Quotes of the Day:
“I hate it that Americans are taught to fear some books and some ideas as though they were diseases.”
- Kurt Vonnegut
“Our society buries most of those that contribute above their station. It disbelieves them, labelling them whatever nickname will soil their reputation the most at the time. That's the standard protocol for political and economic warfare.”
- Anita B. Sulser PhD, We Are One
"Modern politics is civil war carried on by other means"
- Alasdair MacIntyre
1. U.S. warns China against helping Russia evade Ukraine-related sanctions ahead of Xi-Putin meeting
2. Inside Biden’s decision to target ISIS’s elusive leader
3. Delta Force kills leader of ISIS in counterterrorism raid
4. Foreign Disinformation: What the US Government Can Start Doing Now
5. FDD | IAEA Makes Vital Push for Improved Safeguards
6. Islamic State’s ‘ghost’ of a leader was plotting comeback when U.S. commandos cornered him
7. The New Worst Deal in History (Iran)
8. U.S. Says Russia Is Planning to Fabricate a Pretext to Invade Ukraine
9. Uyghur kids recall physical and mental torment at Chinese boarding schools in Xinjiang
10. Ukraine, Taiwan, and strategic smarts
11. Islamic State’s emir dead after U.S. military raid in Syria
12. U.S. Security Assistance to Burkina Faso Laid the Groundwork for a Coup
13. The Bully in the Bubble: Putin and the Perils of Information Isolation
14. Troop-to-Task: A Russian Invasion of Ukraine
15. Invading Ukraine would be a terrible idea for Putin. He might do it anyway.
16. Russia Couldn’t Occupy Ukraine if It Wanted to
17. Airborne Almighty: Examining the Role of Static Line Jumps in Army Special Operations
18. White House on Ukraine and Syria: If you don’t trust us, then f--k you
19. Learning the Wrong Lessons: Biases, the Rejection of History, and Single-Issue Zealotry in Modern Military Thought
20. The Reason Putin Would Risk War
21. Reds: Russian and Chinese spies under every rockReds: Russian and Chinese spies under every rock
22. The Rise Of A Sovereign Digital Currency In ChinaThe Rise Of A Sovereign Digital Currency In China
1. U.S. warns China against helping Russia evade Ukraine-related sanctions ahead of Xi-Putin meeting
The enemy of my enemy....
And China has a lot of relevant experience with sanctions evasion - north Korea has been a laboratory for learning how to evade sanctions.
U.S. warns China against helping Russia evade Ukraine-related sanctions ahead of Xi-Putin meeting
The Washington Post · by Andrew JeongToday at 1:22 a.m. EST|Updated today at 2:06 a.m. EST · February 4, 2022
The United States has warned China against helping Russia dodge potential sanctions related to the crisis in Ukraine, just hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in Beijing on Friday.
Washington and its allies “have an array of tools” that can be deployed against “foreign companies, including those in China” that attempt to evade potential punitive measures against Russia, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters Thursday. He declined to offer specifics, but Western officials have floated penalties on Russian financial institutions, curbs on U.S. technology exports and personal sanctions against Kremlin leaders and their associates.
Price’s remarks came after Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi signaled support for the Kremlin’s recent military buildup in Eastern Europe during a Thursday meeting with Russian top diplomat Sergei Lavrov. Beijing expressed its “understanding and support” for Moscow and the two countries coordinated their positions on Ukraine, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.
Putin is in China’s capital for the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing Winter Olympics, which begin on Friday. His visit comes as U.S. officials allege that the Kremlin is considering filming a fake attack against Russian territory or Russian-speaking people by Ukrainian forces as a pretext to again invade its smaller eastern neighbor.
Moscow has massed more than 100,000 troops near Ukraine’s borders, raising fears of further Russian aggression. The West has sought to deter an incursion into Ukraine by sending military supplies and troops to the region, as well as publicly flagging potential operations that may be attempted by the Kremlin to provide an excuse to send its forces into Ukraine.
China and Russia have grown closer in recent years. Beijing is frustrated by Western criticism of its human rights abuses against ethnic minorities and aggression toward Taiwan, while Moscow has been irked by the expansion of NATO into what Putin sees as Russia’s traditional sphere of influence. Diplomatic efforts to resolve the Ukraine crisis have been deadlocked over Russia’s ultimatum that NATO permanently bar Kyiv from entering the alliance; the West has refused to budge from its open door policy.
Putin did not mention the United States or Ukraine in an opinion article published by the Chinese news service Xinhua on Thursday. But he said that his talks with Xi would include “special attention” on strengthening Sino-Russian business ties and “foreign policy coordination” on “relevant international topics.”
The Russian leader also criticized the West for allegedly politicizing the Winter Games, in apparent reference to the refusal of the United States and many of its allies to send top government officials to the Olympics.
But Chinese support for Russia’s actions regarding Ukraine is not absolute, said Ryan Hass, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who served in President Barack Obama’s National Security Council.
A crisis in Ukraine that triggers Western sanctions on Russia makes Moscow more dependent on China, giving Beijing more leverage, Hass wrote on Twitter, adding that it could also temporarily reduce U.S. pressure on China. But China also has good ties with Ukraine and fears a Russian attack on Kyiv would prompt the United States to beef up defenses in Asia, he said.
The last time China hosted the Olympics in 2008, Russia invaded Georgia, as Putin was in Beijing to watch the Opening Ceremonies. A similar move can’t be ruled out, analysts say, though the deepening of the China-Russia relationship since will make Putin warier about raining on the parade of his Chinese hosts.
The potential fabricated attack video that U.S. officials made public Thursday could include “graphic scenes of a staged false explosion with corpses.” Russian intelligence is intimately involved in the efforts, according to a senior Biden administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the administration.
Russian officials denied the alleged false flag operation. “We are not surprised by the new ‘creative’ scenario,” the Russian embassy in Washington said in a statement that also referenced the flawed intelligence presented by the George W. Bush administration in the run-up to the U.S. intervention in Iraq.
The Biden administration’s claims were met with pushback due to the lack of specificity and evidence. But Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters the alleged Russian disinformation effort was “right out of their playbook.”
Price, the State Department spokesman, said that the Biden administration had called out the purported video plan publicly to prevent Russia from using it as a pretext to attack Ukraine.
In recent weeks, top Kremlin officials have claimed that Ukraine, emboldened by the West’s diplomatic support and arms shipments, could attempt to militarily seize back Crimea. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and supported separatists in Ukraine’s east.
The U.S. allegations were backed by British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who wrote on Twitter that the Washington has offered “shocking evidence of Russia’s unprovoked aggression.”
Diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the Ukraine crisis continued Thursday. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in Kyiv to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, repeated his offer to host peace talks. French President Emmanuel Macron, who spoke to Zelensky and Putin on Thursday, will visit Russia on Feb. 7 and Ukraine the next day, according to an Élysée Palace official.
U.S. officials meanwhile announced visa restrictions on Belarusian officials that they accused of “serious, extraterritorial counter-dissident activity.” They highlighted efforts to crackdown against Belarusian athletes who spoke out against President Alexander Lukashenko, a Putin ally who has been hosting Russian troops for a military exercise. Western officials fear that those same Russian troops could be part of an attack into neighboring Ukraine.
Jeong reported from Seoul. Paul Sonne, Eva Dou in Washington, Amy Cheng in Seoul, and Rick Noack in Paris contributed to this report.
The Washington Post · by Andrew JeongToday at 1:22 a.m. EST|Updated today at 2:06 a.m. EST · February 4, 2022
2. Inside Biden’s decision to target ISIS’s elusive leader
Too much information? Transparency is important and good, but..? Of course the battle between the press and the administration over "evidence" demanded by the press about Russia's false flag and this operations in Syria is really heating up and damaging government credibility.
Inside Biden’s decision to target ISIS’s elusive leader
The Washington Post · by Matt ViserToday at 7:01 p.m. EST|Updated today at 9:28 p.m. EST · February 4, 2022
By December, as it became clear that the United States had located the leader of the Islamic State, a group of military commanders had arrived in the Situation Room to outline for President Biden how to take down the terrorist target in northwestern Syria. But it also became clear just how complicated it would be, with the possibility of civilian losses, American troop casualties and other grave risks.
The man who carries in his breast pocket the precise number of U.S. troops who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan — and who was criticized for decisions in Afghanistan that added 13 more to the tally — and whose late son’s military service remains a point of pride, was confronted with one of the weightiest decisions of his presidency.
A constant give-and-take among Biden and his military commanders — over whether, when and exactly how to go after the Islamic State leader — unfolded over several weeks. It all culminated Tuesday morning in the Oval Office, senior administration officials said.
Biden, meeting with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, authorized his first major counterterrorism operation, a raid not dissimilar to one that he had opposed more than a decade earlier, which resulted in the killing of Osama bin Laden. And by Wednesday evening, following a late-afternoon call with French President Emmanuel Macron, he was pulled into the Situation Room to watch a video feed of the mission being carried out.
“It was very quiet and very tense,” said a senior administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose sensitive details. Some got up and began pacing in the room. “There was not a lot of talking,” the official said.
Biden’s final authorization Tuesday was the culmination of months of behind-the-scenes work by U.S. intelligence and military personnel. After operatives last fall located Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the leader of the Islamic State militant group, Biden was briefed in “really exquisite detail” by a small group of senior advisers on Dec. 20 and presented with several options. The objective was to capture, but they knew a likely outcome was to kill.
Biden and his advisers saw an opportunity to deal a major setback to the Islamic State, a militant terrorist group that some officials have worried is in the midst of a resurgence. The United States has carried out several operations in recent years in an attempt to track down and kill its leaders as a way of disrupting the group.
U.S. officials hope that Qurayshi’s status as a longtime leader within the terrorist group would make his death a particular blow.
“We anticipate that this is going to lead to disruption within ISIS. He’s really one of the few remaining, shall we call them, ‘legacy leaders,’” said a senior administration official. “And so, this is a continued push that has been underway for quite some time to continue to remove the leadership elements of ISIS.”
This operation was unusually complex, U.S. officials said, because months of surveillance revealed numerous children in the area. Families lived on the first floor of the complex, apparently unaware that they shared a building with a leading terrorist. Qurayshi rarely came out of the house, aside from going onto the roof to pray, instead relying on couriers to convey his orders to ISIS fighters.
In December, commanders briefed Biden on exactly how the operation could go, even bringing in a tabletop model of Qurayshi’s compound to emphasize the mission’s complexity.
Biden saw the location as a deliberate choice by Qurayshi, who surrounded himself with women and children to make it harder for the United States to take him down without significant civilian casualties. That led Biden to reshape the mission, directing that it would be carried out by U.S. forces on the ground rather than an airstrike.
