Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important."

- Thomas S. Eliot

"One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps some dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time."

- Carl Sagan

"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does."

- William James

1. Zealot or Savior? This U.S. Minister Is Training Rebels in a Civil War (Free Burma Rangers)

2. Dirty Boat Guys: An Expansive History of Navy SWCC

3. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 17, 2023

4. How one man went from China’s Communist party golden child to enemy of the state

5. Mauled Russian units, shrinking Ukrainian stocks: Leaks suggest both sides hold mixed hands for next phase of war

6. How the Ukraine war has divided the world

7. Drills reveal Beijing’s shortcomings, researcher says

8. Ukraine and Russia Need a Great-Power Peace Plan

9. Do Racial Biases Shape Americans’ Support for Drone Strikes? We Asked Them

10. The World Beyond Ukraine

11. Egypt nearly supplied rockets to Russia, agreed to arm Ukraine instead, leak shows

12. Hikvision: Chinese surveillance tech giant denies leaked Pentagon spy claim

13. After American’s Killing in Syria, F.B.I. Builds War Crimes Case Against Top Officials

14. The Teixeira Breach: What Top Intelligence and Legal Experts Are Saying

15. China’s Economy Rebounds After Three Years of Zero-Covid Isolation

16. FBI Investigating Ex-Navy Noncommissioned Officer Linked to Pro-Russia Social-Media Account

17. Why Jack Teixeira Had Access to So Much Classified Information

18. After leak, Pentagon purges some users' access to classified programs, launches security review

19. Joint Chiefs shuffle: Biden’s top contenders to replace Trump’s military leaders

20. Special Operations News Update - April 17, 2023 | SOF News

21. G-7 diplomats reject Chinese, North Korean, Russian aggression

22. War Before 2025 – The PLAs Villainous Plan To Defeat the U.S. Military

1. Zealot or Savior? This U.S. Minister Is Training Rebels in a Civil War (Free Burma Rangers)

They do not make them like Dave Eubank and his family. While we read about people committing themselves to great causes, rarely do we read about whole of families committed to great causes..

Photos at the link: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/free-burma-rangers-rebels-myanmar-civil-war-1234710725/

Long but very good read.

Excerpts:

“I admire [FBR’s] commitment, valor, and humanity. They don’t pretend to be anything other than what they are: in solidarity with people being targeted in war,” says Dave Mathieson, an independent analyst who tracks conflict and humanitarian matters in Burma. “One can take issues with militarized approaches to aid, especially when tied with fervent religious beliefs, but when it works so productively with FBR, it can’t be faulted.” Or as Phil Thornton, a veteran journalist based on the Thai-Burma border puts it: “He’s a bit mad, but he does great stuff.”

For his part, Eubank dismisses any notion that he’s running a paramilitary operation. “We don’t have the most dangerous job in the world because we’re not trying to fight the Burma Army; we’re trying to avoid them and help people,” Eubank says. “There are organizations that are bigger, stronger, better than us, but if they won’t go, you gotta go,” he adds. “I keep praying, and God keeps sending me.”

Eubank prays aloud more often than anyone I’ve ever met. On the phone, when under attack, for large crowds and passing strangers, even midsentence. Often he’ll be talking in his crisp, rapid-fire cadence and then slip in a prayer that’s only discernible by the closing phrase, In Jesus’ name, amen. Such religiosity can come across as pious and performative when delivered from the pulpit. With Eubank, though, all the prayer somehow feels endearing, a genuine hedge against existential threats that are very real.

Eubank insists that love is the force that drives him to take extreme risks, and also what makes FBR so effective. “[You will] run forward through the bullets, even if you don’t know the person you’re trying to save,” he says. “If I’m shot and I’m bleeding out on the trail and dying and I can’t see my wife and kids again — if I’m not doing that for love, what a disaster.”

Zealot or Savior? This U.S. Minister Is Training Rebels in a Civil War

For 25 years, ex-Special Forces officer Dave Eubank has been dodging bullets to bring humanitarian aid to rebels in Burma’s ongoing civil conflict. Critics say he blurs the lines between combat and relief work while proselytizing the Gospel. Rolling Stone spent three weeks in the jungle with him to try to learn the truth

BY JASON MOTLAGH

Photographs by Jason Motlagh

APR 16, 2023 9:00 AM

Rolling Stone · by Jason Motlagh · April 16, 2023

D ave Eubank makes an exploding gesture with his fist to alert the guerrilla soldiers following him of the danger ahead. “From here until we pass the road, the trail is lined with mines,” he says, scanning the mountainous Burmese jungle for signs of trouble. “Watch where you step.” As his signal relays down the line, conversations fall silent and the air hums with only the sound of heavy breathing and hundreds of footsteps on hard-packed ground.

Eubank picks up the pace, slashing through brush and thorny stalks that tear at his clothing. A former U.S. Special Forces officer and ordained Christian minister, he started the Free Burma Rangers (FBR) in the late 1990s to provide medical care and aid to people resisting the Southeast Asian nation’s military junta, a brutal dictatorship that has crushed dissent and oppressed ethnic minorities for seven decades in what is the world’s longest-running civil war. With a few volunteers and his own wife and kids in tow, Eubank set FBR apart with a relentless commitment to go places other humanitarian groups would not. And that’s built FBR into a movement that fields teams and tracks human-rights abuses across Burma’s front lines and beyond, from northern Syria to Sudan. But critics say Eubank is a Christian zealot who is risking the lives of his family and followers in a vacuum of oversight. They claim FBR is blurring the line between humanitarian work and ideological activism by training and, at times, fighting alongside armed groups while preaching the Gospels of Jesus.

At 62, Eubank is still fighting fit, with a lean, compact frame, oversize feet in constant motion, and eyes that seldom blink beneath the brim of his camo hat. On this December morning, he’s leading his biggest mission yet: a two-week trek through eastern Karen State to deliver critically needed aid, scope enemy positions, and test the nerves of 205 new rangers. The crux of the day is crossing a road that links two Burma Army bases and sees frequent government patrols. Eubank has done it dozens of times, but in the past could rely on stealth and the agility of small numbers in the event of a firefight. This year’s group is more than triple the size of any before it.

In February 2021, a decade-long period of quasi-democracy ended in Burma (now known as Myanmar) when the military seized back power in a coup. Protesters were gunned down in the streets and opposition supporters arrested, tortured, and disappeared. But unlike past uprisings, this generation is refusing to back down. Revolutionary militias called People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) made up of mostly Burmans, the country’s ethnic majority, are attacking the regime in cities and lowland areas that have never before seen fighting, and bolstering ethnic armed groups in the borderlands. Violence in Burma is, according to Eubank, “at its highest level since World War II.” In 2022, 15 rangers were killed in the field, the deadliest year yet.

Eubank (center, in hat) leads trainees through a pushup session as part of a “Ranger Run” they must complete to graduate. In an unusual arrangement, FBR and ethnic resistance groups cooperate, drill, and work out side by side under Eubank’s direction. Jason Motlagh

Under pressure, the junta’s army is doing what it always has but at greater scale: torching villages; executing political prisoners; and deliberately targeting schools, churches, and large civilian gatherings with airstrikes to sow terror. On April 11, officials admitted to carrying out just such an attack on a community hall that reportedly killed at least 165 people, including women and children. To date, thousands have died and more than 3 million people are internally displaced. Demand among resistance groups for the aid and expertise FBR offers has surged.

“There is a level of anger and frustration [in the Burma Army] that basically, given the spread of martial law, says you can do what you fucking want and you can get away with it,” says Anthony Davis, a Bangkok-based security analyst. In March 2022, the U.S. government made an official determination that the Burma Army committed genocide and crimes against humanity against the Rohingya minority. That has done nothing to dim the military’s aggression. Reports of rape, torture, and beheadings are widespread. And with violence at an all-time high, demand among resistance groups for the aid and expertise FBR offers has surged.

All of which makes crossing this Burma Army road trickier than usual. The junction is a riot of overgrowth and we’re late, raising the odds of running into a government patrol. Although FBR-allied rebel fighters from the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) have scouted the area in advance, one enemy base is less than a mile away. On previous occasions, Eubank, who carries a 9 mm handgun under his shirt, has run into soldiers guarding the crossing at night and had to back off.

One by one, the long procession of rangers files past. Greenhorns and seasoned instructors and ethnic fighters are mingled with about 30 foreign volunteers, including Eubank’s always smiling, deceptively tough wife, Karen, and three children, who have spent the better part of their lives in the jungle. Daughters Sahale, 22, and Suuzanne (named after Burmese Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi), 20, drive a string of pack horses bearing medical supplies. Pete, 17, strolls past with his pet macaque clinging to his shoulders.

I follow a KNLA fighter down the road when he notices some of the elephant grass has been trampled and waves me back. The Burma Army appears to have patrolled earlier that morning, and the scouts missed the signs. It’s likely fresh mines have been planted nearby. We retrace our steps back to the junction and keep watch.

When the last ranger finally goes by, Eubank embraces his militia friends and then, in an unusual move for the leader of a relief organization, presses a little cash into their hands. “Christmas present,” he whispers, thanking them in a Karen dialect. Then he starts bounding up the trail toward his place at the front of the line, at once excited and relieved to have slipped the Burma Army again.

GETTING INSIDE BURMA to report on its ethnic conflicts has never been easy. For decades, the country, home to more than 51 million people and 135 officially recognized ethnic groups, was closed like a tropical North Korea: The government kept a black list of journalists, entire regions were off-limits, and legions of plainclothes security agents tracked one’s every move. Since the coup, travel outside major cities has become next to impossible. Linking up with rebel groups requires crossing borders and hiking from several days to a week through calf-busting mountains with fluid front lines. Travel is, with rare exceptions, on foot, and provisions must be lugged in a backpack. And if something goes wrong, there are no hospitals or medevacs. The combination of time needed, physical rigor, and a general lack of appetite among media outlets has reduced coverage to a trickle, despite the Burma Army’s staggering record of atrocities.

Starting in late December, I spent three weeks with Eubank and the rangers in the jungle, going on missions and trying to understand what would drive a man to not just lead a crusade in the bush but to also haul his wife and children with him. In nearly two decades of conflict reporting, I’ve never encountered anyone like Eubank — an ardent believer with deeply held conservative values willing to risk his own life and family for a faraway cause. And not only offer much-needed aid and relief to the persecuted and battle-scarred, but also money and muscle. The heroic and unsettling walking side by side.

Eubank puts recruits through rigorous physical tests. He asks them to consult God before missions, telling them, “Be sure it’s part of his plan for you.” Jason Motlagh

I first crossed paths with Eubank back in 2012, en route to northern Kachin State to make a film about the Burma Army’s theft of resources and attacks against civilians. In a deserted airport in China, I passed the Eubanks on their way home after a two-month mission. They wore shirts that read “Free the Oppressed” and carried themselves with the jovial manner of a family on holiday.

Later I learned Eubank was nicknamed “Mad Dog” and “Father of the White Monkey,” and led an all-volunteer staff of ethnic minorities and foreigners — many of them ex-military — working on the front line. Controversially, some team members carried weapons, ready to fight the Burma Army if they came under attack. Others carried video cameras to document war crimes. Word was the charismatic American triathlete could cover 40-plus miles of hostile terrain in a single day while preaching the good book.

Burma’s lawless depths have attracted plenty of G.I. Joe wannabe’s with a messiah complex. From a distance, it’s easy to think of Eubank as a Bible-thumping mashup of Colonel Kurtz and Captain Fantastic. But even the most hard-boiled Southeast Asia hands agree that in a world of counterfeits, Eubank is the real deal: a diehard humanitarian who has risked his life time and again to help the most vulnerable in a forsaken place that most Americans can’t find on a map.

“I admire [FBR’s] commitment, valor, and humanity. They don’t pretend to be anything other than what they are: in solidarity with people being targeted in war,” says Dave Mathieson, an independent analyst who tracks conflict and humanitarian matters in Burma. “One can take issues with militarized approaches to aid, especially when tied with fervent religious beliefs, but when it works so productively with FBR, it can’t be faulted.” Or as Phil Thornton, a veteran journalist based on the Thai-Burma border puts it: “He’s a bit mad, but he does great stuff.”

Rangers lead displaced children on a field charge at a Good Life Club gathering — a kind of festival of entertainment FBR puts on for kids — in Limerplaw village in January. Jason Motlagh

For his part, Eubank dismisses any notion that he’s running a paramilitary operation. “We don’t have the most dangerous job in the world because we’re not trying to fight the Burma Army; we’re trying to avoid them and help people,” Eubank says. “There are organizations that are bigger, stronger, better than us, but if they won’t go, you gotta go,” he adds. “I keep praying, and God keeps sending me.”

Eubank prays aloud more often than anyone I’ve ever met. On the phone, when under attack, for large crowds and passing strangers, even midsentence. Often he’ll be talking in his crisp, rapid-fire cadence and then slip in a prayer that’s only discernible by the closing phrase, In Jesus’ name, amen. Such religiosity can come across as pious and performative when delivered from the pulpit. With Eubank, though, all the prayer somehow feels endearing, a genuine hedge against existential threats that are very real.

Eubank insists that love is the force that drives him to take extreme risks, and also what makes FBR so effective. “[You will] run forward through the bullets, even if you don’t know the person you’re trying to save,” he says. “If I’m shot and I’m bleeding out on the trail and dying and I can’t see my wife and kids again — if I’m not doing that for love, what a disaster.”

Born in Texas and brought to Thailand by missionary parents, Eubank spent his childhood in the hills around Chiang Mai. He accompanied his father to remote villages to spread the word, and could shoot a rifle, swim, and ride bareback by the age of five. The war in neighboring Vietnam was ramping up, and it stoked an inborn desire to test himself and, as he says, “get into the fight as soon as possible.” He got into trouble, looked for brawls at school and in the street. His Boy Scout troop was trained by U.S. Special Forces and CIA on leave from the war.

Eubank receives a gift of chickens from an old friend in the village of Limerplaw. Jason Motlagh

Determined to go to war and “fight for freedom,” Eubank went to Texas A&M on an ROTC scholarship and entered the Army. At 22, he commanded a platoon in Panama and was selected for a Ranger unit based in Washington state, where he was later assigned to lead a Special Forces A-team. Between missions, he summited peaks in the Cascades, married and divorced, and began to question life in the military. He met Karen, then a special-education teacher. Leaving the Army 10 years in as a major, he enrolled in seminary and pursued her with the same zeal as everything else.

In 1993, Eubank was invited back to Southeast Asia by a tribal leader of the Wa, an ethnic group in northern Burma facing a drug crisis. He took it as a sign from God and told Karen he’d like her to join him as his wife. She agreed, plunging headlong into a life she couldn’t have imagined. “I had never planned to travel overseas,” she says. “And then I’m riding in the back of a huge truck with resistance fighters, guns poking me all over the place.”

Four years later, the couple founded FBR in response to a Burma Army offensive that uprooted more than 500,000 people. Volunteers had to meet three requirements: be literate, not run away from the enemy if villagers could not, and do the work “for love” since no one is paid.

Having kids and bringing them up inside Burma came with risks. But the communities and fellow rangers embraced the Eubank children as their own, cultivating a bond forged in shared danger. While Eubank was out running missions, Karen home-schooled the kids and saved them from vipers lurking in the toilet. She launched a children’s program and expanded it with their help. Over the years, the kids endured life-threatening illness, sniper fire, airstrikes, and the loss of loved ones — but also experiences and perspectives that few contemporaries can share.

“Growing up here versus America was a blessing we didn’t deserve,” says Sahale. “When I hear the word ‘trauma,’ it’s hard for me because this is our life, and I feel like in this day and age, people use trauma as a way to excuse their behaviors.… Our [ethnic Karen] aunts and uncles smile through their pain — they choose joy and gratefulness — which is inspirational because they have nothing, but they give everything.”

The Eubanks’ children — from left, Sahale, Suuzanne and Pete — perform for the volunteers to lighten the mood.

Every summer, the Eubanks travel the U.S. to see friends, share their story, and raise money. In between donor meetings and church events, the family motors around in a mud-streaked Toyota rig on escapades that range from skydiving and mountain climbing to bear hunting in Alaska. The kids are known to drop into the Cody Nite Rodeo in Wyoming on borrowed horses and win belt buckles.

In October, I met up with the Eubanks outside College Station, Texas, near the end of their annual tour. Suuzanne and Sahale followed their dad’s footsteps to A&M, and a whirlwind weekend kicked off with a rugby match. Eubank paced the sidelines cheering on Suuzanne while calling football patterns for Pete on an adjacent field. “Dave doesn’t like to loiter,” says Karen. From there, Eubank caught a helicopter to a wedding he was officiating in Hill Country.

The next day, he’s at it again at back-to-back church fundraisers. Eubank is a gifted public speaker, sincere even when he’s repeating his stump speech for the 10,000th time. After a short video featuring FBR medics at work under fire, he riffs for 20 minutes about the value of sacrifice. “You can live with sorrow, but you can’t live with shame,” he says, with a paternal warmth that strikes a bracing contrast to his war-zone bravura. The program closes with Sahale on guitar, dressed in a native Karen vest, singing a heartfelt homage to a ranger friend killed in Karenni State in July by a Burma Army airstrike.

Some believers are in tears, hands in the air. “People say, ‘I have faith,’ ” says Willie Medlock, 51, a technician from Wimberley, Texas. “Well, you can say what you want to, but they’re living it.”

THE EUBANKS’ WORK has spread from conflict zone to conflict zone. In 2015, a Christian supporter asked if they would go to northern Iraq on his dime to help the embattled Kurdish minority. Islamic State militants were gaining ground, slaughtering villagers and raping women with impunity. Eubank questioned what little FBR could do in the Mideast desert. But he saw parallels in the plight of the Karen and the Kurds, a long-oppressed people and the largest ethnic group in the world without its own country.

Rangers sing the “Ranger Song” before parting company at the end of their mission. Jason Motlagh

When he showed up with Pete, then nine years old, the Kurdish minister of defense was stunned and tried to warn him off. Eubank countered that there were lots of kids in danger who were just as important to him, and FBR’s work was always a family affair. In the ensuing months, Eubank and his team, some of them ethnic volunteers from Burma, provided food and medical support to Yezidis escaping ISIS massacres. They fought alongside Kurdish peshmerga, and assisted in ISIS-ravaged Syrian towns such as Kobani and Manbij. “We were just going boom-boom from Syria to Iraq, one fight to the other,” Eubank recalls.

By 2017, all attention turned to liberating Mosul, the seat of the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate. As hundreds of thousands fled, FBR volunteers fought alongside Iraqi Army special forces in block-to-block combat while Karen and the kids cared for the wounded. One of Eubank’s comrades was killed beside him; another took six shots and lived. In one battle, Eubank found himself four yards from a group of ISIS fighters; he was shot in the arm, but says he managed to kill three of them “point-blank” and stay in the fight.

One scorching June morning, FBR found a heap of more than 50 bodies on the outskirts of the city — men, women, and children — cut down by ISIS snipers while trying to escape. A young girl, no older than five, her hair tied with pink ribbons, peeked out from under the hijab of her dead mother. The bodies were 150 yards away, and the snipers had a clear shot. Eubank plotted a rescue. Iraqi forces coordinated a smoke barrage with the U.S.-led coalition, and he edged closer behind a tank as bullets pinged off the armor. “If I die doing this, my wife and kids would understand,” he recalls thinking. In a harrowing 12-second dash captured on video, two FBR volunteers provide cover fire as Eubank scoops up the girl and carries her to safety.

After years of operating in the shadows, Eubank was thrust into the spotlight. A Christian leader of a humanitarian group engaging in firefights in a Muslim country would normally raise alarms, but the daring rescue video was featured on cable news and talk shows; newspapers profiled the Eubanks, and a faith-based company made a documentary about FBR. Donations spiked, along with volunteer inquiries.

Eubank calls FBR “ambassadors for Jesus.” Prayer and proselytizing are woven into their work. Some rangers are baptized in camp, but the group does not exclude non-believers. “You can be homosexual, you could be a murderer. You only have to say ‘I don’t think that’s the best behavior, and I’m trying not to do those things,’ and then you can join us,” he says, adding that FBR includes atheists, agnostics, and spirit worshipers.

Miles Vining, a former Marine and weapons expert who converted to Islam after deployments in Afghanistan, affirms that FBR does not pressure or cast judgment like the missionary groups he grew up around as the son of American diplomats in Thailand. “I got so incredibly sick of them because everywhere I looked I got God crushed down my mouth,” he says. “In FBR, everything is action-based; [Eubank and his family] are showing their faith, saying, ‘Look, this is what propels us, and we want to do good deeds. And if you want some of this, come on in. But if you don’t, that’s OK, too’ — instead of saying, ‘You’re going to hell.’ ”

FBR trainees video record activity at a Burma Army encampment on an opposing ridge. Jason Motlagh

Still, the group’s faith-forward, weapons-bearing ethos has drawn critics who question the way FBR operates. “FBR may have saved hundreds of lives or more,” writes Alexander Horstmann, an associate professor of Southeast Asian Studies at Tallinn University, “but the way the organization positions itself as an enemy of the Burma military is problematic, as is its active involvement and overlap with the ethnic-minority armies.” Carrying guns stokes the age-old suspicion that aid groups are arms of intelligence agencies, and can make work more challenging for organizations that are trying to remain neutral. “Not unlike movie-hero John Rambo,” Horstmann notes, “Eubank presents himself as a warrior who comes to places of conflict to liberate innocent civilians from the claws of their oppressors.”

Although medics are allowed to carry guns for self-defense under international humanitarian law, a November 2019 report by Offbeat Research, an open-source investigative group, suggests FBR has gone on offensives alongside Kurdish militias in Syria, citing the group’s own video footage as evidence. (FBR denied that, but did note that its members have worn YPG patches in Syria.) Moreover, FBR trains rebels in skills like battlefield communications and land-mine removal, tactics that have plausible humanitarian applications but more strictly support combat efforts. “The existence of the FBR and their actions across Syria,” the report says, “blur the line of humanitarian aid and targeted activism.”

“We’re not a militia, but we work in bear country,” says Eubank. He insists that FBR never shoots first, but makes no bones of its support for pro-democratic causes, asserting that the traditional humanitarian approach of neutrality is one that “always favors the oppressor.” He notes the time a U.S. government official chastised him for aiding ethnic armed groups in Burma. The official touted Bosnia as an example where there was a “clear separation” between military and relief work, and a U.S. battalion provided security while food was distributed. “That is good,” Eubank replied. “Please send the U.S. battalion to stop the Burma Army from attacking Karen, and we will gladly provide humanitarian assistance in safety.”

“In many situations, resistance humanitarians are reaching people faster and better than orthodox humanitarians from neutral international agencies,” writes Hugo Slim, a global authority on the ethics of war at Oxford University. Slim argues that the conventional approach often fails because it becomes bogged down by bureaucracy and requires the consent of predatory regimes, pointing out how aid agencies in Burma are seen as lacking courage, honesty, and ingenuity as they avoid proper recognition of the injustice being carried out around them. Humanitarian resistance, Slim asserts, is both ethical and essential and should be embraced “by [international aid groups] and the governments that fund them.”

One veteran rights investigator concedes that he used to be an avowed pacifist who would “butt heads” with Eubank over FBR’s support of ethnic armed groups. But the brute horror of the Burma Army’s campaign convinced him that FBR’s bold approach is essential to relieve mass suffering. “If FBR wasn’t filling those voids,” he asks, “who would be?”

FBR’S TRAINING CAMP sits in a valley carved by a stream in eastern Karen State. What the Eubanks started with a few bamboo huts and elephant labor has grown into a small village with a free medical clinic, spartan barracks, bunkers and training facilities, and a school for the offspring of volunteers split between “ethnics” (in FBR lingo) and foreigners, a.k.a. galawas (literally “white Indians”). The prevailing vibe is that of a very intense summer camp — one that is sometimes disrupted by Burma Army jets that streak low overhead.

When the Eubanks return in December — Dave, Karen, and Pete from a mission in Syria, Suuzanne and Sahale on break from college — FBR staff and hundreds of ranger trainees line up to welcome them with handmade posters and smiles. The family greets everyone and drops their bags at a two-story cabin plastered with a Bible verse from Philippians and with an office full of yellowed family photos: Eubank on the summit of Denali, and praying with Mike Pence; the girls barrel racing; Pete riding bulls. A “Wall of Heroes” features portraits of 53 rangers killed in the field since FBR was founded.

Eubank pauses on the trail with a ranger moments after a Burma Army mortar exploded on a nearby hill in Limerplaw in January. Jason Motlagh

Facing a 200,000-strong military armed with Russian jets and attack helicopters has not dimmed the trainees’ spirits. They represent seven of the country’s ethnic groups; about a quarter are seasoned fighters. Another quarter are ethnic Burmans — teachers, students, engineers, poets, and shopkeepers — who have joined PDF militias, a shift that was unthinkable prior to the coup.

Twenty-year-old Gabaw Htoo is the face of a generation of unlikely revolutionaries. A lanky former gaming addict from the capital, Yangon, he sports milk-bottle glasses, a shorn head, and a bullet necklace he says he won’t take off until the war is over. Htoo witnessed several friends killed in street protests when rubber bullets turned to live ones. After that, he and his crew decided they needed training to “get weaponized” and join the armed resistance. They considered everything from male prostitution to selling weed to raise money for guns, until a friend connected them with rebels in the eastern jungle.

“We were like aliens,” recalls Htoo in English, honed watching Breaking Bad. He weighed more than 200 pounds with hair that fell down to his chest. “I couldn’t even hold a knife; we were useless, spoiled brats.” Along with harsh terrain and lack of food, he had to overcome prejudices instilled by a racist regime that brainwashed Burmans into believing their superiority over the ethnic minorities: “ ‘Cannibals,’ ” says Htoo. “We grew up with so much propaganda.”

The Karen accepted them and taught them how to survive in the bush. Months of jungle slogs, sleeping in the rain, and subsisting on rice and fish paste hardened his body and resolve. His KNLA mentor gave him the nom de guerre Gabaw Htoo (“Bright Light”).

While some tech-savvy people’s militias are jerry-rigging drones and 3D-printing rifles, most of Htoo’s time in the KNLA was spent setting claymore mines and learning how to make homemade bombs with bamboo shafts, not always with good results. “Guys were always blowing themselves up,” he says. “The training was a mess, and our leaders are so disorganized.” Last year, the Burma Army ambushed his unit and killed five of Htoo’s comrades. He escaped into the jungle and, after weeks on the run, linked up with his KNLA mentor, who sent him to FBR for more training — again the barrier between armed rebels and humanitarian-aid group proving permeable — though he still doesn’t have a gun of his own. FBR does not issue weapons to trainees, and only a fraction of rangers have rifles. (Many are “franken-guns’’ held together with homemade parts: Vietnam-era M-16s, captured Burma Army MA3 rifles, and even M-1 carbines of World War II vintage.) “I have a three-year plan,” Htoo says. “The first was for failure, the past year for training, and this year will be for getting guns and fighting.”

For all his experience, Eubank likes to temper recruits’ eagerness for combat. He cites a botched attack in the nearby village of Limerplaw in December as a warning. Seventy percent of KNLA grenades failed to explode. When the smoke cleared, the mission had failed, and five fighters were dead and 26 were injured. Eubank exhorts the rangers to assess the enemy carefully and question superiors if they are in doubt about an operation — but above all, to pray first. “If you are going to risk your life or take someone’s life, you must be sure this is God’s mission for you,” he warns. “Otherwise, don’t do it.”

