guilt ridden, angry and suicidal. My family suffered equally as they endured this difficult life, my worsening health and my inability to connect emotionally. This is a tragic situation but unfortunately not uncommon.
The Human Cost of the Forever War
I joined Army Special Forces right after 9/11 as a team leader and like many of us, started losing friends and teammates early in the war. Then came regular unit memorials and losses of my own in command. Not just from combat but also from cancer, suicide, and training accidents. Trips to Dover Air Force Base to receive remains, consoling and caring for spouses and children, and attending funerals, took a toll.
Losses extended beyond close friends and included our partner nation forces, civilian casualties and the moral injury that comes from devastating campaigns. As a Green Beret, we train, live and fight alongside our foreign partners, which we watched from a distance as they were abandoned, hunted down and killed if they were not lucky enough to get out of Afghanistan in the final days. These high costs without clear benefit will undoubtedly impact this generation’s veterans and fan the flames of an existing mental health crisis.
PTSD, depression, TBI, chronic pain and physical injury, relationship issues from long absences and substance abuse are hallmark results of enduring wars. Fueled by a culture of unrelenting standards and perfection as well as an overall lack of awareness of mental, emotional and spiritual health, we face continued risks of human deterioration and failure.
A tragic example is the loss of an exceptional Army Officer and friend, COL Scott Green who took his life this past June. A beloved and accomplished leader within Ranger and Airborne forces as well as a husband and father, it was a devastating loss that left many shaken and asking “why”. Accomplishments and career success do not prevent mental compromise. Unless you walked in Scott’s boots, it is hard to understand what he was carrying but I know it became too much and he felt he had nowhere to turn. There are others like Scott out there right now. As a military and society, we owe them more.
Doing the Same yet Expecting Different Results – Time to Change
As a society, we react to mental health, shifting our finite resources from one crisis to another. We put vast resources toward physical health yet resilience classes or a mental health awareness month are shallow offerings toward proactive mental health. With all my education and training, I could not understand or recognize my own deterioration – I did not have the tools, nor would I have admitted I had a problem. I now routinely visit the behavioral health clinic, which I never stepped foot in throughout my 25 years of service until I hit the wall. The stigma is still there. I feel shame in the room. There is no eye contact, no talking, no leadership when it’s needed. This is in stark contrast to the physical therapy clinic where focusing on rehabilitating an injury is just a part of getting healthy and improving performance.
The military’s purpose remains to fight and win our nation’s wars but investing in mental health will not lead to reducing combat effectiveness or standards. Personal responsibility and making better choices are the key to making a difference in this crisis but we need to improve mental health awareness and foster a climate and culture where our servicemembers feel they can ask for help.
Reducing shame and hopelessness are critical in this effort to save lives, and we cannot continue to provide a false choice between health and mission or career. This starts with leader vulnerability, authenticity, and compassion. We all are susceptible to relationship issues, substance abuse problems, mental health needs. It’s time to drop the judgement and show up for someone. A friend showed up for me in my darkest hour and saved my life. Mental health is health and should be prioritized across the military, and if needed, directed by Congress through the National Defense Authorization Act.
We have lost too many of this nation’s best to this conflict and we’re losing more everyday here at home. We stand to lose many more as the wars close and service members transition to civilian life.
I am now reconciling my life and my accountability but also my responsibility to recover and live better for my family and friends. For some time, I felt I was on a collision course but powerless to stop it. With help and a lot of work, I am learning to walk a better path, but it came at too high of a cost.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief
11. Why China’s elite tread a perilous path
I ask this out of ignorance. But is there resistance potential maong the Chinese elite?
Why China’s elite tread a perilous path
Wealth, power and fame are no defence against the arbitrary power of the Communist party
Rui Chenggang made a strong impression on me. He was a young Chinese television anchor, whose tailoring was as impeccable as his English. We met in Davos in 2014, at a press conference with Shinzo Abe. Rui asked the then Japanese prime minister a tough question — while also pointing out that, when in Tokyo, he used the same gym as Abe. In short, he was very pleased with himself.
We chatted after the press conference and Rui told me I must look him up, next time I was in Beijing. I never got the chance. Rui was arrested for alleged corruption that summer and has not been seen in public again. The following year in Davos, I asked one of his Chinese colleagues what had become of Rui. She pulled a face and ran to the other side of the room.
The story of Rui Chenggang serves as my personal reminder of how quickly the rich and powerful can fall from grace in China. The most famous current example is the tennis player Peng Shuai. Peng disappeared for several weeks after making an accusation of sexual assault against a senior Chinese leader, before reappearing in a series of staged photo and video appearances. Her future remains uncertain.
In China, the rich, famous and powerful are all vulnerable to disgrace, disappearance or worse. The phenomenon was highlighted by the headline of an article in Forbes magazine in 2011: “Friends don’t let friends become Chinese billionaires.”
Citing statistics from the Chinese press, the article pointed out that 72 of the country’s billionaires had died premature deaths in the previous eight years. The original piece in China Daily, which is published by the Communist party, provided the details: “Among the 72 billionaires, 15 were murdered, 17 committed suicide, seven died from accidents, 14 were executed according to the law and 19 died from diseases.”
Anyone who thinks that things have become less perilous for the rich and powerful in China in the intervening decade would do well to read Desmond Shum’s recently published book, Red Roulette. Shum and his wife, Whitney Duan, rose from poverty to become billionaire property developers. They drove a Rolls-Royce around Beijing and travelled the world in private jets. The couple thought nothing of spending $100,000 on wine at a single meal in Paris. Whitney thrived on her connections to China’s political elite — until she was arrested in 2017 and disappeared.
As Red Roulette makes clear, this kind of sudden fall from grace is not uncommon. Shum and Duan’s redevelopment of Beijing airport hit a problem when one of their key contacts, Li Peiying, who was the airport’s general manager, disappeared without explanation. He was later charged with corruption and executed.
A key political contact, cultivated by Duan, was Sun Zhengcai, a fast-rising official tipped as a potential successor to President Xi Jinping. Sun was expelled from the Communist party and sentenced to life in prison for corruption in 2018. Shum argues that Sun was actually the victim of a “political hit job”.
Duan’s connections to Sun may, in turn, have led to her arrest. Or it could be that she was too close to the wife of former premier Wen Jiabao, whose family had become fabulously wealthy. Despite once being the second most powerful man in China, Wen is now reduced to communicating in code. A memoir about his mother that he published in an obscure newspaper this year was read as a veiled criticism of Xi and was swiftly scrubbed from the internet.
Some believe that Peng Shuai may also be communicating in code. One of the photos released to prove that she is still alive showed her standing next to a photo of Winnie the Pooh. Xi is often derisively compared with the portly bear.
International renown offers no protection from arbitrary power. Jack Ma, Alibaba founder and China’s most famous businessman, dared to criticise Chinese regulators in October 2020. He has barely been seen in public since. Meng Hongwei was the first ever Chinese president of Interpol, but he was arrested on a trip home in 2018, charged with corruption and sentenced to more than 13 years in prison.
Sympathy for billionaires or party functionaries, brought down by the system that once elevated them, might be limited. But the powers of the Chinese state are used with even more ferocity against dissenting lawyers, journalists and academics. As a recent report for Human Rights Watch illustrates, the authorities also often go after the families of dissidents.
The nature of the Chinese system means that steering clear of politics is no protection. The business world is opaque and runs on connections, so everyone is operating in what Shum calls the “grey zone”, and is therefore vulnerable to a charge of corruption. All institutions are under the sway of the Communist party. A smart lawyer or diligent journalist will be no help if you are arrested. The courts have a conviction rate of 99.9 per cent.
At the top of the system sits President Xi, a leader who has defended not only Mao Zedong but also Lenin and Stalin. It was Stalin’s secret police chief, Lavrenti Beria, who once explained the absolute vulnerability of any individual in a police state, when he said: “Show me the man, and I will find the crime.”
12. MI6 boss warns of China 'debt traps and data traps'
Debt and data.
Interesting trivia at the conclusion:
Mr Moore also revealed the significance of the green ink used by those in his role - which came from a tradition started by Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the first head of MI6, or "C".
He said the green ink means those working in the service know any directive has been signed by him. "The same is true of my typescript on my computer," he added.
MI6 boss warns of China 'debt traps and data traps'
By George Bowden
BBC News
Published
37 minutes ago
MI6 chief Richard Moore has warned of China's "debt traps and data traps" in his first live broadcast interview.
Mr Moore - known as "C" - told BBC Radio 4's Today programme these traps threatened to erode sovereignty and have prompted defensive measures.
He denied the fall of Afghan capital Kabul was an intelligence failure and signalled closer ties with tech giants.
The decision to speak more openly about his work was important in a modern democracy, the ex-secret agent said.