“We made a choice to pursue a special forces raid at a much greater risk than our — to our own people,” Biden said Thursday morning. “Rather than targeting him with an airstrike, we made this choice to minimize civilian casualties.”
Adding to the operation’s risky nature was the fact that the area is largely controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a militant group with ties to al-Qaeda. Russian forces also control some of the airspace that U.S. forces needed to travel through (while they didn’t warn the Russians ahead of time, they used a deconfliction channel to avoid any additional problems).
The debates unfolding inside the Situation Room over the past several months were not entirely different from those that occurred in 2011, when President Barack Obama’s top advisers deliberated whether to send a Navy SEAL team into Pakistan to go after bin Laden.
Back then, Biden was among the skeptical voices. At the time, he said more needed to be done to confirm that the al-Qaeda leader was actually in the compound in Pakistan, and he worried about the risk to American troops. He voiced his dissent internally, according to numerous accounts, although he later claimed that he told Obama privately, “Follow your instincts.” Obama authorized the raid, whose success became one of the landmark events of his presidency.
“Biden’s primary concern was the political consequences of failure,” Robert Gates, Obama’s defense secretary, who was also initially skeptical, later wrote in his book “Duty.”
The consequences of potential failure this time were also significant. Biden’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan resulted in turbulence and death. In the midst of a chaotic withdrawal, the military authorized a drone strike that killed 10 civilians, a result that U.S. officials said was a “horrible mistake.”
Another blunder involving the military would compound Biden’s problems. But still, he seemed to approach this raid differently than he did the raid to capture bin Laden.
“In many ways, it’s the difference between being president and being vice president,” said Leon Panetta, who served as CIA director and defense secretary under Obama. “The vice president can give thoughts and views. But in this situation, he’s the president. He’s got to make the final decision.”
Biden realized that the operation would affect history’s judgment of his presidency, Panetta added.
“In the end, I think the president understands that in many ways his legacy as president is determined by these kinds of decisions,” he said. “He could make the wrong call, and it could turn out to be a disaster. But ultimately he’s got to decide. … If you make the right decision and it works out, you get a hell of a lot of credit for having the courage of making the right decision.”
Biden gave the final authorization for the raid Tuesday morning in a meeting in the Oval Office, according to administration officials, and military leaders determined Wednesday that they had the right conditions for the raid. They tend to aim for a night when the moon is dim.
“A lot of factors had to line up to be just right,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Thursday. “This was the best window to execute the mission.”
Biden and his top advisers gathered in the Situation Room around 5 p.m. Wednesday to monitor the operation unfold in real time. Biden sat at the head table with no suit jacket around his shoulders and a black mask on his face. Vice President Harris sat to his right.
Others in the room included chief of staff Ron Klain; national security adviser Jake Sullivan; deputy national security adviser Jon Finer; Brett McGurk, the White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa; homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall; and Nancy McEldowney, the vice president’s national security adviser.
They watched a video feed of the operation as it unfolded, along with an open line to the Pentagon, where top military officials were watching the same scene.
Special Operations forces, who went through dozens of rehearsals of the raid, were set to be on the ground for about two hours.
Upon arrival, the troops used a bullhorn and shouted out their presence. There was relief in the Situation Room when families from the first floor agreed to leave the site and were led to safety. All told, according to U.S. officials, they were able to evacuate 10 people, eight of them children.
But moments later, there was a massive explosion. Qurayshi, U.S. officials said, had detonated a bomb on the third floor, killing himself and his family. It was something that U.S. officials had thought was possible, particularly since Qurayshi’s predecessor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, also detonated a bomb during a raid that killed him in 2019.
The military even had its engineers assess whether such an explosion would bring down the whole building, concluding — correctly — that it would destroy only the top floor.
Biden and his team continued watching as one of the military’s helicopters encountered mechanical problems. The operatives eventually destroyed the helicopter.
As the raid unfolded, Biden talked in the room about how long they all had been trying to combat the Islamic State, recounting his time as vice president. He remarked how they had previously pursued Qurayshi, who Biden said had only one leg since the U.S. launched a strike on him near Mosul in 2015.
“He was on our target list from the earliest days of the campaign,” one senior administration official said.
Throughout Wednesday night, Biden received updates from Sullivan on other aspects of the mission. Operatives made a positive identification using facial recognition and, later, fingerprints, but it wasn’t until final confirmation using DNA came around 7 a.m. Thursday that they were ready to announce it to the world.
That morning, Biden delivered remarks from the White House, hailing the work of the military and telling foes of the United States, “We remain vigilant. We remain prepared. … We will come after you and find you.”
But Wednesday night, just after the Special Operations team left the ground in Syria and the tense Situation Room began to relax, Biden rose to leave, ending with the same remark he uses to conclude most of his speeches: “God bless our troops.”
Dan Lamothe and Tyler Pager contributed to this report.
The Washington Post · by Matt ViserToday at 7:01 p.m. EST|Updated today at 9:28 p.m. EST · February 4, 2022
3. Delta Force kills leader of ISIS in counterterrorism raid
I have no idea what organization conducted the operation, nor should I know. But I really like this statement from Admiral Kirby and wish we could use this description for all special operations:
"...last night U.S. Special Operations Forces, under the control of U.S. Central Command, conducted a counterterrorism mission..."
https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/2922998/pentagon-press-secretary-john-f-kirby-holds-a-press-briefing/source/GovDelivery/
it would be good if all US government agency spokespeople and leaders would describe the operation this way. But the press (and to some extent the public) wants to know details - to include if there was a dog as part of the operation and what was the dog's name. I certainly was not wondering about this.
Q: And then finally, the question I'm sure all of us are wondering -- was there a dog involved? What was its name? And do you have a photo?
MR. KIRBY: I do not know -- I do not know and I do not know.
Breaking: Delta Force kills leader of ISIS in counterterrorism raid
sandboxx.us · by Stavros Atlamazoglou · February 3, 2022
On Wednesday night, U.S. special operations forces conducted a counterterrorism operation in Syria that killed Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the leader of ISIS.
Sandboxx News understands that the raid was carried out by the Army’s elite Delta Force, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the operation.
No American commandos were wounded during the operation. However, an MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter was damaged and discarded. A follow-up airstrike destroyed the helicopter to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.
Syrian first responders claim that 13 people were killed in the operation, including six children and four women. U.S. officials have suggested the large number of civilian casualties is a result of a suicide-vest detonation within the compound.
— Ahmed Rahhal | أحمد رحال (@pressrahhal) February 2, 2022
“Last night at my direction, U.S. military forces in the northwest Syria successfully undertook a counterterrorism operation to protect the American people and our Allies, and make the world a safer place,” President Joe Biden said in a statement.
“Thanks to the skill and bravery of our Armed Forces, we have taken off the battlefield Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi—the leader of ISIS. All Americans have returned safely from the operation. I will deliver remarks to the American people later this morning. May God protect our troops,” he added.
The destroyed MH-60 Black Hawk (Ryan Chan via Twitter).
This is the second time Delta Force targets and eliminates the very senior leadership of the terrorist organization. On October 31, 2019, Delta Force’s A Squadron, conducted a very similar counterterrorism raid in the same region that killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the former leader of ISIS.
Then and now, the Delta Force operators were supported by the elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, nicknamed the “Night Stalkers.”
The Delta Force operators targeted a single, three-story house in Atmeh, a Syrian town very close to the Turkish border, and not far from the previous ISIS leader had been found hiding.
The American commandos tried to get the occupants of the house to surrender, issuing warnings in Arabic from loudspeakers. After a considerable amount of time, and with no surrender coming, the Delta Force operators and Night Stalkers attacked.
Delta Force operators in Syria (Courtesy picture).
Last night, it seems like when al-Qurayshi realized that U.S. special operators were at his doorstep, he chose to kill himself, taking out innocents with him. If that proves to be accurate, both leaders of ISIS would have died in the exact same manner. The effectiveness and stealthiness of U.S. special operations forces seems to have imbued such fear in ISIS terrorists that sleep with suicide vests on them or keep them within arm’s reach.
“The gravity of the mission and mission success is always in the back of your mind but not failing the men to your left and right (your Brothers) is at the forefront,” a retired Delta Force operator told Sandboxx News.
Ever since al-Qurayshi had succeeded al-Baghdadi he had kept a very low profile, understanding and respecting the intelligence-gathering capabilities of the U.S. and its allies.
“U.S. Special Operations forces under the control of U.S. Central Command conducted a counterterrorism mission this evening in northwest Syria. The mission was successful. There were no U.S. casualties. More information will be provided as it becomes available,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said in a press statement.
Despite its official defeat, ISIS continues to pose a regional and international threat.
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sandboxx.us · by Stavros Atlamazoglou · February 3, 2022
4. Foreign Disinformation: What the US Government Can Start Doing Now
I will reiterate the fundamentals.
Conclusion:
Countering adversary disinformation is a challenging policy issue. It gets to the core of individual freedom and liberty and undermines national security and the foundations of America’s democracy. Disinformation weaves adroitly through modern society and networks — only sometimes visible but always threatening. No system of government is perfect. Adversaries of the United States seek to leverage some citizens’ frustration with democratic outcomes and the sometimes slow and messy process by which policies are decided. This does not make autocracy preferable to democracy: The features that make democracies uniquely vulnerable to disinformation perpetrated by adversary nations are precisely the elements worth protecting.
My thoughts:
1. What we say we stand for
2. What we say we are doing
3. What we are actually doing
4. Key Point- what we are really doing is the actual message.
(We should evaluate the actions of all our national instruments of power against this construct - State's Global Engagement Center should be evaluating this on a daily basis to ensure our actions provide the intended message).
Alternative way to think about strategy: Begin with the influence effect necessary to support national security and then evaluate how to apply the other instruments of national power in support of that effect(s).
It turns out that there is a counter to this – the “truth sandwich.”
How to use it?
1. Start with the truth. This is the frame.
2. Introduce the lie – clearly stating that it is a lie.
3. End with the truth.
Foreign Disinformation: What the US Government Can Start Doing Now
by Robert Morgus and Mark Montgomery
February 3, 2022
The Kremlin is engaged in a “global influence campaign to destabilize sovereign countries,” including the United States, the U.S. Treasury Department reaffirmed, as it slapped sanctions on four Ukrainians working for the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). America’s adversaries have leveraged disinformation since the dawn of the nation. In the early years of the American Revolution, the British monarchy circulated pamphlets in the colonies featuring forged excerpts from ostensible letters written by George Washington suggesting he sympathized with the Monarchy and that the new nation was not ready for democracy. Chinese disinformation campaigns blaming the United States for the origin of COVID-19 recall the Cold War’s Operation DENVER, the KGB’s disinformation campaign promoting the conspiracy theory that HIV and AIDS were bioweapons developed by the U.S. government. Pro-Kremlin social media disinformation efforts during European Union elections in 2019 that implied the EU has Nazi origins are not dissimilar from the Soviet and Czechoslovak intelligence services’ Operation NEPTUNE to discredit West German politicians by tying them to Nazis. In fact, Russia is wielding the same cudgel now against Ukraine, casually and repeatedly accusing its leaders or citizens without evidence of being “Nazis,” even in forums such as the U.N. Security Council.