Eubank rises each morning before dawn for a five-mile run and calisthenics. Then he takes care of email and other administrative tasks he loathes, then tours the camp. He’ll “stress test” his kids at random, handing them an M-16 and calling out worst-case scenarios (“You’re in a helicopter, animal’s getting away, and you’ve got a malfunction”). He picks up trash discarded by rangers (“They’re cheating themselves, leaving crumbs for the Burma Army”), and his sudden presence at training stations hits the bone-tired recruits like a jolt of caffeine. On a “ranger run” with the entire class through the mountains, he crests a summit and orders everyone to the ground for pushups. “Easy way or hard way,” he yells out after 20. “Hard way!” comes the response, and Eubank bangs out 10 more.

Decades of wear and tear have taken their toll, and Eubank’s body is slowing a bit but “his brain and competitiveness are not,” says Dave Small, an ex-Canadian Army officer who has worked with Eubank since he was 15. “He can still out-endure anyone — and that’s just mental. He goes as hard as he can.”

The rangers cross a bamboo bridge in the remote Karen State. It takes days of hiking through the jungle to reach villages in need. Jason Motlagh

During the annual basketball game between ethnics and galawas, a shirtless Eubank is all hustle. He’s setting picks and stifling his man. But the man guarding him keeps fouling; after one too many, Eubank snaps, grabs him by the shoulders, and throws him to the ground. After the game ends with the foreigners on top, Eubank pulls the ranger he slammed in for a hug.

Later on, I accompany Eubank downriver to meet Gen. Baw Gyaw, the battle-hardened leader of the KNLA. I struggle to keep pace as Eubank explains that it was Baw Gyaw, a fellow Christian, who granted him the land for FBR’s training camp and free movement across his territory. “None of this would be possible without Baw Gyaw’s blessing,” says Eubank. “He trusts us.”

We cross a bamboo bridge and strip camouflage netting off an FBR truck for the drive to Da Bu No. Once home to 5,000 people, the village has become a ghost town of shuttered shops and derelict homes. Repeated Burma Army bombings since the coup have wiped out families, shredded school houses, and leveled a KNLA command center. “Everyone is hiding in the jungle,” Eubank says. “It’s really sad.”

Baw Gyaw receives us at a teak house surrounded by guards with M-4 rifles. Eubank gives him a big hug and gifts him a Ka-Bar knife and some fresh FBR shirts. A short, stocky man dressed in jungle boots and fatigues, the general has a shrapnel scar on his left temple and changes shirts to reveal additional scars down his chest and stomach, the markings of a lifetime of guerrilla warfare.

Eubank launches into an update on ranger training and efforts to secure outside support for the resistance. Four days earlier, President Biden had signed into law the BURMA Act, hailed by some advocates as the “most significant action” the U.S. has taken for Burma in decades. The bill pledges tighter sanctions against the junta and greater support for pro-democracy groups fighting inside the country. But aid for ethnic armies was not included, and there was no mention of arms. (Though Eubank is friendly with Republican members of Congress, he denies any connection to U.S. intelligence agencies — an assertion that appears borne out by FBR’s low-budget operations and the shoddy weapons used by the rebels.)

Baw Gyaw is blunt when asked what he needs most: better weapons. The Burma Army receives aircraft and artillery from China and Russia, and there’s only so much his fighters can do against such firepower. “The U.S. should have started helping us a long time ago, before the Chinese got so involved,” says the general. “It’s still a good time to help us.”

Eubank has lobbied Congress for years to back the resistance. But the U.S. is already spending billions in its proxy war in Ukraine; neighboring Thailand has no interest in midwifing the revolution; and China, the only foreign power involved in Burma’s conflicts, would not take kindly to U.S. meddling in its backyard. What’s more, even if there was a will among the U.S. and Western allies to arm the resistance, the jumble of ethnic militias and PDFs lack a central command and a shared strategy to defeat the Burmese military. “Who should the West support? How and with what?” says Bertil Lintner, a specialist on Burma’s affairs and insurgencies in Asia. “I can’t see any significant Western support coming anytime soon.”

Despite their common enemy, the major armed groups in the borderlands are plagued by disunity. In Karen, the KNLA is also fighting several breakaway Karen proxy forces allied with the regime, which long ago mastered a divide-and-conquer strategy.

“Burmese resistance movements and political opposition are their own worst enemies,” says Mathieson, who has spent more than two decades studying the country. “Any viable resistance is consistently hobbled by division. Never has a country been betrayed so much by such poor leadership.”

Baw Gyaw, for his part, believes victory will come in his lifetime. “It’s never easy to unite all the groups, but right now most of us share the same goal, and we are committed to fighting to the end,” he says, buoyed by the influx of ethnic Burmans taking up arms alongside his forces. One of his advisers estimates the Burma Army has lost more than 15,000 men out of a frontline strength of 140,000 since the coup. Many units in Karen are stranded and facing constant harassment, which has made them more dependent on airstrikes.

“You’ve got to think of [the Burma Army] as this giant bull in a field,” explains Davis, the security analyst. “There’s a lot of little dachshunds running around biting its legs. Sooner or later, the bull is going down and all these dogs are gonna be on its back, and at that point it begins to look like game over.”

“Barely, imperceptibly, slowly, I think, they are weakening,” Eubank agrees. “The resistance doesn’t have to win, they just have to hold on.”

ON MISSIONS THE RANGERS bring gifts and entertainment to brighten the lives of the children living in harm’s way. So on a sunny morning in the village of Tho Thoo Plaw, gaggles of displaced kids look on as the Eubanks and rangers host a “Good Life Club” workshop, rocking back and forth to a pounding bass line. Volunteers perform backflips and slapstick routines and dance to Kenny Chesney’s “All the Pretty Girls,” before sweatshirts and cookies are handed out. It’s surreal, goofy, and joyous all at once, and Eubank revels in it.

The rangers are packing up camp when he gets word that Burma Army jets have bombed Da Bu No — again. Baw Gyaw is unscathed. But a ranger and a pair of volunteers narrowly missed getting killed, and one of FBR’s last four-wheel-drive trucks was totaled. “This is war,” Eubank says. “We’re gonna get them back.” In the moment, he’s more Special Forces operator than relief worker.

A short walk up the trail, we come to a school and church complex leveled by an airstrike. A Burma Army base looms above the village on a ridge just over a mile away, and fearful locals have cleared out. The Eubanks pray and film social media clips next to a blast crater. Eubank consoles a young boy wandering alone amid the wreckage and gives a wad of money to a man who’s home was damaged. In the field, Eubank is quick to disburse whatever resources he has to whomever he deems in need. In 2022, a $3 million budget was all spent by October. Eubank put an urgent call out to a group of nine Christian supporters and raised an additional million dollars within a week to cover operations for the rest of the year.

The ever-present threat of attack has driven villagers to hold their Sunday service in a tarpaulin shack tucked away under a giant stand of bamboo. Eubank stands up and offers to rebuild the church. “You can build it bigger, there’s no budget,” he says. “Me, I ask God, and he says put it in the exact same place. You can build two — one here, one there. And if they destroy it again, we’ll build it again. It’s a contest between hate and love, and because of Jesus, love will win.” Eubank asks everyone to pray on it. Although the fervor has gripped him, his congregation does not look convinced.

Eubank consoles his daughter Suuzanne moments after she learns a veteran ranger she considered an “uncle” was killed in a clash with Burma Army forces. Jason Motlagh

EUBANK’S STAUNCHLY HELD conservative values fly in the face of his high-risk life on the extreme margins. His war stories are a torrent of near-death experiences that beggar belief: shooting his way out of ambushes, evading Burma Army forces closing in on three sides, or coming face-to-face with an ISIS fighter in a trench — the tales often close with the punchline We almost got smoked. A few admirers half-joked that he wants to die in the jungle. “I’ll put it this way,” says one longtime FBR volunteer, “things tend to happen when Dave is around.”

In the morning, the rangers hold another variety show at the bomb site to rally the community. Music blares and children dance, and for a few hours the war is forgotten, until Eubank announces that one of FBR’s original rangers, Baw Boe, was killed earlier in the day filming a Burma Army offensive in western Karen. Baw Boe was a “padi” (uncle) to the Eubank kids since they were infants, carrying them on his shoulders and teaching them everything he knew about life in the jungle. Suuzanne, usually stoic, is caught off-guard by the news. Eubank apologizes for not telling her first, holding her close as tears stream down her face. Another extended family member lost and the second ranger to die in the new year.

While the Eubanks make a point of keeping their children away from the front line, the kids have survived just about every threat that comes with operating inside a war zone. This exposure has moved some to accuse the parents of recklessness — though “never,” Eubank points out, “from the people we are standing with under fire.”

There was the time in Syria, in 2018, when the family had to travel by public bus through Assad-controlled territory to reach Afrin, then under assault by jihadists. Recognized by mukhabarat agents at a checkpoint and told to wait, Eubank was not going gently to a Syrian prison. He instructed the children to walk off the bus and, if the agents gave chase, throw hand grenades he’d passed out earlier “as far as you can and run for your lives. And don’t worry about me. I’m gonna throw mine, shoot everyone I can shoot, reload, and run.” The Syrians shouted after the family as they stepped into the street and ran more than 400 yards to the safety of a Kurdish checkpoint.

I ask Eubank if there was ever a moment in hindsight where he felt he’d gambled with his children’s lives. “No,” he shoots back, with the caveat he might have been a beat too slow on deciding to leave that bus in Syria. “I know my kids and what they can do. My daughters, they’re nice. But they will shoot.” And apparently throw grenades.

Rangers cross a stream in view of a Burma Army outpost near Limerplaw village. A failed militia attempt to overrun the base in December left five dead and more than 20 injured. Jason Motlagh

More recently, in the Karen village of Simerplaw, a widow told the Eubanks she’d given up trying to plant rice after the Burma Army shot at her. The family followed her back to the paddy. Eubank and a ranger then crept into the paddy with handfuls of rice sprigs and a volley of gunfire poured in, bullets striking within feet of Karen and the kids at the rear. The episode was filmed and packaged into an FBR report called “Planting Rice Under Fire.”

Getting shot at for a rice-planting photo-op? This smacked of a stunt. But Eubank explains how there had been cloud cover when he went into the field that unexpectedly lifted and exposed him to the enemy. He maintains that this, too, was “not reckless.” When the Eubanks returned to the village seven months later, the widow, Naw Thraw Gay, presented them with a sack of rice. The Burma Army soldiers who shot at them later defected. A photo of them smiling with the Eubanks appears in FBR’s annual report.

When we reach Simerplaw, Eubank summons Naw Thraw Gay to share her side of the story. I ask what she thinks of the Eubanks? Are they crazy? “No, no,” she says, flashing a betel-stained smile. “They helped and gave us confidence so that we can go on with our lives. We feel braver with them among us.” Indeed, after the shooting incident, she and her neighbors went back to their fields at night to finish planting rice.

Our next and final stop on the mission loop is Limerplaw, scene of the disastrous KNLA attack on the Burma Army outpost. The trail segues from dense jungle to dry paddy fields punctured by limestone formations that would be swarming with backpackers were it not for the war. Near the village, we drop into the shadow of a sheer rock wall, and the air is rent by a series of booms on the other side. Bursts of gunfire crackle through the valley, and there are rumors the KNLA has initiated another drone attack.

The fighting kicks up again when we reach camp. We’re told Suuzanne, Sahale, and Pete arrived an hour before us and headed straight to a cave they have explored since they were kids. Getting to the entrance requires traversing open ground in the direct firing line of the Burma Army outpost. Eubank decides to check on them, concerned but not worried. “They know to hide in the bamboo over there if there’s trouble,” he says, pointing to a band that rings the base of the mountain.

Bypassing the mouth of the cave, Eubank climbs up to a ledge and discovers a rebel hideout that connects down to the main subterranean passage. I follow him up, and the floor is strewn with IV bottles, unexploded rocket-propelled grenades, and torn pants soiled with blood. Stalactites loom above us like daggers. “This is pretty cool,” says Eubank, caught between war and wonder, living out a life he imagined as a boy.

Voices echo from the cave’s recesses, and Pete soon emerges below with his monkey and other volunteers. Sahale is trailing behind them, singing a song. The kids reassure their father that they ducked into the bamboo when the Burma Army and KNLA started shooting, just as they were taught to. “I know you did,” Eubank replies. “I love you.”

THE RANGERS ASSEMBLE the next morning for a final children’s program. Suuzanne and Sahale need to get back to school, and Gabaw Htoo and his fellow rangers must return to far-flung units to apply their training where it’s needed most. Back on a familiar trail, I’m contemplating the warm Coke I’m going to buy at the last KNLA checkpoint when faint rumbles begin to echo across the mountains. A Russian-made Yak-130 jet screeches low overhead soon after, snapping everyone’s gaze skyward. The canopy protects us. The question is, what was just hit?

At the checkpoint, Eubank gets a message on the radio: The bombs struck the village of Lay Wah, about 20 miles away, and there are conflicting reports of casualties. It’s late in the day, but he wants to go check it out. Karen, Suuzanne, Sahale, and a few armed rangers jump into the flatbed of an FBR pickup, and Eubank tears off down dirt roads. The engine groans and the Eubank sisters croon “American Pie” and “Country Roads” as we rip around hairpins down to the river. A cable ferry takes us across, and we grind on until we see a truck bearing wounded.

Naw Chi Paw and her son grieve after his father was killed by a Burma Army airstrike on Lay Wah village in January. They were on their way to a clinic to be treated for shrapnel injuries. Jason Motlagh

The driver confirms that bombs leveled two local churches and a schoolhouse, killing five people, including a mother and her two-year-old girl. In the flatbed, Naw Chi Paw clutches her baby next to her teenage son. Her husband, a Catholic deacon, has been killed. Eubank puts his hand on her arm and says a prayer, then takes her phone number with a pledge to look after them. “We’ll come see you at the clinic tomorrow,” he assures.

It’s dark when we reach Lay Wah. Our headlight catches a hobbling water buffalo whose front leg was cut in half by shrapnel. Up on the plateau overlooking the village, the school and churches are blown to splinters. Four craters are surrounded with shards of glass, flip-flops, and splotches of fresh blood. Eubank records the damage on his phone as Suuzanne collects bomb fragments, and an elementary school teacher arrives with more details. Fearing airstrikes, she had already moved her students into the bush for classes. The bombs struck at around 2 p.m. Had the kids been in school, it would have been a massacre.

Five civilians, including a mother and her child, killed in a Burmese Army airstrike on a village near where the FBR operates. This was the deadliest year in the world’s longest-running civil war. Jason Motlagh

Another villager bids us to follow him into the jungle. A short walk along an ink-black footpath brings us to a clearing bathed in candlelight where five bodies are laid out under sheets — or what remains of them. Unbidden, the man strips away the cloth to show what the airstrike had done. Stumps of legs were all that was left of a church assistant. The pastor, badly mangled, lies next to the deacon, mother and child, both of whom were killed by shrapnel to the head. On the drive out, the water buffalo is groaning on the ground. Eubank dutifully stops and puts the beast out of its misery by shooting it in the head.

“THIS IS EVIL, MAN. And this has been happening for 73 years,” Eubank says on the drive back. The deaths were cruel and arbitrary, the kind that defies logic or any belief system, and they will make no difference in the outcome of this war. Eubank has seen many lifetimes worth of such killing. If there was one thing that surprised non-Christian friends who know him more than the fact that he was still alive after all these years, it was that he still believed in a God who allows innocents to be slaughtered so brutally.

“That’s one of the great paradoxes of faith,” he tells me. “I don’t understand that to this day.” He admits that he has “lots of doubts — they just don’t do me any good. The result of an evidently rational response to death and suffering is a hard heart, bitterness, anger, depression,” he goes on. “The opposite is to ask God for help. I’m gonna praise you and say ‘I love you’ no matter what. I practice that. And the result of that is I’m lighthearted, my vision is bigger, I’m bolder, and I have more energy. So which is actually the rational response?”

A week after I left Burma, Eubank began a two-month mission to Karenni State, scene of the fiercest fighting in the country. Trips to Syria and Iraq would follow, and friends are pushing him to go to Ukraine. Part of him wants to bring FBR to a new frontier, but “we’re just not that big,” he says, torn between a compulsive drive and spreading FBR too thin as the civil war in Burma deepens and the world looks away.

Eubank recalled a time when Armenian friends requested FBR’s help in their fight against Azerbaijan. He was interested, but the trip didn’t work out, which Pete assured him was for the best. “He said, ‘I’m glad we didn’t go, Dad. We’re FBR. We go to the broken places with no rules, like the Wild West — that’s where we belong,’” Eubank says. “And I think he’s right.”

Rolling Stone · by Jason Motlagh · April 16, 2023

2. Dirty Boat Guys: An Expansive History of Navy SWCC

SWCCs are too often overlooked.

Dirty Boat Guys: An Expansive History of Navy SWCC

coffeeordie.com

Keyword Search…

Military

April 16, 2023Matt Fratus

Special Warfare Combatant-Craft Crewmen (SWCCs) are often called the “best-kept secret” in the U.S. Navy. U.S. Navy photo.

In 1970, along the outskirts of the Song Cau Lon River in Vietnam, a small, platoon-sized element of Navy SEALs had moments to spare. They’d expended all of their ammunition fighting off a North Vietnamese Army engagement minutes earlier and were sprinting toward the water for extraction.

The commandos, now down to only hand grenades, hoped to see backup waiting for them in the canal. The frogmen reached the water’s edge as a medium SEAL Support Craft flipped around like a speedboat to collect them before the boat laid down a wall of cover fire so they could climb aboard.

Kirby Horrell, a SEAL on the mission, told Coffee or Die what the extraction was like from his perspective. “Whit, [the driver], pivoted the boat — so now there was a minigun looking at those [NVA] guys,” he said. “That minigun goes Wooaaaaah, and we’re hanging on the boat anywhere we can to get the hell out of there.”

The gunboats of Vietnam that routinely rescued SEALs from certain death aren’t as well known as the commandos they protected. Today, the Special Warfare Combatant-Craft Crewmen, or SWCC (pronounced Swick), are often called the U.S. Navy’s “best kept secret.” Their legacy, though lesser known but no less important, dates back to the Beach Jumpers and PT Boats of World War II.

The WWII Units That Paved the Way for SWCC

A Motor Torpedo Boat, PT-105, underway. Wikimedia Commons photo.

The SWCC community has its roots in the heart of the Second World War. The units from that era that most resemble the SWCCs of today are the U.S. Navy’s Beach Jumpers and the Patrol Torpedo Boat Squadrons.

The Beach Jumpers were a psychological warfare unit that utilized agile boats to feign amphibious invasions on Axis-held beachheads. These missions created confusion and drew the enemy’s attention away from the intended Allied objective. The Beach Jumpers raided and assaulted beaches to create as much chaos as possible.

PT Boat Squadrons operated in the South Pacific, often for months on end without maintenance, fighting against various Japanese targets, including enemy planes, surface warfare ships, and enemy combatants on land. They also inserted commandos behind enemy lines and extracted pilots shot down over the ocean.

The most famous PT Boat operation of the entire war included future U.S. President John F. Kennedy Jr. During a nighttime patrol, his boat collided with a Japanese destroyer, and his team had to survive for a week on an island until they were rescued.

The Nasties of MACV-SOG/NAD

A Nasty-class PTF-6 at the naval amphibious base in Little Creek, Virginia, circa December 1973. MACV-SOG/NAD used Nasties in the early years of the Vietnam War. Wikimedia Commons photo.

In early 1964, an elite special operations force took form. They were called MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam — Studies and Observations Group). The top-secret unit primarily included Army Special Forces soldiers.

These Green Berets conducted reconnaissance and direct-action assaults into Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. However, the team also had a small detachment of Navy SEALs within their ranks. Some of these SEALs were from the Naval Advisory Detachment, essentially the maritime branch of MACV-SOG. The NAD used small boats to conduct harassment raids against North Vietnamese installations.

Lt. j.g. Jim Hawes, a SEAL formerly assigned to SEAL Team Two, was one of five officers who helped stand up MACV-SOG/NAD. His team took over OP PLAN 34-A, a CIA-run mission that conducted sabotage operations above the 17th parallel into North Vietnam. Hawes says that he had to start from scratch when he arrived in Bach Dang.

“The Navy had no small boats when we got there,” Hawes told Coffee or Die. “There were no manuals; there were no procedures; there were no nothing — so it was wonderful because we created it all.”

The CIA provided three 50-foot “Swifts” that could travel up to 50 knots. NAD also acquired disguised fishing boats called “junks.” But the best ships for maritime operations came later. These were the Norwegian “Nasty-Class” PT boats, or Nasties.

Gunboats in Vietnam had an impressive range of firepower, including heavy and light machine guns and mortars. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Naval History & Heritage Command.

Hawes trained South Vietnamese boat crews and commandos for hit-and-run warfare. He said the Nasties, each equipped with 40mm guns and 81mm mortars, could outrun and outgun anything the North Vietnamese Army had at the time.

Hawes controlled night operations from afar, staging amphibious raids and mortar bombardments on NVA radar sites for several months. These targeted strikes were clandestine by nature and had a psychological impact in the early stages of the war.

On the night of Aug. 3, 1964, Hawes’ instructed the Nasties to target North Vietnamese radar installations and security bases at the islands of Hon Niu (or Hon Ngu) and Hon Mat (or Hon Me). The Nasties made their assault and destroyed their objectives, but on the way back to Da Nang, North Vietnamese watercraft trailed in pursuit. Hawes’ team outran them. However, the North Vietnamese were committed to retaliation.

According to Hawes, this NVA pursuit team allegedly carried out attacks against the USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy that exploded into the hugely controversial Gulf of Tonkin Incident, which many see as the official start of the Vietnam War.

As a response to the North Vietnamese vengeance, President Lyndon Johnson authorized an escalation of U.S. efforts in Southeast Asia.

Light SEAL Support Craft in Vietnam

Navy SEALs inside a Light SEAL Support Craft in 1968. Wikimedia Commons photo.

In the 1950s, President Dwight D. Eisenhower had foreseen the need for a combined force to counter the growing insurgency issues plaguing our Allies worldwide. The British were engaged in Malaya, Kenya, and Yemen. The French were involved in operations in Indochina and Algeria.

Eisenhower feared the U.S. would soon enter a counterinsurgency campaign of its own. As a result, he directed the establishment of a direct predecessor of today’s Naval Special Warfare Group called the Naval Operations Support Group.

“The NOSG had the existing Beach Jumpers for amphibious deception, the Underwater Demolition Teams for hydrographic reconnaissance and obstacle demolition, the brand-new SEAL Teams for an unconventional special operations capability, and the new Boat Support Units,” said Phil Garn, a former SWCC veteran and current Combatant Craft Crewman Association historian.

In 1966, the SEALs began conducting direct-action raids in Vietnam. One squad of SEALs would crew the boats, while another squad would insert inland for missions.

The maritime external air transportation system, or MEATS, was invented in the Vietnam War. Here, SWCC assigned to Special Boat Teams 12 and 20 attach a naval special warfare 11-meter rigid-hull inflatable boat to an Army Reserve CH-47 Chinook helicopter from the 159th Aviation Regiment during a training exercise in 2008. Photo by Ensign Robyn Gerstenslager.

Instead of dividing the force to keep up with mission demands, Phil Bucklew — a legend in the NSW community — advised standing up boat teams to insert and extract the SEALs. As a result, special boat teams filled this gap to adapt to the flexible mission of the SEALs.

“Boat Support Unit got four old World War II LCPLs [Landing Craft Personnel Large] and two heavy SEAL support craft,” Garn said. “These became Mobile Support Team 1 and Mobile Support Team 2.”

Missions to support the SEALs were fluid. A detachment from MST 1 would insert SEALs in one area, while another detachment from MST 1 would insert SEALs in a completely different place. Eventually, Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, the Chief of Naval Operations in Vietnam, wanted to test a new concept of deploying gunboats into any river or canal to control the waterways.

The Navy established a new unit called STABRON 20 [Strike Assault Boat Squadron Twenty] to fit the mission parameters.

SWCC training with the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the elite helicopter pilots of the U.S. Army, during a training exercise in 2014. The MEATS provides SWCC with a unique capability to insert gunboats into remote waterways worldwide. Photo by Sgt. Christopher Prows.

The STABRON mission utilized a new tactic called maritime external air transport system, or MEATS, which used Light SEAL Support Craft or a Strike Assault Boat tethered by ropes to the bottom of CH-47 helicopters. The helicopters would airlift the boats into and out of hostile coastal zones.

The Light Seal Support Craft relied on the SEALs for weaponry, but the STABs were equipped with M60 machine guns, grenade launchers, and an M2 Browning .50-caliber machine gun.

When the SEALs were in a jam, gunboats equipped with miniguns provided the Americans with an advantage. The miniguns quickly eliminated the enemy’s fire superiority in battle, if only for a short time. A wall of lead that could knock down trees and other vegetation allowed for the SEALs to extract despite being heavily outnumbered.

In the 1970s, NOSG became a Naval Special Warfare Group. The Boat Support Units also evolved and changed their name to become Coastal River Squadrons, then later the Special Boat Squadrons.

The monumental changes arrived in the 1980s when SBS entered U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM).

SOCOM to the GWOT

The SBU-12 PB crew in the Persian Gulf; this shot was taken sometime between April and November 1988. Photo courtesy of warboats.org.

On April 16, 1987, the Naval Special Warfare Group entered SOCOM, bringing a new era for SWCC operators. Almost immediately, SWCC was tasked with its first mission, Operation Earnest Will.

In July 1988, detachments of various Special Boat Units, along with SEALs and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, deployed to the Persian Gulf. For several months, SBU teams operated from mobile sea bases converted from oil rigs to protect Kuwaiti tankers from Iranian attacks. These tasks mostly included day and night coastal patrol and interdiction missions using various watercraft.

In the 1990s, SWCC operated High-Speed Boats, or HSBs, RHIBs, and Mark V Special Operations Craft. In time, the so-called Dirty Boat Guys of SWCC carved out their own reputation, specifically during the Global War on Terror.

In the Philippines, SWCC used Mark Vs to rout Abu-Sayyaf extremists in the islands. The Mark Vs had five SWCCs manning M2 .50-caliber and M240 7.62mm belt-fed machine guns.

SWCC from SBT-22 in an aluminum-hulled, 33-foot-long Special Operations Craft-Riverine during a training exercise. The SOC-R can travel up to 40 knots, carry a crew of four plus eight SEALs, and is equipped with weapon systems, including miniguns. U.S Navy photo.

While these missions emphasized SWCCs firepower, some of the missions were more clandestine in nature, and the watercraft and weapons they chose for those missions reflected that.

“We were sending guys in dugout canoes with outboard motors for collection operations,” Garn said. “Two guys in a boat with pistols and a radio.”

SWCC also integrated with the SEALs and other special operations forces in unique ways. For example, Garn explained how SWCC joined SEAL platoons to work as drone operators.

“In Iraq, we were doing a lot more intelligence-gathering missions in the rivers,” Garn said. “We got into some hellacious gunfights, the biggest gunfights since the Vietnam War.”

The quiet professionals within the SWCC community have a long, respected history of always delivering on their “On Time, On Target” motto to mesh with American and Allied SOF units around the world.

What SWCC Does Today and How They Train

SWCC is called “the best-kept secret” in the U.S. Navy. U.S. Navy photo.

The primary role of SWCC is to maintain and operate highly advanced gunboats in support of special operations forces missions worldwide.

For example, off the coast of the horn of Africa, SWCC works in tandem with Navy SEALs during anti-piracy operations.

In 2009, Somali pirates hijacked the Maersk Alabama in the Indian Ocean and took the captain hostage — the incident that inspired the movie Captain Phillips. Eventually, the pirates piled into one of the ship’s small lifeboats and fled with Capt. Richard Phillips as a hostage.