- warned China has the capability to "harvest data from around the world" and uses money to "get people on the hook"
- admitted the assessment of the Taliban's progress in Afghanistan this summer was "clearly wrong" - but denied Kabul's fall was an "intelligence failure"
- described a "chronic problem" with Russia and Ukraine - with Russia posing an "acute threat" to the UK
- supported closer links with technology partners and speeding-up the vetting process for new tech-savvy recruits
Speaking about the threat posed by China, Mr Moore described its use of "debt traps and data traps".
He said Beijing is "trying to use influence through its economic policies to try and sometimes, I think, get people on the hook".
Explaining the "data trap", he said: "If you allow another country to gain access to really critical data about your society, over time that will erode your sovereignty, you no longer have control over that data.
"That's something which, I think, in the UK we are very alive to and we've taken measures to defend against."
'Clearly wrong'
The assessment of the speed at which the Taliban would seize control of Kabul as British and American troops withdrew from Afghanistan was "clearly wrong", Mr Moore admitted.
But he said it was "really overblown to describe it in terms of intelligence failure". "None of us predicted the speed of the fall of Kabul," he said.
"Frankly, if we had recruited every member of the Taliban Shura, you know, the leadership group of the Taliban, [if] we recruited every one of them as a secret agent, we still wouldn't have predicted the fall of Kabul because the Taliban didn't."
However, he added that there is no "soft soaping" that the victory of the Taliban had been a "serious reverse" and he is concerned it will be a "morale boost for extremists around the world, and indeed for those sitting in the capitals in Beijing, Tehran, and Moscow".
Mr Moore described Russia as an "acute threat" and said Russian President Vladimir Putin has been clear that he does not recognise Ukraine's right to be an independent state.
"From time to time we get sort of crises around Ukraine as we worry about build-up of troops and what President Putin's intentions might be," he said.
"Therefore it bears very careful watching and it bears very careful signalling to the Russians about, you know, the price that they would have to pay if they intervened, as they did in 2014.
He said there was not "an adversarial sort of agenda here", adding: "We're not trying to encircle Russia, we're not trying to prevent it from pursuing its legitimate interest."
Richard Moore said working more closely with tech giants will help its real-life "Q labs" keep up to date
Looking ahead to the future of the Secret Intelligence Service, Mr Moore said he wanted to "partner in a different way" with the UK's technology industry to help its real-life "Q labs" stay ahead.
But he said the service would always uphold UK laws around privacy and data.
Mr Moore also revealed the significance of the green ink used by those in his role - which came from a tradition started by Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the first head of MI6, or "C".
He said the green ink means those working in the service know any directive has been signed by him. "The same is true of my typescript on my computer," he added.
13. Taliban kill, abduct dozens of ex-officers: rights group
They must be considered one of the biggest threats to the Taliban.
Taliban kill, abduct dozens of ex-officers: rights group
KABUL (AP) — Taliban fighters have summarily killed or forcibly “disappeared” more than 100 former police and intelligence officers since taking power in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch said in a report Tuesday. The group pointed to continuing retaliation against the armed forces of the ousted government despite an announced amnesty.
Taliban forces have hunted down former officers using government employment records and have targeted those who surrendered and received letters guaranteeing their safety, the report said. In some cases, local Taliban commanders have drawn up lists of people to be targeted, saying they committed “unforgivable” acts.
“The pattern of killings has sown terror throughout Afghanistan, as no one associated with the former government can feel secure they have escaped the threat of reprisal,” Human Rights Watch said in the report.
The Taliban seized power on Aug. 15 when they swept into the capital Kabul as the internationally backed government collapsed. Kabul’s fall capped a stunningly swift takeover by the insurgents, who had taken a string of cities as U.S. forces and their allies withdrew from Afghanistan after nearly 20 years of war. Since that time, the Taliban have been struggling to deal with the collapse of the country’s economy and have faced an increasingly deadly insurgency by the Islamic State group.
Taliban forces have also targeted people they suspect of supporting the Islamic State group in eastern Nangarhar province, an epicenter of IS attacks, the report said. In the province’s capital Jalalabad, a fierce, 8-hour gunbattle erupted Tuesday when Taliban forces raided a suspected hideout of IS militants, witnesses said. Provincial intelligence chief Tahir Mobariz said that during the fighting, a woman and a man in the house detonated suicide vests, dying in the blasts, and third person was killed by gunfire. Two suspected militants were arrested, he said.
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How a group of military veterans rescued a total stranger from Afghanistan.
The Taliban leadership has repeatedly announced that workers of the former government, including members of the armed forces, have nothing to fear from them. Former army officers have said they were ordered to give up their weapons, and in return they received a document confirming their surrender and ensuring their safety.
On Saturday, Taliban Prime Minister Mohammed Hassan Akhund denied in a public address that any retaliation was taking place.
When the Taliban took over, “they announced amnesty for all. Has there been any example of this?” he said, referring to retaliation. “There is no problem for anyone.” But he added that if any former security officer “resumes his bad deed...then he will be punished based on his crime.”
But Human Rights Watch said the promised amnesty has not stopped local commanders from retaliating against former members of the army, police and intelligence services.
“The burden is on the Taliban to prevent further killings, hold those responsible to account and compensate the victims’ families,” said Patricia Gossman, the organization’s associate Asia director.
Through interviews with witnesses, relatives, former government officials, Taliban officials and others, Human Rights Watch said it had documented the killings or enforced “disappearance” of 47 former armed forces members in four provinces between Aug. 15 and Oct. 31. It said its research indicated at least another 53 killings or disappearances took place as well.
The research focused on Ghazni, Kandahar, Kunduz and Helmand provinces. “But the cases reflect a broader pattern of abuses” reported in other provinces, it said.
Taliban fighters have carried out night raids on homes to detain former security officers or threaten and abuse their relatives into revealing their whereabouts, it said. In multiple cases it documented, the bodies of those who had been taken into detention were later found dumped in the street.
While some “opportunistic” killings took place immediately after the Taliban takeover, “killings and disappearances appear to have become more deliberate since then as Taliban commanders...have used informants and information from the previous government to locate others” linked to the former armed forces, it said.
RELATED
For a small group of Green Berets at Fort Bragg, working to help rescue American citizens and Afghan allies has taken a great mental and emotional toll.
In one case cited by the report, a former fighter in the National Directorate for Security named Abdul Qadir went into hiding in Kunduz province after the government fell, then resurfaced to live with his in-laws. On Aug. 25, he was stopped at a checkpoint by Taliban fighters. He admitted he had been an NDS member, but pointed out the amnesty. The fighters detained him anyway, and three days later his body was found by a river.
In Ghazni province, a former local police commander named Saadat disappeared after going to the market in mid-October. Residents later brought his body to his home, telling relatives he had been killed on the road by armed men they believed were Taliban.
The Taliban leadership in September announced the creation of a commission to investigate reports of rights abuses and crimes by their own fighters. But the commission has so far only announced arrests of a few members for theft and the dismissal of others for corruption, Human Rights Watch said.
“The Taliban’s unsupported claims that they will act to prevent abuses and hold abusers to account appear so far to be nothing more than a public relations stunt,” Gossman said.
14. Brian Cox on: “Congress Must Make Informed Decisions to Prevent Risk of Systemic Military Justice Failure”
Thoughtful and important commentary and analysis from Maj Gen Dunlap and Brian Cox.
Brian Cox on: “Congress Must Make Informed Decisions to Prevent Risk of Systemic Military Justice Failure”
Congressional action is underway to eviscerate commanders’ authority in military justice matters but prudent consideration of the long-term and broader military impact is needed. Brian Cox, a doctoral candidate lecturer and J.S.D. candidate at Cornell Law School, is one of the nation’s foremost experts on this matter, and I urge you to read his latest scholarship in Lawfire’s guest post.
But, first, a few thoughts of my own…
Is it possible that many in Congress, military leadership, veterans and the public might not have fully comprehended the dangerous repercussions and domino effect of commanders losing their disciplinary authority to what will likely be a D.C.-based bureaucracy composed of staff officers and civilians? Because if commanders – even four-star generals – want to discipline someone in their unit, they will almost always be obliged to come as supplicants to this O-6 headed bureaucracy far from any battlefield and try to make their case.
In my mind, officers without disciplinary authority aren’t really commanders; rather, they are little more than glorified managers. That isn’t a formula for warfighting success.
Moreover, if Congress doesn’t trust commanders to make military justice decisions which are so intrinsic to maintaining unit morale, discipline and readiness, how can it trust them with the operational life-or-death decisions that take place so often in the chaos of combat? Or will those decisions also be outsourced to some DC-based staffers? What about the complex, law of armed conflict decisions a warfighting commander may have to make multiple times in a day?
Let’s face it, there has never been a successful military in a major war where its commanders lacked disciplinary power. As I’ve said before, everything in the military that’s really important is commander’s business, so why change military discipline from a commander-centric system to a bureaucratic-centric system?