While the Cold War was riddled with spectacular stories of disinformation, in today’s technological and media environment, Russia and China can now scale their disinformation operations and accelerate its spread in the information ecosystems of adversaries. Disinformation also is now a much more visible topic in U.S. political discourse, as policymakers on both sides of the aisle struggle to define the appropriate role of the federal government in preventing and combating foreign disinformation, other than steps that have become increasingly common, such as sanctions against perpetrators.
This is the question taken on recently by two commissions that, while diagnosing the challenge differently, reached a number of similar conclusions about the steps the federal government needs to take. In December, the nonpartisan Cyberspace Solarium Commission (CSC) issued a white paper drafted while we were on staff. (One of us, Robert, was a lead co-author). The CSC diagnoses disinformation as a problem facing free societies everywhere and describes disinformation as a tool used by those with ill intent to manufacture division and inflame tension. In November, the Aspen Institute Commission on Information Disorder released its own report on the topic. It described structural inequality in the United States as the disease and disinformation as a symptom.
But both commissions offered similar recommendations in several realms for how the federal government can begin to tackle this scourge.
Social Media
On the issue of social media, for example, the CSC and Aspen agree that the federal government should push for greater transparency on how social media platforms sort, moderate, and remove content on their platforms. The unique position of platforms in the information ecosystem allots them an outsized opportunity to exert positive influence over the media and information environment. But rather than trying to regulate content on these social media platforms, lawmakers and regulators should endeavor to establish clearer transparency expectations and guidelines for social media companies related to labeling advertisements and paid content, bots, and content created by foreign registered agents. In addition, the two commissions argue that the federal government should work with social media companies so that the American public better understands the various platforms’ policies on content moderation and takedowns.
In addition, both the CSC and the Aspen Commission agree that Congress should take action to ensure that third-party researchers can access data to better understand, identify, and – most importantly – explain foreign disinformation campaigns to the American public. The federal government could support these research efforts through grants to nonprofit centers, such as the Alliance for Securing Democracy’s Hamilton 2.0 dashboard and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.
Finally, both the CSC and the Aspen Commission identify the importance of civic empowerment and education. In keeping with this conviction, the CSC recommends the creation of a bipartisan Civic Education Task Force to enable greater access to civic education resources, and raise public awareness about foreign disinformation. The task force should be tasked with providing civic education resources, including courses and course materials, for the military and civil servants, all while making these materials available to the broader population.
Beyond these shared recommendations, the CSC advocates for some additional approaches to counter foreign disinformation.
Beware of Overreach
In setting out to address the issue, the federal government must recognize its own limitations and ensure it does not overreach. For example, with few exceptions, the ability of the U.S. government to directly intervene in the information ecosystem is rightly constrained by the First Amendment. Meanwhile, since the Tenth Amendment reserves the right of states to make policy in areas not explicitly delegated to the federal government by the Constitution, states and local governments drive education policy and possess greater control over the content taught in schools.
Federal action also is constrained by the appearance of inappropriate government influence over parts of society that are better served by other stakeholders. For example, it would be inappropriate for the government to exercise influence over journalism, which plays a key role in holding authorities accountable. Rather than federal action to bolster journalism, other stakeholders from civil society or private industry are better positioned to lead this aspect of countering disinformation.
With that caveat, the CSC white paper identifies additional steps the U.S. government could take to improve the health of America’s information ecosystem. Where foreign-owned and operated media outlets are concerned, the federal government could do more to improve transparency on ownership without overstepping its bounds and censoring content. Greater transparency would help ensure that Americans are aware of the foreign actors attempting to influence public opinion.
Updating and Expanding FARA
The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a law passed in 1938 in response to Nazi propaganda, provides a framework to promote transparency regarding the sources of information available to the American public. However, many of the rules created by the law are antiquated, and FARA must be reformed to ensure that all agents of foreign adversaries, including such media organizations, register. In the last Congress, Representative (and CSC Co-Chair) Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc) proposed the Chinese Communist Party Influence Transparency Act, which would require all Chinese corporations to register under FARA. Congress should look at expanding this effort to include corporations domiciled in other adversaries like Russia and Iran. In addition, Congress should amend the definition of “informational materials,” which registered foreign agents are required to both label as such and report to the Department of Justice, in FARA to make clear that social media and email communications are included. In addition, Congress should provide greater specificity regarding the types of social media and email communications that need to be included in FARA filings to ensure that the Department of Justice adopts a records system that better captures the dynamism and interactiveness of digital media and communications, allowing, for example, for social media posts filed to be maintained along with, for example, comments on or replies to a post, while preserving appropriate privacy protections.
Combatting disinformation also requires imposing costs on adversaries responsible for influence operations – what the CSC refers to as a strategy of layered cyber deterrence in the information landscape. For example, the U.S. government should continue to engage in robust “defend forward” operations to dismantle adversary disinformation infrastructure and cause friction in adversary disinformation campaigns, as it did, for example, with the Internet Research Agency around the 2018 midterm election.
Countering adversary disinformation is a challenging policy issue. It gets to the core of individual freedom and liberty and undermines national security and the foundations of America’s democracy. Disinformation weaves adroitly through modern society and networks — only sometimes visible but always threatening. No system of government is perfect. Adversaries of the United States seek to leverage some citizens’ frustration with democratic outcomes and the sometimes slow and messy process by which policies are decided. This does not make autocracy preferable to democracy: The features that make democracies uniquely vulnerable to disinformation perpetrated by adversary nations are precisely the elements worth protecting.
IMAGE: A general view of the headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s main security agency, in Moscow on March 23, 2021. (Photo by KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images)
5. FDD | IAEA Makes Vital Push for Improved Safeguards
Excerpts:
The director general’s efforts are commendable and necessary to enhance the IAEA’s monitoring and inspection authorities and its ability to ensure states’ nuclear activities remain peaceful. The Biden administration should fully support the agency’s campaign.
The administration can also support the IAEA by censuring Iran at the IAEA Board of Governors for Tehran’s obstruction of the agency’s 3.5-year investigation into Iran’s undeclared nuclear activities, as well as for the Islamic Republic’s continued, threatening nuclear advances. As part of that censure, Washington should underscore that Iran must fully ratify the AP and subject its nuclear activities to complete IAEA oversight.
Absent full IAEA safeguards over Tehran’s nuclear program, including over Iranian technical advances that Grossi has said have no justifiable civilian purposes, Tehran’s nuclear proliferation may irreparably harm the IAEA’s safeguards mission.
FDD | IAEA Makes Vital Push for Improved Safeguards
Andrea Stricker
Research Fellow
Anthony Ruggiero
Senior Fellow
fdd.org · by Andrea Stricker Research Fellow · February 3, 2022
The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is spearheading a campaign to improve the agency’s ability to detect potential nuclear weapons development by member states. This effort is urgently needed because of the erosion of the IAEA’s ability to oversee states’ compliance with the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
State parties to the NPT are required to conclude a comprehensive safeguards agreement (CSA) with the IAEA, placing certain nuclear material, facilities, and activities under agency oversight. Since taking office in December 2019, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi has sent letters to nine member states that have not yet concluded a CSA, urging them to do so. Two of those countries have since brought their agreements into force.
In 1997, IAEA member states approved the Additional Protocol (AP), a supplementary but voluntary safeguards agreement endowing the IAEA with enhanced verification authorities and improved oversight over states’ nuclear activities. The AP compensates for inadequacies in the IAEA’s ability to detect proliferation using only the CSA. In the 1980s and 1990s, Iraq, North Korea, Libya, and Taiwan covertly established or furthered nuclear weapons programs despite having CSAs.
The AP grants the IAEA additional access to a state’s nuclear program, allows the agency to inspect sites that contain no nuclear material but may fundamentally relate to a country’s nuclear activities, and enhances the IAEA’s ability to detect states’ undeclared use of nuclear material for weapons development. Member states must also provide more information about their nuclear activities.
Nearly 140 of about 186 states with safeguards in place implement the AP. On Tuesday, Grossi sent a letter to more than 40 countries, encouraging them to implement the AP. He underscored that “[w]ithout an AP in force the IAEA is not able to draw the conclusion that all nuclear material remains in peaceful activities in a State.”
Egypt, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are key countries that have not signed onto the AP. Tehran agreed to provisionally adhere to the AP as part of the 2015 nuclear deal but ceased doing so in February 2021. These countries represent outliers in the Middle East, where additional nuclear proliferation is a serious concern. Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates all apply the AP. Israel is not a member of the NPT but is a member of the IAEA.
Grossi is also tackling weaknesses in another safeguards element known as the Small Quantities Protocol (SQP), which holds certain CSA provisions in abeyance for states without significant nuclear material, facilities, or activities. In 2005, the IAEA Board of Governors approved a revised SQP to enhance the original SQP’s monitoring and inspection authorities. In September 2020, Grossi described the old SQP system as a “weakness in the IAEA safeguards system.” He sent letters to 31 countries that same month, encouraging them to adopt the revised SQP or to rescind it altogether and implement their CSAs and the AP. Eight countries have since complied with Grossi’s request. Notably, Saudi Arabia, which plans to launch significant nuclear facilities and activities, has not yet complied.
The director general’s efforts are commendable and necessary to enhance the IAEA’s monitoring and inspection authorities and its ability to ensure states’ nuclear activities remain peaceful. The Biden administration should fully support the agency’s campaign.
The administration can also support the IAEA by censuring Iran at the IAEA Board of Governors for Tehran’s obstruction of the agency’s 3.5-year investigation into Iran’s undeclared nuclear activities, as well as for the Islamic Republic’s continued, threatening nuclear advances. As part of that censure, Washington should underscore that Iran must fully ratify the AP and subject its nuclear activities to complete IAEA oversight.
Absent full IAEA safeguards over Tehran’s nuclear program, including over Iranian technical advances that Grossi has said have no justifiable civilian purposes, Tehran’s nuclear proliferation may irreparably harm the IAEA’s safeguards mission.