While Navy SEAL snipers ultimately took out the pirates on the lifeboat with some amazing synchronized shooting from the fantail of the USS Bainbridge, if the pirates had remained on the merchant vessel, the Navy would have taken a different approach.

SWCC boats and operators would have parachuted into the Indian Ocean alongside the SEALs to conduct a Visit Board Search & Seizure, or VBSS, operation. This would require fast, agile boats to pull alongside the ship.

SEALs inside the SWCC boats would hook caving ladders on the hijacked vessel’s railings, climb aboard, and commence an assault. In order to pull off such a feat, SEALs and SWCC have to work together.

Two U.S. Navy SWCCs engage a target during a joint-fire training exercise with Hellenic Navy operators from Underwater Demolition Command (DYK) in the Aegean Sea near Greece on July 16, 2020. Photo by U.S. Army Sgt. Aven Santiago.

SWCC training is specialized and a bit unique. SEALs and SWCC have a similar pipeline but different selection courses. Unlike other special operations pipelines, officers and enlisted train together.

After time in the fleet or completing Navy recruit training, SEAL and SWCC candidates go to Coronado, California, where the bulk of their training is held.

SEALs and SWCCs both attend a five-week Naval Special Warfare Preparatory Course. Successful candidates move on to a two-week introduction to their own selection courses called Naval Special Warfare Orientation. Finally, those who meet the standard begin the first phase of instruction.

SEAL candidates move on to Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL, or BUD/S, while SWCC candidates go to Basic Crewman Selection, or BCS.

When a SWCC class graduates, its members are rewarded with the Warboat insignia, formally recognizing them as new SWCC operators.

Each course has three phases — BUD/S includes first, second, and third phases, while the SWCC BCS has alpha, bravo, and charlie phases. Each SWCC phase is approximately seven weeks long.

The alpha phase is a gut check consisting of physical training (running, swimming, and calisthenics), teamwork exercises, and classroom instruction. The culminating event — similar to the SEALs’ “Hell Week” — is called “The Tour,” which includes a multi-day exercise designed to simulate combat stressors, such as sleep deprivation, physical and mental exhaustion, and making critical thinking decisions under tight timelines.

The bravo phase teaches students maritime skills, navigation, and weapons handling, and the final charlie phase finally puts candidates inside the NSW Combatant-Craft, so they can get to know it through a series of training missions that include a joint exercise with SEAL candidates.

After additional specialized training, SWCC candidates are pinned with the Warboat insignia, formally recognizing them as new SWCC operators.

Teams, Crewmembers, Boats

U.S. Naval Special Warfare operators climb aboard a simulated enemy ship during a VBSS training mission at the NATO Maritime Interdiction Operational Training Center in Greece on July 31, 2020. Photo by Sgt. Aven Santiago.

In 2002, SWCC was reorganized under Naval Special Warfare Group 4, located in Little Creek, Virginia. Fewer than 1,000 SWCCs are assigned to three Special Boat Teams:

Special Boat Team 12 in Coronado, California
Special Boat Team 20 in Little Creek, Virginia
Special Boat Team 22 in Stennis, Mississippi

Later in a SWCC’s career, more opportunities and special programs are available. This includes Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or SEAL Team 6. However, SWCCs have to attend their own selection course first to become eligible for integration into the Mobility Team within DEVGRU.

Each Special Boat Team also has their own arsenal of high-speed, well-armed boats to operate and maintain. The fleet is designed to fit a variety of mission parameters.

A SWCC deploying a Puma All Environment Unmanned Aircraft System during a training mission in the Aegean Sea near Greece on July 15, 2020. The Puma is designed for surveillance, reconnaissance, and target acquisition in both land and maritime operations. Photo by U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Aven Santiago.

For example, Special Boat Team-12 (SBT-12) currently operates Combat Craft Assault (CCA) for VBSS operations, Combatant Craft-Medium (CCM) for insertion and extraction of SEALs, and Special Operations Personal Watercraft (PWC), aka jet skis. SBT-12 supports missions in the Pacific, Middle East, and wherever else they’re needed.

In contrast, SBT-20 operates CCAs, CCMs, Combatant Craft Heavy (also known as Sea Lions), and PWCs in support of missions primarily in Europe.

SBT-22 has CCAs as well as aluminum-hull, 33-foot-long Special Operations Craft-Riverine for missions along coastal or littoral environments worldwide. The SOC-R can travel up to 40 knots, carry a crew of four plus eight SEALs, and is equipped with weapon systems, including miniguns.

Despite the U.S. pulling out of major combat zones, the Global War on Terror continues to rage in hot spots all over the world. The work of SWCC will remain active, integrating with SEALs and Allied nations, without much fanfare. Their operations will remain close-guarded from the limelight, only to be covered by historians decades after their missions have transpired.

Matt Fratus

Matt Fratus is a history staff writer for Coffee or Die. He prides himself on uncovering the most fascinating tales of history by sharing them through any means of engaging storytelling. He writes for his micro-blog @LateNightHistory on Instagram, where he shares the story behind the image. He is also the host of the Late Night History podcast. When not writing about history, Matt enjoys volunteering for One More Wave and rooting for Boston sports teams.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 17, 2023

Apr 17, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 17, 2023

Karolina Hird, Kateryna Stepanenko, Nicole Wolkov, Grace Mappes, Layne Philipson, and Frederick W. Kagan

April 17, 6pm ET

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin is seemingly regaining some favor with Russian President Vladimir Putin, likely as a result of the Russian conventional military’s inability to accomplish the tasks Putin had set for it during the winter offensive in Donbas. Wagner forces appear to be receiving reinforcements, ammunition, and political recognition – which is a stark deviation from the Kremlin’s previous efforts to expend Wagner forces and Prigozhin in Bakhmut since at least January 2023.[1] Wagner-affiliated sources announced on April 17 that Wagner is training up to three motorized rifle brigades of mobilized personnel to reinforce Wagner‘s flanks in Bakhmut.[2] Prigozhin also confirmed that Russian airborne forces (VDV) are operating alongside Wagner and indicated that Wagner is actively receiving artillery shells.[3] Prigozhin advocated for Wagner to receive more artillery shells, which indicates that Prigozhin has reestablished his supply of ammunition from the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD). The Russian State Duma will also consider amendments to the Russian law on veterans’ rights to grant veteran status to private military companies (PMCs) and volunteers.[4] Prigozhin had been routinely advocating for Wagner personnel to be recognized as participants of the ”special military operation” in Ukraine, and the adoption of this bill would signify that Prigozhin’s position in the Kremlin inner circle has improved.

The extent of Putin’s trust and favor for Prigozhin is unclear at this time, but it is likely that Putin halted the Russian MoD’s efforts to avenge Wagner by denying Wagner reinforcements and ammunition.[5] The New York Times, citing leaked Pentagon documents, reported that Putin personally attempted to resolve the feud between Wagner and the Russian MoD by holding a meeting between Shoigu and Prigozhin on February 22.[6] Putin could be turning back to Prigozhin after experiencing another disappointment with Russian conventional forces, which did not capture Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts frontlines before the April 1 date that Putin had reportedly set for them.[7] Putin is reportedly once again reappointing select Wagner-affiliated commanders such as VDV commander Colonel General Mikhail Teplinsky, which if true, suggests that he is prioritizing a decisive victory at least in Bakhmut in the near term.[8] Putin likely needs an immediate victory in Bakhmut ahead of Victory Day on May 9 or the rumored ”Direct Line” press conference he is preparing to hold in June to assert his authority among domestic audiences.[9]

Putin’s improving relations with Wagner may also be a symptom of his hesitance to increase mobilization and signal a return to crypto mobilization. Putin increased the annual conscription quota from 134,000 conscripts to 147,000 men for the spring 2023 cycle, and likely is experiencing shortages of trainers to prepare conscripts, remaining mobilized personnel, and volunteers.[10] The Kremlin may be hoping to use Wagner trainers to prepare its mobilized forces. ISW had previously reported that the Kremlin outsourced recruitment of personnel to nationalist groups and is currently carrying out large-scale volunteer recruitment campaigns.[11] Wagner is currently recruiting across Russia, and it is possible that the Kremlin may still see Wagner as a feasible source of combat power.

An interview with two former Wagner Group fighters on their treatment of Ukrainian children and other civilians and prisoners of war (POWs) further highlights how Wagner has institutionalized systematic brutality as part of its fundamental modus operandi. Russian human rights organization Gulagu.net released a video interview on April 17 with two former convicts who finished their contracts with Wagner and returned to Russia.[12] One Wagner fighter, Azamat Yaldarov, admitted that Prigozhin ordered his unit to kill children while taking control of Soledar, and that he buried 18 children that he killed in Krasnodar Krai and Saratov and Kirov oblasts.[13] Yaldarov emphasized that Prigozhin gave the order for Wagner fighters to ”eliminate” everyone in Soledar, and that Yaldarov was specifically ordered to kill children. Another Wagner fighter and commander of a reconnaissance unit, Aleksey Savich, told the interviewer that he fired on his own men for disobedience and that he personally witnessed the executions of 80 Wagner fighters for refusing to follow orders. Savich claimed that Wagner command gave the order to kill all civilians in Bakhmut aged 15 and older, and that his unit killed 23 civilians, 10 of whom were unarmed teenagers. Savich recounted other instances from operations in Bakhmut and Soledar in which he murdered children as young as five years old and other civilians. Savich also claimed that Prigozhin has a personal preference for recording videos of the execution of Ukrainian prisoners of war.

The extremely graphic atrocities described by Yaldarov and Savich underscore a slate of recent reports of Wagner’s systematic use of brutality as a method of waging war.[14] Prigozhin and Wagner’s command may actively encourage active engagement in atrocities in an attempt to build social cohesion and reputation within Wagner units. This type of engrained violence is likely to have escalating domestic impacts on Russian domestic society, especially as Wagner fighters complete their contracts and return to their homes. Russian society will have to increasingly work to handle the normalized brutality committed by its forces as they reintegrate into the domestic sphere, which will likely have generational domestic societal ramifications.

The Gulagu.net interview with the two former Wagner fighters provides valuable insight into Wagner’s force structure and operational prioritization. Yaldarov claimed that he was the commander of Wagner’s 5th Assault Detachment and that he trained with a special unit that specifically taught him to kill.[15] Yaldarov stated that the higher Wagner command gave his unit the order to place a flag on likely the Bakhmut administrative building and that he was not allowed to leave Bakhmut until after its capture. Considering the fact that Yaldarov gave the interview from his home in Russia because he was released from his contract, his anecdote about the administrative building may suggest that Wagner considered the capture of the administrative building and the central Bakhmut area to be threshold for announcing the capture of the city. The apparent return of Putin’s favor to Prigozhin may have resulted in part from Prigozhin’s ability to claim the capture of Bakhmut — his objective — while the Russian MoD’s conventional forces failed to achieve any of their objectives. Yaldarov’s account of Prigozhin’s orders for Wagner troops to massacre civilians and everyone they came across in Soledar in early January additionally indicates that Prigozhin pushed for the quick capture of the settlement and ordered his fighters to take it essentially at any cost. Both Yaldarov and Savich emphasize the way that the Wagner command demands brutal treatment of Wagner dissenters within the ranks and the operational reliance on attritional assaults carried out by convict recruits.

The Moscow City Court sentenced Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza to 25 years in prison on the charge of high treason for Kara-Murza's criticism of the Kremlin and the war in Ukraine.[16] The 25-year sentence is the longest and harshest for an opposition activist to date.[17] Kara-Murza's sentencing comes as the Kremlin has continued to intensify domestic repression of dissenting voices through escalated legislative manipulations.[18] The Russian State Duma previously approved amendments to the Russian Criminal Code on April 13 that will introduce life sentences for high treason and increase prison sentences for terrorist activity.[19] Kara-Murza's high-profile case and sentencing are emblematic of the wider trend in Russia towards total and codified authoritarianism.

Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on April 16 and pledged to strengthen military exchanges and cooperation between Russia and China. Li stated that he had arrived in Moscow to implement Chinese President Xi Jinping’s agreement with Putin from late March and claimed that Russian-Chinese relations “have already entered a new era.”[20] Li noted that China is prepared to work with Russia to “strengthen strategic communication between the two militaries, strengthen multilateral coordination and cooperation, and make new contributions to safeguarding regional and global security for peace.”[21] Official Russian and Chinese readouts did not include any mentions of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Wang Wenbin reiterated China’s intent to promote peace talks in Ukraine and continuation of cooperation which Xi and Putin agreed upon previously.[22] ISW previously assessed that Putin was unable to secure a no-limits bilateral partnership with China during Xi’s visit to Moscow, and it is likely that the meeting between Li and Putin did not further expand the scope of Russian-Chinese cooperation.

Putin continued efforts to portray Russia as an equal defense partner with China and a Pacific naval power amidst Li’s visit. Putin stated that the Russian military is prioritizing the war in Ukraine but continues to develop the Russian Pacific Fleet during his meeting with the Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu on April 17.[23] Shoigu stated that recent Russian combat readiness drills involved 25,000 military personnel, 167 warships and support vessels, and 89 planes and helicopters. Shoigu stated that Russian forces are currently conducting maneuver exercises and are moving to the southern part of the Sea of Okhotsk. Shoigu claimed that the final drills will begin on April 18, a day before Li’s departure from Russia. ISW assessed on April 14 that the Russian Pacific Fleet‘s combat readiness checks are likely meant to signal to China that Russia supports Chinese security objectives in the Pacific, especially ahead of the G7 meeting in Japan between May 19 and May 21.[24]

Former Russian officer and ardent nationalist Igor Girkin’s newly formed “Club of Angry Patriots” published its manifesto focused on protecting pro-war factions in the Kremlin from possible “sabotage” and “betrayal.” The “Club of Angry Patriots” published its manifesto on April 17 on its newly created Telegram channel, which emphasizes protecting pro-war factions in the Kremlin instead of efforts to win the war in Ukraine.[25] The manifesto claims that unspecified actors who remain in power in Russia have transferred their money and allegiance to the West and may be preparing for a coup and the ”dismemberment” of the Russia Federation. The manifesto likens the Kremlin‘s pro-war and anti-war factions to the fight between the Reds and Whites in the Russian Civil War following the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. The manifesto also claims that Russia is currently fighting the war in a mediocre way and is unable to defeat Ukraine in its current state. ISW previously assessed that Girkin and the “Club of Angry Patriots” may be attempting to advance the political goals of unnamed figures in Russian power structures who want to influence Putin’s decision making through public discourse.[26]

Key Takeaways

Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin is seemingly regaining some favor with Russian President Vladimir Putin likely as a result of the Russian conventional military’s inability to accomplish the tasks Putin had set for it during the winter offensive in Donbas. The extent of Putin’s trust and favor for Prigozhin is unclear at this time, but it is likely that Putin halted the Russian MoD’s efforts to avenge Wagner by denying Wagner reinforcements and ammunition.
An interview with two former Wagner Group fighters on their treatment of Ukrainian children and other civilians and prisoners of war (POWs) further highlights how Wagner has institutionalized systematic brutality as part of its fundamental modus operandi.
The Gulagu.net interview with the two former Wagner fighters provides valuable insight into Wagner’s force structure and operational prioritization.
The Moscow City Court sentenced Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza to 25 years in prison on the charge of high treason for Kara-Murza's criticism of the Kremlin and the war in Ukraine.
Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on April 16 and pledged to strengthen military exchanges and cooperation between Russia and China. Putin continued efforts to portray Russia as an equal defense partner with China and a Pacific naval power amidst Li’s visit.
Former Russian officer and ardent nationalist Igor Girkin’s newly formed “Club of Angry Patriots” published its manifesto focused on protecting pro-war factions in the Kremlin from possible “sabotage” and “betrayal.”
Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks northeast of Kupyansk and south of Kreminna.
Russian forces have made further gains in Bakhmut and continued ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.
Russian forces continued defensive preparations in southern Ukraine.
The Kremlin’s transition to electronic summonses distribution is continuing to complicate Russian conscription procedures.
Russian occupation authorities continue to discuss the provision of Russian passports in occupied areas of Ukraine.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
Activities in Russian-occupied areas

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks northeast of Kupyansk and south of Kreminna on April 17. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful ground attacks near Synkivka (8km northeast of Kupyansk), Hryhorivka (11km south of Kreminna), and Spirne (25km south of Kreminna).[27] A Russian milblogger claimed that fighting occurred near Kolomyichykha (10km west of Svatove) and that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful ground attacks near Torske, Terny, Nevske (all 14 to 18km west or northwest of Kreminna) and Bilohorivka (12km south of Kreminna).[28] A Russian milblogger claimed on April 16 that Russian forces made limited advances south of Ploshchanka (16km northwest of Kreminna) and that fighting occurred near the Serebrianska forest area (10km south of Kreminna).[29] Footage published on April 17 purportedly shows Russian forces, likely airborne (VDV) elements, using TOS-1A thermobaric artillery systems near Kreminna.[30] A milblogger claimed on April 17 that Russian aircraft made more sorties in the Svatove direction than he “had seen in a long time.”[31]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian Objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Russian forces have made further gains in Bakhmut as of April 17. Geolocated footage posted on April 16 shows that Wagner Group forces have advanced north of the T0504 Kostyantynivka-Chasiv Yar-Bakhmut route along the main railway in Bakhmut.[32] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that assault detachments, likely referring to Wagner Group forces, seized two unspecified quarters in northwestern and central Bakhmut.[33] A Russian milblogger claimed that Wagner forces advanced in northern Bakhmut, are attempting to gain a foothold between Bakhmut and Khromove (2km west of Bakhmut), and are fighting for control of the railway in central Bakhmut.[34] The milblogger also claimed that conventional Russian forces are engaging in positional battles north of Bakhmut.[35] Another milblogger claimed that Wagner forces continue to conduct ground attacks in northern, western, and southern Bakhmut.[36] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted ground attacks in Bakhmut, northwest of Bakhmut near Khromove, and southwest of Bakhmut near Ivanivske (3km southwest) and Predtechyne (12km southwest).[37] Other milbloggers claimed that Russian Airborne (VDV) forces and 2nd Luhansk People’s Republic Army Corps personnel have formed a continuous line of defense along Wagner’s northern flank on the Zalizhnyanske-Sakko i Vanzetti-Mykolaivka-Yakovlivka-Berestove line, and that the Russian 106th VDV Division is operating on this line near Soledar.[38]

Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin attempted to justify slow Wagner advances within Bakhmut on April 17, likely in an attempt to pressure the Russian MoD into providing Wagner with a consistent and adequate supply of artillery shells. Prigozhin claimed that Wagner forces need at least 6,000 shells, over an unspecified period of time, to advance more than 100-200 meters per day.[39] Prigozhin claimed that Wagner forces would sustain fewer casualties if they receive more shells.[40] Prigozhin has previously criticized the MoD for failing to provide Wagner with enough artillery shells and called on the information space to pressure the MoD into providing more.[41]

Russian forces continued ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on April 17. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful ground attacks near Novokalynove (8km north of Avdiivka), Sieverne (5km west of Avdiivka), Vodyane (8km southwest of Avdiivka), Pervomaiske (11km southwest of Avdiivka), Nevelske (6km northwest of Donetsk City), and in Marinka (27km southwest of Avdiivka).[42] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful ground attacks towards Avdiivka from the immediate south near Opytne and immediate east from Kruta Balka.[43] Former Russian officer Igor Girkin claimed that several unspecified Russian assault companies sustained significant casualties in the Avdiivka direction during ineffective ”meat assaults,” which Girkin claimed Russian forces have conducted for well over a year.[44] Ukrainian Joint Press Center of the Tavriisk Defense Forces Spokesperson Colonel Oleksiy Dmytrashkivskyi stated that Russian forces withdrew two unspecified VDV units from the Marinka direction to unspecified areas to recover from casualties.[45]

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed or claimed ground attacks in western Donetsk Oblast on April 17. The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces repelled three Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups near Novomykhailivka (10km southwest of Donetsk City).[46]

Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Russian forces continued defensive preparations in southern Ukraine on April 17. Ukrainian military sources stated that Russian forces are building fortifications and defensive lines in Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts.[47] Russian milbloggers warned that Ukrainian forces are preparing for counteroffensive actions in the Kherson and Zaporizhia directions, and one Russian source noted that Russian forces are “uneasy” and regrouping out of concern for Ukrainian attacks.[48] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command noted that Russian forces added another surface missile carrier to the Black Sea ship grouping and that there is now a total of 16 Kalibr missiles in the Black Sea.[49] Russian forces continued routine shelling along the southern frontline.[50]

Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

The Kremlin’s transition to electronic summonses distribution is continuing to complicate Russian conscription procedures. The Russian Ministry of Digital Development stated on April 17 that there are no legal grounds for the distribution of electronic conscription summons though the Russian “Gosuslugi” state services portal as the law digitizing military records does not specify that “Gosuslugi” would send summonses.[51] The Ministry added that the Russian government must establish a method of sending summonses through a separate bill that has not been adopted at this time. The Ministry’s statement followed an announcement by Moscow City military recruitment officer Maksim Lokteyev, who noted that the city will be electronically distributing summonses for the spring 2023 conscription cycle via the “Gosuslugi” platform, SMS messages, and phones calls.[52] Russian State Duma Chairman of the Defense Committee, Andrey Kartapolov, previously stated that the law on digitizing military records would not affect the current spring conscription cycle.[53]

Russian officials are continuing crypto-mobilization and volunteer recruitment campaigns across Russia. Omsk Oblast officials are recruiting Rosgvardia (Russian National Guard) personnel to serve in occupied Donetsk Oblast.[54] Khabarovsk Krai began advertising volunteer recruitment on the NTV federal channel.[55] Republic of Bashkortostan Prime Minister Andrey Nazarov stated that Bashkortostan’s volunteer battalions are competing against military recruitment for an unspecified reason and discouraged the continuation of such a rivalry.[56]

Russian opposition outlets are continuing to calculate the total decline of the Russian prison population following the Wagner Group’s expansive prisoner recruitment campaign since summer of 2022. Russian opposition outlet Mediazona reported that the prisoner population across 35 Russian regions decreased by 17,248 prisoners towards the beginning of 2023.[57] Mediazona reported that the most prisoners disappeared in Samara, Chelyabinsk, and Kirov oblasts, and in the Republic of Tatarstan of the 35 regions.[58] Mediazona reported that Russian Federal Penitentiary Service indicated the disappearance of 32,890 prisoners across Russia.

Wagner is continuing to create burial grounds in the Russian fields and forests likely because it lacks official permission to bury deceased fighters in local cemeteries. A Russian independent outlet published a video showing a Wagner burial ground near Irkutsk City with 57 graves for convicts from Zabaykalsky Krai, Republic of Buryatia, and Irkutsk Oblast.[59] A former Wagner commander told the Russian human rights organization Gulagu.net that Wagner buries empty coffins in the fields because Wagner servicemen are unable to retrieve or identify corpses.[60]

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian civilians into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Russian occupation authorities continue to discuss the provision of Russian passports in occupied areas of Ukraine. The Kakhovka, Kherson Oblast occupation administration claimed on April 17 that its passport specialists received 90 applications for Russian passports from residents of the area.[61] The Ukrainian Luhansk Oblast Military Administration noted that the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) ordered Russian occupation authorities to submit lists of Russian passport-holders in occupied areas to military enlistment offices by April 18.[62] Russian officials will continue to push passportization measures in order to consolidate administrative control of occupied territories and to expand the military mobilization pool within occupied Ukraine.

Significant activity in Belarus (ISW assesses that a Russian or Belarusian attack into northern Ukraine in early 2023 is extraordinarily unlikely and has thus restructured this section of the update. It will no longer include counter-indicators for such an offensive.) ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus, but these are not indicators that Russian and Belarusian forces are preparing for an imminent attack on Ukraine from Belarus. ISW will revise this text and its assessment if it observes any unambiguous indicators that Russia or Belarus is preparing to attack northern Ukraine.

Belarusian forces continued combat exercises in Belarus on April 17. The Belarusian Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported that Belarusian Airborne troops practiced landing techniques jumping out of Il-76 aircraft in Brest Oblast.[63] The Belarusian MoD also reported that the joint Russian-Belarusian Regional Group of Forces continues training in Belarus.[64]

Belarusian outlet Zerkalo reported on April 17 that the employees of the Belarusian State Security Committee (KGB) are inspecting the homes of Ukrainians permanently residing in Belarus and asking them questions about communication with family in Ukraine, which side they support in the war, and their opinions on Belarusian authorities.[65]

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

[1] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[2] https://t.me/brussinf/5870; https://t.me/z_arhiv/20374

[3] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/770

[4] https://ura dot news/news/1052641820

[5] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/13/world/europe/russia-intelligence-leaks.html?unlocked_article_code=0vNFu2wYygsv7K_JVxx6tnrYwRPw09tFZ9jAQNHvwYzhbTuLhtVNiNOj6SkBEf9RYh-P_O6g6fvLXJLjO57kwif6zHUje8LG7eMzikQYHDrO9QtSckylVr0JW3cXez9c8TeqcH8MOYMBZNVJ4UxsQzexMIKpFzS0oVSqlTXVsFU8dKiCr3OGedbyXcHQu1NGJWLUSq9Qu169D5q5O0bFIFCQbf9vYJgHz6SyoHDCD1imVbgj5wKxJqna1e1vk-ZzYApyO3K-dUYc3DbXo5dVgwWOJwvLkXrS35AzdJeUkorc-CZEcqC69CkXz9dTOWY92BIiLJ4W9go7Usp1_6TjiurPiZ1l14BA&smid=url-share

[7] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-1-2023

[8] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[9] https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-14-2023

[10] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-30-2023

[11] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[12] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYqdso9Hx_8

[13] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYqdso9Hx_8

[14] https://isw.pub/UkrWar021323; https://isw.pub/UkrWar041223

[15] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYqdso9Hx_8

[16] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/04/17/world/russia-ukraine-news?smid=url-share#vladimir-kara-murza-a-fierce-putin-critic-is-handed-a-25-year-prison-sentence; https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-journalists-demand-politician-kara-murzas-release-ahead-stalinist-2023-04-10/; https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/apr/17/russia-ukraine-war-live-verdict-due-in-treason-trial-of-kremlin-critic-putin-meets-chinese-defence-minister; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/17/moscow-jails-vladimir-kara...

[17] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-17/putin-critic-jailed-f...

[18] https://isw.pub/UkrWar041023; https://isw.pub/UkrWar013123

[19] https://isw.pub/UkrWar041023

[20] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/70941

[21] https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/16/china/china-defense-minister-visit-russia-vladimir-putin-li-shangfu-intl-hnk/index.html

[22] https://www.fmprc dot gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/202304/t20230417_11060585.html

[23] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/70942

[24] https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass...

[25] https://t.me/KRPRus/2

[26] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-8-2023

[27]https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0ouT5L5hWGcgyiwxZrb1RHVg9XxG4EaMUSH9BoFf5BQYEJiMyZwwsjzjqcmJLgQQsl; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0oCc6AHRo4UptyaGDxxJK5qU7rvgthfo9GizHnLTFeTy3VGTEPw2p3UhuFRCJH7edl

[28] https://t.me/wargonzo/11995

[29] https://t.me/rybar/45892

[30] https://t.me/milinfolive/99378; https://t.me/m0sc0wcalling/23020

[31] https://t.me/vysokygovorit/11331

[32] https://t.me/WarArchive_ua/776; https://twitter.com/JagdBandera/status/1647679407257952262 ; https://twitter.com/neonhandrail/status/1647988787660865536?s=20 ; https://t.me/umftteam/84

[33] https://t.me/mod_russia/25731

[34] https://t.me/rybar/45892; https://t.me/rybar/45916

[35] https://t.me/rybar/45916

[36] https://t.me/wargonzo/11995

[37]https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0oCc6AHRo4UptyaGDxxJK5qU7rvgthfo9GizHnLTFeTy3VGTEPw2p3UhuFRCJH7edl; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0ouT5L5hWGcgyiwxZrb1...