Furthermore, with the armed forces facing so many challenges from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and more, is now really the time to add to its burdens by stripping America’s military commanders of most of their disciplinary power? We should be empowering, not de-powering the ability of commanders’ to maintain discipline.
What is ironic is that the current military justice system produces a disciplinary environment others can only hope to have. Experts
[A]cording to surveys, females attending college have the highest rate of victimization for sexual assault of any age or gender. A woman in college has a 51 percent greater likelihood of being sexually assaulted than a woman between 18 and 24 years of age serving in the military. The military rate per thousand for felony-level sexual assault convictions based on population is five times higher than the rate per thousand of Texas and eight times the rate per thousand of New York. (Emphasis added.)
My own view is much the same as that expressed by General Mattis at the You may recall this exchange which is reprinted from an earlier post:
Dunlap: How important is disciplinary authority to a military commander, especially a combat commander? And do you have any thoughts on those proposals?
GENERAL JIM MATTIS: Well, maintaining the military justice system as a commander-centric system is critical if you’re going to hold commanders responsible for the good order and discipline of the only organization…[that] really that has the authority to employ enormous violence in the name of the American people overseas. And if you start diluting that authority, then the responsibility dilutes too.
[The danger of weakening the military’s cohesion]
And I can pretty much assure you that at that point, you will weaken the military’s cohesion and the sense of ownership by the commander, from the platoon commander, lieutenant, and company commander, all the way on up, over discipline. Like right now, if something goes wrong in your city, you turn it over to the city, the policemen picks up the person. They turn it over to the city prosecutor, and they deal with it. And when it’s over, life goes on.
In the military, the guy comes back to the unit or he stayed in the unit. And somehow– we’re a closed labor system. It stays right there. So the whole point is to keep this violence-capable unit under strict good order and discipline.
You may want to keep General Mattis’ words in mind as you read Brian’s new essay below.
Congress Must Stand Up to Misguided Political Pressure in Order to Avoid Risk of Systemic Military Justice Failure
By Brian Lee Cox
As the Senate resumes work this afternoon following the Thanksgiving break, debate involving that chamber’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is expected to finally take center stage. The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) voted to advance the draft legislation for consideration by the full Senate in July, though competing legislative priorities have notoriously prevented the bill from advancing to the full chamber before now.
Among the most significant issues to iron out now in the Senate and later when both chambers meet in conference to address differences between versions adopted by the respective chambers is what manner of sweeping military justice reform to adopt, if any. The NDAA passed by the House earlier this year and the version advanced to the full Senate by SASC in July both contain provisions that would essentially implement into law the central recommendations presented in the accountability line of effort of the DoD Independent Review Committee (IRC).
If the central IRC accountability recommendations are passed into law, each service Secretary would be required to establish a separate office of prosecutors to decide whether and how to proceed with all allegations involving “special victim offenses.” These would be limited to sexual assault offenses as well as crimes such as domestic violence and stalking.
In contrast to the “special victim offenses” approach reflected in both current drafts of the NDAA, the version advanced to the full Senate by the SASC includes a proposal that would transfer disposition authority for most felony offenses from commanders to military lawyers. The list of covered offenses is extensive, and the authority transferred to O-6 judge advocates includes both preferral and referral decisions.
If Congress cares to avoid the risk of an imminent systemic military justice failure, lawmakers must refuse to adopt this “most felonies” approach.
The Military Justice Bait and Switch Act of 2021
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has long crusaded for sweeping military justice reform to address what she refers to as an “epidemic of sexual assault” in the military. However, anticipating that she would garner unprecedented support for her signature military justice reform campaign this congressional session, Sen. Gillibrand’s employs a bait-and-switch tactic to expand the target of “reform” from sexual assault offenses to most felonies.
The sudden shift in scope from sexual assault crimes to nearly all felonies is supported neither by existing evidence nor by the corrosive rhetoric that has become a defining feature of the military justice reform movement. Rather, the expansion to most felony-level offenses was a chief recommendation presented in a report published by the “Shadow Advisory Report Group of Experts” in April 2020.
According to the recommendation of the “SARGE” report, the “gist of the alternate” recommended military justice system is that no “offense for which the maximum authorized punishment exceeds one year’s confinement may be tried or even preferred without the approval of an O-6 or above judge advocate who is outside the accused’s chain of command.” Unfortunately, the SARGE report presents no data to support the perceived necessity of expanding the scope of military justice reform in this manner.
Renowned military justice expert Eugene Fidell, who was a co-author of the SARGE report, explained during congressional testimony earlier this year that he has “looked at” the issue “eight ways from Sunday to try to figure out if there is a truly nourishing, satisfying way to draw the line” between commander and lawyer disposition authority. According to Gene, “the simplest way of doing it, really, is the familiar felony/misdemeanor dichotomy.”
For readers familiar with Gene Fidell’s scholarship, the propensity to limit commanders’ court-martial disposition authority to the greatest extent possible will come as no surprise. Indeed, a portrait of King George III graces each page of his well-known Global Military Justice Reform blog. As he noted in 2014, the 1774 Articles of War upon which the earliest American Articles were modeled “continue to cast a long (and in important respects retrograde) shadow across the military justice systems of the United States and some other countries whose systems may be traced to the classic command-centric British model.”
The 21st Century Military Justice System the Military Deserves?
As Gene remarked separately while lamenting the ostensibly unsatisfactory pace of congressional military justice reform, “neither the die-hard defenders of what remains of our George III-era legacy of military justice that gave charging powers to commanders, nor its numerous critics — should be content with the dog’s breakfast Congress has served up.” According to Gene Fidell, then, Congress must correct this inherent fundamental flaw in the American military justice system in order to “give our fighting forces the 21st century military justice system they deserve.”
The way to accomplish this goal, from this perspective, is for Congress to ensure that commanders are only “permitted to handle minor disciplinary matters through their existing nonjudicial punishment powers.” Permitting commanders to “decide who is charged with what offenses, and how those offenses will be disposed of” is, according to Gene, a “procedural problem [that] is hard-wired into the Uniform Code of Military Justice.”
This prognosis led Gene to conclude that “the issue of whether commanders have a built-in conflict of interest might have” influenced the decision not to pursue court-martial proceedings for personnel involved in the 2015 attack on the Médecins Sans Frontières trauma center in Kunduz, Afghanistan. However, as I have observed separately here on Lawfire, “my discussions with friends and former colleagues who were directly involved with advising at various echelons of command after the Kunduz airstrike indicate, without exception, that these military lawyers would not have initiated court-martial proceedings if the decision had been theirs.”
As Gene has observed much more recently, the “impetus for congressional attention” on the disposition authority of commanders “was concern over the continued pattern of sexual assaults on military personnel by other military personnel.” However, according to Gene, “the central issue with the system for charging decisions under the Uniform Code of Military Justice both predates and transcends them.”
This progression of developments helps explain the current bait and switch tactic of Sen. Gillibrand’s most recent military justice reform proposal. The “bait” has long been a sustained misrepresentation of sexual assault prevalence data. With a comparatively limited scope of “reform” on the hook as the bait, and with a sympathetic administration in the White House, the timing supported a “switch” to what reformists actually hope to achieve: to limit the scope of commanders’ court-martial disposition authority due to perceptions of systemic unfairness and bias.
Gene Fidell has emphasized in his written work that “these issues have been studied long enough,” and Sen. Gillibrand has suggested the same. They are both correct on this note, of course, though existing data indicates that they’re not making the points they seem to intend with these observations. While it is true that the potential for systemic unfairness of decisions made by commanders has been studied in depth, the findings demonstrate commanders do, in fact, act reasonably under the current system.
Case Review Subcommittee Report On Investigative Case File Reviews
In October 2020, the Defense Advisory Committee on Investigation, Prosecution, and Defense of Sexual Assault in the Armed Forces (DAC-IPAD) published the results of a study of investigative case file reviews for military adult penetrative sexual offense cases. The study was performed by the Case Review Subcommittee (CRSC) of the full DAC-IPAD committee.
Congress directed the Secretary of Defense to establish the DAC-IPAD in the FY 15 NDAA to advise the Secretary on the “investigation, prosecution, and defense of allegations of rape, forcible sodomy, sexual assault, and other sexual misconduct involving members of the Armed Forces.” The report published in 2020 “is the culmination of a nearly three-year project in which CRSC members and professional staff performed in-depth reviews of 1,904 cases documenting investigations of adult penetrative sexual offenses.”
As the CRSC report notes, this study represents “the first time” a group of reviewers had been tasked to assess “whether military commanders’ initial disposition decisions were reasonable” in the context of “military sexual assault investigations.” To my knowledge, no study of this depth and magnitude has been conducted by any other government – though I recommend that the methodology of this study should be utilized as a template for any government interested in an evidence-based approach to assessing the reasonableness of systemic military justice decisions.