Andrea Stricker is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where Anthony Ruggiero is a senior fellow. Anthony previously served in the U.S. government for more than 19 years, most recently as senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense on the U.S. National Security Council. They both contribute to FDD’s Iran Program, International Organizations Program, and Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP). For more analysis from the authors, the Iran Program, the International Organizations Program, and CMPP, please subscribe HERE. Follow Andrea and Anthony on Twitter @StrickerNonpro and @NatSecAnthony. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_Iran and @FDD_CMPP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Andrea Stricker Research Fellow · February 3, 2022
6. Islamic State’s ‘ghost’ of a leader was plotting comeback when U.S. commandos cornered him
What will be the effects?
Excerpts:
Meanwhile, in social media chatrooms frequented by Islamic State sympathizers, many reacted to the news with a shrug. Whatever Qurayshi’s contributions as leader, his loss is ultimately of minor significance, some said.
“He didn’t appear on the media in the same manner as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, but that also had to do with the current situation on the ground in Syria and Iraq,” said one self-professed Islamic State sympathizer, responding to a question over an encrypted text-messaging platform. “But even if the media is not reporting about it as much, we are strong in the Sahel. We are still capable of conducting operations in Syria and Iraq. And soon more operations will follow.”
Islamic State’s ‘ghost’ of a leader was plotting comeback when U.S. commandos cornered him
The Washington Post · by Joby Warrick and Souad Mekhennet Yesterday at 4:35 p.m. EST · February 3, 2022
Captured Islamic State fighters described him as a “ghost,” a mysterious and nearly invisible leader with little practical sway over his weakened terrorist organization. Rivals questioned his credentials and reviled him as a turncoat who ratted out his comrades during a stint in a U.S. military prison.
But the Islamic State chief dubbed Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi also was known as a survivor, one who had weathered multiple setbacks and defeats. In recent months he had been plotting a comeback, U.S. officials and terrorism experts say, including a second act for the violent Islamist self-declared caliphate that had terrorized the region and, along with its affiliates, other parts of the world until its destruction three years ago.
Those plans abruptly ended in the predawn hours Thursday, when a U.S. Special Operations team assaulted his safe house in northwestern Syria. As commandos attacked the three-story villa, Qurayshi detonated a bomb that killed him and his family, including several children, U.S. officials said.
“This horrible terrorist leader is no more,” President Biden said in a televised statement announcing the successful raid.
Qurayshi was the second person to lead the Islamic State in its current incarnation, and his death came in a manner nearly identical to that of his predecessor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who also detonated a bomb after being surrounded by U.S. commandos in a similar raid in 2019, just a few miles away. Like Baghdadi, Qurayshi held the title of “caliph,” or leader, of the Islamic State, even though the physical caliphate had been destroyed months before he took the helm.
His tenure as terrorist chief was spent entirely in hiding, as the Islamic State’s core area in Iraq and Syria was reduced to a scattering of underground cells that carried out occasional attacks against security forces and then retreated. But more recently, the group appeared to be on the rebound. Its network of regional affiliates in Africa has been steadily gaining strength, while its fighters in Iraq and Syria had begun staging increasingly elaborate and ambitious attacks, including last month’s massive assault on the Hasakah prison in northeastern Syria where thousands of former militants were detained.
Whether Qurayshi personally directed the Hasakah assault is unknown, but his death is at minimum a serious psychological setback at a moment when the terrorist group was attempting to regain its footing, counterterrorism officials and independent experts say.
“It is certainly a blow to the morale boost that followed the Hasakah prison break,” said Charles Lister, director of the Syria and Countering Terrorism and Extremism programs at the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank. The big question, given the terrorist group’s decentralized state, is whether “the killing of the leader is an overall strategic achievement for the U.S., rather than just a tactical blow.”
Although he was in the position for less than three years, Qurayshi had been preparing for the role of Islamic State leader for much of his adult life. Born in Iraq in 1976 as Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abd-al-Rahman al-Mawla, he joined the terrorist group around 2004, when it called itself al-Qaeda in Iraq and waged guerrilla warfare against U.S. forces occupying the country.
Before the U.S.-led invasion, he had lived in relative obscurity, the son of parents from a village near the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar. His family background conferred at least one significant advantage: claimed membership in a tribe that was said to have descended from Islam’s founder, Muhammad — a key qualification for a future “caliph” of the Islamic State.
Iraqi records show that Qurayshi — then known as al-Mawla — attended the University of Mosul, majoring in Koranic studies. After a brief stint in the Iraqi army, he returned to the university to obtain a master’s degree in Islamic studies, gaining scholarly credentials that also served him as he later sought to climb to senior leadership positions within the Islamic State.
He suffered a severe blow to his reputation after he was captured in 2008 and held at the U.S. military prison known as Camp Bucca. According to military records and photos released years later, the future Islamic State leader was a scowling, fleshy-faced man known within the prison as a willing — even eager — informant. In dozens of interrogation memos, he revealed names, addresses and personal details of rivals within the terrorist group, including of the then-No. 2 leader, Abu Qaswarah. The Moroccan-born Swede was killed weeks later in a raid by U.S. troops.
“Detainee is providing a lot of information,” said one of the interrogation reports, which was published in the summer by the Combating Terrorism Center, a Pentagon-funded academic institution at the U.S. Military Academy. A terrorism expert who analyzed the documents described Qurayshi as “a songbird of unique talent and ability.”
Although the precise details remain unclear, Qurayshi was released from prison sometime in 2009, after the Americans began to transfer control of detention facilities to the Iraqi government. He returned to the terrorist group and, five years later, when Baghdadi was leading an Islamic State army to sweeping victories across Syria and northern Iraq, he held an important position as a religious adviser, organizing prayer services and delivering sermons and religious instruction.
Qurayshi was an aide to Baghdadi when the group seized control of Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, in 2014, and he was part of the senior leadership as the Islamic State suffered a succession of defeats at the hands of a U.S.-led military coalition, starting in the fall of 2014 and continuing through early 2019, with the crushing of the last stronghold near the town of Baghuz, Syria.
Reports about Qurayshi’s past cooperation with his U.S. captors continued to haunt him, even as he climbed the ranks. When Baghdadi’s death thrust Qurayshi into contention as a possible new leader, prominent commentators on pro-Islamic State social media sites criticized the choice, arguing that his past behavior was disqualifying.
However, for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, Qurayshi appeared to check all the right boxes as someone who could unify a defeated organization and provide a symbolic, if not hands-on, leadership.
“ISIS sought to portray Abu Ibrahim as a descendant of the prophet Muhammad,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA counterterrorism official and the author of “Jordan and America,” a book detailing the cooperation against terrorist groups that evolved between Washington and one of its closest Middle East allies. “This would enhance the group’s legitimacy in the eyes of its followers. It would also strengthen their claim to be the true caliphate and descendants of the early Islamic states.”
Yet, Qurayshi was — as terrorism experts often observed — a “caliph without a caliphate.” While the Islamic State commands a cadre of at least 10,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria, according to U.S. military estimates, it struggled to regain its footing after the fall of Baghuz. Meanwhile, Qurayshi, never a prominent leader, effectively disappeared from public view after his promotion. U.S. officials said they believe Qurayshi continued to direct operations and dispense advice to the Islamic State’s regional affiliates. But he did so from hiding, never showing himself publicly or even releasing videotaped messages to rally morale, as Baghdadi had occasionally done.
One Middle Eastern intelligence official who closely tracks the Islamic State said Qurayshi simply lacked the charisma of Baghdadi. But he also seemed to prefer a lower profile, for operational and security reasons.
“[He] seems to have given the emirs of the different branches more responsibility and power to act without the need to constantly get the approval from him, the caliph,” said the intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence assessments. “This is why ISIS was able to spread more widely in some areas, even though the ‘caliphate’ no longer exists.”
There was no immediate confirmation or comment on Qurayshi’s death from the Islamic State, and no public suggestions on his possible replacement. Terrorism experts said it is likely to be months before a new caliph is announced. Early speculation about Baghdadi’s possible successor in 2019 turned out to be inaccurate.
Meanwhile, in social media chatrooms frequented by Islamic State sympathizers, many reacted to the news with a shrug. Whatever Qurayshi’s contributions as leader, his loss is ultimately of minor significance, some said.
“He didn’t appear on the media in the same manner as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, but that also had to do with the current situation on the ground in Syria and Iraq,” said one self-professed Islamic State sympathizer, responding to a question over an encrypted text-messaging platform. “But even if the media is not reporting about it as much, we are strong in the Sahel. We are still capable of conducting operations in Syria and Iraq. And soon more operations will follow.”
The Washington Post · by Joby Warrick and Souad Mekhennet Yesterday at 4:35 p.m. EST · February 3, 2022
7. The New Worst Deal in History (Iran)
Excerpts:
To wage that political fight, the administration will resort to a blame game, invoking Trump’s name whenever possible to give congressional Democrats a political talking point. And it may falsely claim it’s this deal or war: the same false choice that Barack Obama employed to keep just enough Democrats in line to keep the JCPOA alive.
But the pushback from Congress should be swift and furious. Just as the Afghanistan withdrawal will forever be Biden’s responsibility, the new worst deal in history is a result of Biden’s policy failure alone. And since this deal, if it runs its course, would leave Iran on the threshold of nuclear weapons—potentially adjacent to an Israeli red line for military action—Congress could retort, it’s not “this deal or war,” but more likely this deal and war.
Congress should also decry the illegitimacy of an agreement that suspends terrorism sanctions without any change in the underlying conduct of Iranian banks and companies that support the Quds Force, Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorists. Congress can also rightly say that any deal that ignores an active investigation into undeclared nuclear material and sites inside Iran would eviscerate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—triggering a cascade of crises in other countries in the years ahead.
Members of the House and Senate need not tie themselves to another foreign policy debacle from a White House in political freefall. Now is the time to reject a foolhardy proposal. True “Plan Bs” do exist. Tell the president to choose another path.
The New Worst Deal in History
Iran was under extreme pressure a year ago. Now it’s on the verge of a deal with better terms than the original JCPOA.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. (Photo by Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images.)
Just a few short months since his botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, President Biden is barreling toward another foreign policy disaster of his own making: a stunning yet predictable “agreement” to let Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, remain just steps away from the nuclear threshold while lifting U.S. terrorism sanctions without any cessation of the regime’s support for terrorists.
Calling this an agreement, of course, would be kind. What is likely to emerge from Vienna, where Biden’s special envoy for Iran is making indirect overtures to Tehran through a Russian intermediary, can best be described as a surrender.
Biden inherited the most economic leverage over another country in the history of financial warfare. He also commands the largest and most powerful military in the world. You’d never know either to be true from the way his administration approached the Islamic Republic during its first year: loosening sanctions, shredding military deterrence, and holding back political accountability for nuclear and regional misconduct.