[38] https://t.me/boris_rozhin/83203; https://t.me/rlz_the_kraken/57773; https://t.me/epoddubny/15584; https://t.me/wargonzo/12011; https://www.kp dot ru/daily/27490.5/4749268/; https://t.me/sashakots/39341

[39] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/770

[40] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[41] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[42]https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0ouT5L5hWGcgyiwxZrb1RHVg9XxG4EaMUSH9BoFf5BQYEJiMyZwwsjzjqcmJLgQQsl; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0oCc6AHRo4UptyaGDxxJ...

[43] https://t.me/wargonzo/11995

[44] https://t.me/strelkovii/4560

[45] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/04/17/oleksij-dmytrashkivskyj-rozpoviv-pro-manevry-rosiyan-na-tavrijskomu-napryamku/; https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/04/17/oleksij-dmytrashkivskyj-rozpoviv-pro-manevry-rosiyan-na-tavrijskomu-napryamku/

[46] https://t.me/mod_russia/25732

[47] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/04/17/oleksij-dmytrashkivskyj-rozpoviv-pro-manevry-rosiyan-na-tavrijskomu-napryamku/; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0ouT5L5hWGcgyiwxZrb1RHVg9XxG4EaMUSH9BoFf5BQYEJiMyZwwsjzjqcmJLgQQsl; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0oCc6AHRo4UptyaGDxxJK5qU7rvgthfo9GizHnLTFeTy3VGTEPw2p3UhuFRCJH7edl

[48] https://t.me/rybar/45890; https://t.me/wargonzo/11995

[49]https://www.facebook.com/OperationalCommandSouth/posts/pfbid0mNEbJtKJq3P78ht8bqfhaQsdnEz9HuExHhJCvg7g6bgTEk4E4vsvNTdEavqdAr3vl

[50]https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0ouT5L5hWGcgyiwxZrb1RHVg9XxG4EaMUSH9BoFf5BQYEJiMyZwwsjzjqcmJLgQQsl; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0oCc6AHRo4UptyaGDxxJK5qU7rvgthfo9GizHnLTFeTy3VGTEPw2p3UhuFRCJH7edl; https://t.me/mod_russia/25732; https://t.me/wargonzo/11995; https://twitter.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1647949697016037377?s=20; https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1647584877930246145?s=20

[51] https://www.rbc dot ru/politics/17/04/2023/643d6b2e9a7947c7f8324023; https://t.me/istories_media/2368

[52] https://www.rbc dot ru/politics/17/04/2023/643d6b2e9a7947c7f8324023

[53] ttps://www.rbc dot ru/politics/17/04/2023/643d6b2e9a7947c7f8324023; https://t.me/istories_media/2368

[54] https://t.me/mobilizationnews/11169

[55] https://t.me/astrapress/25088;

[56] https://www.kommersant dot ru/doc/5939479

[57] https://zona dot media/article/2023/04/17/17000

[58] https://d1hjclf8o8eabf.cloudfront.net/a/32367408.html; https://zona dot media/article/2023/04/17/17000

[59] https://t.me/mobilizationnews/11179; https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1647991946030227457?s=20; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gtjmtuTAWE

[60] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYqdso9Hx_8

[61] https://t.me/VGA_Kherson/8688

[62] https://t.me/luhanskaVTSA/9887

[63] https://t.me/modmilby/25901

[64] https://t.me/modmilby/25899

[65] https://t.me/astrapress/25099; https://news.zerkalo dot io/life/37076.html?tg

How one man went from China’s Communist party golden child to enemy of the state

Experts say Xu Zhiyong’s fate symbolises the rise and fall of China’s ill-fated rights movement

The Guardian · by Verna Yu · April 16, 2023

Xu Zhiyong’s dream is for China to become a democratic country that is “beautiful, free, fair and happy.” It is a simple wish, yet in the eyes of the authorities, his vision is dangerous and subversive.

The 50-year-old human rights lawyer and champion of social equality was sentenced to 14 years in jail earlier this month, along with fellow activist and lawyer Ding Jiaxi, who was jailed for 12 years. Both were convicted of the crime of “subversion of state power.”

The Communist party-controlled court has accused Xu of intending to overthrow the current regime by promoting his vision of “a beautiful China.” According to a court indictment, with a series of articles, blogs, websites and secret meetings, Xu, Ding and other activists were “seriously endangering national security and social stability.”

Detained activist fears for missing zero-Covid protesters in China

But the government once felt very differently about Xu, and experts say Xu’s dramatic life symbolises the rise and fall of China’s ill-fated rights movement.

Twenty years ago, Xu was a golden boy feted by the Chinese government and the state media. Along with fellow PhD law graduates Teng Biao and Yu Jiang, he successfully lobbied the national legislature to abolish rules on detaining and repatriating migrants after a young man was beaten to death in custody. The trio were hailed by the Ministry of Justice and state broadcaster CCTV as “the top ten legal figures of 2003.”

The “Sun Zhigang incident” in 2003, named after the young man who died, marked the beginning of China’s rights defence movement.

In the following years, Xu and Teng made it their mission to seek justice for the underprivileged. They and other lawyers set up the Open Constitution Institute, a non-profit legal aid centre, to provide free legal advice for people with grievances. Xu also campaigned for children of migrant workers’ education rights, investigated extralegal “black jails” which locked up petitioners and wrote research reports on social issues. He was showered with awards by the state media, and was named one of “Ten most outstanding young leaders” by a state-run magazine in 2006.

But as Xu’s popularity grew, the authorities became increasingly wary. In 2009 the authorities closed Open Constitution Institute, accusing it of tax evasion. Xu, a lecturer, was taken into custody and barred from teaching.

Upon his release in 2009, he said in an interview that his vision remained unchanged: “I dream of a country that has democracy, rule of law, equality, and justice … a simple and happy society.”

Protesters in Taiwan call for the release of Xu Zhiyong and other activists Photograph: Wiktor Dąbkowski/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock

In the following years, Xu set up the social campaign New Citizens Movement, a loose network of activists who met regularly to discuss rights issues and the country’s future. When Xi Jinping came to power in late 2012, Xu wrote an open letter, challenging him to implement constitutional democracy. Around then, the police stepped up their surveillance on him, frequently detaining him or putting him under house arrest .

Xu would end up paying dearly for his dream.

‘Someone has to pay a price’

After staging protests for equal rights for migrant children and demanding official transparency over private assets, Xu was arrested in July 2013 and jailed in January 2014 for “assembling a crowd to disrupt order in a public place.” He wept when his lawyer showed him a picture of his baby daughter, born two weeks before the sentencing.

Even after his release in 2017, he insisted on pushing his civil society initiatives – efforts that the court indictment called “subverting state power through advocating non-violent ‘colour revolution’.” After a gathering of about 20 lawyers and activists in Fujian province in December 2019, the authorities arrested more than half of the participants, including Ding. While hiding, Xu published an essay to urge Xi to resign over the coronavirus crisis and the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests. He was arrested in Guangzhou in February 2020 and along with Ding, were tried in June 2022 for “subversion of state power.”

Teng Biao (left), Yu Jiang (middle) and Xu Zhiyong (right) on their PhD graduation day at Peking University in 2002 Photograph: Teng Biao

Fellow activist Teng Biao said Xu’s strong conviction of democratic values, his advocacy for non-violent regime change and ability to attract supporters, are seen by the Communist party as “a huge threat.”

“His determination and beliefs in freedom and democracy was directly opposite that of the Communist dictatorship,” Teng said.

William Nee, a researcher at US-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders, says Xu’s two-decade career is “a mirror that reflects the dampened hopes for what China could have been.”

The Communist party has reason to fear idealistic activists with a sense of mission -- before it came to power in 1949, the underground Communist party grew quickly through networks of young intellectuals who swore to fight dictatorship under the Nationalist government.

Eva Pils, a law professor at King’s College London, says Xu and Ding’s harsh sentencing may not achieve its intended effect. Last November’s nationwide protests “must have reminded the [authorities] of the enduring potential of resistance to autocratic governance.”

“Chinese human rights defenders are a very resilient lot,” she said.

Xu’s will has certainly not been broken. In his self-defence, he wrote: “Dictatorship shall end, democracy shall come.” According to Teng, after his sentencing last Monday, he told the court: “Dawn will soon come.”

However, observers fear that the long sentence and harsh conditions of jails means Xu and Ding may never come out of jail alive.

Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo, who was sentenced to 11 years, died in jail in 2017. But Xu has always said he was aware of the heavy cost of his dream.

“I think it’s glorious to sacrifice for the sake of social progress and fighting injustice.” he said under house arrest in a phone interview in 2012. “For the world to become a better place, someone has to pay a price.”

The Guardian · by Verna Yu · April 16, 2023

5. Mauled Russian units, shrinking Ukrainian stocks: Leaks suggest both sides hold mixed hands for next phase of war

Mauled Russian units, shrinking Ukrainian stocks: Leaks suggest both sides hold mixed hands for next phase of war | CNN

CNN · by Tim Lister · April 16, 2023

Ukrainian soldiers load ammunition into the 2s9 artillery vehicle in the direction of Avdivka in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, on April 14, 2023.

Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

CNN —

There are several significant takeaways from the leaked US documents about the course of the conflict in Ukraine.

Russian ground forces in the country are approaching exhaustion and there are few reinforcements available. Ukrainian air defenses are depleted, making any counteroffensive vulnerable to Russian air superiority. And the United States does not expect the war to end this year.

The 53 documents reviewed by CNN provide a snapshot of capabilities and vulnerabilities as perceived by the US Defense Department in the first quarter of this year.

Snapshots are inherently risky: Circumstances change, as do resources and intentions. But the documents tend to confirm that Ukrainian forces are preparing for an offensive and that Russia is putting extensive effort into holding what it already has, while looking to aviation to blunt any Ukrainian attacks.

And if the Russians were unaware of the way the Ukrainian military would design its counteroffensive, the documents may have given them some useful indicators.

Ukrainian servicemen fire a D-30 howitzer at Russian positions near Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine, on March 21, 2023.

Sergey Shestak/AFP/Getty Images

Russian brigades mauled

Several of the documents, which appear to date largely from February and March, tend to confirm that Russia has committed the vast majority of its army battalions to its war on in Ukraine. Despite the mobilization last autumn, which potentially added 300,000 soldiers to the Russian ranks, a significant minority of these battalions are described as “combat ineffective” – short of men and equipment.

One document says that 527 out of 544 available Russian battalions are committed to the operation, and 474 are already inside Ukraine. A substantial number are deployed in the south of the country – with an estimated 23,000 personnel in Zaporizhzhia and another 15,000 in Kherson. That suggests the Russians expect any Ukrainian offensive to target that region.

But in Donetsk, for example, 19 out of 91 battalions were adjudged as “combat ineffective.”

Russia still has vast inventories of hardware, but the documents suggest that some of the best has already been lost, and older, less reliable armor is being dusted off. One says that Russia continued to fall behind stated goals for replenishing equipment and personnel, and was incorporating “older, less accurate munitions systems.”

The documents provide some startling estimates, suggesting that at one point early this year Russia had 419 tanks in theater, but had lost a staggering 2,048 during the conflict. They also suggest that at that time, Ukraine had more armored personnel carriers (APCs) and fighting vehicles in the field than did Russia.

This feeds into a broader estimate of what the Pentagon calls combat sustainability – the ability to continue fighting. While assessing both sides as having ‘moderate’ sustainability, Russian ground forces are at 63%; the Ukrainians at 83%.

According to documents obtained by the Washington Post, this degradation extends to Russian special forces, or Spetsnaz. One satellite image published by the Post showed the half-empty base of a Spetsnaz brigade in southern Russia in November 2022, with the comment that “all but one of five Russian Separate Spetsnaz Brigades that returned from combat operations in Ukraine in late summer 2022 suffered significant losses.”

CNN has not reviewed that document and cannot verify its contents. But throughout the conflict, Russian military bloggers and others have reported on the losses of special forces as they have been misused – often being thrown into battles where regular troops have failed.

Given that special forces require several years of training and play a critical offensive role, such losses are undoubtedly damaging.

A member of Ukraine's mobile air defense group, or so-called drone hunters, checks a Browning machine gun on top of a pick up truck at the Hostomel airfield near Kyiv, Ukraine, on April 1, 2023.

Maxym Marusenko/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Open skies

While Ukraine’s ground forces may be in better shape than the enemy’s, especially once 12 new brigades mentioned in one leak are fully trained and equipped, its reliance on Soviet-era air defenses points to a growing vulnerability, according to the documents obtained by CNN. This in turn may give the Russian air force freedom of the skies to blunt any Ukrainian ground offensive.

One of the leaked documents detailed how Ukrainian stocks of Soviet-era medium-range air defense missiles were severely depleted. Ominously, it suggested that Ukraine had run out of munitions for the highly capable German-made Iris-T air defense system by February.

“Ukraine’s ability to provide medium-range air defense to protect the FLOT (front line) will be completely reduced by May 23,” stated one document from February.

As one layer vanishes, so other layers must be used to compensate, “reducing the ability to defend against Russian aerial attacks from all altitudes.” The inability to protect ground forces could mean Ukraine “loses the ability to strike, support and resupply” during any counteroffensive, according to the document.

Ukrainian officials are constantly asking Western partners for more air defense weaponry and one document talks of a three- to six-month window in which to solicit further Western contributions.

Just how vulnerable the Ukrainians are in the skies is indicated by another leaked document, which says the combat sustainability of the Russian air force stands at 92%; that of the Ukrainian air force at 68%. The Russian air force is much larger, while the Ukrainians are yet to receive pledges of any modern Western combat planes.

Matthew Schmidt, associate professor of national security at the University of New Haven, says he worries that Russia is “preparing its air force to devastate Kyiv once the counteroffensive starts,” in an effort to deepen what he calls a spiritual exhaustion among Ukrainian civilians.

A man stands outside a burning house after shelling in the town of Chasiv Yar, near Bakhmut, on March 21, 2023.

Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images

The Ukrainian counteroffensive

There is considerable detail in the documents obtained by CNN about the training and equipping of the 12 brigades Ukraine is building for its counteroffensive (though crucially no discussion of where, when and how such an offensive will happen.)

The documents provide specifics on how each brigade will be equipped, which could potentially be useful to Russian commanders.

“It depends on whether the Russians think they can use it to do really good psychological profiles on the decision-making styles of commanders in order to be able manipulate and exploit that knowledge in battle,” Schmidt told CNN.

The Ukrainians are likely debating how these units should form up for what are known as Combined Arms Maneuvers, which simultaneously integrate different military capabilities.

The Russians will be looking for signs of where the brigades are deployed and whether they will be split up to enable supporting or diversionary attacks. But the Russians’ own intentions may not be watertight, according to some of the documents which disclose US penetration of Russian military communications. This disclosure alone is significant and may disrupt Russian planning, but at the same time may provide them with clues about their vulnerabilities.

Another interesting strand to emerge from the documents: The Russians are getting creative about procuring weapons. One leak reported by the Washington Post, which CNN cannot verify, suggests Moscow was seeking thousands of rockets from Egypt. Egyptian officials have denied any such deal was in the works.

Another document seen by CNN says that US intelligence was aware of efforts by the Wagner private military company to obtain Turkish weapons through the African state of Mali, where it has a presence.

CNN has not independently confirmed the veracity of the documents, but US officials have indicated that most of the leaked tranche are authentic. CNN has reached out to the US National Security Council, the office of the Turkish president and Turkey’s embassy in Washington for comment on the document.

Additionally, there is a suggestion that China is ready to supply lethal equipment to Russia, while wanting to keep it secret. The Washington Post cited “signals intelligence” indicating Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service had reported that China’s Central Military Commission had “approved the incremental provision” of weapons.

In response to a request for comment from CNN, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s office said Beijing had always “adhered to an objective and fair stance on the Ukrainian issue” and “controlled the export of dual-use items according to laws and regulations.”

There’s been no evidence of lethal equipment directly supplied by China turning up on the battlefield, but a steady flow of weapons could significantly affect the military balance. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken hinted that Washington was aware of Chinese plans in late February, saying that, “The concern that we have now is based in information we have that they’re considering providing lethal support.”

A local resident walks past a damaged church and a destroyed Russian tank in the town of Svyatogirsk, Donetsk region, on March 1, 2023.

Anatolii Stepanov/AFP/Getty Images

The reaction

While expressing annoyance over the disclosures, Ukraine has played down their significance. Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov described them as “a mixture of true, false and outdated information.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was perhaps a little more mischievous, saying Friday that, “Our focus is to thoroughly examine this data, while also critically assessing its authenticity, but to study it meticulously.”

However, Peskov dismissed reports in some of the documents that purportedly speak of rifts within Russian elites – and especially between the Federal Security Service (FSB) and Defense Ministry.

The FSB is reported to have been unhappy about the Defense Ministry’s under-reporting of casualties, according to documents reported by the New York Times which have not been seen by CNN. The finding highlights “the continuing reluctance of military officials to convey bad news up the chain of command,” according to the documents.

Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov attends the Eurasian Economic Summit on November 9, 2022 in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

Contributor/Getty Images

The Times also reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin summoned Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin to a Kremlin meeting in late February to resolve their differences.

That dispute has been widely reported, not least by Prigozhin himself.

Turf battles within the Russian establishment are perennial. CNN contributor Jill Dougherty notes that, “Putin has always tried to balance one group against the other, people who already had some power or wanted more power or influence.”

But she added that Putin has been forced to be the moderator between Prigozhin and Shoigu. “It’s destabilizing and undermines his control.”

Beyond 2023

Ukrainian officials have regularly spoken of anticipating victory this year. But the US documents seen by CNN suggest the Pentagon thinks that unlikely.

One document says, “Russia’s grinding campaign of attrition in the Donbas region is likely heading toward a stalemate, thwarting Moscow’s goal to capture the entire region in 2023.” Another says that the damage done to Russian forces means that Moscow’s goals will be frustrated, “resulting in a protracted war beyond 2023.”

But Ukraine can’t afford a stalemate; denying Russia victory is not enough. The economy is on life support, the government’s budget heavily dependent on Western grants and loans.

For the one-third of the population already displaced, the idea of going home may slowly fade away.

Schmidt says: “The idea that this is a winnable war is as important to sustaining support as that it’s a just war. Despite the operational-level success of Ukraine, Russia still holds the strategic advantage.”

The documents that have appeared over the past week suggest that each side holds a very mixed hand. What they can’t measure is the determination, ingenuity and commitment that will be necessary to gain the advantage.

CNN · by Tim Lister · April 16, 2023

6. How the Ukraine war has divided the world

Conclusion:

The US may be right that the war in Ukraine is a struggle of transcendent significance. But if it cannot persuade or browbeat the rest of the world into agreement, America’s own global position may be eroded.

How the Ukraine war has divided the world

China is making diplomatic progress with countries that are unhappy about America’s approach to the conflict

GIDEON RACHMAN

Financial Times · by Gideon Rachman · April 17, 2023

While Joe Biden was on a sentimental journey to Ireland, Xi Jinping was busy in Beijing. Following a high-profile visit by President Emmanuel Macron of France, the Chinese leader played host to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil.

The messaging to emerge from the Lula-Xi summit was congenial to China and disturbing to the US. Brazil’s leader said that his country wanted to work with China to “balance world politics” and accused America of “incentivising” the war in Ukraine. He also backed a longstanding Chinese goal of undermining the US dollar’s role in the world financial system, remarking: “Every night I ask myself why all countries have to base their trade on the dollar.”

China has also made recent headway with its Middle East diplomacy. This month, the foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia met in Beijing, after China brokered a deal to restore diplomatic relations between the two powers.

The preferred messages to the world from Xi and China are clear: “While America promotes war, China promotes peace. While China promotes trade, America imposes economic sanctions.”

These developments are causing some concern in Washington. Larry Summers, the former US Treasury secretary, spoke last week of “troubling” signs that America was losing global influence. He added that someone from a developing country had told him: “What we get from China is an airport. What we get from America is a lecture.”

A significant divergence in attitudes to the war in Ukraine is driving these shifts. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, an eminent Indian political scientist, points out that for a large part of the world, America’s reaction to the Russian invasion seems to be as problematic as the invasion itself. It is this constituency that China is appealing to.

Viewed from the US and much of Europe, Vladimir Putin’s war is a unique event that requires a unique response. As they see it, this is a very unusual conflict since it is not about a boundary dispute or even regime change. It is a war of territorial acquisition. Such conflicts have been very rare since 1945. The attempted annexation of Kuwait in 1990 by Saddam Hussein of Iraq was another example — and it provoked a broad global response. A war of annexation, the US argues, is even more threatening when carried out by Russia — a nuclear-weapons state and a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

In response to the Ukraine war, the US launched an effort to turn Russia into an economic and diplomatic outcast. Unprecedented economic sanctions were imposed and Russian foreign reserves were frozen.

But the Russian economy has not suffered the catastrophic collapse that some predicted. In large part, this is because a substantial number of countries — including major economies, such as China, India and Brazil — have kept trading with Russia.

For these countries, the Ukraine war may be regrettable — but it is a conflict to be managed by the pursuit of ceasefires and compromises. S Jaishankar, India’s foreign minister, gave pithy expression to the global south’s refusal to join in the ostracism of Russia, with a much-quoted complaint that Europe thinks that “Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but that the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems”.

The Indians and others argue that sanctions imposed on Russia have created new problems for the rest of the world. They point to the impact of the war on food and energy prices, and therefore on poor people around the world. Rich people in the global south are also getting nervous. Actions that were widely applauded in the west — such as the freezing of Russian foreign reserves and sanctions on the assets of Russian oligarchs — have sent a chilling message about the potential danger of keeping your assets in dollars.

The US dollar, which has gained international credibility as a “safe haven” currency, now looks less safe to those who fear they might one day be on the wrong side of a geopolitical dispute with Washington. That particularly concerns traditional American allies, such as Saudi Arabia, that are also open to criticism on human rights or the use of military force.

After Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, was implicated in the brutal murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Biden called Saudi Arabia a pariah. Although the US president has attempted to mend fences with the crown prince, the Saudi has clearly neither forgiven nor forgotten his humiliation — and he is drawing closer to China.

Concerns about potential US sanctions in the future have become even more pointed, given the rise in tensions between Washington and Beijing. What if the US ever tried to impose Russia-style financial sanctions on China? The dollar is the world’s most popular currency for trade. But China is the world’s largest trading nation.

Rather than doing less trade with China, some countries are looking to do less trade in dollars. Russia has already moved in this direction for obvious reasons and Beijing is encouraging others — such as Saudi Arabia and Brazil — to use the yuan for bilateral trade.

The US may be right that the war in Ukraine is a struggle of transcendent significance. But if it cannot persuade or browbeat the rest of the world into agreement, America’s own global position may be eroded.

gideon.rachman@ft.com

Financial Times · by Gideon Rachman · April 17, 2023

7. Drills reveal Beijing’s shortcomings, researcher says

Conclusion:

The unimpressive practice of joint air and sea operations, sparse use of drones and a lack of nighttime flights suggest that the Chinese military has serious difficulties or tries to deceive its adversaries, he said.

Home Taiwan News

Mon, Apr 17, 2023 page2

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2023/04/17/2003798086

Drills reveal Beijing’s shortcomings, researcher says

By Jonathan Chin / Staff writer, with CNA

China’s most recent military drills around Taiwan revealed shortcomings that continue to pose challenges to Beijing, despite its efforts to modernize its forces, a researcher said on Friday.

China conducted drills that involved 232 air sorties from April 8 to Monday last week, 35 sorties on Tuesday and 26 sorties on Wednesday, National Policy Foundation associate research fellow Chieh Chung (揭仲) said.

The drills showed that the Chinese military made significant improvements in formation flights, individual pilot skills and operational air control, but deficiencies in key capabilities were also apparent, he said.

A Chinese fighter jet pilot takes part in combat readiness patrol and military exercises around Taiwan on Monday last week.

Photo: EPA-EFE / XINHUA / Mei Shaoquan

Although China flew a record-breaking number of sorties, they did not exceed the sophistication displayed in drills involving 149 sorties from Oct. 1 to 4, 2021, he said.

China at the time practiced nighttime strike operations involving 25 planes, including fighter jets and bombers, that encroached on Taiwan’s southern and southeastern airspace under the guidance of airborne warning and air control systems (AWACS), he said.

During the most recent drills, China practiced sorties during the day and its strike groups did not carry out long-range penetration operations from bases along China’s coast, he said.

Although Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong launched 19 sorties on April 9 and Monday last week alongside China’s air force, there was little coordination between the units involved, he said, calling it China’s first-ever simulation of such a joint operation.

Chinese navy aircraft flew close to southeastern Taiwan, while jets operated by its air force flew near the Taiwan Strait’s median line, suggesting that China lacks the capability to use AWACS for such operations, Chieh said.

Only six sorties involved uncrewed aerial vehicles, an “absurdly low number” in light of the status of drones in China’s plans for a potential war in the Strait, he said.

The unimpressive practice of joint air and sea operations, sparse use of drones and a lack of nighttime flights suggest that the Chinese military has serious difficulties or tries to deceive its adversaries, he said.

8. Ukraine and Russia Need a Great-Power Peace Plan

Excerpts:

Furthermore, U.S. officials might be loath to grant Beijing equal status in this endeavor, and they would undoubtedly worry that giving Beijing a role in ending the war would facilitate its re-engagement with Europe and undercut the long-term effort to unite the world’s democracies against Beijing. There are obvious risks on China’s side, too: Ending the war would leave the United States free to focus on Asia, which is probably the last thing Chinese President Xi Jinping wants.

But keeping a war going—or, more precisely, not making a serious effort to end it—is a hard position to defend in the eyes of the rest of the world. Which is why the Biden administration should take this idea seriously. At a minimum, asking China to work jointly on a peace settlement would force Beijing’s hand: Instead of limiting itself to meaningless “peace proposals” that nobody takes seriously, a U.S. offer to work with China on a joint peace initiative would force Beijing to put up or shut up. Were China to reject a sincere U.S. proposal along these lines, its purported commitment to peace would be exposed as hollow. For that reason alone, Beijing might take it seriously and agree to help. And were this initiative to succeed, it would provide a much-needed reminder of the benefits of great-power collaboration.

ARGUMENT

An expert's point of view on a current event.

Ukraine and Russia Need a Great-Power Peace Plan

How Washington and Beijing could stop the war in Europe.

Walt-Steve-foreign-policy-columnist20

Stephen M. Walt

By Stephen M. Walt, a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University. FP subscribers can now receive alerts when new stories written by this author are published. Subscribe now | Sign in

Foreign Policy · by Stephen M. Walt · April 18, 2023

If those leaked documents from the Pentagon are to be believed—and I think they are—the United States needs a plan B for Ukraine. As much as we’d all like to see the swift liberation of Ukrainian territory, the under-equipped, under-trained Ukrainian forces now gearing up for a spring offensive are unlikely to make far-reaching gains against Russia’s defenses. The administration’s bold promises of an eventual Ukrainian triumph will probably not be borne out, and Ukraine will suffer additional damage in the meantime. What Ukraine needs is peace, not a protracted war of attrition against a more populous adversary whose leader does not much care about how many lives are sacrificed in the maelstrom.