For any member of Congress concerned about the prospect of actual systemic bias or unfairness in the current commander-centric military justice system, the findings of the CRSC report should allay this anxiety. Specifically, the report determines that the “initial disposition authority’s decision to take no administrative, nonjudicial, or judicial action against a Service member for an alleged penetrative sexual offense was reasonable in 1,316 (98.5%) of 1,336 of the adult-victim cases” studied.
When commanders did decide to initiate (or “prefer” in U.S. military justice terminology) an offense, the CRSC study determined that this decision “was reasonable in 486 (94.0%) of the 517 adult victim cases” studied.
The Systemic Problem with Referral of Sexual Assault Cases
In fact, the only central finding of the CRSC study that is cause for alarm is that there “is a systemic problem with the referral of penetrative sexual offense charges to trial by general court-martial when there is not sufficient admissible evidence to obtain and sustain a conviction on the charged offense.”
Although the CRSC study does not offer an opinion regarding what might be the cause of the systemic problem with commanders’ referral to court-martial of sexual assault offenses when there is not sufficient admissible evidence to obtain and sustain a conviction, my experience in military justice suggests that practitioners attribute this systemic problem to the current political climate involving sexual assault in the military. The chief instigator of the current toxic political climate is the same political figure leading the charge for “reform” – Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
For example, during the 2019 confirmation hearing of General James McConville, the current Chief of Staff of the Army, Sen. Gillibrand berated GEN McConville for “failing us” on the issue of sexual assault because “the trajectories of every measurable are now going in the wrong direction.”
As Sen. Gillibrand “analyzes” a copy of the FY 18 Workplace Gender Relations Survey of Active Duty Members (WGRA) report, she laments, “To have an estimated 20,000 cases – the statistics I’m looking at are as bad as they were when I started advocating for reforms.” Later she waives the WGRA report in the air and advises GEN McConville that he needs “to study this as well.”
Earlier this year, Sen. Gillibrand, explained that “all serious crimes” need to “be taken out of the chain of command” because “we have two data points that prove” commanders are unfairly biased.
One of those data points is “the poor results we have seen for survivors of sexual assaults over the last 10 years that data has been collected.” (Incidentally, the other data point involves the supposed “existence of racial bias” in the military justice system – but the GAO study upon which this “data point” is based repeatedly cautions that the findings of that report, “taken alone, do not establish whether unlawful discrimination has occurred, as that is a legal determination that would involve other corroborating information along with supporting statistics.”)
“More Convictions” Needed to “Change the Culture” of the Military
For years, Sen. Gillibrand has maintained that court-martial decisions must be made by lawyers instead of commanders because removing the supposed inherent bias of commanders would result in “more convictions and more perpetrators going to jail” and that “you need that rate to be much higher to change the culture” of the military.
These remarks from Sen. Gillibrand collectively indicate that her long-running crusade to transfer court-martial authority from commanders to military lawyers is both ill-informed and dangerous. It is ill-informed because she appears to believe that results of a periodic survey present actual evidence of “poor results…for survivors of sexual assaults” in the military. As I have described here on Lawfire and elsewhere, these metrics “are of extremely limited probative value as a measure of the effectiveness of the military justice system.”
Even worse, the insistence that “more convictions” of sexual assault offenses at court-martial is a necessary predicate to “change the culture” of the military exemplifies the very antithesis of justice. The findings of the CRSC report demonstrate that commanders are not biased when making decisions regarding whether or not to initiate (“prefer”) prosecution for a sexual assault offense.
However, after a preliminary hearing has been conducted and the case file is ready to be sent to trial, there “is a systemic problem with the referral of penetrative sexual offense charges to trial…when there is not sufficient admissible evidence to obtain and sustain a conviction.” The “bias” that exists, at least according to actual data, is in favor of attempting to, in Sen. Gillibrand’s words, “send more perpetrators to jail.”
In any event, it is unfathomable that Sen. Gillibrand insists on ignoring the results of the CRSC study, especially since it is Congress that directed the establishment of the DAC-IPAD. The CRSC study “drew on its members’ extensive collective expertise in sexual offense case investigation and adjudication to assess whether, from an investigatory and legal standpoint, commanders are systemically exercising their authority” in a reasonable manner.
While the study methodology is genuinely impressive and the results should fundamentally shape discussions involving the role of military commanders in deciding whether to initiate courts-martial proceedings for sexual assault offenses, Sen. Gillibrand has yet to even acknowledge the existence of the report more than a year after it was published. Indeed, one will not find a link or reference to the report on the “Comprehensive Resource Center for the Military Justice Improvement Act” of Sen. Gillibrand’s current
Even if Sen. Gillibrand refuses to acknowledge the results of the CRSC study, her colleagues in Congress must extend due consideration to the report. Whether Sen. Gillibrand has been misinformed or disingenuous, or both, throughout her campaign to divest court-martial authority from commanders, this is no reason for other members of Congress to make legislative decisions in the same manner.
This is especially the case because the product of the current bait and switch reform measure that will now be considered by the full Senate poses a risk of near and mid-term systemic failure of the military justice system.
Sen. Gillibrand’s Proposal Would Change “Very Little” in Practice?
Although Sen. Gillibrand claims the “most felonies” approach proposed in her preferred military justice reform measure would have very little practical effect, this assertion is, quite simply, misguided. Sen. Gillibrand summarized this claim during a Military Times interview posted this past August.
During the interview, Sen. Gillibrand observes that if potential critics would just “read the bill for what it is, and actually understand the change, it’s very simple.”
She goes on to explain: “Which lawyer’s desk does the case file go to first? That’s all it is. And this independent military prosecutor will make a judgment. And if he chooses not to take this case to trial, it goes right back to the commander. So it changes very little.”
In reality, the difference between transferring authority only for “special victim offenses” and for nearly all felony offenses is immense. After studying the final recommendations reflected in the DoD Independent Review Commission for nearly three months, the Secretary of Defense published a four-tiered implementation plan that establishes an estimated date of 2027 for even the earliest recommendations to be completed.
Even implementing the comparatively modest “special victim cases” approach, then, would require fundamental structural reform and several years to complete. If the scope of the “reform” is expanded to include most felony offenses but extensive structural and resourcing requirements are not revised accordingly, the outcome could be catastrophic.
Under the current commander-centric system, disposition authority is diffused because all O-6 level commanders can initiate a special court-martial for all offenses, including felonies, if the command is satisfied with a maximum punishment for an offense of one year (the max punishment available at a special court-martial). Only the most serious offenses need to be considered by a general officer, who is advised by an O-6 judge advocate, for possible referral to a general court-martial.
If Sen. Gillibrand’s “most felonies” proposal is adopted, even those offenses that are addressed at lower echelons of command by special (and summary) courts-martial will now need to be considered by an O-6 judge advocate. Even relatively minor misconduct that is adjudicated by non-judicial punishment or administrative measures can be addressed by lower-level commanders right now; just because an offense carries a maximum potential punishment of a year or more in prison doesn’t mean that all such offenses warrant a process that allows for such a punishment.
Expressing the Imminent Risk of Systemic Military Justice Failure
By adopting the “most felonies” approach, nearly all of these offenses would now need to be considered by an O-6 judge advocate since only s/he would have the authority to decide whether a court-martial is warranted. Currently commanders possess the full range of disposition options, from no action to administrative measures to non-judicial punishment to courts-martial.
Under Sen. Gillibrand’s “most felonies” an O-6 judge advocate who is “outside the chain of command” would have sole authority to “prefer” (initiate) and “refer” (to court) nearly all felony offenses.
For an Army Division with four brigade combat teams, each of which consists of, say, seven battalions that are commanded by an officer with summary court-martial convening authority and a brigade commander with summary and special court-martial convenient authority, each of whom in a Division that is commanded by a general officer with summary, special, and general court-martial convening authority, an O-6 judge advocate who is “outside the chain of command” would be required to make disposition decisions for all the roughly 29 field grade or higher commanders.
Under the current force structure, there is only one O-6 judge advocate assigned to cover this entire echelon of command, and this staff judge advocate typically only gets deeply involved in case files that must be considered by one commander – the commanding general – for review and action.
In short, the difference between the “special victim offenses” and the “most felonies” approaches amounts to much more than “which lawyers desk the case goes to first.” After all, a decision to refrain from initiating (“preferring”) a court-martial proceeding is a disposition decision nonetheless.
A decision to implement an administrative or non-judicial punishment process short of court-martial must be made in light of the entire case file, and right now that full spectrum of disposition authority rests with commanders. As long as DoD has adequately planned for and resourced the “special victim offenses” approach – which is a process for which the initial phase is projected to be complete five years from now, the military justice system should still be able to accommodate the shift in disposition authority.
Executing any “reform” without an effective implementation and resourcing plan carries a risk that unforeseen complications will lead to systemic failure. Right now, only the “special victim offenses” proposal is accompanied by an implementation plan. Sen. Gillibrand’s “most felonies” proposal bears an immeasurable risk of systemic military justice failure – and it does so even though the justification for this proposal is not supported by existing data.