The 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), had fatal flaws, including weak verification measures and a raft of “sunset clauses” that gradually lifted the most important restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear program. JCPOA proponents liked to claim the deal put Iran’s nuclear program in a box—though it was more of a jack-in-the-box with Iran capable of shooting out at any time of its choosing. If there’s a box involved in Biden’s deal, it will effectively have no sides or top.
Under the impending arrangement, details of which are slowly emerging, Iran may be allowed to produce high-enriched uranium, stockpile more of that enriched uranium, advance its centrifuge program to hasten a future nuclear breakout, accelerate its development of longer-range nuclear-capable missiles, and stonewall the International Atomic Energy Agency’s investigation into undeclared nuclear sites and materials discovered over the last three years. In exchange, the United States would suspend terrorism and missile sanctions on Iran, not just nuclear sanctions—providing an economic bailout to Tehran while flooding the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with cash.
What’s more, the new arrangement would preserve the sunset provisions from the JCPOA, which are now six years closer to taking effect than they were originally. The date for the expiration of the international arms embargo on Iran has already passed, the missile embargo expires next year, and the end of all enrichment restrictions is coming in the next few years. Those sunsets were established on condition that Iran complied with the terms of the JCPOA, yet the new deal apparently requires no such thing. That Iran could remain non-compliant with the JCPOA and keep the sunsets will be a significant policy question not just for Biden, but for U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who holds the power to trigger a “snapback” of U.N. sanctions on Iran.
The travesty of this agreement is painfully compounded by one of its prime beneficiaries: Ebrahim Raisi, the newly installed Iranian president described by experts as a gruesome and unapologetic killer. Gone is the illusion of coming to terms with a so-called moderate or reformer. This will be a blood pact delivered to mass murderers and terrorists. And it will be a poke in the eye to the 1,200 Gold Star family members who asked the Biden administration not to release funds to the regime until all federal judgments were paid to American victims of Iran-sponsored terrorism.
The turnabout for Iran is breathtaking. A regime that was under more pressure one year ago than it was before the JCPOA is being handed better terms than it received under the prior deal. Despite being warned time and again to abandon its carrot-filled, stickless negotiating strategy, the Biden administration is poised to conclude an agreement precisely as bad as Biden’s critics predicted.
That’s apparently why Richard Nephew, the second-ranking U.S. negotiator in Vienna —and a key player in negotiating the JCPOA in 2015—abandoned the talks late last year. It’s also likely what prompted Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to take to the Senate floor this week to warn the administration against this kind of agreement.
The president, keep in mind, came into office vowing to return to the JCPOA as a springboard to negotiations over a longer and stronger deal that would address the prior agreement’s many deficiencies. But once Tehran realized it could race forward with its nuclear program and still receive sanctions relaxation in return, the notion of a longer and stronger deal faded quickly.
The administration claimed it was preparing a Plan B if Iran refused to return to the JCPOA. Plan B apparently did not include the obvious option of restoring economic pressure and threatening the use of military force. Instead, it consists of giving Tehran whatever it wants.
Reportedly, the White House wants to lay the blame for its bad deal at the feet of Donald Trump, who withdrew the U.S. from the agreement in 2018. But it is a direct result of Joe Biden’s policy choices. He decided to relax sanctions on Iran. He decided not to respond militarily to attacks on U.S. forces, including the death of a U.S. contractor. He decided not to hold Iran accountable before the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). He decided to rescind America’s attempted snapback of U.N. sanctions.
Rather than reciprocate these goodwill gestures, Tehran recognized that Biden was desperate. It began taking bold steps it never dared to risk before the 2020 presidential election, like manufacturing uranium metal, a key component of nuclear weapons, or enriching uranium to 20 and then 60 percent purity, which is dangerously close to weapons grade.
The White House knows it cannot win a debate on the merits of this prospective agreement. If it were submitted to the U.S. Senate as a treaty, which it ought to be, the Senate would reject it overwhelmingly. So it’s preparing instead for a different fight: a congressional attempt to use the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act—a law passed by Congress in 2015 ahead of the JCPOA debate—that allows the House and Senate to consider a joint resolution of disapproval before the president can lift sanctions.
To wage that political fight, the administration will resort to a blame game, invoking Trump’s name whenever possible to give congressional Democrats a political talking point. And it may falsely claim it’s this deal or war: the same false choice that Barack Obama employed to keep just enough Democrats in line to keep the JCPOA alive.
But the pushback from Congress should be swift and furious. Just as the Afghanistan withdrawal will forever be Biden’s responsibility, the new worst deal in history is a result of Biden’s policy failure alone. And since this deal, if it runs its course, would leave Iran on the threshold of nuclear weapons—potentially adjacent to an Israeli red line for military action—Congress could retort, it’s not “this deal or war,” but more likely this deal and war.
Congress should also decry the illegitimacy of an agreement that suspends terrorism sanctions without any change in the underlying conduct of Iranian banks and companies that support the Quds Force, Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorists. Congress can also rightly say that any deal that ignores an active investigation into undeclared nuclear material and sites inside Iran would eviscerate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—triggering a cascade of crises in other countries in the years ahead.
Members of the House and Senate need not tie themselves to another foreign policy debacle from a White House in political freefall. Now is the time to reject a foolhardy proposal. True “Plan Bs” do exist. Tell the president to choose another path.
Richard Goldberg is a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He served on Capitol Hill, on the U.S. National Security Council, as the governor of Illinois’s chief of staff and as a Navy Reserve intelligence officer.
8. U.S. Says Russia Is Planning to Fabricate a Pretext to Invade Ukraine
The press is skeptical and demands evidence. It will be sad when this does not happen. I believe it is likely Putin was planning this (or making us think he was planning it). But by releasing this information we are exposing and attacking his strategy. We are actually inoculating Ukraine and the international community against Putin's possible and likely actions which may prevent him from achieving the desired effects. It may deter him. (Sun Tzu: it is of supreme importance to attack the enemy's strategy).
The press is rightly being skeptical and asking hard questions (but naively asking for "evidence" based on intelligence - by that is their right to do so).
The simple fact is the US has intelligence. The US has chosen to release the information and its assessment because if Putin is planning this Ukraine and the international community needs to know this and be prepared for it. And by exposing and attacking the strategy there is a chance of Putin deciding that he can no longer achieve the desired effects.
It is okay (and necessary) for the press to be skeptical. In fact their skepticism is actually good because it will keep this issue in the headlines and increase the chances of exposing Putin's strategy to the largest number of people which is one of the best ways to deter Putin from following through.
Again the real sad fact is that if Putin does not execute the strategy the press will attack the US government for misrepresenting its assessment. We will not be able to prove the negative and the distrust will only increase.
U.S. Says Russia Is Planning to Fabricate a Pretext to Invade Ukraine
Officials say newly declassified intelligence shows Moscow seeks to use staged video as justification for attack
WSJ · by Gordon Lubold and Warren P. Strobel
The intelligence shows a Russian plan to stage a fabricated attack by Ukrainian military or intelligence personnel against Russian sovereign territory, or against Russian-speaking people, to justify an incursion into Ukraine, U.S. officials said.
The plan would include Moscow’s use of a propaganda video that would depict “graphic scenes” according to administration officials, of a staged, false explosion with corpses, actors depicting mourners and images of destroyed buildings and military equipment. The equipment in the video would be made to look like it is Ukrainian or from nations belonging to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, officials said.
“This is just one example that we can talk about today,” said Pentagon press secretary John Kirby. “We’ve seen this kind of activity by the Russians in the past, and we believe it’s important when we see it like this and we can, to call it out.”
“The video will be released to underscore a threat to Russia’s security and to underpin military operations,” administration officials said, adding that it “could provide the spark” that Russian President Vladimir Putin needs to justify an invasion of Ukraine. Details of the intelligence were first reported by the New York Times.
The U.S. and U.K. governments, which share virtually all intelligence they collect, haven’t released the underlying intelligence reports regarding the accusations.
British officials said they agreed with the U.S. assessment of the intelligence. “This is clear and shocking evidence of Russia’s unprovoked aggression and underhand activity to destabilize Ukraine,” British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said. “This bellicose intent towards a sovereign, democratic country is completely unacceptable and we condemn it in the strongest possible terms.”
The U.S. and the U.K. have and publicly released information in recent weeks they say shows that Russia is considering military and political interventions in Ukraine.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday told the Russian daily newspaper, Izvestia, that the claim that Russia is preparing a video that will show an attack on it by Ukraine was an invention of the West.
“The delusional nature of this kind of fabrication, and there are more and more of them every day, is obvious to any more or less experienced political scientist,” Mr. Lavrov said.
In late January, the United Kingdom said it had exposed a plot to oust Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and install a pro-Russian leader in Ukraine.
In mid-January, the White House said it had evidence that Russia was sending saboteurs into eastern Ukraine to stage a provocation that would serve as a pretext for an invasion.
State Department spokesman Ned Price pushed back when asked to present evidence of the U.S. and British claims.
“If you doubt the credibility of the U.S. government, of the British government, of other governments and want to, you know, find solace in information that the Russians are putting out, that is for you to do,” Mr. Price told reporters Thursday.
Standoff With Russia
News and insights on the rising tensions between Russia and Ukraine and the West, selected by the editors
9. Uyghur kids recall physical and mental torment at Chinese boarding schools in Xinjiang
Pure evidence of pure evil.
As an aside I bet you cannot access NPR in China as the Great Firewall keeps these kinds of reports out.
Uyghur kids recall physical and mental torment at Chinese boarding schools in Xinjiang
NPR · by Emily Feng · February 3, 2022
Lütfullah Kuçar, 8, waits at home for his sister, Aysu Kuçar, to return from school, in Istanbul. The two Uyghur children were forcibly separated from their family and spent nearly 20 months in state boarding schools in Xinjiang, China. Nicole Tung for NPR
ISTANBUL — In quiet, polite voices, Aysu and Lütfullah Kuçar describe the nearly 20 months they spent in state boarding schools in China's western region of Xinjiang, forcibly separated from their family.
Under the watchful gaze of their father, the two ethnically Uyghur children say that their heads were shaved and that class monitors and teachers frequently hit them, locked them in dark rooms and forced them to hold stress positions as punishment for perceived transgressions.
By the time they were able to return home to Turkey in December 2019, they had become malnourished and traumatized. They had also forgotten how to speak their mother tongues, Uyghur and Turkish. (The children were being raised in Turkey but got forcibly sent to boarding school during a family visit to China.)
"That was the heaviest moment in my life. Standing in front of my two Chinese-speaking children, I felt as if they had killed me," says Abdüllatif Kuçar, their father.