I suspect most top officials in the Biden administration understand this cruel reality, whatever they may say in public. Although anything is possible in wartime, they don’t expect Ukraine to achieve a dramatic breakthrough or the Russian army to collapse. Instead, they are hoping that Ukraine’s armed forces do well enough to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin to move toward a cease-fire and eventually negotiate a full peace agreement. (For an unofficial version of this view, see Raj Menon’s thoughtful and relatively optimistic analysis here.) If the Ukrainian offensive goes poorly, however, Putin will be in no rush to negotiate. Although Russia would also be better off if the war ended, he is unlikely to stop until his main war aim—the strategic neutralization of Ukraine—is achieved.

What to do? Since the start of the war, outsiders have hoped that China might use its influence and leverage to get Moscow to cut a deal and end the fighting. Those hopes have been disappointed thus far, in part because China has benefited from the war in several obvious ways. Western sanctions made Russia even more dependent on China, provided Beijing with oil and gas at discount prices, and prevented the United States from focusing more attention on Asia. But letting the war drag on endlessly presents problems for Beijing, too. China is eager to mend fences with Europe; get trade, investment, and advanced technology flowing unimpeded; and gradually drive a wedge between Europe and the United States. Although China’s leaders have tried to portray themselves as a disinterested party to the conflict, being one of Russia’s best friends while it assaults Ukraine undermines every one of these goals.

There is some reason to believe, therefore, that China’s leaders might like the war to end sooner rather than later, and that in the right circumstances, they would be willing to use their influence toward that end. That possibility alone ought to worry U.S. policymakers: What if Beijing followed up on its successful mediation effort between Iran and Saudi Arabia by positioning itself as the broker of peace in Ukraine? If China could pull that off—admittedly, a very big “if”—it would strengthen its efforts to portray the United States as a declining power that is better at sowing strife and conflict than at fostering cooperation, and it would burnish China’s image as a rising power genuinely devoted to peace and harmony.

So here’s a wild idea: Given that both Beijing and Washington have an interest in ending the war, the Biden administration should invite China to join it in a joint effort to bring the two sides to the bargaining table. In effect, the United States would offer to use its influence to deliver Kyiv, and Beijing would agree to use its leverage to deliver Moscow. If they succeeded, the two states would share the credit and neither could claim a propaganda victory over the other.

Sound far-fetched? Of course it does, but there are some historical precedents for this sort of great-power collaboration. At the height of the Cold War, for example, the United States and the Soviet Union jointly supported the U.N. Security Council resolutions that ended the Six-Day War in 1967 and established a cease-fire during the October War in 1973. The circumstances were somewhat similar to the situation today, insofar as both superpowers wanted the fighting to stop and each had to pressure their clients to agree. Indeed, as Galen Jackson shows in a superb new book, The Lost Peace, Soviet leaders repeatedly tried to get Washington to convene a comprehensive peace conference on the Middle East in which each would play an equal role, only to be stymied by U.S. opposition.

An agreement jointly mediated by the United States and China would also be more likely to endure, as Moscow and Kyiv would be less likely to renege on a deal arranged and blessed by their principal patrons. Thus, if China and the United States genuinely wanted to orchestrate a peace settlement in Ukraine, there is some reason to think that such an effort could succeed.

Which is not to say that it would be easy. A cease-fire might be comparatively simple to arrange, but that would leave Russia in control of most of the territory it claims to have annexed and produce an unstable frozen conflict. A genuine peace treaty would require agreement on a host of thorny issues (e.g., borders, reconstruction aid, repatriation of prisoners, accountability for war crimes, security guarantees, transit arrangements for the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, etc.), and none of them would be easy to sort out. The Biden administration would have to walk back its earlier triumphalism, and any such effort would undoubtedly prompt harsh criticism from more hawkish NATO allies, especially those in Eastern Europe, as well as resistance from some if not most Ukrainians.

Furthermore, U.S. officials might be loath to grant Beijing equal status in this endeavor, and they would undoubtedly worry that giving Beijing a role in ending the war would facilitate its re-engagement with Europe and undercut the long-term effort to unite the world’s democracies against Beijing. There are obvious risks on China’s side, too: Ending the war would leave the United States free to focus on Asia, which is probably the last thing Chinese President Xi Jinping wants.

But keeping a war going—or, more precisely, not making a serious effort to end it—is a hard position to defend in the eyes of the rest of the world. Which is why the Biden administration should take this idea seriously. At a minimum, asking China to work jointly on a peace settlement would force Beijing’s hand: Instead of limiting itself to meaningless “peace proposals” that nobody takes seriously, a U.S. offer to work with China on a joint peace initiative would force Beijing to put up or shut up. Were China to reject a sincere U.S. proposal along these lines, its purported commitment to peace would be exposed as hollow. For that reason alone, Beijing might take it seriously and agree to help. And were this initiative to succeed, it would provide a much-needed reminder of the benefits of great-power collaboration.

Would this work? I don’t know. Frankly, I suspect the circumstances aren’t propitious—at least not yet—and such a proposal would require the sort of imaginative leap that has been in short supply among American diplomats in recent years. But the main alternatives look worse and the costs of trying and failing would be modest. And if the Biden administration doesn’t like this idea, I sure hope they have a better one in mind. I can’t wait to find out what it is.

Foreign Policy · by Stephen M. Walt · April 18, 2023

9. Do Racial Biases Shape Americans’ Support for Drone Strikes? We Asked Them

I had not considered this.

Conclusion:

Together, our findings have cascading implications for US counterterrorism policy. A false sense about the degree of “consensus” for drone strikes helps explain why political officials frequently conduct these operations abroad, although they are incapable of achieving military victory against terrorist groups on their own. A distorted understanding of Americans’ support for drone strikes also helps explain why political officials often dissemble about these operations abroad, reasonably assured of continued public approval. An inflated appreciation of public attitudes for drone strikes may also help clarify why political officials fail to hold military commanders publicly responsible for preventable targeting errors that result in civilian casualties, as was the case following the botched US drone strike in Afghanistan in August 2021 that killed ten Afghan civilians rather than a suspected Islamic State terrorist.

Yet such accountability is integral to the perceived legitimacy of US drone strikes, especially because they have largely been used against Brown and Black people during counterterrorism operations that began after 9/11. As such, Americans need to demand greater congressional oversight of US drone strikes, in which the merits—and limits—of these operations are publicly discussed and scrutinized. Until this happens, we will continue to misunderstand the complicated relationship between race and public attitudes for these operations.

Do Racial Biases Shape Americans’ Support for Drone Strikes? We Asked Them - Modern War Institute

mwi.usma.edu · by Paul Lushenko, Keith Carter, Srinjoy Bose · April 17, 2023

Are US drone strikes racially biased? Does public support fall along a “color line” where Americans endorse drone strikes the most when they are used against darker-skinned people in non-Western countries? Many scholars think so. Keith Feldman contends that drones are a form of “racialization from above.” John Emery and Daniel Brunstetter argue that drones exercise “aerial occupation,” which other experts, such as Shala Cachelin, believe is a form of neocolonialism. For other critics, the “unambiguously” racist nature of US drone strikes has contributed to unequal relations between countries. John Williams claims that drones are “Western-centric, racialized, and exclusionary toward non-Western modes of politics”; Alex Cooley adds that drones “and the expansion of a supporting basing infrastructure constitute another type of hidden hierarchy in the US security network”; and, Katherine Chandler concludes drones “re-enact racial and colonial hierarchies through transnational networks and grounded relations that connect militarism to everyday life.”

On its surface, the argument that US drone strikes are racially biased seems sensible. The intended targets are mostly people of color who live in non-Western countries. Indeed, critics often point to targets’ skin color and location when arguing public support for US drone strikes is shaped by racial preferences. But critics have not validated this claim with data informed by public attitudes. Missing from the conversation on race and drones is an assessment of if, or to what degree, the observable racial cues of targets’ skin color and location shape public support for US drone strikes. Studying this question is important. Though drones are appealing from a policy perspective, reducing the financial costs of intervening abroad while protecting soldiers and minimizing civilian casualties, racial preferences may shape approval for strikes that have the potential to heighten grievances among targeted communities, prolong conflict, and embed racism in global politics.

Recently, we conducted a study to assess if US drone strikes are racially biased. We found that Americans who have a racist worldview, reflected through our use of the widely validated Racial Resentment Scale, are more likely to support US drone strikes regardless of targets’ skin color and location. We also found that other Americans do not calibrate their support for US drone strikes based on the observable racial cues of targets’ skin color and location. Rather, providing these details on a target can actually decrease public support for US drone strikes. This means that the way US officials frame these operations, often deemphasizing the targets’ humanity, matters a lot for public support. At the same time, Americans draw on numerous other considerations—instrumental, normative, and operational—when adjudicating their support for US drone strikes. Thus, our study paints a more complicated, yet also more complete, picture of the relationship between race and public support for US drone strikes than critics’ existing narrative reflects.

Race and US Drone Strikes

For critics, the racially biased nature of US drone strikes is reflected by Americans’ puzzling endorsement of these operations in some cases but not others. Though Americans broadly support US drone strikes abroad, they also disapprove of them when they target US citizens, even if they are suspected of being terrorists. In 2011, for example, President Barack Obama authorized a drone strike to kill a US citizen in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who served in an important media role for al-Qaeda. The strike also killed another US citizen, Samir Khan, who claimed allegiance to al-Qaeda as well. It did not matter to Americans that the US Department of Justice certified the operation. Americans were outraged because Obama’s use of a drone to kill al-Awlaki and Khan circumvented their constitutional right to due process in a court of law, and raised questions about the president’s authority to use drones within the United States.

Other skeptics of US drone strikes were also appalled, but for a different reason. Glenn Greenwald, a journalist, asked if anyone doubts that if drones “were killing nice white British teenagers or smiling blond Swiss infants—rather than unnamed Yemenis, Pakistanis, Afghans and Somalis—that the reaction to this sustained killing would be drastically different.” Ruha Benjamin, a sociologist at Princeton University, recently added that there is “good reason to be skeptical of the way tech cheerleaders feign innocence when it comes to the racial dimensions of” emerging technologies, including drones.

This line of reasoning, though it seems intuitive, can be misleading for two reasons. First, the targets of US drone strikes are mostly suspected terrorists in war-torn countries across Africa, Central and South Asia, and the Middle East that are Brown or Black. This means it is difficult, if not impossible, to assess if racial preferences shape Americans’ support to strikes without directly asking them. Second, it is also difficult to determine exactly why Americans may not support US drone strikes in Europe. Is it because of the strength of relations forged between predominately White countries on either side of the Atlantic Ocean? Or, is it because of the assumption that terrorists in Europe are White, though in many cases they are not? Other factors may also be at play. Since 9/11, US officials have only used drones in “fragile” or “failing” states, meaning authorities there have been unwilling or unable to pursue terrorists that wish to harm Americans.

Exploring Public Support for US Drone Strikes

We recently tested the claim that Americans support US drone strikes based on the observable racial characteristics of targets’ skin color and location. We did so by administering an original image-based survey experiment among US citizens. In our survey, which we conducted in February 2023, we randomly assigned each participant to a hypothetical but realistic drone strike scenario. Each scenario presented to a participant either identified the location of the strike as one of three countries—Estonia, Peru, or South Africa—or provided no information on the geographic setting of an operation.

We also varied the skin color of a target using an image taken by a real drone. The drone photo was professionally rendered to alter the skin color of a target, which can be Brown, Black, or White. We also included a black-and-white image that mimics how drones often observe a target with electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensors, meaning that the target has no identifiable skin color. By showing US citizens a picture of the target, which was superimposed with drone targeting metadata, we compelled them to carefully review the image when assessing their level of support. After reading their randomized scenario, Americans were asked the following question: “Do you support the US president’s use of a drone strike in this setting?” They answered using a five-point scale ranging from “strongly support” (5) to “strongly oppose” (1).

Figure 1: One of four images was randomly assigned to each participant. Three were manipulated to show different skin colors—Brown, Black, or White—while one mimicked an image derived from EO/IR sensors, with no identifiable skin color.

We then used common statistical methods to analyze the data and found that Americans are more likely to support a US drone strike when given no information on the target’s skin color and location. In other words, when shown a militarized image that strips the target of an identifiable skin color, and given no indication of the target’s location, Americans are more likely to support a US drone strike. When provided with these details, on the other hand, we observe that Americans largely disapprove of a US drone strike. Next, we specifically explored if geography proxies for race, as critics argue it does. We also found that the location of a target does not shape public support for a US drone strike. If the observable racial characteristics of a target’s skin color and location do not shape Americans’ support for a US drone strike, what does? We address this question by studying a number of beliefs and values that may underlie Americans’ overall attitudes for US drone strikes. In doing so, we offer a more nuanced understanding of public support for US drone strikes than critics of these operations usually present.

We found that Americans who demonstrate higher racial resentment and ethnocentrism, implying they view global politics as a competition between an in-group and out-group, are more likely to support US drone strikes than those who do not. In forming their judgments, however, these Americans do not reflect on targets’ skin color and location. Rather, these and other Americans draw on multiple other considerations that relate to the United States’ place in the world, how US officials should operate globally, and the purpose of US military force. Consistent with existing drone warfare scholarship, we found that Americans’ support for US drone strikes can be shaped by their support for the use of force abroad, endorsement of US unilateral military actions globally, and belief that US officials have a moral obligation to intervene abroad. Americans also carefully consider the accuracy of intelligence justifying a drone strike, the likelihood for civilian casualties following a strike, and the perceived threat to US security imposed by a target when forming their opinions about an operation.

Reframing the Drone Debate

These results also suggest that the way US drone strikes are depicted has important implications for US citizens’ attitudes, which can reflect either endorsement of or opposition to these operations. This is consistent with what scholars call a “framing effect.” By referring to targets of US drone strikes as “extremists” or “terrorists,” and providing no further information, national polls and political officials overestimate public support to these operations. Simultaneously, critics often conflate public support for US drone strikes with racial preferences. Rather, we find that Americans draw on a range of factors when forming their support to US drone strikes that are not reducible to the racial cues of targets’ skin color and location.

Together, our findings have cascading implications for US counterterrorism policy. A false sense about the degree of “consensus” for drone strikes helps explain why political officials frequently conduct these operations abroad, although they are incapable of achieving military victory against terrorist groups on their own. A distorted understanding of Americans’ support for drone strikes also helps explain why political officials often dissemble about these operations abroad, reasonably assured of continued public approval. An inflated appreciation of public attitudes for drone strikes may also help clarify why political officials fail to hold military commanders publicly responsible for preventable targeting errors that result in civilian casualties, as was the case following the botched US drone strike in Afghanistan in August 2021 that killed ten Afghan civilians rather than a suspected Islamic State terrorist.

Yet such accountability is integral to the perceived legitimacy of US drone strikes, especially because they have largely been used against Brown and Black people during counterterrorism operations that began after 9/11. As such, Americans need to demand greater congressional oversight of US drone strikes, in which the merits—and limits—of these operations are publicly discussed and scrutinized. Until this happens, we will continue to misunderstand the complicated relationship between race and public attitudes for these operations.

Paul Lushenko, PhD is a lieutenant colonel in the US Army, deputy director of the Cornell University Brooks School’s Tech Policy Institute, and coeditor of the recently published volume, Drones and Global Order: Implications of Remote Warfare for International Society.

Keith L. Carter, PhD is a lieutenant colonel in the US Army and director of the Defense and Strategic Studies Program at the United States Military Academy.

Srinjoy Bose, PhD is a senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and coeditor of the recently published volume, Drones and Global Order: Implications of Remote Warfare for International Society.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Senior Airman Haley Stevens, US Air Force

mwi.usma.edu · by Paul Lushenko, Keith Carter, Srinjoy Bose · April 17, 2023

10. The World Beyond Ukraine

Excertrps:

It is worth asking whether it really matters how the rest of the world lines up on Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin, for one, said in a speech in June 2022 that he believes it does, arguing that in the wake of the war, “new powerful centers have formed on the planet,” a reference to the rise of powers such as Brazil, China, and South Africa. These changes, Putin claims, are “fundamental and pivotal.” Meanwhile, China has launched a series of global projects under the rubric of its “Community of Common Destiny Future for Mankind,” including the vast infrastructure investment program known as the Belt and Road Initiative, that reflect the changing global order.

Yet U.S. President Joe Biden spent less than three minutes discussing the wider world beyond Ukraine in his State of the Union address in February, which was more than an hour long. It was a striking lacuna given his administration’s creditable record: over 90 percent of humanitarian aid going to Somalia, for example, currently comes from the United States. An agenda focused on courting the rest of the world has little domestic traction, of course; that is not where the votes are. But other countries also have votes—not in U.S. elections but in how American interests are perceived and advanced around the world. In the case of Ukraine, Russia’s economy has been sustained despite Western sanctions by expanded trade with the non-Western world, new energy alliances, and new sources of weapons supplies. These ties matter.

As a geopolitical entity, the West remains a powerful and influential actor, more so with its newfound unity. To be sure, the relative shares of global income among Western countries will be lower in the twenty-first century than they were in the twentieth. But income per capita in Western countries remains high by global standards. The West’s military and diplomatic strength is real. The alternative systems to democracy are repressive and unattractive.

At the same time, the demands from a variety of countries for a new deal at the international level are in many cases reasonable. Addressing them with urgency and in good faith is essential to building a global order that is satisfactory to liberal democratic states and their citizens. The war in Ukraine has allowed the West to rediscover its strength and sense of purpose. But the conflict should also help Western governments confront their weaknesses and missteps.

The World Beyond Ukraine

The Survival of the West and the Demands of the Rest

By David Miliband

May/June 2023

Published on April 18, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by David Miliband · April 18, 2023

“Ukraine has united the world,” declared Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a speech on the first anniversary of the start of the war with Russia. If only that were true. The war has certainly united the West, but it has left the world divided. And that rift will only widen if Western countries fail to address its root causes.

The traditional transatlantic alliance of European and North American countries has mobilized in unprecedented fashion for a protracted conflict in Ukraine. It has offered extensive humanitarian support for people inside Ukraine and for Ukrainian refugees. And it is preparing for what will be a massive rebuilding job after the war. But outside Europe and North America, the defense of Ukraine is not front of mind. Few governments endorse the brazen Russian invasion, yet many remain unpersuaded by the West’s insistence that the struggle for freedom and democracy in Ukraine is also theirs. As French President Emmanuel Macron said at the Munich Security Conference in February, “I am struck by how we have lost the trust of the global South.” He is right. Western conviction about the war and its importance is matched elsewhere by skepticism at best and outright disdain at worst.

The gap between the West and the rest goes beyond the rights and wrongs of the war. Instead, it is the product of deep frustration—anger, in truth—about the Western-led mismanagement of globalization since the end of the Cold War. From this perspective, the concerted Western response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine has thrown into sharp relief the occasions when the West violated its own rules or when it was conspicuously missing in action in tackling global problems. Such arguments can seem beside the point in light of the daily brutality meted out by Russian forces in Ukraine. But Western leaders should address them, not dismiss them. The gulf in perspectives is dangerous for a world facing enormous global risks. And it threatens the renewal of a rules-based order that reflects a new, multipolar balance of power in the world.

THE WEST APART FROM THE REST

The Russian invasion has produced remarkable unity and action from the liberal democratic world. Western countries have coordinated an extensive slate of economic sanctions targeting Russia. European states have increasingly aligned their climate policies on decarbonization with national security-related commitments to end their dependence on Russian oil and gas. Western governments have rallied to support Ukraine with enormous shipments of military aid. Finland and Sweden aim to be soon admitted to NATO. And Europe has adopted a welcoming policy toward the eight million Ukrainian refugees within its borders. All these efforts have been advocated by a U.S. administration that has been sure-footed in partnering with European allies and others. The squabbles over Afghanistan and the AUKUS security partnership (a 2021 deal struck by Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States that irked France) seem a long time ago.

Many in the West have been surprised at this turn of events. Clearly, so was the Kremlin, which imagined that its invasion would not provoke a strong and determined Western response. The West’s unity and commitment are not matched elsewhere, however. At the beginning of the war, the UN General Assembly voted 141 to 5, with 47 absences or abstentions, to condemn the Russian invasion. But that result flattered to deceive. As the team of analysts at the International Crisis Group have noted: “Most non-European countries that voted to deplore Russia’s aggression last March did not follow up with sanctions. Doing the right thing at the UN can be an alibi for not doing much about the war in the real world.”

In a series of UN votes since the war started, around 40 countries representing nearly 50 percent of the world’s population have regularly abstained or voted against motions condemning the Russian invasion. Fifty-eight countries abstained from a vote, in April 2022, to expel Russia from the UN Human Rights Council. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, two-thirds of the world’s population live in countries that are officially neutral or supportive of Russia. These countries do not form some kind of axis of autocracy; they include several notable democracies, such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, and South Africa.

Much of the fence-sitting is not driven by disagreements over the conflict in Ukraine but is instead a symptom of a wider syndrome: anger at perceived Western double standards and frustration at stalled reform efforts in the international system. The distinguished Indian diplomat Shivshankar Menon put the point sharply in Foreign Affairs earlier this year when he wrote, “Alienated and resentful, many developing countries see the war in Ukraine and the West’s rivalry with China as distracting from urgent issues such as debt, climate change, and the effects of the pandemic.”

ON THE FENCE

Realpolitik has played its part in determining the positions of certain countries on the Ukraine conflict. India has traditionally been dependent on Russia for military supplies. The Wagner paramilitary company—the Russian mercenary organization now active in Ukraine—has worked with governments in western and central Africa to support their security and survival. And China, which is one of Russia’s principal sources of support, is the largest trading partner of more than 120 countries around the world and has proved unforgiving of diplomatic slights.

But there are also other factors. Some countries contest the Western narrative about the causes of the war. For example, although Brazilian President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva has described the invasion as a “mistake,” he has also given credence to the argument that Russia has been wronged. “Zelensky is as responsible as Putin for the war,” Lula claimed last summer in a statement that highlighted global ambivalence about the conflict.

The war has united the West, but it has left the world divided.

Many observers outside the West also perceive that impunity is, in general, the province of all strong countries, not just Russia. The United States is in an especially weak position to defend global norms after the presidency of Donald Trump, which saw contempt for global rules and practices in areas as diverse as the climate, human rights, and nuclear nonproliferation. Critics point to the U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to claim that hypocrisy, not principle, is driving the West. And U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition’s war in Yemen, which spawned a humanitarian crisis in that country, is adduced as evidence of doublespeak when it comes to concern for civilians. It is also argued that the West has shown far more compassion for the victims of war in Ukraine than for the victims of wars elsewhere. The UN appeal for humanitarian aid for Ukraine has been 80 to 90 percent funded. Meanwhile, the UN’s 2022 appeals for people caught in crises in Ethiopia, Syria, and Yemen have been barely half funded.

On their own, some of these reasons for sitting on the sidelines might seem petty to Ukrainians fighting on the frontlines. But the wariness of supporting Ukraine must not obscure a bigger problem. The West has failed since the financial crisis of 2008 to show that it is willing or able to drive forward a more equal and sustainable global economic bargain or to develop the political institutions appropriate to manage a multipolar world. This failure is now coming home to roost. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, the world was massively off track in achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which member states set with great fanfare in 2015. In 2018, four out of five fragile and conflict-ridden states were failing on SDG measures. World Bank figures for 2020 show that people born in those places were ten times more likely to end up poor as those born in stable countries, and the gap was growing.

Since then, as a result of protracted conflicts, the climate crisis, and the pandemic, the guardrails have come off altogether. More than 100 million people are currently fleeing for their lives from warfare or disaster. The UN reports that 350 million people today are in humanitarian need, compared with 81 million people ten years ago. More than 600 million Africans lack access to electricity. The UN Development Program reports that 25 developing countries are spending over 20 percent of government revenues on debt servicing, with 54 countries suffering from severe debt problems. And the unequal access to vaccines to combat the pandemic—a gulf especially glaring during the early phases of the vaccine rollout in 2021—has become a poster child for empty promises.

Western governments have also failed to fulfill their commitments in other arenas. The UN’s climate Adaptation Fund, established in 2001 to protect poor countries from the consequences of carbon emissions from rich countries, has not yet met its inaugural funding commitment of raising $100 billion a year and is seen as a symbol of Western bad faith: all talk, no walk. The lengthy delays in putting it together have fueled the demand for a new fund to cover “loss and damage” arising from the climate crisis. This new fund was inaugurated last year, but it is not yet funded. Yet another underfunded global initiative will only deepen the deficit of trust between rich countries and poor ones.

HOLLOW SOLIDARITY

If the next two decades are like the last two, marked by the West’s confused priorities and failed promises, multipolarity in the global system will come to mean more than greater economic competition. It will mean strengthened ideological challenges to the principles of Western countries and weakened incentives for non-Western countries to associate or cooperate with the West. Instead, liberal democratic countries that support a rules-based global system need to think and act with long-term strategic purpose as they engage with the rest of the world. China has been doing so since 1990.

Hard power in terms of military partnerships and trade cooperation will be critical in determining the West’s relations with the rest of the world. But Western governments also need to attend to a number of soft-power issues, notably in three areas: to offer commitments to solidarity and equity in managing global risks, to embrace reforms that widen the range of voices at the table in international affairs, and to develop a winning narrative in an era when democracy is in retreat. These actions would not only help sustain the global position of the West; they are also the right thing to do.

The call for more solidarity and equity in managing global risks is fundamental to the current moment. Great-power competition is exacerbating global challenges to the extreme detriment of the poorest countries. The food crisis arising from the war in Ukraine, and the inadequate global response to it, is but one example. This trend makes the efforts of the Center for Global Development to apply a “global public goods” lens to international development especially important. Such goods include programs to lower the risk of pandemics, mitigate climate change, address antimicrobial resistance, and combat nonstate terrorism and cybercrime. Investment in staving off these looming threats, however, suffers from a market failure: because all people benefit, not just those who pay, no one pays. According to the CGD, around six percent of the total U.S. State Department budget over the past decade went to development-relevant global public goods, and that proportion does not seem to have increased over time.

A Ukrainian soldier in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, April 2023

Kai Pfaffenbach / Reuters

Pandemics are a good example. In 2022, the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, which the World Health Assembly asked the World Health Organization (WHO) to establish and on which I served, published a comprehensive review of the global actions that would be required to prevent and mitigate future pandemics. The report estimated that the financial cost of pandemic prevention would be $15 billion per year, less than half what Americans spend on pizza every year.

The most shocking revelation was that 11 high-level panels and commissions in 16 reports over the preceding 20 years had made sensible recommendations about how to prepare for, detect, and contain pandemics, but most of the recommendations had not been implemented. The Independent Panel’s conclusion was that this problem could be overcome only by encouraging leaders to mobilize a sustained whole-of-government commitment to pandemic preparedness. We suggested the creation of a Global Health Threats Council separate from the WHO (because pandemics are not just a health issue) with a mission to ensure that governments sufficiently prepare for pandemics, whether through effective surveillance systems or the timely sounding of alarms on outbreaks. This proposal should not be allowed to gather dust.

Support for refugees presents a further example of how global costs are shared unequally. Although many Western countries bemoan the influx of refugees, poor and lower middle-income countries host over 80 percent of them. Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Pakistan, Turkey, and Uganda all take in large numbers of refugees. Poland, currently hosting over 1.6 million Ukrainians, and Germany, with 1.5 million Syrians, are outliers among rich countries. Poor and lower middle-income countries receive limited recompense from richer countries for the responsibilities they bear and therefore have limited incentive to enact policies that promote the inclusion of refugees in work, education, and health systems.

Poor and lower middle-income countries host over 80 percent of refugees.