Resisting Misguided Political Pressure to Limit Risk of Systemic Failure
As NDAA deliberations approach the home stretch, Sen. Gillibrand has revealed her strategy to ensure that her “most felonies” approach to military justice reform remains in the final bill. Indeed, she has already begun painting a dire picture of “democracy” being “shunned…behind closed doors in the dead of night.”
In this Face the Nation interview, Sen. Gillibrand claims that the only way her version of military justice reform “does not become law is if four men, behind closed doors, take it out in conference.” The “four men” to whom she is referring are presumably Sen. Jack Reed, Sen. Jim Inhofe, Rep. Adam Smith, and Rep. Mike Rogers, respectively the chairs and ranking members of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees.
Fomenting political pressure directed at members of Congress who “impede” the “progress” of Sen. Gillibrand’s signature military justice reform bill is a tactic also adopted earlier this year by the New York Times editorial board. Whether from inside the Senate or from outside in the media, directing this brand of theatrical political pressure is, at best, counterproductive.
There is no shortage of noise in the form of perspectives from observers who are not qualified to present an informed opinion on the administration of military justice. Whether it originates from a group of veteran service organizations or a collection of attorneys general or the editorial boards of media giants such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, this clamor for “reform” is misguided if it is not informed by actual data and evaluated for feasibility in implementation.
Sen. Gillibrand is certainly correct to point out that her current military justice “reform” bill was originally supported by 66 co-sponsors in the Senate. However, it is not clear how many of those sponsors still support her brand of reform.
She sold her colleagues and the American public a vision: that military justice reform is necessary to correct an “epidemic of sexual assault” in the military. What she hopes to deliver now instead is a bill that far exceeds that vision and that has not been evaluated for implementation in practice.
Sen. Susan Collins has already publicly jumped ship upon realizing that Sen. Gillibrand’s “bill is far broader” than Sen. Collins had realized. How many more senators have done so already in private?
As a former military prosecutor and current law professor, the continued insistence by Sen. Gillibrand and her supporters on mischaracterizing data in a way that supports the military justice reform agenda while ignoring data demonstrating that the agenda is misguided has always been perplexing. As a soldier who experienced sexual assault very early in my military career, these reform tactics are particularly galling because they have diverted attention away from changes to the military that actually would make a positive difference.
Although the DoD Independent Review Commission accountability line of effort recommendations are plagued by the same lack of evidence that besets most of the prevailing military justice “reform” movement, at least implementation of these recommendations has been evaluated and determined to be feasible.
As lawmakers exercise their constitutional authority to make rules for the armed forces, they have a duty to ensure that any rules they adopt will actually work in practice and will not do more harm than good. Under current circumstances, adopting Sen. Gillibrand’s “most felonies” approach to military justice “reform” would constitute an abject dereliction of that duty.
Regardless of the noise that is produced both within and outside of the Capitol building, members of Congress must refuse to support a bill that presents a potential risk of systemic failure of the U.S. military justice system. Doing so requires adoption of, if anything, the military justice “reform” model that is based on the DoD IRC recommendations – and nothing broader than that.
About the author:
Brian L. Cox is is a doctoral candidate lecturer and J.S.D. candidate at Cornell Law School and a visiting scholar at Queen’s Law in Ontario. Brian retired in 2018 from the U.S. Army after 22 years of military service. He served as an airborne infantry soldier, combat camera operator, airborne infantry officer, and for seven years as a military legal advisor. His combat deployments include Iraq from 2003-2004 as a combat camera operator and Afghanistan from 2013-2014 as the chief of international and operational law for Regional Command-East in Afghanistan.
Brian also served as a military prosecutor, federal prosecutor, brigade judge advocate, and military magistrate while he was a military legal advisor. His military awards, decorations, and qualifications include the Ranger Tab, Senior Parachutist Badge, Pathfinder Badge, Air Assault Badge, Bronze Star Medal, Meritorious Service Medal, Basic and Advanced Collateral Damage Estimation Certification, Joint Firepower Certification, and Special Victim Unit Investigator Certification. Brian holds an LL.M. from Queen’s Law and a B.A. (International Relations) and J.D. from the University of North Carolina.
The views expressed by guest authors do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security, or Duke University.
Remember what we like to say on Lawfire®: gather the facts, examine the law, evaluate the arguments – and then decide for yourself!
15. The Uncomfortable Reality of the U.S. Army’s Role in a War Over Taiwan
Excerpts:
That potential misunderstanding is dangerous. Without a public debate about its commitment to defending or reinvading Taiwanese territory, Washington runs the risk of falling into traps that confounded the United States in both Korea and Vietnam. In Korea’s case, the United States didn’t fully understand its own commitment to South Korea until after a calamitous North Korean invasion. In Vietnam, the public felt duped about the cost of an “advisory force” that turned into a large-scale war and conscription. Some hawks are keen to galvanize public support for firm assurances to defend Taiwan, concerned that a perception of public disinterest might decrease deterrence and ultimately lead China to invade. However, it would be far worse for the United States to promise to defend Taiwan without preparing its public and its soldiers for the fight they very well could face.
If Washington does decide that Taiwan is worth fighting for, then the Army could play a major role in both deterring and, if necessary, winning that conflict. Sending Army personnel to train with Taiwanese forces and create doctrine, operations, tactics, and weapons for a Taiwanese defense strategy could help convince Beijing that Washington has the will to follow through with its ambiguous commitment to Taiwan’s security.
On the other hand, the Army already has its hands full with Russia and North Korea and more explicit commitments to Taiwan might let Taipei off the hook for investing in its own defense. Most importantly, all parties must weigh how a larger role for the U.S. Army in a future Taiwan conflict could spiral a precarious relationship into an unwanted war. Already, the Chinese foreign ministry has decried the presence of U.S. security advisors in Taiwan and launched a large-scale military drill in the Taiwan Straits to demonstrate their displeasure with a U.S. congressional visit to the island. An overt move by the United States to place American forces on the island could become a Cuban Missile Crisis moment for the Chinese in which two nuclear states find themselves in a dangerous game of chicken.
These important questions — not the Army trying to fit within an AirSea battle of long-range fires— should drive the debate about the future role of the U.S. Army in Taiwan.
The Uncomfortable Reality of the U.S. Army’s Role in a War Over Taiwan - War on the Rocks
These are uncomfortable questions because there is a good chance that the role U.S. decisionmakers will ask the Army to play in this conflict is not what has been presented so far: lobbing missiles or “advising” Taiwanese military units. Instead, troops may find themselves either defending the island from a Chinese invasion or even helping retake Taiwan after China (due to proximity and first-mover advantages) wins the initial high-tech struggle. Both of these roles are massive shifts for an insurgency-honed force, as well as expensive, bloody, and politically fraught — not to mention that they would represent a significant escalation in a crisis between two nuclear-armed states.
Recent polling suggests that, for the first time in many years, a majority of the American public supports defending Taiwan in the case of a Chinese invasion. Given the potential for this conflict to include American soldiers, the public deserves to know what they are buying when they make this decision. As the United States debates whether to increase its support of Taiwan’s defense and officially align more closely with Taiwan, politicians need to honestly evaluate American willingness to see our commitment through. If the United States is indeed serious about defending Taiwan, then the government may need to make a massive investment in a new focus for the Army — and that pivot will have to occur quickly.
So, what is the future of the Army in a U.S.-Chinese competition turned violent? Why don’t we like to talk about it? An honest answer to these questions may help the United States avoid these uncomfortable circumstances in the first place.
A High-Tech Air and Sea Battle Is Not the Whole Story
Prognosticators looking at future war with China tell a story of air and naval campaigns that lean on U.S. technological dominance to subdue and defeat an invading Chinese force. Department of Defense concepts like AirSea Battle and the “third offset” all envisage high-tech fights in which, faced with an onslaught of Chinese missile volleys, air attacks, and destroyers, the United States comes to the defense of Taiwan with stealth fighters, long-range missiles, and stealthy submarines. These mechanisms all rely on networks of satellites and airborne sensors to fight the kind of offense-focused campaigns for air and naval dominance that have become the hallmark of U.S. strategy in the 21st century. Meanwhile, as both sides battle for air and sea superiority, they simultaneously try to blind one another with cyber operations, electronic warfare, and space attacks.
This vision of high-tech conflict is likely, but it’s just the beginning. There is a reasonable chance that China wins the first round of high-tech conflict. Declassified wargaming results, think tank reports, and congressional testimony all warn that the U.S. military — which will ostensibly be fighting to defend Taiwan from behind the island while dependent on fragile logistics chains — could lose the first volleys (or at least find itself seriously disadvantaged) in a Chinese quest to retake Taiwan.
Hence, there is a good chance the United States will struggle to keep Chinese forces from taking control of the Taiwan Strait. But what about the second — and more important — phase of conflict: defeating a Chinese invasion of Taiwan? In order for China to assert control over Taiwan, it needs to not only defeat aircraft, submarines, surface ships, and missiles, but also take and control the island with boots on the ground.