Since 2017, authorities in Xinjiang have rounded up hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs, a largely Muslim ethnic minority group, and sent them to detention centers where they are taught Mandarin Chinese and Chinese political ideology. Camp detainees have reported being forced to work in factories during their detention or after they are released. The children of those detained or arrested are often sent to state boarding schools, even when relatives are willing to take them in.
Aysu, 10, and Lütfullah play with a balloon in their bedroom in Istanbul. Aysu was only 6 years old and Lütfullah was only 4 when they were sent to separate boarding schools in Xinjiang. When they returned, they were malnourished and could no longer speak Uyghur or Turkish. Nicole Tung for NPR
Experts say this is part of Chinese authorities' efforts to mold minority children into speaking and acting like the country's dominant Han ethnic group.
"This ideological impulse of trying to assimilate non-Han people corresponded with this punitive approach of putting adults in camps, and therefore lots of young children ended up in boarding kindergartens and boarding schools or orphanages," says James Millward, a professor at Georgetown University who studies Chinese and Central Asian history. "It really is an effort to try to make everyone Chinese and see themselves as Chinese and have a single cultural background."
These family separations have contributed to a slow erasure of the Uyghur language and culture in China, experts say — one of the reasons officials in the U.S., Canada, France, the Netherlands and other countries have declared that China's policies in Xinjiang amount to genocide.
China rejects the widespread accusations of wrongful discrimination against Uyghurs and other minorities in the region — but Uyghurs, rights advocates and reporters have documented numerous accounts of systematic abuse.
Abdüllatif Kuçar, 54, looks through an old suitcase for photos and documents at his home in Istanbul. After moving to Turkey in 1986, he regularly shuttled between Istanbul and Xinjiang's capital of Urumqi. Nicole Tung for NPR
Despite these dangers, the Kuçar family is sharing its story publicly for the first time.
Lütfullah was only 4 years old when he was sent to a boarding school just south of downtown Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, in February 2018. His older sister, Aysu, then 6, was sent to a separate school in the same city. When they were reunited with family members the next year, the two children were nearly unrecognizable to their loved ones.
People stand in a guard tower on the perimeter wall of the Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center in Dabancheng, in western China's Xinjiang autonomous region, on April 23, 2021. China's largest detention center has room for at least 10,000 inmates. Mark Schiefelbein/AP
"They were like living corpses," says Neriman Kuçar, their stepmother. "They had become entirely different children."
He was right to have misgivings about going back to China
Abdüllatif Kuçar is originally from Xinjiang but had been living in Turkey for about 30 years. He returned to China with his family for a visit in 2015, with misgivings.
Kuçar shows text messages he exchanged with his wife Meryem Aimati the night she was detained from her home in Xinjiang. "The police are at the door," she wrote. Nicole Tung for NPR
Still, Kuçar was unable to stay away from China. Despite having moved to Turkey in 1986, he regularly shuttled between Istanbul and Urumqi to visit relatives and keep a lucrative textile and leather business there running.
Kuçar's misgivings proved correct. His Turkish citizenship put him under suspicion, and Chinese authorities seized the family's passports in late 2015, trapping him and his two children in the country. When his documents were finally returned in 2017, Kuçar was deported back to Turkey and barred from reentering China.
That same year, Chinese leader Xi Jinping personally ordered a massive security campaign to extinguish terrorist threats by targeting the entire Uyghur ethnic group.
Lütfullah described physical and emotional punishment he endured after he was sent to a state boarding school. The children said they were taught in only Mandarin Chinese for six days a week, and students who spoke without permission or spoke Uyghur were hit with rulers. Nicole Tung for NPR
Because Chinese authorities had not returned his children's passports, Kuçar was forced to leave Aysu and Lütfullah behind with their mother, Meryem Aimati, in Urumqi. Kuçar thought their separation would only be temporary.
But Aimati was growing increasingly fearful. She was soon required to attend a daily flag-raising ceremony to show allegiance to China's ruling Communist Party. Local officials often dropped by her Urumqi apartment unannounced, part of a series of campaigns in which more than 1 million civilians and Communist Party officials were dispatched to live with and educate Uyghur families in their own homes.
"Three officials came by today. I did a lot of talking, and they took pictures of me raising the Chinese flag," Aimati said in a voice message to Kuçar in 2017, which he played for NPR. "I am exhausted."
One night, Kuçar was talking on the phone with Aimati when police started banging on her Urumqi apartment door. Terrified, she told him she was going to let them in, before hanging up on him.
Relatives in Urumqi came to check on Aimati the next morning. They found her apartment turned upside down and the two children in shock — and Aimati was gone.
Aysu said that older students and teachers would inflict physical punishment while she was at the state boarding school. She spent most of her waking time alone since she was afraid to speak to the other children. Nicole Tung for NPR
Aimati's cousins took in the children, but in February 2018, they were arrested as well. There was no news about the children. It was as if they had disappeared.
The kids were sent off to boarding schools and describe tough punishments
Unbeknownst to Kuçar, Aysu and Lütfullah had been sent off to two separate state schools in Urumqi.
Every school day began the same way, as the children describe it to NPR. Kids were roused from the dormitory rooms where they bunked with multiple other Uyghur children of various ages. Teachers came by for a mandatory bed inspection before the children could line up for breakfast, usually corn or rice porridge.
Then came a Chinese flag-raising ceremony for which they were taught to chant Chinese political slogans and sing patriotic songs. Years later, the children would still calm themselves down by singing Chinese songs about "Grandfather" Xi Jinping and "Father" Wang Junzheng. The latter is the former security chief of Xinjiang, who has been sanctioned by numerous governments, including the U.S. government, for human rights abuses.
"My two children spoke Chinese as well as birds sing," says Kuçar.
Pedestrians walk past a police station in Urumqi in April 2021. At least 1,300 state boarding schools are set up across Xinjiang. Dake Kang/AP
In interviews from their Istanbul home, both children independently describe routine physical and emotional punishment. An older class monitor assigned to each dorm room was given permission to bully the younger students.
"The 'older sisters' pulled my hair and beat me. All my hair fell out when I was at school," says Aysu, now 10.
"If we cried, the 'older brother' made us stand still facing the wall or hit us," says Lütfullah, now 8.
When children didn't follow orders or learn quickly enough, their teacher would put them into a stress position they call "the motorcycle," the children say. Aysu and Lütfullah demonstrate: two arms stretched out front, knees bent in a half-squat, which they held for several minutes.
But they say the worst punishment was being sent to the school's basement. Lütfullah says the teachers told him ghosts lived there, and children including him were locked there in the dark, alone, for hours at a time.
In class, the children say, they were taught in only Mandarin for six days a week, and students who spoke without permission or spoke in Uyghur were hit with rulers.
After class each day, the children finished their homework in silence before returning to their dormitories and watching television. Terrified to speak to other children, Aysu says she spent much of her waking time alone. "I would just stare at the ceiling in a daze if I could not sleep," she remembers.
China is building out boarding schools
A Uyghur woman rides past a billboard showing China's president, Xi Jinping, joining hands with a group of Uyghur elders at the Unity New Village in Hotan, in the Xinjiang region, in 2018. Andy Wong/AP
NPR was able to identify the school Lütfullah was sent to. It had been previously called the Urumqi Folk Art School and is located in the densely populated, predominantly Uyghur neighborhood of Sandunbei in the region's capital.
The school is among at least 1,300 boarding schools set up across the Xinjiang region, according to Education Ministry documents. Xinjiang local governments have been scrubbing their websites of all references to the boarding schools, but an official education report from 2017 — the year before the Kuçar children were sent to the schools — says nearly half a million children had already been enrolled by the start of that year.
China has placed more central control over education after regional authorities blamed seditious textbooks and faulty curricula for radicalizing Uyghur students toward violent extremism. Last April, a Xinjiang court sentenced to death one of the region's former top education officials, Sattar Sawut, for allegedly inserting separatist material into Uyghur textbooks. Uyghurs and researchers say the accusation about radicalization in schools is false.
"[The textbooks] were approved at the time. What happened is the standards were changed from the top down, and therefore these people were made scapegoats," says Millward, the Georgetown professor.
China says it is expanding the number of boarding schools to improve educational access, especially in remote rural communities.
"Boarding schools make it easier for students of all ethnic groups to attend school. ... All choices are made by the students and their parents, who can visit anytime they want to see their children," Mierguli Maimaitimin, a Xinjiang boarding school teacher, said at a news conference organized by the Xinjiang regional government last July.
But Uyghur families say such schools are also where children with both parents detained or imprisoned are sent, against family wishes.
"My relatives would rather take care of the children themselves, but they are forced to send the kids to boarding schools," says Mukerrem Mahmud, a Uyghur student in Turkey.
Her four younger siblings were sent to state boarding schools in Hami, an eastern Xinjiang city, after her mother was sentenced to six years in prison for wiring Mahmud money. Their father was given a 15-year sentence for an unknown reason. In 2019, her 15-year-old brother, Abdullah, died of an untreated tumor while living at his school.
"I am quite sure that if my parents had been able to take him to Shanghai [for medical treatment] as they had planned, he would have survived," says Mahmud.
A Chinese marriage certificate for Meryem Aimati and Abdüllatif Kuçar. After many months of petitioning political ministers, Kuçar was able to travel to China to pick up his children and visit Aimati in November 2019. Nicole Tung for NPR
In 2018, a U.N. human rights panel said it had "credible reports" that at least 1 million Uyghur adults had been interned without due process in Xinjiang. As the scale of mass incarcerations picked up across the region, the number of temporarily orphaned children also grew.
A 2018 state-compiled list from Xinjiang's Karakax (Moyu, in Chinese) County lists the names and identification numbers of more than 1,700 Uyghur children receiving welfare payments because both parents were in detention or prison. "No ability to work, mother detained under 'Strike Hard Campaign,' father being trained [in a reeducation camp]," county officials wrote next to the entry for an 8-year-old girl. She received 151 yuan ($24) a month.
The Xinjiang Victims Database, a website run by rights advocates compiling names and personal details of people believed to be held in camps in the region, lists more than 2,400 people under age 18 in detention or separated from their parents in Xinjiang.
Desperate and grasping for answers, some Uyghur parents have turned to Chinese social media to look for their missing children.
One Uyghur shopkeeper in Istanbul has been searching for five of his children back in China. He left China in 2016 to send three of his other kids to Turkish school. Two years later, he found one clue: a picture of his daughter Fatima, then age 7, with her head shaved and hands clasped, celebrating Chinese Lunar New Year with her elementary school class.
The picture had been posted by the government of Yopurga County, in northern Xinjiang, but it had not been taken at the same school where Fatima had been enrolled when the shopkeeper left for Turkey. There was no sign of Fatima's twin brother.