Two World Bank initiatives reflect a willingness to address the concerns of developing countries hosting large numbers of refugees, but they need to be scaled up significantly. The Window for Host Communities and Refugees program promises to support meaningful medium- to long-term interventions that support low-income countries hosting refugees. Seventy-seven percent of WHR funds have been committed to African countries. But the program needs to be better resourced; expanded to include other multilateral development banks, such as the African Development Bank and the Islamic Development Bank; and made more effective through coordination with bilateral sources of aid. Another World Bank initiative, the Global Concessional Financing Facility, does include other multilateral development banks and supports middle-income countries hosting refugees (for instance, the World Bank has allocated Colombia $1.6 billion to help its efforts with Venezuelan refugees). But contributions to the fund are ad hoc and cannot meet the needs of host countries.

The climate crisis is the global risk that looms largest and presents the greatest test of the sincerity of Western countries’ solidarity with the rest of the world. Wealthy countries need to spend trillions of dollars to decarbonize their economies, but they also need to support low-carbon development in poor countries and pay for the inevitable costs of adaptation to climate change already foreshadowed by current levels of global warming.

The appointment of a new managing director of the World Bank at the 2023 spring meetings is, therefore, of the highest importance. As former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has written, “There is an urgent need for the U.S. and its allies to regain the trust of the developing world. There is no better means of regaining trust than through the collective provision of large-scale support for countries’ highest priorities. And there is no more rapid and effective way of mobilizing support than through the World Bank.”

The new leadership of the World Bank will need to make up for lost time. According to the analyst Charles Kenny, the bank’s contributions as a proportion of the gross national income of borrowing countries fell from 4.0 percent in 1987 to 0.7 percent in 2020. The World Bank can and should do more. Its far too conservative approach to risk, its too limited range of partners (nongovernmental and governmental), and its culture and modus operandi need to be the focus of reform, alongside the proposals for new financing in Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s Bridgetown Agenda, which calls for a major new mobilization of funds through international financial institutions for countries grappling with climate change and poverty. The new managing director needs to not only raise more funds but also develop delivery systems that recognize that fragile and conflict-ridden states need to be treated differently from their more stable counterparts.

A SEAT AT THE TABLE

In addition to crafting a more equitable way to address global risks, Western countries need to embrace demands from developing countries for a greater say in the international arena. Many countries resent the unbalanced nature of global power in today’s international institutions. One recent example occurred during the pandemic. The WHO’s Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator was an important initiative intended to drive global access to vaccines, treatments, and diagnostics. But representatives of low-income and middle-income countries were not meaningfully included in the governance of the program. This lack of representation hampered efforts to achieve the fair distribution of vaccines and the effective delivery of other health services.

The case of the UN Security Council veto, at the apex of the international system, provides a useful lens for thinking about how all international institutions need to rebalance the way they work to recognize the realities of modern power. Currently, the five permanent members of the Security Council—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—have the right to veto any resolution, in effect sidelining the other ten members, many of which are low-income and middle-

income countries.

Fundamental reform that would change the number of veto-holding states on the council seems unlikely. But the ongoing conflicts in Ethiopia, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen provide telling examples of how impunity reigns when the Security Council is paralyzed by the veto or the threat to use it. A sign of the frustration regarding this issue is the “veto initiative” passed by the UN General Assembly in 2022, which requires that when a country uses a veto in the Security Council, the General Assembly is automatically convened to discuss the matter at hand. In addition, more than 100 countries have signed on to a French and Mexican proposal, which I support, that calls for the permanent members of the Security Council to agree to refrain from using their veto in cases of mass atrocities. Some permanent members are already exercising restraint. The United Kingdom has not used its veto on any issue since 1989.

The proposal envisions that the UN secretary-general would identify cases that merit the suspension of the veto, based on a clear definition of “mass atrocities.” Such a reform would immediately open the decision-making process in the council to more equitably include the views of the ten elected members in addition to the five permanent ones. The United States has said it is worried about the potential politicization of the process for identifying atrocities. Although U.S. officials are understandably concerned about the consequences of giving up the veto (albeit in limited circumstances), Moscow’s repeated vetoes of resolutions on Ukraine in the past year should give Washington pause as to whether it has more to gain or to lose by refusing to consider limits on the veto.

A LOOK IN THE MIRROR

In the battle for global opinion, narrative matters. The preferred Western framing of the war in Ukraine—as a contest between democracy and autocracy—has not resonated well outside Europe and North America. Although it is true that Ukrainians are fighting for their democracy as well as their sovereignty, for the rest of the world the invasion primarily represents a fundamental transgression of international law. So, too, do Russia’s military attacks, which have targeted Ukrainian civilians and civilian infrastructure.

There is a better alternative. Western governments should frame the conflict as one between the rule of law and impunity or between law and anarchy rather than one that pits democracy against autocracy. Such an approach has many advantages. It correctly locates democracy among a range of methods for the promotion of accountability and the curbing of the abuse of power. It broadens the potential coalition of support. It tests China at its weakest point because China claims to support a rules-based international system. It also sounds less self-regarding, which is important given the obvious problems plaguing many liberal democracies. A coalition built around the need for international rules is far more likely to be broader than one based on calls for democracy.

To defend the rule of law, however, Western countries must abide by it and subscribe to it. The U.S. condemnation of Chinese breaches of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea—with respect to China’s military installations on islands in the South China Sea, for example—would be far more persuasive if the United States ratified the convention. And although U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris made a powerful call at the recent Munich Security Conference for the prosecution of war crimes in Ukraine, it would have been much more effective had the United States ratified the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court in 1998. Critics and adversaries of Western powers relentlessly cite these double standards. And it is not hard to see why.

Migrants in Tunis, Tunisia, March 2023

Jihed Abidellaoui / Reuters

It is worth asking whether it really matters how the rest of the world lines up on Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin, for one, said in a speech in June 2022 that he believes it does, arguing that in the wake of the war, “new powerful centers have formed on the planet,” a reference to the rise of powers such as Brazil, China, and South Africa. These changes, Putin claims, are “fundamental and pivotal.” Meanwhile, China has launched a series of global projects under the rubric of its “Community of Common Destiny Future for Mankind,” including the vast infrastructure investment program known as the Belt and Road Initiative, that reflect the changing global order.

Yet U.S. President Joe Biden spent less than three minutes discussing the wider world beyond Ukraine in his State of the Union address in February, which was more than an hour long. It was a striking lacuna given his administration’s creditable record: over 90 percent of humanitarian aid going to Somalia, for example, currently comes from the United States. An agenda focused on courting the rest of the world has little domestic traction, of course; that is not where the votes are. But other countries also have votes—not in U.S. elections but in how American interests are perceived and advanced around the world. In the case of Ukraine, Russia’s economy has been sustained despite Western sanctions by expanded trade with the non-Western world, new energy alliances, and new sources of weapons supplies. These ties matter.

As a geopolitical entity, the West remains a powerful and influential actor, more so with its newfound unity. To be sure, the relative shares of global income among Western countries will be lower in the twenty-first century than they were in the twentieth. But income per capita in Western countries remains high by global standards. The West’s military and diplomatic strength is real. The alternative systems to democracy are repressive and unattractive.

At the same time, the demands from a variety of countries for a new deal at the international level are in many cases reasonable. Addressing them with urgency and in good faith is essential to building a global order that is satisfactory to liberal democratic states and their citizens. The war in Ukraine has allowed the West to rediscover its strength and sense of purpose. But the conflict should also help Western governments confront their weaknesses and missteps.

DAVID MILIBAND is President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee. From 2007 to 2010, he served as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the United Kingdom.

Foreign Affairs · by David Miliband · April 18, 2023

11. Egypt nearly supplied rockets to Russia, agreed to arm Ukraine instead, leak shows

The irony. Egypt is (or was) one of the largest recipients of US security assistance.

As bada as the leak is, I think our diplomats deserve credit for heading off these transfers.

Excerpts:

Egypt, though it has a long-standing diplomatic and military relationship with Russia, has for decades been a principal American ally in the Middle East and receives more than $1 billion a year in U.S. military aid.

In an apparent diplomatic win for the Biden administration, a new leaked document stated that Egypt shelved the Moscow deal and approved selling 152mm and 155mm artillery rounds to the United States for transfer to Ukraine.

Egypt nearly supplied rockets to Russia, agreed to arm Ukraine instead, leak shows

The Washington Post · by Missy Ryan · April 17, 2023

Egypt paused a plan to secretly supply rockets to Russia last month following talks with senior U.S. officials and instead decided to produce artillery ammunition for Ukraine, according to five leaked U.S. intelligence documents that have not been previously reported.

The Post last week reported on another document that exposed a covert scheme by Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi in February to provide Russia with up to 40,000 122mm Sakr-45 rockets, which can be used in Russian multiple-launch rocket launchers. Sisi instructed his subordinates to keep the project secret “to avoid problems with the West,” the document said.

But the new documents, which The Washington Post obtained from a trove of material allegedly posted on Discord by a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, appear to show Sisi in early March backing away from plans to supply Moscow, a move that would have represented a major rebuke to Cairo’s most generous Western ally, the United States.

The Discord Leaks

Dozens of highly classified documents have been leaked online, revealing sensitive information intended for senior military and intelligence leaders. In an exclusive investigation, The Post also reviewed scores of additional secret documents, most of which have not been made public.

Who leaked the documents? Jack Teixeira, a young member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was arrested Thursday in the investigation into leaks of hundreds of pages of classified military intelligence. The Post reported that the individual who leaked the information shared documents with a small circle of online friends on the Discord chat platform.

What do the leaked documents reveal about Ukraine? The documents reveal profound concerns about the war’s trajectory and Kyiv’s capacity to wage a successful offensive against Russian forces. According to a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment among the leaked documents, “Negotiations to end the conflict are unlikely during 2023.”

What else do they show? The files include summaries of human intelligence on high-level conversations between world leaders, as well as information about advanced satellite technology the United States uses to spy. They also include intelligence on both allies and adversaries, including Iran and North Korea, as well as Britain, Canada, South Korea and Israel.

What happens now? The leak has far-reaching implications for the United States and its allies. In addition to the Justice Department investigation, officials in several countries said they were assessing the damage from the leaks.

1/5

End of carousel

Egypt, though it has a long-standing diplomatic and military relationship with Russia, has for decades been a principal American ally in the Middle East and receives more than $1 billion a year in U.S. military aid.

In an apparent diplomatic win for the Biden administration, a new leaked document stated that Egypt shelved the Moscow deal and approved selling 152mm and 155mm artillery rounds to the United States for transfer to Ukraine.

Washington has sought to enlist new supporters — and desperately needed ammunition — for Kyiv’s fight against Russian forces. Egypt intended to use its capacity to produce weapons for Ukraine as “leverage” to obtain advanced U.S. military items, the document said.

Taken together, the documents provide new insight into the Biden administration’s quiet but high-stakes diplomacy with countries that have sought to stay on the margins of Washington’s intensifying standoff with Moscow. They also show how great power competition has allowed Egypt to seek new advantages as its relationship with the United States grows less crucial.

“The mere fact of competition creates openings for easy wins with the U.S., and you can imagine that this will be to the detriment of the democracy and human rights agenda,” said Michael Hanna, U.S. program director at the International Crisis Group.

The documents do not indicate whether Cairo later revived the Moscow plan or whether it has yet supplied the United States with the ammunition for Ukraine.

The Post earlier reported that Egypt has denied producing rockets for Russia, and a U.S. government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to address sensitive information, told The Post there was no indication Egypt had executed the plan.

Presented with the new documents, a spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the leaked materials. After the initial report on Russian rocket production, Egyptian state-run media reported that officials denied the claim, saying it had “no basis in truth.”

A senior Biden administration official said, “Egypt is a close partner and we are regularly engaged with its leadership on a host of regional and global issues.”

The United States faces challenges ramping up its own production of artillery shells and other items needed in Ukraine and has sought help from partner nations worldwide in advance of what U.S. officials predict will be challenging spring fighting season. Conversely, Washington has slapped sanctions on its adversary Iran over shipments of arms to Russia and issued warnings to China against doing the same.

One Western ambassador in Cairo said the leaks suggest Egypt “underestimated the U.S. response to a possible arms supply to Russia” and wanted to “maximize their benefit from both sides.”

The top-secret documents — informed in part by signals intelligence, or eavesdropping — detail a month of intelligence reports from early February to early March and were intended for top Pentagon officials.

The first, dated Feb. 17, reports that Egypt took steps in late January and early February to secretly supply rockets to Russia, including setting a price and making plans for obtaining brass to make the rockets. In a conversation on Jan. 31, Minister of State for Military Production Mohamed Salah al-Din told Sisi that he advised Russian delegates that their agreed price of $1,100 per unit could rise to $1,500 due to a potential increase in brass prices. The Russians were ready to “buy anything,” he told Sisi. The Egyptian president also told Salah al-Din, according to the document, to request “specialized equipment” from Russia to improve the accuracy of the rockets or the quality of the Egyptian factories making them.

A second and undated document, likely from mid-February, states that Egypt began creating a rocket production line for the Russian military. Russian delegates had requested to purchase 15,000 rockets at the $1,100 unit price, the document states, but Sisi ordered subordinates to purchase the necessary materials to produce up to 40,000.

Like Ukraine’s army, Russian forces have expended enormous amounts of weaponry in the grinding war and need resupply.

Egypt’s president appears to have put a stop to the rocket plan following visits from U.S. officials, including Brett McGurk and Barbara Leaf, the top White House and State Department officials for Middle East issues, who traveled to Cairo in late February, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who visited in early March.

The Wall Street Journal reported that month that Austin asked Egyptian leaders to provide Ukraine artillery rounds during their talks in Cairo but got no clear agreement. But an intelligence document dated March 9, the day after Austin’s visit, states that Egypt had approved selling 152mm and 155mm artillery rounds to the United States for transfer to Ukraine.

That document, part of a daily intelligence update for senior Pentagon leaders, said that Egypt planned to use the U.S. request for ammunition to push Washington for a long-term military aid deal and to obtain specific American equipment, including F-35 stealth fighter jets and Patriot air defense systems. The document said that Egypt would require American help for establishing a production line for the shells, a licensing agreement and raw materials.

Austin’s visit is the subject of another document, apparently from mid-March, that summarizes conversations between Sisi and two senior officials on March 8, the day the Egyptian president and the U.S. defense secretary held talks in Cairo.

In the March 8 conversations, Sisi appeared to suspect the possibility his discussions were being surveilled and issued Defense Minister Mohamed Zaki what the document described as a warning to “‘be careful’ about discussing presumably military requests from other countries, like Russia.” He and Zaki referenced “military contracts” with Russia but did not explicitly reference the rocket production plan, the document reported.

Zaki told Sisi that plans for an Egyptian delegation to travel to Russia on March 12 or 13, when they would likely sign contracts, had been postponed “until the situation is clearer” following Austin’s visit. Sisi said that “caution was warranted to avoid Egypt getting into trouble unnecessarily,” to which Zaki responded that “we have not taken any measures” and that Egypt had not signed any contracts.

Cairo has recently evinced frustration with the state of the relationship with Washington. The document summarizing Sisi’s March 8 conversations reports the Egyptian president “characterized the situation as the U.S. not having anything new for Egypt and not needing anything from Egypt, with the U.S. only interested in confirming U.S.-Egypt relations.”

“ElSisi envisioned the U.S. believing Israel was doing well, the Gulf countries were fine, and Europe was supporting the U.S. regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine, so as a result, Egypt’s role was secondary,” it continued.

The United States has pressed Egypt on human rights issues, including on its widespread jailing of activists and anyone who might voice opposition to Sisi. Last year, Washington withheld a small portion of its military aid to Egypt, citing concerns over this pattern of repression.

Even so, President Biden — who once pledged “no more blank checks” for Sisi — has faced scrutiny for adopting what some critics saw as an overly friendly approach to the Egyptian president, including a chummy interaction on the sidelines of the COP27 climate conference in the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh last year.

The intelligence also provides additional visibility into Egypt’s deepening military relationship with Moscow and how it may have already aided Russian forces on the battlefield. An additional, undated document in the leaked trove notes that U.S. imagery and electronic intelligence had identified four Russian SA-23 surface-to-air missile systems in Ukraine that “very likely” had been intended for export to Egypt. Cairo signed a contract with Moscow for four SA-23 batteries in 2017, and the first two were delivered to Egypt in 2020 and 2021, the document stated. It did not explicitly say whether Egypt had returned those two systems to Russia for use in Ukraine.

When Russia invaded Ukraine last year, Egypt took a public position of noninvolvement, voting for an end to the invasion at the United Nations but otherwise remaining neutral, and receiving visiting officials from both Russia and the United States. But with international grain shortages due to the war in Ukraine, Egypt has relied heavily on Russia to provide wheat that has helped stave off social unrest over rising food prices and an economic crisis caused in part by fallout from the conflict. Russia also began construction on Egypt’s first nuclear power plant last year and recently signed a deal for a railway workshop in Egypt.

The two countries have a long history of military and trade cooperation, even as Egypt relies on the United States for more than $1 billion of military aid each year. Egypt’s enormous population, strategic location neighboring Israel and control over the Suez Canal have long kept it relevant internationally, and Egyptian officials have tried to represent themselves to the United States and other powerful allies as a key security partner and mediator in regional tensions.

A former National Security Council official during the Obama administration who worked on the Middle East and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations said that it was common for Egypt to use Russia as a “hedge” to push Washington. After the 2013 Rabaa massacre and military coup led by Sisi prompted the government to review aid to Egypt, Cairo indicated that it could “turn to Russia,” a threat that “resonated with some senior officials at the time,” the person said.

Behind the scenes, the leaked documents suggest, Egypt’s balancing act was more complicated.

“Ideally it is not an either or, but appeasing both ends,” the Western ambassador said. “Bottom line is, though, they cannot endanger their ties with Russia [either], so they cannot actively cooperate with the U.S. on supplies to Ukraine.”

The Washington Post · by Missy Ryan · April 17, 2023

12. Hikvision: Chinese surveillance tech giant denies leaked Pentagon spy claim

They doth protest too much?

Admit nothing, deny everything , make counters-accusations,

Hikvision: Chinese surveillance tech giant denies leaked Pentagon spy claim

BBC · by Menu

Image source, Getty Images

Image caption,

Hikvision is the world's largest surveillance camera maker

By Tessa Wong, Paul Adams & Peter Hoskins

in Singapore and London

Chinese surveillance technology giant Hikvision has denied it is illegally disguising its products sold to the US government to enable Chinese espionage.

It was responding to BBC queries about allegations revealed in a recently leaked Pentagon document.

But Hikvision did not answer questions on whether it partners with Chinese intelligence agencies.

The company is the world's largest surveillance camera maker and has close links to the Chinese state.

It supplies its products to resellers who in turn supply governments and companies, often with the resellers' branding, in a process known as "white labelling".

Though this is a common business model, Hikvision has come under intense scrutiny for its ties to the Chinese state and the use of its products in monitoring Uyghurs.

The US had previously banned Hikvision products from its government supply chains, but in November regulators took this a step further and put in place a nationwide ban, citing concerns over national security.

What the leaked Pentagon files show

In a leaked US government document seen by the BBC, Hikvision is described as "partnering with Chinese intelligence entities" and "using relationships with resellers to disguise its products for sale to government suppliers".

It claims this was "creating vectors for Beijing to compromise DoD [Department of Defense] networks", and that the presence of Hikvision products would probably persist in US government supply chains "because of the company's efforts to mask its exports to retain access to US and allies' markets".

The document also claims that as of January, white-labelled Hikvision products were still available to customers in the US government.

In response to BBC queries about the allegations, a Hikvision spokesperson said "it has not, does not and will not violate the law in order to conduct its business", and that it has "very clear and longstanding policies in place to prevent the improper labelling of its products by anyone for any reason".

The company said it has been working with the US government for many years to keep its products off their supply chains and to "make sure our cameras are never sold improperly" to the US government.

The Hikvision spokesperson did not answer queries on whether the company partners with Chinese intelligence agencies and passes client information to them.

The company has in the past repeatedly denied that it presents a national security threat to governments. It previously said it cannot access end users' data and therefore cannot transmit it to third parties.

Hikvision's biggest shareholder is the state-owned China Electronics Technology Group Corporation.

It has also won multimillion-dollar contracts from the government as China builds a vast surveillance network across the country - including in Xinjiang, where the government is accused of committing genocide against the Uyghurs. Critics say Hikvision has been aiding Chinese oppression against the Muslim minority.

The company has been the subject of increased suspicion, particularly from Western countries which have in recent months sought to stop or root out Hikvision's presence.

In the UK, government departments were told in November to stop installing surveillance cameras made by Chinese companies on "sensitive sites" because of security concerns. Officials have been told to consider removing existing equipment entirely.

The Australian government said in February it would remove Chinese-made surveillance cameras from defence sites.

BBC · by Menu

13. After American’s Killing in Syria, F.B.I. Builds War Crimes Case Against Top Officials

After American’s Killing in Syria, F.B.I. Builds War Crimes Case Against Top Officials

By Katie Benner and Adam Goldman

April 17, 2023
7 MIN READ

The New York Times · by Adam Goldman · April 17, 2023

The inquiry aims to hold to account Syrian officials considered key architects of a brutal system of detention and torture that flourished under President Bashar al-Assad.

Send any friend a story
As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.
April 17, 2023Updated 5:37 p.m. ET

For months, guards at a Syrian prison brutally tortured an American aid worker and threatened to kill her loved ones. She eventually caved to their demands, confessing to crimes she did not commit. A trial that lasted no more than a few minutes followed, and she was ordered executed in late 2016.

Human rights workers and politicians were outraged when the American government stayed noticeably silent about the death of the aid worker, Layla Shweikani, 26. Her case never received the same level of attention as those of other American citizens captured abroad, including Austin Tice, a freelance journalist covering the war in Syria who was abducted outside Damascus in 2012; Jason Rezaian, a correspondent for The Washington Post, who described being subjected to psychological abuse and sleep deprivation after he was released from an Iranian prison in 2016; and Brittney Griner, a professional basketball star who was imprisoned for nearly a year in Russia.

But for five years, the Justice Department has been quietly investigating Ms. Shweikani’s killing, led by the U.S. attorney in Chicago, according to four people with knowledge of the inquiry. F.B.I. agents traveled to Europe and the Middle East to collect troves of evidence and interview potential witnesses, including the man who may have buried Ms. Shweikani. Federal prosecutors convened a grand jury, which has been hearing evidence.

Layla Shweikani was detained on Feb. 19, 2016, along with her father and her fiancé.Credit...via Syrian Network for Human Rights

The inquiry, which has not been previously reported, aims to bring to account top Syrian officials considered key architects of a ruthless system of detention and torture that flourished under President Bashar al-Assad: Jamil Hassan, the head of the Air Force Intelligence Directorate when Ms. Shweikani disappeared, and Ali Mamlouk, then the head of Syria’s National Security Bureau intelligence service.

A federal indictment accusing the men of committing war crimes would be the first time that the United States has criminally charged top Syrian officials with the very human rights abuses that Mr. al-Assad has long denied using to silence dissent. Although the men are unlikely to be apprehended, a conviction would signal that the United States aims to hold the Syrian government responsible. Already, the United States has imposed sanctions on Mr. al-Assad and his inner circle, including Mr. Mamlouk and Mr. Hassan, over abuses like violence against civilians.

International efforts to bring top officials in Syria to justice for war crimes committed over more than a decade of conflict have been starkly limited. Few perpetrators have been prosecuted, raising the stakes of any possible charges and testing diplomatic relations. A potential indictment would “personalize the evil of this regime and make it clear you can’t do business with Assad,” said former Ambassador James F. Jeffrey, the Trump administration’s special representative for Syria engagement.

Even as it is widely acknowledged that security forces under Mr. al-Assad have systematically sought to stamp out opposition to his authoritarian rule, he has inched back onto the world stage. A few Arab countries, led by the United Arab Emirates, are trying to draw Syria back into the international fold. Critics have accused President Biden of tacitly shifting from the position held by previous administrations that no nation should ever engage with Syria, accusations the White House has denied. And after a powerful earthquake devastated Syria in February, Western nations have worked more amicably with Mr. al-Assad’s government to deliver aid.

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has long denied human rights abuses.

Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, an advocacy group, said that an indictment would send an undeniable message. “No one should normalize relations with a regime that has killed an estimated 500,000 to a million people, including Americans and Europeans, and that continues to do so,” he said.

Asked to comment for this article or whether the F.B.I. had reached out, Ms. Shweikani’s father, Mohamed Shweikani, said, “I want nothing to do with running your story or the F.B.I.”

Spokeswomen for the Justice Department and the F.B.I. declined to comment.

As a child, Ms. Shweikani traveled to Syria to see family, and she earned a computer science degree in 2012 from Arab International University, according to her LinkedIn account. After working for a few years as a software engineer, she relocated in 2015 from suburban Chicago to Damascus to join a grass-roots network of humanitarian relief workers. But Mr. al-Assad tightly controls all official aid efforts in his country and he has treated citizen-run efforts as a threat, accusing them of terrorism.

By the time the authorities detained Ms. Shweikani on Feb. 19, 2016, along with her father and her fiancé, who were also in the country, almost every member of her relief group had been taken into Syrian custody. She would spend nearly a year in prisons on the outskirts of Damascus where cramped conditions, illness and torture run rampant: a detention facility at the Mezze airport, the Adra civilian prison and the Saydnaya military prison, where witnesses believe she was tried and executed.

Syrian guards tortured Ms. Shweikani, witnesses would later tell Justice Department investigators, recounting how they vowed to kill her father and fiancé, who had been detained for only a few days. The guards eventually forced her to falsely confess to crimes against the state, including terrorism.

Some of the worst abuse she endured is believed to have been at the Mezze detention center, which was then controlled by Mr. Hassan. One former detainee described the stark conditions there after he was arrested in 2012 as part of the government’s crackdown on Homs, once the heart of the resistance against Mr. al-Assad.

“You’re blindfolded, handcuffed and naked,” said Mohamed, who asked to be identified only by his first name for fear of retribution. “Your cell is so full that you sleep standing up. You don’t know what time it is. But you know that you’re always awaiting torture.” He had scabies and lice, and his skin was deteriorating. Some prisoners died of gangrene from mutilations and amputations, others of starvation and suffocation.

Guards suspended him by his wrists, feet barely touching the floor, alternately beating him and leaving him hanging for hours to listen to the screams of men, women and children as guards set upon them.

“I confessed to anything they wanted me to,” he said.

International efforts to bring top officials in Syria to justice for war crimes committed over more than a decade of conflict have been limited.

Eventually, Ms. Shweikani was moved to Adra prison, where the Obama administration dispatched the Czech ambassador, Eva Filipi, to meet her in December 2016 because it had cut off formal diplomatic relations with Syria. Convinced that Ms. Shweikani had confessed under torture, she relayed that to officials in Washington, two former officials said.

But before the U.S. government could intervene, Ms. Shweikani was transferred in late December to the Saydnaya military prison. After a brief field trial, she was convicted. Investigators believe she was hanged. She died at 7:07 a.m. on Dec. 28, 2016, according to a government document obtained by a Syrian news service.

At a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Syria in 2018, Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, disclosed Ms. Shweikani’s death to the public.

“She became the first American citizen that we know of to be killed by the Assad regime,” Mr. Kinzinger said, adding, “Whatever response the administration decides to take will shape how the regime and its backers treat other Americans.”

At the hearing, Ambassador Jeffrey confirmed that Ms. Shweikani died “in Syrian government hands.”

Four months later, at a private White House meeting, President Donald J. Trump told Republican lawmakers that he was unlikely to respond to a killing by the Syrian government, according to two people familiar with the conversation. Even though human rights groups had details supporting allegations of torture and murder, Mr. Trump said he was not inclined to address the matter because of Mr. al-Assad’s claims about aid workers and extremism.