The U.S. Army can play a large role in a Taiwan scenario, either by standing with Taiwanese forces to defend the island from a Chinese invasion or as part of a campaign to retake Taiwan after a Chinese invasion. However, this is a qualitatively different kind of role than what the Army is currently discussing, and far removed from the skills, tactics, and technologies that the Army developed over the last two decades of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. In fact, this kind of conflict more closely resembles the wars of attrition fought in southeast Asia or the island-hopping campaigns of World War II than the fights in which U.S. forces have honed their capability since 9/11.
Defending the island from invasion will mean defeating a Chinese military amphibious capability that is expanding rapidly. This expansion includes eight marine brigades and significant investment in new amphibious vessels, as well as a repurposed and large coast guard, merchant marine augmentation, and a prolific maritime militia. Chinese forces will be invading an island that has not focused enough on defense, instead buying increasingly obsolete prestige aircraft and missiles optimized for offensive strike. To further complicate defense efforts, Washington’s official policy of strategic ambiguity means that the United States has very limited forces on the island — ostensibly all in a training capacity. If the U.S. Army were to have to defend the island in the current status, it would face a difficult and contested deployment conditions and arrive to fight alongside a Taiwanese military with whom it has limited to no experience. None of these conditions bode well for American forces facing the invasion of a peer competitor on an island they have not fortified, with an ally not officially an ally, and in a territory thousands of miles away from major Army bases. American lives would be lost — potentially at great scale. When the United States defended the Philippines against an invading Japanese force in World War II, it lost 25,000 troops, and almost 100,000 were captured (Japan would subsequently lose over 400,000 while defending the Philippines from a U.S. invasion force).
Further, if defending the island is a bloody and difficult endeavor, reinvading the island after China takes Taiwan would be far worse (so difficult, in fact, that it may be beyond the scope of U.S. capability or strategic interests). The United States lost about 23,000 troops in its reinvasion of the Philippines. Even the most successful campaigns — for example, the U.S. landing at Incheon in 1950 — killed more U.S. personnel than died in all but four of the 20 years the United States was in Afghanistan. And while the battles of World War II and Korean War are from a different time technologically, these skills — mass landings, retaking lost territory, defending coastal positions, and warding off invasions of thousands of troops — have become historical relics rather than campaigns the U.S. military is prepared to conduct.
Why Don’t We Like Talking About It?
There are many reasons, even beyond America’s official foreign policy stance, why politicians and military leaders avoid talking about the Army in these kinds of Taiwan scenarios. Most obviously, discussing these possibilities requires speaking openly about the United States losing the first round of conflict. This scenario is a difficult pill to swallow, but one that is possible enough that — given recent discussions about changes in the U.S.-Chinese balance — it at least needs to be examined. Related, it is hard to believe that the U.S. military would put forces into exactly the kind of prolonged wars of denial and attrition that doctrine since Vietnam has tried to avoid. The underlying belief, drawn from Vietnam, that the American public has no stomach for significant loss of life has been a strong and enduring influence in U.S. military strategy and has led to a focus on qualitative technological superiority and campaigns of offense dominance. Indeed, the Army’s last defensively focused doctrine (a 1976 version of field manual 100-5, colloquially referred to as Active Defense) was largely rejected by the Army corps and replaced with the far more offensive AirLand Battle. This doctrine shift has influenced Army (and to some extent Air Force) acquisition strategies and campaigns ever since, leading to technologies and operations that optimize speed and overwhelming decisive advantage over defense and wars of attrition.
Focusing on defending or retaking territory is a hard shift for the Army. After the withdrawal from Afghanistan and facing a U.S.-Chinese competition that seems to play out on anything but land, the Army is struggling with an identity crisis perhaps as dramatic as its reinvention after the Vietnam War. Army doctrine and the public narrative both reveal this struggle. The Army’s most recent doctrine, Multi Domain Operations, waxes on about operations short of conflict and “layered stand-off,” while long-range precision fires dominated talks at the annual Association of the U.S. Army convention. The head of Army operations in the Indo-Pacific suggested Army training with allies in the region would help deter China from invading Taiwan. Together, the public discussion suggests an Army conception of itself in the U.S.-Chinese competition as an actor that vaguely threatens cooperation with Taiwanese forces coupled with long-range precision artillery as part of integrated deterrence to keep China from invading Taiwan.
None of these conversations confirm whether these actions could actually deter a revisionist China. Indeed, advisory forces and threats of long-range strikes have mixed records as signals of alliance commitment credibility. Additionally, all of these conversations stop short of articulating what the Army would do after deterrence fails. As Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth candidly commented, “I’m not convinced that we have fully thought our way through all of the challenges we may face on the future high-end battlefield if deterrence fails.”
The focus on campaigns of offense dominance, coupled with an Army in the midst of an identity crisis, has left the United States without enough tools for the second phase of a conflict over Taiwan. The Army will need new weapons and operational strategies if it is going to defend or reinvade Taiwan. It will need to create new training concepts and capabilities for conflicts that involve defending or retaking territory against the world’s largest army. It will need to train with Taiwanese forces and invest in paradrop and other methods for infiltrating contested territory. Further, the Air Force and Navy will have to divert attention away from campaigns for air and naval superiority and instead support ground efforts, conducting close air support in contested airspace. While the United States has made great strides in modern close air support after its 20 years of war in Afghanistan and the Middle East, conducting close air support for major combat operations is a difficult endeavor and one that only a few training facilities in the United States are designed to hone.
It’s Time to Talk About the Army’s Role in a Taiwan Scenario
The Army can make a compelling argument for manning, equipping, and planning for this second phase of conflict, but it requires both a desire by the Army to change its focus and a political reckoning about the extent of the U.S. security relationship with Taiwan. That is not an Army fight — that is a political discussion.
My argument here is not for or against U.S. defense of Taiwan, whether declared or ambiguous. Defending a democracy from an autocratic China may be worth the lives of American soldiers. However, the problem is when those advocating for clearer and more declaratory support to Taiwan don’t articulate what that means. Selling a narrative to the American public that the United States can come to the rescue of Taiwan without significant Army personnel in Taiwanese territory is potentially dishonest. Moreover, it might lead to overinvesting in air and naval assets poised only for the first volleys of a war to defend Taiwan.
That potential misunderstanding is dangerous. Without a public debate about its commitment to defending or reinvading Taiwanese territory, Washington runs the risk of falling into traps that confounded the United States in both Korea and Vietnam. In Korea’s case, the United States didn’t fully understand its own commitment to South Korea until after a calamitous North Korean invasion. In Vietnam, the public felt duped about the cost of an “advisory force” that turned into a large-scale war and conscription. Some hawks are keen to galvanize public support for firm assurances to defend Taiwan, concerned that a perception of public disinterest might decrease deterrence and ultimately lead China to invade. However, it would be far worse for the United States to promise to defend Taiwan without preparing its public and its soldiers for the fight they very well could face.
If Washington does decide that Taiwan is worth fighting for, then the Army could play a major role in both deterring and, if necessary, winning that conflict. Sending Army personnel to train with Taiwanese forces and create doctrine, operations, tactics, and weapons for a Taiwanese defense strategy could help convince Beijing that Washington has the will to follow through with its ambiguous commitment to Taiwan’s security.
On the other hand, the Army already has its hands full with Russia and North Korea and more explicit commitments to Taiwan might let Taipei off the hook for investing in its own defense. Most importantly, all parties must weigh how a larger role for the U.S. Army in a future Taiwan conflict could spiral a precarious relationship into an unwanted war. Already, the Chinese foreign ministry has decried the presence of U.S. security advisors in Taiwan and launched a large-scale military drill in the Taiwan Straits to demonstrate their displeasure with a U.S. congressional visit to the island. An overt move by the United States to place American forces on the island could become a Cuban Missile Crisis moment for the Chinese in which two nuclear states find themselves in a dangerous game of chicken.
These important questions — not the Army trying to fit within an AirSea battle of long-range fires— should drive the debate about the future role of the U.S. Army in Taiwan.
Jacquelyn Schneider, Ph.D., is a Hoover fellow at Stanford University and an affiliate at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. Follow her on Twitter @jackiegschneid.
16. Four-star to review 2019 Syria strike that killed dozens of civilians
Four-star to review 2019 Syria strike that killed dozens of civilians
Army Gen. Michael X. Garrett, head of Army Forces Command, has 90 days to review not only the strike itself, but how its results were investigated and briefed up the chain of command, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday. Garrett held the top job at Army Central Command until 10 days before the March 18, 2019, strike.
“He will review the reports of investigation already conducted into that incident and will conduct further inquiry into the facts and circumstances related to it,” Kirby said, including the civilian casualties, compliance with the law of war, reporting procedures, whether lessons learned in previous investigations were implemented, whether discipline is recommended for those involved and whether any policies or procedures need an update as a result.