Aysu and Lütfullah hold a picture of their mother, Meryem Aimati, at their home in Istanbul. The children have not seen their mother for over two years, since they were released from state boarding schools and brought back to Turkey with their father. Nicole Tung for NPR
"I am worried that they will forget their culture and language and they will not be able to communicate," says the man, who did not want to be identified because he believes he has been targeted for deportation back to China.
Kuçar managed to reunite with his kids
Meanwhile, anguished and stuck in Turkey, Abdüllatif Kuçar had been petitioning Turkish government ministries and protesting outside the Chinese Embassy for help with extricating Aysu and Lütfullah from China. "I averaged one minister a month," Kuçar remembers.
His activism paid off. In 2019, the Turkish Foreign Ministry informed him it had negotiated with China to allow Kuçar a single-entry visa to enter China and pick up his two children.
Kuçar landed in Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital, in late November 2019. He described what unfolded in a series of interviews with NPR. He immediately began dialing relatives' phone numbers. Every single one hung up on him, then shut off their phone, he says. Walking the streets of his old neighborhood, Kuçar passed by several acquaintances and former neighbors. They crossed the street to avoid talking to him.
Police booked both hotel rooms adjacent to his. He was not allowed to close his hotel door. Security officers tailed him in two vehicles whenever he stepped out for a meal. Each day, he had to check in at a local government office to debrief the police on his whereabouts. For 10 days, he waited for authorities to bring him Aysu and Lütfullah.
Lütfullah stands behind his stepmother, Neriman Kuçar, in their kitchen in Istanbul. She made the children laghman, Uyghur-style noodles, and Aysu cried. She was served Uyghur food only twice while she was at the state boarding school, but both times older classmates ate it all before she could take a bite. Nicole Tung for NPR
"When the Chinese police brought my two children out, they ran to me as fast as a bullet from a gun," Kuçar remembers. He fainted in the December snow as his children began hugging him.
When he came to, he realized his children no longer seemed to react to Turkish or Uyghur. "Even though they did not understand me, I did not think there was a language barrier. We could communicate with our expressions," says Kuçar. "I kissed them, I held them, and they could not stop smiling at me."
NPR verified that Kuçar traveled from Turkey to China in both 2015 and briefly in 2019 through visa stamps and Chinese and Turkish identification documents. Details of the children's account were corroborated by Turkish medical and education professionals who are treating the children. The Turkish Embassy in Beijing declined to comment on the story and referred all questions back to the Kuçar family.
But what about their mother?
Before leaving China in December 2019, the Kuçars made one last stop. It was to see the children's mother, Meryem Aimati. Kuçar learned she had been sentenced to a 20-year prison term in her hometown of Kucha, but Chinese authorities arranged for her to be transported to a nearby hospital for a last visit with her family.
Abdüllatif Kuçar watches his two children play chess in the living room. Lütfullah and Aysu are slowly acclimating to life in Istanbul, but when they were first reunited with their father, they suffered from intense nightmares. Nicole Tung for NPR
"She was thin to the bone and had lost all her hair," he remembers. "I grabbed her skeletal hand and saw the dark scars the handcuffs had left on her wrists."
After 15 minutes, Kuçar was told his visit was over. Despite prohibitions on touching her or even crying, he says, he wrapped Aimati in a bear hug, lifting her off the bed. When he set her down, he noticed she was too weak to stand.
"I thought to myself, 'What is the point of living anymore?' " he says. "But I saw Meryem sitting on the bed crying, and our children grabbed my hand. I decided: I must live for the children."
Both China's Foreign Ministry and the Xinjiang regional government did not respond to requests for comment.
The kids are home, but there's a road to recovery
Just over two years after returning to Turkey, the Kuçar children are still in the middle of a long recovery process.
Both lost weight during their time in boarding school. A pediatric doctor in Istanbul diagnosed them with calcium and iron deficiencies, and the family put them on a special diet.
"On her second day back home, I made Aysu laghman, Uyghur-style noodles," says Neriman Kuçar, their stepmother. "Aysu started crying when she saw the dish. They had only been served Uyghur food twice while she was at the school, but older classmates had eaten it all before she got a bite."
For both children, the mental trauma stemming from their time in Urumqi runs far deeper than the physical impact. For months, Aysu and Lütfullah hid whenever guests came over. They asked for permission before going to the bathroom and before eating.
"Lütfullah could not speak or express himself until the end of first grade. I did not have this problem with other Uyghur children from Xinjiang," says the child's Turkish elementary class teacher. The teacher did not want to be named because discussing China's policies in Xinjiang is politically sensitive in Turkey.
The two children also work with a psychiatrist who specializes in treating Uyghur children with art therapy, and they attend Uyghur-language classes after school.
For the first four months the children were back in Turkey, Kuçar says, he sat by their bedside every night because of their frequent and intense nightmares. "The children gnashed their teeth, kicked in bed and would shout, 'No, I will not do that!' in their sleep," Kuçar says.
He still keeps the lights on 24 hours a day inside the house to chase away Lütfullah's memories of being locked in the dark school basement.
Kuçar says what keeps him going is prayer and a sense of duty to keep the family together. He knows that despite their scars, in partially reuniting, they are one of the luckier Uyghur families.
Abduweli Ayup contributed reporting from Istanbul.
NPR · by Emily Feng · February 3, 2022
10. Ukraine, Taiwan, and strategic smarts
Conclusion:
Strategic sobriety requires the ability to make distinctions and establish priorities among interests, and then assess the best means and courses of action. Not all interests are equal. Our ability to achieve our interests will of necessity vary from case to case. By failing to make the necessary distinction between the crises in Ukraine and Taiwan, we ignore the adage of Frederick the Great that he who attempts to defend everything ends up defending nothing.
Ukraine, Taiwan, and strategic smarts
by Mackubin Owens | February 03, 2022 11:00 PM
The United States faces two potential crises on opposite sides of the globe: a Russian invasion of Ukraine and China’s threat to Taiwan. Much of the commentary surrounding these threats lumps them together, emphasizing either their similarities or the way one crisis will affect the other. But it’s important to note their differences, and what those differences mean for U.S. strategy. For not only are they geographically separate, but they are also geopolitically distinct and should not be conflated. Chinese pressure on Taiwan calls for forceful U.S. action. The Russian threat to Ukraine does not.
Foreign policy should be guided by prudence, which Aristotle called the virtue most necessary for the statesman. Prudence, of course, dictates that President Joe Biden should not have essentially invited a Russian “incursion” into Ukraine during his recent, ill-advised press conference. But even more fundamentally, prudence requires an examination of the means available in light of the ends that one seeks. In the case of Ukraine and Taiwan, this means answering these questions: What are the American interests at stake? What are the courses of action available? What are the risks associated with the various courses of action? What is the likelihood of success?
The United States's fundamental interest in Europe is the peace and stability of Western and Central Europe. NATO has long been the means of achieving this. Unfortunately, the U.S. made a serious strategic error in the wake of the Cold War by expanding NATO too far to the east. Although the inclusion of the Visegrad states of Central Europe (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia) made both cultural and strategic sense, including the Baltic states and the threat to embrace other former Soviet states, especially Ukraine, constituted a strategic “bridge too far” that helped to fuel Russian paranoia.
Vladimir Putin’s threat to invade Ukraine is a matter of Russian irredentism. It is no secret that Putin wishes to reconstitute, at least geographically, the old Soviet Union. While Americans claim to be uncomfortable with the idea of “spheres of influence,” it is clear that Ukraine’s proximity to Russia is a geopolitical concern.
Were Ukraine to join NATO, the alliance would be obligated to defend it against a Russian attack. We can see right now that there is no rush by Germany and other NATO states to step up against Russia. It seems that our European friends regard a war on behalf of Ukraine in the same way that Otto von Bismarck regarded war in the Balkans: not worth the healthy bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier.
Even if military force is contemplated, what are the prospects for success? The Pentagon has placed U.S. troops on alert, and some have called for those troops to be deployed to the region. What they would do there is unclear. Even the use of allied air power would be problematic. The problem is one of geography, “the tyranny of distance.” Ukraine’s entire northern and eastern border is Belarus, a Putin ally, and Russia itself.
Some have called for active U.S. support of a guerrilla war against Russia. But Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, lies just south of the border with Belarus. Putin can achieve his strategic objective by a rapid seizure of the capital and the installation of a puppet regime. There is no strategic rationale for Russia to drive beyond Kyiv. The last thing Putin wants is to get bogged down in the Ukrainian hinterlands to be bled white in a guerrilla war.
What about nonmilitary courses of action? Of course, sanctions are always a possibility. Indeed, Congress is working on sanctions legislation now. Unfortunately, the Biden administration has substantially weakened them. Our greatest nonmilitary tool against Russia is energy. To the advantage of both American citizens and our allies, the Trump administration ramped up U.S. domestic energy production by exploiting the technological revolution associated with hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) and directional drilling, turning the United States into a net exporter of energy. As such, we were able to undercut Russia’s ability to use energy to blackmail Western and Central Europe and reduce Russian energy revenues. Biden’s war against U.S. domestic oil and gas production has been both an economic and foreign policy boon for Russia. Indeed, it is unlikely that Putin would have threatened Ukraine had the United States continued to wield the energy club.
While the U.S. has little strategic interest in Ukraine, that is not the case in the Indo-Pacific region. Those interests are threatened by the People’s Republic of China, which has made clear that it seeks to displace the U.S. as not only a regional but also a global hegemonic power. In the service of its goals, China has worked assiduously to undermine the U.S.-led alliance system along the Asian rimland and invested heavily in naval, missile, and other military capabilities. Recent decades have seen the PRC pursue a massive military buildup, including an ambitious maritime modernization program. Today, the size of its navy rivals that of ours. Although still qualitatively inferior to its American counterpart, the PRC navy boasts more hulls, and its shipyards are churning out modern ships at breakneck rates that far outstrip U.S. naval output.
Aided by the “tyranny of distance,” China seeks to deny the United States unfettered access to the Western Pacific by means of an Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) strategy that features the deployment of a layered cruise and ballistic missile system that threatens U.S. and allied forces operating in the Western Pacific.
Our strategy calls for countering this in an asymmetric fashion by defending key territory using widely dispersed forces, capable of engaging ships and aircraft at a great distance, rendering large swaths of the Pacific Ocean off-limits to China’s navy. The U.S. strategy is centered on the “first island chain,” a barrier running parallel to China and stretching from Japan to the South China Sea. By maintaining strategic control of the first island chain, we limit the extension of China’s military power into the Western Pacific while enabling U.S. freedom of action. A central component of this barrier is Taiwan. Accordingly, the United States has a clear strategic interest in defending Taiwan.