But two F.B.I. agents privately told Mr. Kinzinger that the bureau would not be dissuaded from investigating her death, the people said. Former and current U.S. officials involved in scrutinizing Ms. Shweikani’s activities also expressed doubt about Syria’s accusations of terrorism.

F.B.I. agents traveled to collect troves of evidence and interview potential witnesses regarding Ms. Shweikani’s death.Credit...T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times

While investigators gathered ample information that placed Ms. Shweikani in the prisons and testimony about her brutal treatment, the bigger challenge was directly linking Syria’s top intelligence officials to her torture and death. But they made inroads, largely with the help of Syrian activists, victims and nongovernmental organizations that for years have collected evidence of Syria’s activities.

At least one prisoner testified to seeing Mr. Hassan at Mezze prison while Ms. Shweikani was there. The gravedigger’s papers authorizing him to dispose of the bodies from Syria’s prisons were signed and stamped by Mr. Mamlouk. He said in an interview with The New York Times that Mr. Hassan ordered his work.

Nearly every night, intelligence officers called him on a military communications device to meet tractor-trailer trucks that ferried bodies to mass graves. “Sometimes it was impossible to open the truck because the pressure built up inside from the decay,” he said.

The trailers tilted the corpses into vast trenches. “Hundreds of bodies flowed out. Some human beings looked skeletal because they were starved. Others had their guts spilling out. I would see a river of parts,” the gravedigger said. “Those that got stuck on the ledge, me and my team would have to get them into the hole.” The smell lingered in his nose and mouth for days.

But the bodies from Saydnaya were different, arriving in cars, a few dozen at a time. “Their bodies were still warm, just executed,” the gravedigger said. “I always saw the mark of the noose on their neck and their hands and legs tied. They were always naked.”

Prosecutors in Germany and France have spent years establishing criminal cases against Mr. al-Assad’s lieutenants, underlining some of the difficulties in pursuing justice for atrocities committed in countries like Syria.

Demonstrators gathered last month on the 12th anniversary of the uprising against Mr. al-Assad.

In January 2022, a German court handed down a landmark life sentence against Anwar Raslan, a Syrian colonel, for crimes against humanity, including the torture of more than 4,000 Syrian prisoners. In 2018, German prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Hassan, but they have yet to apprehend him.

In March, prosecutors in France indicted and issued arrest warrants for Mr. Mamlouk and Mr. Hassan related to the killing of two men with dual French-Syrian citizenship.

If the Justice Department were to charge Mr. Hassan and Mr. Mamlouk, it is highly unlikely that the men would enter a country willing to extradite them to the United States. But human rights lawyers say the prosecution would still be valuable, revealing more about the atrocities that continue to be committed in Syria.

“Assad is still in power,” said Clémence Bectarte, a lawyer for the International Federation for Human Rights who represented the family of the two victims in France’s recent indictment. “Prosecutions are the only way at the moment for victims to articulate their quest for justice.”

The New York Times · by Adam Goldman · April 17, 2023

14. The Teixeira Breach: What Top Intelligence and Legal Experts Are Saying

The Teixeira Breach: What Top Intelligence and Legal Experts Are Saying

justsecurity.org · by Just Security · April 17, 2023

April 17, 2023

[Editor’s note: for further analysis on this topic, see Brianna Rosen’s article here].

The unauthorized disclosure of classified documents from Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira represents a significant security breach for the U.S. Intelligence Community. On Friday, Teixeria appeared before the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, where he is facing charges for leaking classified information on an online gaming platform.

In the wake of the revelations, Just Security asked top experts and former senior intelligence officials to assess the damage from the Teixeira breach and implications for national security.

Robert Litt, former General Counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence under the Obama administration:

The recent arrest of a 21-year-old National Guardsman for leaking classified documents has raised a number of questions that illustrate the tensions under which the Intelligence Community operates. People have wondered why sensitive information about the Ukraine conflict, Chinese spy balloons, and internal Russian political dynamics was shared with the Massachusetts Air National Guard. But in the aftermath of 9/11, there was tremendous pressure to ease and broaden the flow of intelligence information, both to enable analysts to “connect the dots” and to ensure that agencies charged with protecting national security were fully informed about present and future threats. People have wondered why it took several months after the release of some documents on a social media platform for the authorities to discover them. But privacy and civil liberties concerns appropriately limit the ability of government authorities to monitor postings on social media in the absence of concrete evidence of wrongdoing – particularly social media sites that are not open to the general public. And people have expressed astonishment that, yet again, a leaker has slipped through the security clearance process. Yet with over 1 million people having Top Secret security clearances, even a clearance system that is 99.99% perfect – a degree of perfection that is unimaginable for human processes – there would be over 100 security risks with access to top secret information.

In the aftermath of the leaks, there should be a sober and penetrating review of information sharing, of the number of people with security clearances, of implementation of existing policies regarding “need to know,” and of monitoring of classified systems. But it will be important not to overcorrect and take steps that either burden civil liberties or impede effective intelligence gathering, analysis, and dissemination.

Mary McCord, Executive Director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (@GeorgetownICAP) and former Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the U.S. Department of Justice:

The Teixeira case raises a number of red flags. First, did Teixeira actually have a “need to know” the information to which he was provided access? Even with the proper clearances, access is supposed to be limited to those with a need to know. Providing technical support to the classified communications systems for the Air National Guard should not establish a need to know the content of the classified information on those systems. The Department of Defense should examine its practices for granting clearances and providing access to highly classified information to those whose jobs are to make sure the computer systems work properly, but who otherwise do not have a need to know the content of the information flowing over those systems.

Second, the casualness with which Teixeira felt he could ignore the lifelong non-disclosure agreements he signed in order to obtain access to highly classified information warrants a review of how the Air National Guard – and the military more generally – trains its members about the importance of complying with classified information procedures, how and to whom the clearances are granted, and how read-ins to special access programs are conducted. This review should also consider the age and maturity of those to whom we are entrusting information which, if disclosed, could cause exceptionally grave harm to our nation’s security. Teixeira’s choice of a gaming platform to make disclosures to a group of boys some of whom may not even have been old enough to enlist in the military, in an apparent attempt to impress them, underscores this point.

Finally, reporting about Teixeira’s racist and anti-Semitic statements and actions, including an alleged video of him shouting these types of statements before shooting a rifle, is reason to review how the Air National Guard – and, again, the military more generally – is recruiting and training its volunteers and enlistees. There is no place in our military for those whose extremist views undermine the mission of the branch in which they seek to serve. The Teixeira case is a wake-up call. Our nation’s security demands that it be heeded.

John Sipher (@john_sipher), 28-year CIA veteran with multiple tours overseas as Chief of Station and Deputy Chief of Station in Europe, Asia, and in high-threat environments:

The recent leak of intelligence relating to the war in Ukraine has provided some interesting – if not surprising – findings. For example, some of the documents have highlighted sensitive signals intelligence that there is increased infighting among Russian military and political officials.

For students of Russia such infighting is nothing new. Even in the best of times, Russian officials seem to be particularly skilled at undercutting each other. Also, over recent years Putin has become adept at using the classic practice of divide and rule. If an official or organization appears to be gaining strength inside the system, they can expect to be cut down to size. Dictators cannot tolerate anyone gaining any kind of authority that might be seen as a political threat.

In such a system (well, in any system), those responsible for military and strategic failures need to shift blame to others. The Kremlin has engaged formal and informal actors, as well as covert and overt units in an effort to destroy Ukraine. All have failed and all need to find a way to cover their backsides.

In normal times, our diplomats and intelligence operatives only gain glimpses of the internal machinations of key Kremlin insiders. Times of war however, provide our intelligence professionals a much wider array of targets to inspect and analyze. Military and political commanders must communicate in a rushed and chaotic manner which allows more opportunities for collection. Indeed, the recent reports of infighting seem to derive from signals intercepts.

While the leak of the intelligence is unfortunate, it is unlikely to lead to a loss of collection across the board. Politicians, commanders, and soldiers cannot easily change their equipment and procedures in a time of war, and the worse things get on the ground, the greater the need to shift the blame to others.

Erik Dahl (@ErikJDahl1), associate professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School and faculty member of the Center for Homeland Defense and Security:

This case appears in many ways to be even more dangerous for American intelligence and national security than previous leaks such as Snowden and Manning. From what we know so far, this appears to be a case of a knucklehead with a clearance, and such a person can be much more difficult to detect and track than traditional leakers, who are typically motivated by factors such as ideology, politics, or money.

Counterintelligence efforts can detect internal threats such as leakers at three different stages. First, before the person is granted a clearance and access to secrets, the security investigation and clearance approval process is designed to detect potential danger signs from someone’s past behavior and statements. Second, while the person is working in a position of trust — whether as a member of the military, a civilian employee, or a contractor — there are systems such as periodic clearance reviews designed to spot warning signs that might develop. And third, security systems are in place to detect loss of classified material and other internal threats as soon as possible, in order to contain the threat and identify the persons responsible.

All of these security systems are designed to detect traditional threats, such as insiders who voice extremist or violent views or who communicate with known terrorist groups or foreign security services. And all three of these systems appeared to have failed in this case, in which the offender appears to have been a low-level insider with no ideological or political axe to grind, and who was not motivated by traditional factors such money.

Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_), Senior Lecturer at Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and former Special Agent in the New York office of the FBI:

The question that the Texeira case raises is how many cases like his do we NOT know about? Surely he was not the only junior officer in the military who had access to such sensitive material, and he had no problem bringing these documents home. These individuals would be low-hanging fruit for intelligence services seeking to recruit sources; those who might be motivated by financial incentives, rather than narcissism like Texeira, could very well be passing our secrets directly to our adversaries instead of posting them online.

Alex Finley (@alexzfinley), former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe:

For me, the biggest takeaway is that the government needs to revisit its clearance process and stop handing out Top Secret access like it is candy at Halloween. Getting a clearance has become a bureaucratic process, rather than a common sense process. Issues such as Teixeira’s anti-government views are not likely to manifest themselves on a form, and too many people hold high-level clearances. Lastly, we need to rethink sharing. After 9/11, sharing intelligence widely became a mantra, and rightly so. But perhaps some sharing needs to be reined in.

Image: This photo illustration created on April 13, 2023 in Washington, DC, shows the Discord logo reflected in a screengrab of the suspect, national guardsman Jack Teixeira, being taken into custody by FBI agents in a forested area in North Dighton, in the northeastern state of Massachusetts (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images).

justsecurity.org · by Just Security · April 17, 2023

15. China’s Economy Rebounds After Three Years of Zero-Covid Isolation

Retail sales rose more than 10% in March from a year earlier, hinting at increased consumer confidence

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-economy-rebounds-after-three-years-of-zero-covid-isolation-693ed73

By Jason DouglasFollow

and Bingyan Wang

Updated April 17, 2023 11:47 pm ET

SINGAPORE—China’s economy rebounded in the first three months of the year after Beijing dismantled its heavy-handed Covid-19 controls, teeing up a revival in growth that is expected to buoy the global economy as the U.S. and European economies slow.

China’s economy expanded 4.5% in the first quarter of the year compared with the same three months a year earlier, China’s National Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday, a better performance than the 4.0% pace expected by economists polled by The Wall Street Journal.

Compared with the previous quarter, when China was hit by a wave of Covid infections after the abrupt end to its zero-tolerance Covid policies in December, the economy expanded 2.2%.

Growth was driven by Chinese consumers, who began shopping, eating out and traveling again after almost three years of stringent restrictions on daily life, data showed. The economy also benefited from government investment in infrastructure and a surprise pickup in exports in March.

Chinese consumers began shopping, eating out and traveling again after years of Covid-19 restrictions on daily life.

PHOTO: ALY SONG/REUTERS

The result means the economy is broadly on track to meet Beijing’s goal of expanding by about 5% in 2023, after growth last year clocked in at just 3%, one of China’s worst economic results in decades.

China’s reopening is a bright spot in an otherwise downbeat outlook for the global economy. The International Monetary Fund said this month that the world is entering a perilous phase as economies wrestle with stubborn inflation, sharply higher interest rates and the continuing fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Recent turmoil at U.S. and European banks also raises the specter of a bout of damaging financial instability, the fund said in its April world economic outlook.

Top Bank Regulators Testify Before Senate Over SVB, Signature Failures

FBI Investigating Ex-Navy Noncommissioned Officer Linked to Pro-Russia Social-Media Account

Sarah Bils is an administrator of the Donbass Devushka account, which disseminated leaked classified documents and sells pro-Russian merchandise

By Sadie GurmanFollow

, Gordon LuboldFollow

and Bob Mackin

Updated April 17, 2023 9:17 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fbi-investigating-ex-navy-noncommissioned-officer-linked-to-pro-russia-social-media-account-e0cf9a10

The FBI is investigating the activities of a former U.S. Navy noncommissioned officer who oversaw a social-media account involved in the spread of intelligence documents allegedly leaked by Airman First Class Jack Teixeira, U.S. officials said Monday. The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the woman, Sarah Bils, administered several pro-Russian outlets while in uniform.

The scope of the investigation into Ms. Bils, a 37-year-old who left the Navy in November, couldn’t be determined.

“She is actively under federal investigation,” a U.S. official said, “but the circumstances of the content of the investigation are unclear at this time.”

Ms. Bils told the Journal on Monday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which sent agents to her home in Oak Harbor, Wash., on Sunday, is investigating death threats allegedly made against her. She said that she also discussed the leak of classified documents with the FBI and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and has stressed that she wasn’t the sole administrator of the site where leaked documents appeared.

“I have been forthright and honest with the FBI and NCIS in regards to what my clearances were and what I had access to, which was literally nothing,” Ms. Bils said. “I didn’t leak the documents and they’ve never even been in my possession.”

The FBI declined to comment on Ms. Bils.

USNI News, the online news service of the U.S. Naval Institute, earlier reported that Ms. Bils was under federal investigation.

The Justice Department last week charged Airman Teixeira with unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information and unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material. Prosecutors are expected to lay out some of their evidence against him at a Wednesday detention hearing in Boston. Public defenders representing him didn’t respond to requests for comment Monday.

Guardsman Arrested Over Leaked Classified Documents Is Charged

Why Jack Teixeira Had Access to So Much Classified Information

A former intelligence officer provides some context.

BY FRED KAPLAN

APRIL 14, 202310:48 AM

Slate · by Fred Kaplan · April 14, 2023

The 21-year-old airman was working on one of the northeastern bases for NORAD. EYEPRESS via Reuters Connect

One of the odd mysteries in the case of Jack Teixeira—the 21-year-old Airman arrested on Thursday for pilfering and leaking hundreds of highly classified documents to pals online—turns out not to be so odd after all.

The puzzle, as I noted in a column on Thursday, is why the Massachusetts Air National Guard, which is where Teixeira worked, would have access to such material in the first place.

The answer is that Otis Air Base, the Cape Cod home to the Massachusetts Air National Guard, is one of a few northeastern bases for NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command. This means one of its main missions is to detect, track, intercept, and defend against foreign incursions of U.S. air space.

As such, according to a former intelligence officer who still does high-level intelligence analysis, the base would routinely have access to reports and dispatches filed on the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communication System (JWICS, often pronounced J-Wicks)—and the key word here is worldwide. All information about foreign aircraft, air-defense weapons, military operations, and foreign-policy decisions would be swept up and transmitted throughout the system.

Teixeira was low-ranked—an airman 1st-class is equivalent to the Army’s private 1st-class—but he was working in the base’s intelligence wing. Just to work in that wing, according to the former intelligence officer, he would have had to be granted a TS/SCI security clearance, allowing him to see documents marked “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information.”

Though it is not yet known what Teixeira’s precise duties were, he was an I.T. specialist in the intelligence unit, meaning he would have had access to the JWICS—and, once inside that system, he could have searched any topic.

According to the former intelligence officer, several years ago, in response to a spate of leaks, JWICS was modified so that no documents from its files could be downloaded. This may explain why Teixeira, at first, wrote down summaries—in some cases, verbatim transcripts—of intelligence documents, which he then sent to his pals on the Discord gamers’ server.

The Washington Post and New York Times have reported that he later printed out documents, which he folded, took home, photographed, and then emailed to his small band of followers.

This is where serious security questions come into play. The former intelligence officer said that it is not unusual for people on the JWICS network to print documents. However, a record is made of what gets printed, at what time; so, someone, somewhere along the way, should have noticed the possibility of a security breach. It may also be worth asking why nobody noticed such papers in Teixeira’s briefcase as he left the building—or whether, at Otis Air Force Base or many other secure bases, anyone checks briefcases or any other containers at all.

It’s also a worthwhile question whether security officers ever give random polygraph tests to those who handle such high-level documents. (They used to.) The prospect of a lie-detector grilling can be daunting to even the most respectable clearance-holder—and a deterrent to at least some of those who mull about veering off the straight and narrow path.

Finally, it may be time to add more restrictions to the JWICS system, requiring strict need-to-know rules on who gets access to what and imposing a two-key rule, blocking one person on duty from printing—or taking long looks at—sensitive documents unless a colleague signs on.

We don’t yet know exactly how Teixeira did what he did, but it’s fairly clear that he didn’t simply slip through some loopholes; he knew that he was breaking the rules and breaking the law. Upon Teixeira’s arrest on Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland said that the airman would be charged with the “unauthorized removal, retention, and transmission of classified national defense information”—a clear reference to the Espionage Act, which carries penalties of up to 30 years in prison or, in extreme cases, death.

Anyone given a high-level security clearance signs a document acknowledging the possible penalties for a violation. The vast majority of those who sign take it seriously. A few don’t, but it doesn’t take many to wreak damage. Yes, a lot—probably most—classified documents are over-classified; a lot of them don’t need to be classified at all. But some secrets should legitimately be secret; as Barack Obama once said, “There’s classified, and there’s classified.” Some of the stuff that Jack Teixeira put online was classified. The system needs to be tightened.

Slate · by Fred Kaplan · April 14, 2023

18. After leak, Pentagon purges some users' access to classified programs, launches security review

After leak, Pentagon purges some users' access to classified programs, launches security review - Breaking Defense

The review, whose initial findings are due in 45 days, involves DoD CIO John Sherman, who's already been long at work revamping how the Pentagon protects its secrets.

breakingdefense.com · by Ashley Roque, Jaspreet Gill · April 17, 2023

The Pentagon, but digitized. (Graphic by Breaking Defense. Circuit photo by Pixabay.)

WASHINGTON — As the Department of Justice continues investigating the breadth of the Discord leak, the Pentagon has launched a review of its security policies and procedures and is paring back just who has access to highly classified information, a Pentagon spokeswoman announced today.

Late last week, a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard was arrested and charged with two counts related to the unauthorized handling of classified materials in relation to a deluge of classified documents that circulated online for months unnoticed. Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh referred reporters today over to the DOJ for all questions related to that investigation but said top Department of Defense leaders continue to receive briefings and are taking some initial steps designed to better protect classified material.

For example, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has directed the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, in coordination with the Chief Information Officer and the Director of Administration and Management, to lead a “comprehensive review of DOD security programs, policies and procedures.”

“Within 45 days, [the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security] will provide [Austin] with initial findings and recommendations to improve the department’s policies and procedures related to the protection of classified information,” Singh said.

That review is designed, in part, to review who has access to “sensitive information” across the DoD and in other agencies.

“It’s not just the Department of Defense who has [a stake] in some of these unauthorized disclosures of docs that were posted online. There are other agencies that were impacted, our allies and partners as well,” she told reporters.

More immediately, though, the Pentagon is combing through distribution lists of people able to access and print classified material to determine if they should have that level of access.

“A very simple example would be a distribution list that has 10 people on it, and one of those people have left the organization, but they moved within the department and still have that email,” Singh explained. “So, it’s culling through some of those lists and making sure that people are sent information they actually need to… do their jobs.”

“That effort is going to be ongoing [and] not just going to stop tomorrow and it’s not going to stop after a week because it’s going to be a long-term effort,” she said separately.

People have already been purged from these distribution lists, according to Singh but she declined to say just how many.

Although this recent document leak has prompted the department to take new, initial steps to shore up document access, the Pentagon has long sought reforms for how it handles access to sensitive and classified information.

For example, prior to the leak the office of the CIO already had been front and center of bolstering cybersecurity across the Pentagon. In January last year, President Joe Biden signed a memorandum mandating the DoD CIO and those of the intelligence agencies to keep an inventory of information systems that “do or should likely” constitute national security systems.

The DoD CIO, John Sherman, is also leading the effort to implement zero trust, a security strategy that assumes no user is ever fully “trusted” on a network and must continuously be validated through every stage. Sherman aims to have that in place across the board by fiscal 2027.

19. Joint Chiefs shuffle: Biden’s top contenders to replace Trump’s military leaders

Place your bets. I wonder what the oddsmakers in Vegas are giving these selections.

Joint Chiefs shuffle: Biden’s top contenders to replace Trump’s military leaders

Politico

Besides the chair, the Pentagon could also see new leaders for the Army, Navy, Marines and possibly the Air Force this year.

An illustration featuring President Joe Biden and the potential members of his Joint Chiefs of Staff. | POLITICO illustration/Photos by AP, Getty Images, U.S. military

04/17/2023 06:30 PM EDT

Donald Trump handpicked the nation’s top military brass while he was in office. Now it’s Joe Biden’s turn.

As many as five members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the eight most senior uniformed leaders who advise the president on military issues, are scheduled to leave their assignments this year. Besides the Joint Chiefs chair, the heads of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and potentially the Air Force are all set to leave. Three of the military’s top operational commanders are changing over as well: The heads of Northern Command, Space Command and Cyber Command.

The vacancies give President Biden a chance to put his stamp on the Joint Chiefs as the administration looks to take big steps to counter Chinese aggression in the Pacific, chart a new course in Europe after the Ukraine invasion and dump old weapons systems to make room for new ones.

“These are legacy moments for the Biden administration, but they are also the guard rails for the republic,” Peter Feaver, a former staffer on the National Security Council and author of “Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations.”

It’s also an opportunity for Biden, who named the first Black defense secretary in 2021, to make more historic appointments, including the first female member of the Joint Chiefs. Last year, Biden chose Adm. Linda Fagan to be the first female commandant of the Coast Guard, which operates under the Department of Homeland Security.

POLITICO spoke to 11 current and former Defense Department officials, as well as leaders in academia with knowledge of the discussions to forecast who’s in the running for the jobs. Some were granted anonymity to discuss the subject ahead of the announcements.

Here are the names at the top of the list:

Chair

Current leader: Army Gen. Mark Milley, sworn in Oct. 1, 2019

The frontrunner: Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown

If you ask most people at DoD, the shoo-in for the top job is Gen. C.Q. Brown, the Air Force chief of staff. Brown, a fighter pilot by training, has stellar credentials, serving as commander of the service’s forces both in the Middle East and in the Pacific. He is also the first Black man to serve as Air Force chief of staff, and was nominated for the job the same summer as the Black Lives Matter protests swept the nation.

Brown is not known for making news, and typically sticks closely to the talking points during public appearances and press engagements. But in a rare candid moment, he weighed in on the racial unrest roiling the country in an emotional video describing his experience navigating the issue in the military.

Tapping Brown for the top job would mean plucking him from his current post before his term is up. He was sworn in Aug. 6, 2020, and has another year left as the Air Force’s top officer.

Marine Corps Gen. David Berger

The White House is also considering Gen. David Berger, the Marine Corps Commandant, who has served in the post since July 2019.

Berger “connected” more with the president during his interview for the job, one former DoD official said. Berger’s interview lasted 90 minutes, while Brown’s interview lasted only 40, another former DoD official said.

A career infantry officer, Berger has commanded troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Pacific. Yet he is seen as controversial in some corners of the military. His vision for reshaping the Marines by shedding heavy weaponry in favor of a lighter, faster force has drawn criticism, particularly from retired generals.

The longer interview for Berger doesn’t mean he has the job of course, but one person familiar with both Berger and Brown pointed out that the Marine leader is considered more talkative than the analytical Brown. Plus, Berger’s almost total rethinking of how the Marine Corps will be positioned to fight — particularly in the Pacific — is by far the most ambitious retooling of any of the services in decades, which could have sparked more conversation.

One factor that might weigh against Berger is that the current vice chair, Adm. Christopher Grady, is a Navy officer. Lawmakers frown on having a chair and vice chair from within a department, such as the Department of the Navy, which includes both the Navy and Marine Corps.

Army Gen. Laura Richardson

DoD insiders aren’t ruling out Gen. Laura Richardson, an Army officer serving as the commander of U.S. Southern Command. She is one of only 10 women ever to hold the rank of a four-star general or admiral. A helicopter pilot, Richardson previously served as commanding general of U.S. Army North, and has commanded an assault helicopter battalion in Iraq. She also served as military aide to former Vice President Al Gore, and the Army’s legislative liaison to Congress.

But one unofficial rule of the process is that no two consecutive chairs should be from the same service. Since Milley is also an Army officer, Richardson may be at a disadvantage. However, she is also seen as a candidate to replace Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville.

Army

Current leader: Army Gen. James McConville, sworn in Aug. 9, 2019.

The frontrunner: Army Gen. Randy George

While Richardson is a contender, the top candidate for Army chief of staff is Gen. Randy George, who is serving in the vice chief of staff role. George is an infantry officer who served in the 101st Airborne Division and deployed in support of the Gulf War. He also served as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s senior military assistant from June 2021 to July 2022.

Army Gen. Andrew Poppas

Another possibility is Gen. Andrew Poppas, a former commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division. He’s the head of Army Forces Command, a position Milley also held before becoming the Army’s top officer. Poppas also served as director of operations of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, a post Austin held in 2009.

Navy

Current leader: Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday, sworn in on Aug. 22, 2019.

The frontrunner: Navy Adm. Lisa Franchetti

Navy Adm. Lisa Franchetti, currently the vice chief of naval operations, is widely seen as a lock for the top job. The second woman to hold the vice CNO job, Franchetti also holds a degree in journalism. A career surface warfare officer, Franchetti served on the Joint Staff, and commanded the destroyer USS Ross.

Navy Adm. Samuel Paparo

There has also been some talk of Adm. Samuel Paparo, commander of the Pacific Fleet, as a possible candidate. He is a longshot, however, and is considered the top pick to take over as head of Indo-Pacific Command in two years when Adm. John Aquilino moves on.

Air Force

Current leader: Gen. C.Q. Brown, sworn in on Aug. 6, 2020.

The frontrunner: Gen. Jacqueline Von Ovost

If Brown is tapped to be the next chair, that creates an opening to be the top leader of the Air Force.

There’s a lot of buzz around Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, who as the commander of U.S. Transportation Command has been at the center of all DoD’s most high-profile efforts during the Biden administration. Her forces moved vaccines during the Covid-19 response, flew evacuees from Kabul airport in 2021 and are shipping weapons to Ukraine. She is the first female head of Transportation Command, and would be the first woman to head the Air Force.

Gen. David Allvin

The Air Force’s No. 2 military officer since 2020, Allvin previously served as the director for strategy, plans, and policy on the Joint Staff. He comes from the air mobility community and commanded forces in Afghanistan and Europe.

Marine Corps

Current leader: Gen. David Berger, sworn in on July 11, 2019

The frontrunner: Gen. Eric Smith

Gen. Eric Smith is the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, making him the service’s No. 2 general. He has commanded at every level, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a general officer, he commanded the Marine Corps’ forces in U.S. Southern Command, as well as Marine Corps Combat Development Command. He also served in the Pentagon as senior military assistant to the defense secretary in 2016 to 2017.

Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl

While Smith has for months topped the list as a successor to Berger, another candidate in high standing is Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl, who leads the Marine Corps’ Combat Development Command. In that job, Heckl has pushed to test and implement Berger’s reforms, and he has in many ways been the service’s public face for modernization in the Berger vein.

Joe Gould, Paul McLeary and Lee Hudson contributed to this report.