The original inspector general investigation into the Baghouz strike “was stalled and stripped of any mention of the strike,” the New York Times reported, a timeline Garrett will have to recreate as part of his review.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the review following a Nov. 17 briefing, in which he mentioned both an internal and external review on U.S. airstrikes and civilian casualties. One is an annual requirement from Congress, while another is a Rand Corp. project on airstrikes in Raqqa, Syria, also during operations against ISIS.
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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin pledged to review strike procedures to better avoid casualties.
“The American people deserve to know that we take this issue very seriously. And that we are committed to protecting civilians and getting this right both in terms of how we execute missions on their behalf and how we talk about them afterwards,” Austin said at the time. “And I recognize that and I’m committed to doing this in full partnership with our military leaders.”
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
17. Former Trump Pentagon chief sues to publish material in memoir
Former Trump Pentagon chief sues to publish material in memoir
The lawsuit, which was filed Sunday in U.S. District Court in Washington, describes the memoir, “A Sacred Oath,” as an account of Esper’s tenure as Army secretary from 2017 to 2019 and his 18 months as defense secretary, which ended when Trump fired him in a tweet just days after the president lost his reelection bid.
The period in which Esper was Pentagon chief was “an unprecedented time of civil unrest, public health crises, growing threats abroad, Pentagon transformation, and a White House seemingly bent on circumventing the Constitution,” the lawsuit says.
Esper and Trump were sharply divided over the use of the military during civil unrest in June 2020 following the killing of George Floyd. Other issues led the president to believe Esper was not sufficiently loyal while Esper believed he was trying to keep the department apolitical. Firing a defense secretary after an election loss was unprecedented, but the opening allowed Trump to install loyalists in top Pentagon positions as he continued to dispute his election loss.
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Defense Secretary Mark Esper called Military Times for a lengthy discussion of his time in office.
The lawsuit contends that “significant text” in the memoir, scheduled for publication by William Morrow in May, is being improperly held under the guise of classification and that Esper maintains it contains no classified information. The suit notes that Esper is restricted by his secrecy agreements from authorizing publication without Pentagon approval, or face possible civil and criminal liability.
The lawsuit quotes from a letter Esper sent to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin criticizing the review process. He wrote that he had been asked not to quote Trump and others in meetings, not to describe conversations he had with Trump, and not to use certain verbs or nouns when describing historical events.
The letter describes other problematic subjects and says some 60 pages of the manuscript contained redactions at one point. Agreeing to all of those redactions would result in “a serious injustice to important moments in history that the American people need to know and understand,” Esper wrote.
The suit itself says some stories Esper relates in the manuscript under consideration appeared to have been leaked to some mainstream media “possibly to undermine the impact” it would have had in his book.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the department was aware of Esper’s concerns. “As with all such reviews, the Department takes seriously its obligation to balance national security with an author’s narrative desire. Given that this matter is now under litigation, we will refrain from commenting further,” he said in a statement.
Esper, 57, a West Point graduate and Gulf War veteran, said in a statement that he had waited for six months for the review process to play out but found “my unclassified manuscript arbitrarily redacted without clearly being told why.”
“I am more than disappointed the current Administration is infringing on my First Amendment constitutional rights. And it is with regret that legal recourse is the only path now available for me to tell my full story to the American people,” he said.
18. Afghanistan's women leaders persist despite exile — the US must follow their lead
Afghanistan's women leaders persist despite exile — the US must follow their lead
The Hill · by Teresa Casale, opinion contributor · November 29, 2021
Women parliamentarians around the world are leading in extraordinary ways. No more so than in Athens, where Afghan women members of Parliament (MP) who were evacuated to Greece, announced that they are forming a women’s parliament in exile.
Before the Taliban takeover, women made up 27 percent of the Afghan Parliament, known locally as the Wolesi Jirga (House of People). Following the withdrawal, women MPs went straight to the top of the Taliban’s kill lists. They became targets for kidnapping, torture, and assassination by Taliban forces. Those who have not yet managed to escape live in constant fear of Taliban reprisal.
The women have not been cowed. They feel that they still wear the mantle of leadership, even if they are thousands of miles away from their home and the people they serve. They have set an ambitious agenda for themselves — they will advocate for the human rights of women and girls still in Afghanistan as well as for humanitarian aid to reach those who need it most during this time of acute crisis. They will also seek to work in coordination with Afghan women leaders still in the country.
And they need support from other world leaders, especially parliamentarians. Last month all 24 U.S. women senators signed a bipartisan letter to President Joe Biden calling on him to protect the rights of Afghan women and girls. They told him, “You have committed to press the Taliban to uphold the rights of women and girls… Afghan women and girls need our action now.”
This is not the first time that the women of the U.S. Congress have supported their Afghan sisters. When Afghan women leaders were sidelined during the peace talks between the Taliban and the U.S. in February 2020, they warned the world that a hasty and unconditional withdrawal of international troops, without a sustainable peace agreement in place, could lead to a Taliban takeover and the loss of their rights.
The women’s hopes were raised again last year that the newly elected Biden administration would follow through on its promises of leadership on what is known as the Women, Peace and Security agenda. Enshrined by UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and implemented in U.S. policy through the Women, Peace, and Security Act, it recognizes the central role that women play in the prevention of conflict, peace negotiations, and post-conflict stability.
Once the Biden administration announced it would fast-track the Afghan peace process and gather all parties to the conflict in Istanbul in April 2021 to reach an agreement, Mina’s List and a consortium of international and Afghanistan-based partners planned a parallel peace process for women leaders. We gathered over 100 diverse women delegates from 25 provinces across Afghanistan who were known peacebuilders and activists in their communities. The delegates were prepared to develop recommendations and conditions on each of the topic areas to be discussed by the official negotiators, then meet with them to deliver their demands. The initiative was supported by civil society in both the U.S. and Afghanistan, as well as the highest levels of the U.S. government and other key international players.
It never happened. The Taliban boycotted the official talks and Biden announced the non-conditional withdrawal of troops, effectively ending the peace process. However, even though the 100 delegates did not get a chance to make their demands of the peace negotiation teams, the women of the U.S. Congress were still interested in hearing their recommendations for peace. To their credit, the Democratic Women’s Caucus hosted all 100 peace delegates for a virtual roundtable and based much of their advocacy to the administration on how to protect women and girls in Afghanistan on the Afghan women’s recommendations.
We failed the women of Afghanistan in August. Today, they are under attack as their rights are being rolled back and the progress of the past 20 years is erased. They are facing increasing violence while experiencing the humanitarian catastrophe caused by the political and economic collapse of the country.
And yet, despite losing everything, Afghan women are still leading, both inside Afghanistan and in exile. The women’s Parliament in Athens is just one example of how the leaders are fighting to protect the rights of Afghans everywhere. Women leaders on other refugee bases around the world are also organizing to ensure their needs are met amidst enormous challenges.
Going forward, the international community, led by the U.S., needs to remind itself of its commitments under the Women, Peace, and Security agenda, and the values that led to its adoption in the first place. It should apply maximum diplomatic pressure on the Taliban to allow for full human rights for women and girls, including the right to education, employment, freedom of movement, and participation in public life and leadership. It should bring women back to the table so that they can speak directly with the Taliban and help rebuild a more equal and stable country. And importantly, it should ensure women’s groups in Afghanistan are funded and supported to address the growing humanitarian needs of the Afghan people.
The letter from the U.S. Congress applying pressure on the Biden administration is a welcome example of the importance of women’s substantive leadership, i.e., women using their leadership platforms to support other women. But much more needs to be done. Supporting the women’s parliament in exile is one such move.
As Cynthia Enloe said last month to Mina’s List: “Women are smart... They have learned what armed conflict does to men, what it does to women, what it does to boys, what it does to girls, and what it does to the relationships of every one of those to armed groups and to governments. That's why women have to be included; because they have knowledge without which you cannot create sustainable or even temporarily effective peace.”
Teresa Casale is the policy & advocacy director for Mina’s List, which has worked in Afghanistan since 2014 on advancing women’s participation in political leadership and the peace process.
The Hill · by Teresa Casale, opinion contributor · November 29, 2021
19. The Brain Is a Battlespace
And the most important battlespace there is.
We must also learn to lead with influence. We should not forget that we have better messages and narratives than our authoritarian adversaries.
This effort will require significant dedicated resources, legal authorities, and leadership to defend us from the information war being waged against us by authoritarian adversaries. China, Russia, and other authoritarians are sparing no effort to cause us to lose faith in and abandon the protection of the liberal rules-based world system that has served so many so well.
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“The most important six inches on the battlefield is between your ears.” – General James Mattis
Nothing could be more true today than this quip from the former U.S. Marine icon and former Secretary of Defense General James Mattis. In an age of pervasive information flows and global connectivity, our ability to process and validate information is vital to our national security. This raises an important issue in the current strategic competition between today’s great powers. The problem is two-fold; first, the United States and its partners and allies are under a relentless assault in the information sphere. Information is used as a weapon to weaken our resolve and confuse our responses. Second, it is an insidious assault below the headline horizon and thus not widely recognized or acknowledged by policymakers, let alone their constituents. To be more precise, the United States and its allies and partners—supporters of the liberal, rules-based world order—are under attack from determined authoritarian adversaries like China, Russia, and Salafist Jihadists that use information warfare intending to replace that world order with an alternative, authoritarian vision, and we are not defending ourselves.
In this information war, the West is handicapped by its narrow and binary understanding of war. We are most comfortable with the simple view that we are either at war or at peace, and if our armed forces aren't fighting, it must mean we are at peace. Note how our national security leaders desperately insist that we are not in and don't want a new cold war. Our adversaries do not suffer from this handicap. Any honest examination of what they say amongst themselves—be it Russian, Chinese, or Wahhabist/Salafist Jihadi leaders—shows that they believe they are in an existential struggle for global dominance.
While less tangible than other forms of warfare, information warfare is neither new nor inherently difficult to understand. Put simply, information warfare is the use of information to wage war. Russia is a master of this art; though blunted recently, Russia’s interference in the U.S. elections of 2016 was a brazen attack on the validity of American elections—one of the cardinal elements of democratic governance; and its results must have pleased the Kremlin. Russia did the same with lesser fanfare in multiple European elections. In 2020 China was using as many as 23,750 primary accounts and approximately 150,000 booster accounts to conduct a campaign aimed at applauding China’s COVID-19 response while discrediting Western responses, as well as attacking traditional targets such as Hong Kong pro-democracy activists and Taiwan. During its ascendence, the Islamic State masterfully used social media platforms to recruit, to propagandize, and to incite violent acts against its enemies. These are all instances of information warfare: There are many, many more.
In a blunt sense, the way information warfare works is to either make the adversary do something contrary to its interest or fail to do something in its interest. Emerging technologies have added new techniques to the toolbox of the information warrior. In addition to the traditional tactics of propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation, we are now assaulted by trolling, catfishing, gaslighting, and spamouflaging.
In addition to influencing opinions with these new techniques of manipulating information, there is the frightening prospect of neurological advances enabling warfighter performance enhancement, or conversely, adversary performance suppression. The pharmaceutical industry is now studying drugs that can dramatically increase attention span and significantly improve concentration in sleep-deprived conditions. We are still studying the causes and effects of the mysterious Havana Syndrome on the mental performance of diplomats, intelligence, and military personnel. Chinese scientists working for the China Communist Party are allegedly developing genetic manipulation techniques to improve its armed forces' cognitive and physical capabilities. If successful, these new techniques could lead to information-processing overmatch in terms of speed and volume of data processed by Chinese warfighters and commanders.
How can we counter the onslaught of information warfare if we do not even recognize it as warfare? The first step is intellectual; we must expand our understanding of the meaning of war. The word war itself comes from ancient roots connoting confusion and disruption—not necessarily physical violence. Confusion and disruption are the precise intentions of the information warrior. We must accept what our adversaries believe: we are already engaged in war, a struggle for global dominance between two competing visions of order. But how can we persuade the general public that we are in a war that doesn't entail bombs or missile strikes yet is existential to our way of life? Through consistent and persistent public information campaigns, including repeated public service announcements and educational programs, persuaded the public of the importance of sanitation, education, seat belts, the dangers of tobacco, and many other beliefs that were once not widely held. Through such campaigns, we have made our populations more informed consumers and citizens. Our governments should be able to devise similar campaigns to make people better consumers of information, advise them on reliable sources, detect and discern dis- and misinformation, and better judge the reliability of the information they encounter.
Technology can help; for example, applications that detect deep fakes would be useful or inform users when information comes via automated bots or other deceptive sources. Social media companies, too, can and should be doing a much better job monitoring the content on their platforms. Tobacco companies were forced to warn smokers of the dangers of tobacco; all social media companies should be responsible for warning users when content is deceptive or from devious sources.
Technological and educational measures will strengthen our defense against information warfare, and as such, may constitute a version of deterrence by denial. We can hope that our defenses will discourage our adversaries if they doubt their efforts will accomplish significant outcomes. These measures will not contribute, however, to deterrence by punishment, which assumes we have some capability to retaliate and make our adversaries pay inordinately for their information warfare attacks. The United States once had a robust and extensive information warfare capability with the United States Information Agency (USIA) and the radio programs Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty that unveiled many of the lies that communism was built upon and discredited the ideology among the Soviet Union’s and the Warsaw Pact’s own people. Such information warfare capabilities should be resurrected along with the technological tools to help penetrate Russian, Chinese, and Jihadist brain space.
To make any retaliatory capability or campaign effective will require an institutional owner granted the authority and resources to partner with the private sector. The owner must support developing and utilizing the most advanced technology available to meet the information warfare challenge, from both a denial and punishment posture. America's current national security architecture cannot resolve the organizational issue of ownership, an architecture designed in the ashes of World War II. The State Department cannot meet this challenge, whose efforts to take on the activities once performed by USIA have been unsuccessful. Nor should these responsibilities be given to the Department of Defense, which is too immersed in a binary and narrow paradigm of warfare. Following the al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security was established. Also, established-for-purpose was the National Counterterrorism Center. The information warfare challenge requires a similar designed-for-purpose institution.
This effort will require significant dedicated resources, legal authorities, and leadership to defend us from the information war being waged against us by authoritarian adversaries. China, Russia, and other authoritarians are sparing no effort to cause us to lose faith in and abandon the protection of the liberal rules-based world system that has served so many so well.
Michael Miklaucic is a Senior Fellow at National Defense University and the Editor-in-Chief of PRISM, NDU’s journal of national and international security affairs.
20. One among most wanted Abu Sayyaf members, 3 others surrender in Sulu
Surrenders are not sensational news. But they are a result of hard work and successful influence operations.
The surrender of terrorists often goes unnoticed but in the Philippines there have been a lot of surrenders that do not make the news.
Leading with influence is important. Forgive me for saying so but this is one area of great success our PSYOP and Civil Affairs forces in conjunction with USAID and the US country team have had in our support to the Philippines. The greatest measure of success for us is that the Armed Forces and the Government of the Philippines are doing this on their own.
Excerpts:
MBLT-7 Commanding Officer Lieutenant Colonel Eduard Olasco said the ASG members will be taken under the Ending Local Armed Conflict (ELAC) Program of the municipality.
“The whole-of-nation approach is employed to address the issues of our surrenderers as part of their comprehensive mainstreaming and to encourage more ASG members to return into the folds of the law,” he said.
“I urge every ASG member to surrender because your Marines, in partnership with local governments, various agencies, and non-government organizations, have doubled our efforts to formulate and implement programs for you,” added Colonel Hermanie Songano who witnessed the surrender.
One among most wanted Abu Sayyaf members, 3 others surrender in Sulu
Four members of the Abu Sayyaf group, including one of the most-wanted members of the group in Sulu province, surrendered to Philippine officials last week, the Philippine Marine Corps announced Sunday.
According to data released by Marine Battalion Landing Team 7 (MBLT-7) under the 4th Marine Brigade, the surrender was facilitated together with the local government of Panamao in Sulu last Thursday, November 25.
The surrenderers include Sikal Hussien Juhurim who is one of the most-wanted members of the ASG in the Sulu province.
Juhurim was involved in the kidnap-for-ransom of two German nationals in April 2014 in Puerto Princesa, Palawan in April 2014, and of two Canadian nationals in Samal Island in Davao del Norte in September 2015.
Also among the surrenderers are Jumadil Sali who was involved in the Sipadan kidnapping in 2011, Ibnorajik Aranan Igasan who served as a spotter and errand man for the group during the Malaysian kidnapping incidents in 2018 and 2019, and Marajan Jawae Mahing who was under sub-leader Sansibar Bencio operating in the areas of Bud Bawis Complex.
MBLT-7 Commanding Officer Lieutenant Colonel Eduard Olasco said the ASG members will be taken under the Ending Local Armed Conflict (ELAC) Program of the municipality.
“The whole-of-nation approach is employed to address the issues of our surrenderers as part of their comprehensive mainstreaming and to encourage more ASG members to return into the folds of the law,” he said.
“I urge every ASG member to surrender because your Marines, in partnership with local governments, various agencies, and non-government organizations, have doubled our efforts to formulate and implement programs for you,” added Colonel Hermanie Songano who witnessed the surrender.
“Join us as we continue the fight in winning the peace and in ending violent extremism in the 4th marine Brigade area of operation for us to achieve our goal of lasting peace and development in the Province of Sulu,” he added. —Jon Viktor D. Cabuenas/DVM/KG, GMA News
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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.