POLITICO

Politico

20. Special Operations News Update - April 17, 2023 | SOF News

Special Operations News Update - April 17, 2023 | SOF News

sof.news · by SOF News · April 17, 2023

Curated news, analysis, and commentary about special operations, national security, and conflicts around the world.

Photo / Image: A diver inserts an ice screw during an emergency procedures drill as part of an ice diving exercise in Sheridan Lake, British Columbia, March 14, 2023. The exercise is designed to enhance interoperability between U.S. and Canadian diving units. (Courtesy Photo, DoD, March 14, 2023)

Do you receive our daily newsletter? If not, you can sign up here and enjoy it five (almost) days a week with your morning coffee (or afternoon tea depending on where in the world you are).

SOF News

Best Ranger Competition. A team from the 75th Ranger Regiment won the Best Ranger Competition. This was the third year in the row that a team from the 75th took first place. This year’s competition saw 56 teams taking part. The teams went through 32 different events over the course of three days that tested their physical, technical, and cognitive skills.

Pararescue Jumpers. The Air Force’s PJs perform very challenging rescue missions under extreme and hazardous conditions in remote environments. The PJs undergo rigorous physical and mental training to include parachuting, scuba diving, and intensive medical training. Learn more about the history, organization, and training of the PJs. “Air Force pararescue teams: Unsung heroes of special operations”, We Are the Mighty, April 17, 2023.

ARSOF and Post 9/11. During the 21 years since the terrorist attacks of September 2001 the Army Special Operations Forces have been in the forefront of the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Read about the men and women of ARSOF who lost their lives in the GWOT. “7,290 Days: A Salute to the ARSOF Fallen of the Post 9/11 Era”, ARSOF History, April 14, 2023.

MH-53 Pave Low. Read about the helicopter that has transported PJs and other Spec Ops types to and from the battlefield. The Pave Low helicopter program provided an airframe that could operate at night and/or during inclement weather. it has some advanced features that make the MH-53 able to fly clandestine, low-level missions 24/7 no matter the weather or light conditions. “MH-53 Pave Low: A U.S. Military Helicopter Designed to Save Lives”, 1945, April 2023.

“Dirty Boat Guys”. The legacy of the Navy’s Special Warfare Combatant-Craft Crewmen (SWCC) dates back to the Beach Jumpers and PT Boats of World War II. The history of SWCC can be traced as well through the 1950s and into the 1960s where boat crews support Navy SEALs and Green Berets during the Vietnam conflict. In 1987, when the Naval Special Warfare units became part of the United States Special Operations Command (USASOC), the boat crews continued their work overseas in conflict areas leading into the Global War on Terror (GWOT) era. Read more in “Dirty Boat Guys: An Expansive History of Navy SWCC”, by Matt Fratus, Coffee or Die Magazine, April 16, 2023.

Cuts to TACPs? The elite corps of tactical air control party airmen may very well be cut in half over the next three years. The Air Force is downsizing certain units in its transition to being prepared to fight in the Indo-Pacific region. The TACPs deploy with Army and special operations forces on the ground and a critical to calling in close air support. “Air Force looks to cut nearly 50% of tactical air control party jobs”, Air Force Times, April 14, 2023.

Adm Howard on BoD for Somewear Labs. A technology company enabling critical communications for defense has announced that Rear Admiral Hugh Wyman Howard III (ret.) has been appointed to its Board of Directors. (PR Newswire, Apr 17, 2023). Admiral Howard previously served as the Commanding Officer of the Naval Special Warfare Command.

Ex-SF Officer and Free Burma Rangers. For over 25 years a former Green Beret has been dodging bullets to bring humanitarian aid to rebels in Burma’s ongoing civil conflict. A reporter from the Rolling Stone spent three weeks in the jungle with Dave Eubank. Read about it in “Zealot or Savior? This U.S. minister is training rebels in a Civil War”, The Rolling Stone, April 16, 2023.

International SOF

Women in IDF. From 2020-2021, the Israeli Defense Force conducted an analysis of combat positions for women. Previous studies had found that there was a low probability for women being able to fulfill the physical requirements of certain units, such as armored and heavy infantry. Some elite units are open to women while others are not. “IDF: Women can’t serve in combat units due to physiological differences”, The Jerusalem Post, April 17, 2023.

India’s Special Forces. Read about the history, training, and missions of India’s Special Forces. “Enabling India’s Finest Soldiers”, Frontier India, April 17, 2023.

Australian SASR. The demands placed on the Special Air Service Regiment and Commando Regiment have stretched Australia’s elite troopers to the point where they may be a systemic culture problem that needs fixing. MENAFN, April14, 2023.

Portuguese SOF. The Army Special Operations Forces of Portugal are part of the Army Rapid Reaction Brigade. Portuguese Army SOF has participated in missions and operations by the United Nations, European Union, and NATO. Read about the organization, tasks, mission, operations, training, weapons, and equipment of the SOF unit based in Lamego, Portugal. “Portuguese Army Special Operations Forces”, Spec Ops Magazine, April 12, 2023.

Russian Spetsnaz in Ukraine. Hundreds of Russian commandos are being used as frontline soldiers, with poor results. According to leaked documents tracking the war in Ukraine, losses have been so high among the elite units that it could take up to a decade to replace the losses of the last 14 months. “Russia’s Spetsnaz forces are being annihilated in Ukraine, leaks claim”, Task & Purpose, April 16, 2023.

SOF History

“Nick Rowe”. On April 21, 1989, Col James N. “Nick” Rowe was assassinated in the Manila, Philippines. He was an American prisoner of war that escaped captivity during the Vietnam War after being held for five years. He helped establish the US Army Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training program at Fort Bragg. He was killed by a unit of the New People’s Army in the Philippines.

Failed Hostage Rescue Attempt. Operation Eagle Claw was a failed attempt to rescue American hostages held in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran on April 24, 1979.

Ukraine Conflict

UK SOF in Ukraine? According to some leaked U.S. intelligence documents the United Kingdom has UK special forces operating in Ukraine. One document indicates that as many as 50 UK SOF personnel had been deployed to Ukraine alongside SOF from other nations. The UK Ministry of Defence is pushing back on the claims saying:

“The widely reported leak of alleged classified US information has demonstrated a serious level of accuracy. Readers should be cautious about taking a face value allegations that have the potential to spread disinformation.”

Spokesman for UK MoD, April 11, 2023, MOD @DefenceHQ Twitter

U.S. SOF In Ukraine. The CIA and U.S. Army Special Forces have some personnel based in Ukraine serving in an advisory capacity. Read more in “The Unknown Mission of American Special Ops Troops Fighting in Ukraine”, SOFREP, April 16, 2023. (subscription) See also “Ukraine Situation Report: US Troops for Embassy Support Only Pentagon Says”, The Drive, April 17, 2023.

New Ukrainian Head of SOF. Yevhenii Khmara has been appointed by President Zelenskyy as the head of the Alpha Group of the Security Service of Ukraine and head of the Special Operations Centre. Yahoo! News, April 14, 2023.

National Security

Capture of ISIS Operative. On April 12, CENTCOM announced that U.S. forces conducted a helicopter raid on April 8, 2023, in eastern Syria capturing an attack facilitator and two of his associates. Read more in “U.S. Special Forces Silently Hunting ISIS in Syria”, Newsweek, April 17, 2023.

Female Afghan Interpreters Who Worked for U.S. SOF Now in U.S. Members of the Afghan Female Tactical Platoon served as interpreters for U.S. special operations forces hunting the Taliban. After the takeover of the Afghan government by the Taliban in August 2021 more than forty members of the FTP were able to make their way to the United States. The legal future of these veterans of the Afghan war is now in question. They wait for their asylum packets to clear the bureaucracy hurdles but at the same time are hoping that the Afghan Adjustment Act passes Congress this year.

Conflict in Sudan. Fighting has erupted Saturday between the Sudanese Army and a paramilitary group. The capital city, Khartoum, is suffering from water and electricity shortages. Sudan has been ruled by two generals who took power in a coup two years ago and was supposed to transition to civilian rule in one month. The rival forces are fighting for control of the country. Read more in “Sudan’s Violent Power Struggle: A Situational Assessment”, Grey Dynamics, April 16, 2023. “US Top Diplomat Calls for Ceasefire in Sudan as Death Toll Nears 200”, Voice of America, April 18, 2023.

CIA’s ‘Zero Units’ – Now in Limbo. Afghan members of a clandestine U.S.-trained counterterrorism force were flown to the U.S. on military transports during the Kabul NEO of August 2021. Many of them have now been admitted to the United States where they are now in a ‘legal limbo’. Some members of the U.S. intelligence community worry that the U.S. is neglecting men who were a key asset during the long war. “They helped the CIA in Afghanistan. Now They’re Suffering in America”, The Washington Post, April 16, 2023. (subscription)

Biden’s Botched Afghan Policy. The recent release of a the Afghan withdrawal report by the Biden administration laid blame for the chaos in August 2021 on the Trump administration. The Biden administration took no blame for the catastrophic withdrawal. This lack of accountability is cited by many as a sign of failed leadership. “Accountability for Biden’s Botched Afghan Withdrawal?”, Real Clear Defense, April 15, 2023.

Upcoming Events

May 8-11, 2023. Tampa, Florida

SOF Week

USSOCOM

May 16-18, 2023. Fort Bragg, NC and via Zoom

Geostrategic Symposium 2023

USASOC

May 22-26, 2023. Indianapolis, Indiana

Special Forces Association Convention

May 31, 2023. Ijamsville, MD

6th Annual Golf Tournament

Three Rangers Foundation

June 21-22, 2023

Warrior East

ADS

August 5, 2023. Perdido Key, Florida

Deep Dive 2023 Combat Diver Reunion

CDF

SOF News welcomes the submission of articles for publication. If it is related to special operations, current conflicts, national security, or defense then we are interested.

Pubs and Movies

Military Review. The March-April 2023 issue of Military Review is now online. This online magazine by the Army University Press has several interesting articles on doctrine, operational art, mission modeling for commanders, irregular approach to integrated deterrence (financial access denial), air defense artillery, suicide prevention, and more.

CRS Report on DNI. The Congressional Research Service has published a short brief about the Director of National Intelligence. The DNI oversees the integration of the intelligence functions of the 18 statutory elements of the Intelligence Community (IC) and serves as the principal intelligence advisor to the President. Learn more about the creation of the DNI position, authorities, and responsibilities. PDF, April 7, 2023, 3 pages. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10470

Movie Review – Tears of the Sun. This movie came out in 2003 and features Bruce Willis as a U.S. Navy SEAL. His team is given the task of rescuing a missionary and her staff in an African country in the midst of conflict. “Bruce Willis’ Film ‘Tears of the Sun’ Gave Post-9/11 America An Important Moral Message”, War History Online, April 14, 2023.

Podcasts

The Pinelander. Blacksmith Publishing

https://www.thepinelander.com/

SOFCAST. United States Special Operations Command

https://linktr.ee/sofcast

The Indigenous Approach. 1st Special Forces Command

https://open.spotify.com/show/3n3I7g9LSmd143GYCy7pPA

Irregular Warfare Podcast. Modern War Institute at West Point

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/irregular-warfare-podcast/id1514636385

sof.news · by SOF News · April 17, 2023

21. G-7 diplomats reject Chinese, North Korean, Russian aggression

G-7 diplomats reject Chinese, North Korean, Russian aggression

militarytimes.com · by Matthew Lee, The Associated Press · April 17, 2023

KARUIZAWA, Japan — Top diplomats from the Group of Seven wealthy democracies vowed a tough stance on China’s increasing threats to Taiwan and on North Korea’s unchecked tests of long-range missiles, while building momentum on ways to boost support for Ukraine and punish Russia for its invasion.

Russia’s war in Ukraine consumed much of the agenda Monday for the envoys gathered in this Japanese hot spring resort town for talks meant to pave the way for action by G-7 leaders when they meet next month in Hiroshima.

The world is at “turning point” on the fighting in Ukraine and must “firmly reject unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force, and Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and its threats of the use of nuclear weapons,” Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi told his colleagues, according to a Japanese summary.

For the American delegation, the meeting comes at a crucial moment in the world’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and efforts to deal with China, two issues that G-7 ministers from Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Italy and the European Union regard as potent challenges to the post-World War II rules-based international order.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, and Japan's Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi meet during a G7 Foreign Ministers' Meeting at The Prince Karuizawa hotel in Karuizawa, Japan, Monday, April 17, 2023. (Andrew Harnik/AP, Pool)

A senior U.S. official traveling with Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that the Biden administration’s goal for the talks is to shore up support for Ukraine, including a major initiative on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure launched at last year’s G-7 gatherings in Germany, as well as to ensure the continued provision of military assistance to Kyiv.

Ramping up punishment against Russia, particularly through economic and financial sanctions that were first threatened by the G-7 in December 2021, before the invasion, will also be a priority, the official said.

Ukraine faces an important moment in coming weeks with Russia’s current offensive largely stalled and Ukraine preparing a counteroffensive. The U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss Blinken’s priorities at the closed-door meetings, said there would be discussion about ways to deepen support for Ukraine’s long-term defense and deterrence capabilities. That might also improve Kyiv’s position for potential negotiations that could end the conflict on its terms.

The role of Japan — the only Asian member of the G-7 — as chairman of this year’s talks provides an opportunity to discuss coordinated action on China. Leaders and foreign ministers of G-7 countries, most recently France and Germany, have recently concluded visits to China, and the diplomats in Karuizawa are expected to discuss their impressions of where the Chinese stand on numerous issues, including the war in Ukraine, North Korea, and Taiwan, which is a particular sore point in U.S.-Chinese relations.

At a private working dinner on Sunday night that was the diplomats’ first formal meeting, Hayashi urged continued dialogue with China on the many global challenges where participation from Beijing is seen as crucial. Among the Chinese interests that are intertwined with those of wealthy democracies are global trade, finance and climate efforts.

But the diplomats are also looking to address China’s more aggressive stance in the region, particularly toward Taiwan, the self-governing democracy that Beijing claims as its own.

Hayashi told ministers that outside nations must continue “building a constructive and stable relationship, while also directly expressing our concerns and calling for China to act as a responsible member of the international community,” according to a summary of the closed-door dinner.

China recently sent planes and ships to simulate an encirclement of Taiwan. Beijing has also been rapidly adding nuclear warheads, taking a tougher line on its claim to the South China Sea and painting a scenario of impending confrontation.

The worry in Japan can be seen it its efforts to make a major break from its self-defense-only post-World War II principles, working to acquire preemptive strike capabilities and cruise missiles to counter growing threats.

Blinken had been due to visit Beijing in February, but the trip was postponed because of a Chinese spy balloon incident over U.S. airspace and has yet to be rescheduled.

Blinken met briefly with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Forum, but high-level contacts between Washington and Beijing have become rare. Thus, Blinken will be seeking insight from his French and German counterparts on their interactions with the Chinese, the senior U.S. official said.

Despite indications, notably comments from French President Emmanuel Macron, that the G-7 is split over China, the official said there is shared worry among G-7 nations over China’s actions. The official added that the foreign ministers would be discussing how to continue a coordinated approach to China.

Another senior State Department official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity to describe the closed-door meetings, said the G-7 would release a communique Tuesday that would make clear the group’s strong unity over Russia’s war in Ukraine, China and the broader Indo-Pacific, particularly North Korea, the need to maintain the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, and to improve relations with Pacific island nations.

The official downplayed suggestions that fissures are emerging over China. G-7 members, the official said, want to work with China on common challenges, but will “stand up” against Chinese coercion and attempts to water down or circumvent international rules regarding trade and commerce.

The official said that in numerous recent diplomatic engagements with Chinese officials, G-7 members had stressed to Beijing that any supply of weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine would be met with serious consequences, as would attempts to change the status quo of Taiwan. The official said that European members now have a better understanding of how a “roiling” of the status quo would affect their interests, notably their economies.

North Korea is also a key area of worry for Japan and other neighbors in the region.

Since last year, Pyongyang has test-fired around 100 missiles, including intercontinental ballistic missiles that showed the potential of reaching the U.S. mainland and a variety of other shorter-range weapons that threaten South Korea and Japan.

Hayashi “expressed grave concern over North Korea’s launch of ballistic missiles with an unprecedented frequency and in unprecedented manners, including the launch in the previous week, and the G-7 Foreign Ministers strongly condemned North Korea’s repeated launches of ballistic missiles,” according to the summary.

22. War Before 2025 – The PLAs Villainous Plan To Defeat the U.S. Military

War Before 2025 – The PLAs Villainous Plan To Defeat the U.S. Military

By Christopher Brown

April 18, 2023

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/04/18/war_before_2025__the_plas_villainous_plan_to_defeat_the_us_military_894361.html

Remember the classic Twilight Zone episode The Monsters are Due on Maple Street? You know, the segment where aliens come to earth and systematically start turning off the lights. This quickly escalates to neighbor turning on neighbor in bloody mayhem blaming each other for these inexplicable, disquieting technological mysteries. Now pause for a moment and imagine any modern street in America. Jamaica Avenue in Queens, New York or East Houston Street in San Antonio, Texas. Each street contains Americans, blue and white collar. Independent, Republican, and Democrat. Americans’ paranoid of one another, each espousing their own ideologies with the vast majority unable to coalesce around topical, pragmatic conversation. Americans armed to the teeth with 400+ million firearms.[i] Every day we hear it in passing. Strangers remarking about a coming civil war, celebrities acting out in extreme defiance over their own political opinions, pundits propagating misinformation over the airwaves, Americans on the brink of sheer hysteria over the latest viral moment on social media. All these things are brewing a divisive stew of suspicion, fear, hate, and angst.

The Looming Large-Scale Combat Operation

In the Pentagon I have no doubt top people right now are focusing on contingency operations for responding to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. I am of the outside opinion. That is, I believe the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will launch a full-scale invasion of Taiwan prior to January 1st, 2025, with a minimum of 1+ million troops, air, land, and sea. I will not delve into my reasons, backed up only by open-source information available to the public. And no one is perfect in their assessments. But I was correct in predicting a major Russian invasion of Ukraine, four months before it occurred. Experts such as Peter Zeihan, predicted it as far back as 2014.[ii] Has the Pentagon considered that an attack on an island nearly 7,600 miles away from the U.S. mainland is likely to be preceded by or complimented by a much larger strike with never seen, non-kinetic, weapons of mass destruction here on American soil? I am highly doubtful.

An Electronically Addicted, Uninterested, Untested Youth

Enter the military recruiting crisis.[iii] Recently, the Department of Defense released polling and survey data indicating potential military recruits were passing on service for key reasons including fears of safety.[iv] Imagine for a moment a present-day, large-scale war involving American forces. There will be casualties. Safety is by no means guaranteed. In fact, visceral, painful, images of life altering casualties are to be expected. Remember the scene in Saving Private Ryan during the D-day invasion? The American soldier lying on the ground, innards out, while screaming for his mother? This horrific moment is sure to be repeated in future wars. The difference this time, is the ability to beam sickening snapshots like this back to American recruits – already hesitant to serve, in real time.

Weaponizing the Algorithm

On Capitol Hill, officials are lambasting TikTok, deriding its ability to freely access 150+ million users’ information, which is no doubt being culled by the government in Beijing.[v] They are completely missing the point. Social media is a waiting, weapon of mass destruction. You read that right. The PLA will weaponize scenes like the one in Saving Private Ryan in a future conflict over Taiwan. They will project that back to the American youth with lighting precision.

Discarding the Digital Draft Card

The PLA will follow the teachings of Sun Tzu. To defeat the United States Military without fighting is the entire point. Why wage a bloody war of attrition when you can merely sap the will to fight of an entire enemy recruiting age population before ever setting foot on the battlefield? Better yet why not turn them on each other and make their home the real battlefield? Once U.S. forces are committed to Taiwan, scenes of death and destruction will start showing up in social media feeds. If you think recruiting is bad now, it will come to a full stop. Selective service will be initiated. This time though, no Vietnam-era scenes of draft cards on fire in black and white imagery will be strewn across the tv screen. Instead, the U.S. government will have no choice but to lock down online bank accounts of all members who opt not to show with a message to report to their local draft station. How will they respond? By posting videos of themselves on social media, crying that they cannot pay their rent or grocery bill. Mass rioting will ensue in every major city. The PLA will weaponize the algorithm with a divisive narrative of an American population who wants nothing to do with what they claim is an unjust war and a corrupt government forcing them to fight it.

A Very Limited Window of Time to Act

There is an answer to saving America. It is called avoiding war through National Will and achieving true deterrence. For many GWOT veterans, this meant coalescing around the idea of defending the homeland following the tragic day of September 11th, 2001. This time it will need to involve the American public writ large, not just 1% made up entirely of volunteers.[vi] So, what is the catalyst? It is an unpopular one, and one we must initiate ourselves. Congress should initiate a mandatory, one-year service obligation for the entire recruiting age population of 18–24-year-olds. You heard me right. American youth need to understand what it means to serve. If we do not go through these pains as a country now. And I mean now. We are in serious trouble.

The Call for a New Prince

If a contemporary draft is not instated prior to outbreak of war over Taiwan, the solution will be an unsuccessful attempt by the private sector to backfill the military. We will see a reemergence of companies like Blackwater, on a large scale, made up of GWOT veterans at 500k a contract to form line infantry. I do not believe we will resort to convicts like Wagner Group,[vii] but you get the picture. This will be supplemented by Gen X and to a lesser extent Boomers trained and led by these GWOT veterans. Essentially, selective service will extend all the way to 60-year-olds and maybe beyond. This is not dissimilar to World War I veterans who were brought back to lead World War II recruits. It is not ideal and will not work for reasons too numerous to list here.

The PLAs Nuclear Option

If the United States manages to reassume National Will, but deterrence fails, we will respond militarily. There is no doubt China will resort to forms of economic warfare. If the CCP must bear the brunt of extreme financial consequences, then I believe they will begin taking drastic measures. The PLA will employ unconventional military techniques right here in the United States through our porous border. This will take the shape of either undocumented foreign agents from malign nation states or proxy forces such as Central American cartels paid off by the CCP, who will sabotage our power grid with relative ease, striking any number of the roughly 55,000 substations across the United States.[viii] This will likely bring the grid down like a game of Jenga, thrusting the United States back into the late 1800s. Remember The Monsters are Due on Maple Street? This time the monsters will be on every street in America armed with pistols and AR-15s.

If the Grid Goes Down

My prediction? 9 out of 10 Americans will die within one year. That civil war? It will take a backseat to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Once the raw, graphic scenes of innate violence stems and some semblance of society is reestablished, those extreme ideologies will emerge in armed groups and form whatever subsections of American society remain – most likely from the fringe right and left. This is assuming that our true adversaries do not launch a mainland invasion concurrent to this which may, ironically, bring America back together again.

The Crossroads

We are at a fork in the path and a decision must be made soon. We must harden our critical infrastructure and train a mass force of special, covert protection specialists to always keep it under watchful eye. We must give Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) the tools they need to succeed. We are on the brink of catastrophe and America is asleep at the wheel, still left with a nasty hangover from the Afghanistan debacle. National Will and a hardened, defended power grid are the only things standing in the way of Rome burning again should nuclear mutually assured destruction hold. The balloon is already up, so what is our next move?

Major Christopher Brown is an Army Reserve Officer, Army Historian, and former deputy director of information operations and tactical planner with two tours in Africa enabling special operations forces. He specializes in executive protection and critical infrastructure protection in his civilian career.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Military, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

Notes:

[i]https://www.thetrace.org/2023/03/guns-america-data-atf-total/

[ii] https://www.financialsense.com/podcast/20281/peter-zeihan-predicted-russian-invasion-ukraine-years-back-now-warns-whats-come-next

[iii]https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/02/23/what_the_data_says_about_the_militarys_recruiting_crisis_883427.html

[iv]https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-politics-military-and-defense-race-ethnicity-6548adcb0fee590f3427771d1e1eeea7

[v]https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/bipartisan-opposition-banning-tiktok-emerges-capitol-hill-rcna77293

[vi]https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/05/the-changing-face-of-americas-veteran-population/#:~:text=Over%20the%20past%20half%2Dcentury,in%20today's%20all%2Dvolunteer%20force.

[vii]https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/ukraine-crisis-russia-wagner/

[viii] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/05/us/north-carolina-power-station-attack.html

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Access NSS HERE

Company Name | Website

Zealot or Savior? This U.S. Minister Is Training Rebels in a Civil War

Dirty Boat Guys: An Expansive History of Navy SWCC

The WWII Units That Paved the Way for SWCC

The Nasties of MACV-SOG/NAD

Light SEAL Support Craft in Vietnam

SOCOM to the GWOT

What SWCC Does Today and How They Train

Teams, Crewmembers, Boats

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 17, 2023

Tags

How one man went from China’s Communist party golden child to enemy of the state

‘Someone has to pay a price’

Mauled Russian units, shrinking Ukrainian stocks: Leaks suggest both sides hold mixed hands for next phase of war | CNN

Russian brigades mauled

Open skies

The Ukrainian counteroffensive

The reaction

Beyond 2023

How the Ukraine war has divided the world

Drills reveal Beijing’s shortcomings, researcher says

A Chinese fighter jet pilot takes part in combat readiness patrol and military exercises around Taiwan on Monday last week.

Ukraine and Russia Need a Great-Power Peace Plan

How Washington and Beijing could stop the war in Europe.

Do Racial Biases Shape Americans’ Support for Drone Strikes? We Asked Them - Modern War Institute

The World Beyond Ukraine

The Survival of the West and the Demands of the Rest

By David Miliband

THE WEST APART FROM THE REST

ON THE FENCE

HOLLOW SOLIDARITY

A SEAT AT THE TABLE

A LOOK IN THE MIRROR

Egypt nearly supplied rockets to Russia, agreed to arm Ukraine instead, leak shows

Hikvision: Chinese surveillance tech giant denies leaked Pentagon spy claim

After American’s Killing in Syria, F.B.I. Builds War Crimes Case Against Top Officials

The Teixeira Breach: What Top Intelligence and Legal Experts Are Saying

Retail sales rose more than 10% in March from a year earlier, hinting at increased consumer confidence

FBI Investigating Ex-Navy Noncommissioned Officer Linked to Pro-Russia Social-Media Account

Sarah Bils is an administrator of the Donbass Devushka account, which disseminated leaked classified documents and sells pro-Russian merchandise

Why Jack Teixeira Had Access to So Much Classified Information

A former intelligence officer provides some context.

After leak, Pentagon purges some users' access to classified programs, launches security review - Breaking Defense

Joint Chiefs shuffle: Biden’s top contenders to replace Trump’s military leaders

Chair

The frontrunner: Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown

Marine Corps Gen. David Berger

Army Gen. Laura Richardson

Army

The frontrunner: Army Gen. Randy George

Army Gen. Andrew Poppas

Navy

The frontrunner: Navy Adm. Lisa Franchetti

Navy Adm. Samuel Paparo

Air Force

The frontrunner: Gen. Jacqueline Von Ovost

Gen. David Allvin

Marine Corps

The frontrunner: Gen. Eric Smith

Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl

Special Operations News Update - April 17, 2023 | SOF News

SOF News

International SOF

SOF History

Ukraine Conflict

National Security

Upcoming Events

Pubs and Movies

Podcasts

G-7 diplomats reject Chinese, North Korean, Russian aggression

War Before 2025 – The PLAs Villainous Plan To Defeat the U.S. Military

The Looming Large-Scale Combat Operation

An Electronically Addicted, Uninterested, Untested Youth

Weaponizing the Algorithm

Discarding the Digital Draft Card

A Very Limited Window of Time to Act

The Call for a New Prince

The PLAs Nuclear Option

If the Grid Goes Down

The Crossroads