Again, effective deterrence requires prudence. The United States must recognize the relative “value of the objective” to China and avoid provocation. But it must also understand that Beijing only responds to power. In contrast to the Ukraine situation, the United States possesses viable nonmilitary options against China.
We possess the ability to pit our strengths against China’s weaknesses, which include reliance on imports for foodstuffs and oil/gas. Although China possesses vast coal reserves, it lacks oil and natural gas. Thus, in addition to countering the Chinese strategy in the Western Pacific, we should make it clear that the United States and its allies will respond to Chinese aggression by threatening both its ability to operate beyond the first island chain and in the wider Pacific and the Indian Ocean.
If the PRC threatens Taiwan or seeks to deny access to the South China Sea, the United States and its allies can return the favor by denying China’s access to the wider Pacific and the Indian Ocean, threatening the vital sea lanes that run through the Strait of Malacca and other choke points. This “distant blockade” has the potential to cut off Beijing’s access to the Middle Eastern oil upon which it desperately depends.
Strategic sobriety requires the ability to make distinctions and establish priorities among interests, and then assess the best means and courses of action. Not all interests are equal. Our ability to achieve our interests will of necessity vary from case to case. By failing to make the necessary distinction between the crises in Ukraine and Taiwan, we ignore the adage of Frederick the Great that he who attempts to defend everything ends up defending nothing.
Mackubin Owens is a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia and author of U.S. Civil-Military Relations After 9/11: Renegotiating the Civil-Military Bargain. He is currently writing a history of U.S. civil-military relations.
11. Islamic State’s emir dead after U.S. military raid in Syria
Conclusion:
Just as Baghdadi’s death did not signal the demise of the Islamic State, it is unlikely that the loss of Qurayshi will severely degrade the group’s global operations, especially as many of its affiliates have become more decentralized. Qurayshi’s tenure as caliph proved the Islamic State’s capability to expand its influence no matter who ranks highest, yet another tangible example that jihadist organizations are consistently resilient in the face of decapitation strategies.
Islamic State’s emir dead after U.S. military raid in Syria | FDD's Long War Journal
Islamic State emir Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi died during a daring overnight raid conducted by U.S. special operations forces in Idlib province in northeastern Syria on Thursday, according to the White House, ending a two-year hunt for the group’s leader.
Qurayshi’s long resume in jihad stretched back to his service in Saddam Hussein’s army, leadership roles with Al Qaeda and then the Islamic State. He served as the emir of the Islamic State since 2019.
President Biden announced that Qurayshi was killed in a counterterrorism raid in northwestern Syria early Thursday morning, stating: “Thanks to the skill and bravery of our Armed Forces, we have taken off the battlefield Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi — the leader of ISIS. All Americans have returned safely from the operation.”
During the operation, the U.S. military claimed that Qurayshi detonated a suicide bomb that killed him and twelve members of his family, including women and children.
The Islamic State has not confirmed Qurayshi’s death or named a replacement at this time. However, given that Qurayshi was held in detention by U.S. forces in Iraq in 2008, it is likely the U.S. military was able to confirm his identity using a combination of DNA, fingerprints, and other means.
Qurayshi became the leader of the Islamic State following the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019. Baghdadi was killed in a similar U.S. raid in northwestern Syria under the Trump administration, in which he also detonated an explosive device to kill himself rather than be captured by American Special Forces.
The raid against Qurayshi occurred in Atmeh, a town close to the Turkish border and approximately 30 miles north of Idlib. His chosen hiding spot sparked intrigue, as Atmeh is home to Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an Al Qaeda-linked group led by Abu Mohammad al-Julani. HTS has conducted operations against Islamic State cells in Idlib province as it sought to eliminate competing jihadist rivals in its territory.
However, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was also found hiding in Idlib province when he was killed in 2019. Baghdadi’s safehouse was in Barisha, approximately ten miles south of the three-story cinder block building where Qurayshi was died.
In 2019, after the death of Baghdadi, Qurayshi was named “Emir of the Faithful,” the official title for the leader of the Islamic State. In the official announcement, Qurayshi was described as a “worshiping working scholar,” indicating he was an ideologue and sharia official for the group.
After he was appointed emir, the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program offered a $10 million reward for information leading to the capture of Qurayshi, who was identified as Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abdal-Rahman al-Mawla, and also known as Hajji Abdallah, and Abdul Amir Muhammad Sa’id Salbi.
Qurayshi has a long pedigree in jihad in Iraq and Syria. Prior to joining Al Qaeda in Iraq, he was educated as an Islamic scholar and served as an officer in Saddam Hussein’s army. Following the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam’s regime, Qurayshi joined al Qaeda where he served as a senior religious official and political leader.
U.S. Forces captured Qurayshi in early 2008 and detained him at Camp Bucca. While in U.S. custody, Qurayshi was cooperative and shared information that led to the detention and elimination of his rivals within the Islamic State of Iraq (the successor of Al Qaeda in Iraq), including their No. 2 official at the time, Abu Qaswarah [See Generation Jihad Ep. 30 – The Would-be Caliph was a Snitch].
After being released by the U.S. (the date is unknown but he was likely freed sometime before Sept. 2009 when Camp Bucca was closed), Qurayshi quickly rejoined the Islamic State of Iraq where he rose through the jihadist ranks, including top leadership positions in Mosul. In 2014, he swore fidelity to Baghdadi and the Islamic State, where he was instrumental in the caliphate’s capture of Mosul in June 2014. Reports indicated that Qurayshi was a driving force behind the genocidal massacre against the Yazidis in Sinjar.
After years of serving as Baghdadi’s deputy, he was elected the new caliph of the Islamic State by the shura council just one week after Baghdadi’s death.
Despite widespread speculation that Baghdadi’s death would be the death knell for the Islamic State, Qurayshi maintained the organization’s cohesion even after it lost control of its territory in Syria. Qurayshi received unanimous acceptance from IS affiliates around the globe, suggesting that the global terror organization did not suffer a crisis of legitimacy after the death of Baghdadi.
Under Qurayshi’s leadership, the Islamic State expanded its presence in Africa, particularly in the Sahel where Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) has dramatically enhanced its influence since 2019. Furthermore, across Sub-Saharan Africa, the Islamic State opened new fronts for its global jihad, supporting affiliates in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mozambique.
Just as Baghdadi’s death did not signal the demise of the Islamic State, it is unlikely that the loss of Qurayshi will severely degrade the group’s global operations, especially as many of its affiliates have become more decentralized. Qurayshi’s tenure as caliph proved the Islamic State’s capability to expand its influence no matter who ranks highest, yet another tangible example that jihadist organizations are consistently resilient in the face of decapitation strategies.
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12. U.S. Security Assistance to Burkina Faso Laid the Groundwork for a Coup
Blame it on security assistance.
But I do think we need to reexamine how security assistance fits into the national defense strategy and how it is (or is not) employed to achieve national security objectives. What are the assessments and intelligence estimates that we are using to determine security assistance plans and objectives? Are assessments and intelligence estimates even used for prioritizing security assistance plans and resources?
Are the programs, processes, procedures, funding, and authorities the right ones to support the national defense and national security strategies? Do Title 22 authorities support campaign plan execution? (I will be told they are not designed to support campaign plan execution- if so that needs to be examined). Security assistance cannot be a self licking ice cream.
U.S. Security Assistance to Burkina Faso Laid the Groundwork for a Coup
Since 2009, the United States has supported the country’s military with funding, weapons, and training.
By Stephanie Savell, an anthropologist and co-director of the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
Burkina Faso’s military seized power last week, claiming President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré’s democratically elected government was not adequately dealing with the country’s unrest. This is the same military that, in the name of fighting supposed jihadism, has been implicated in widespread human rights abuses and targeted killings of ethnic Fulani people, a minority group that made up about 6.3 percent of Burkina Faso’s population in 2019 (though some estimates put it at 8.4 percent as of 2010). The Fulani traditionally are Muslim pastoralists who live across West Africa and herd cattle semi-nomadically.
Since 2009, the United States has been supporting Burkina Faso’s military with funding, weapons, and training as part of Washington’s post-9/11 counterterrorism efforts. That support, while not directly responsible for last week’s coup, helped lay the groundwork for the country’s increased militarism—and, ultimately, the coup it produced.
Most Burkinabe explain the violence tearing apart their country in terms of local dynamics and intimate, person-to-person interactions. When asked, very few see the United States as having any role at all in the current conflict in the tri-border region of the Sahel between Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. Violent actors include military and police forces, militants such as the al Qaeda-affiliated Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin coalition and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, and other armed militias. France, the region’s former colonial power, has been the primary Western nation involved through its Operation Barkhane, targeting Islamist militants and backing regional governments in the fight.
Burkina Faso’s military seized power last week, claiming President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré’s democratically elected government was not adequately dealing with the country’s unrest. This is the same military that, in the name of fighting supposed jihadism, has been implicated in widespread human rights abuses and targeted killings of ethnic Fulani people, a minority group that made up about 6.3 percent of Burkina Faso’s population in 2019 (though some estimates put it at 8.4 percent as of 2010). The Fulani traditionally are Muslim pastoralists who live across West Africa and herd cattle semi-nomadically.
Since 2009, the United States has been supporting Burkina Faso’s military with funding, weapons, and training as part of Washington’s post-9/11 counterterrorism efforts. That support, while not directly responsible for last week’s coup, helped lay the groundwork for the country’s increased militarism—and, ultimately, the coup it produced.
Most Burkinabe explain the violence tearing apart their country in terms of local dynamics and intimate, person-to-person interactions. When asked, very few see the United States as having any role at all in the current conflict in the tri-border region of the Sahel between Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. Violent actors include military and police forces, militants such as the al Qaeda-affiliated Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin coalition and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, and other armed militias. France, the region’s former colonial power, has been the primary Western nation involved through its Operation Barkhane, targeting Islamist militants and backing regional governments in the fight.
Among the many complexities wrapped up in the conflict are clashes between different livelihood groups such as farmers and herders; environmental changes wrought by climate change and desertification; historical race relations between ethnic groups that date back to colonial and pre-colonial times; widespread poverty; and frustration with a corrupt government that does little to provide opportunities or even basic infrastructure for the majority of its people.
Nonetheless, closer examination reveals the U.S. role in promoting the idea that terrorism in Burkina Faso required a military response—even though the local dynamics were far too complicated to align neatly with the U.S. view that “good” government forces battle “evil” terrorists.
“It’s not that all Fulani are terrorists, it’s that most terrorists are Fulani,” a Burkinabe army communications officer, speaking in an unofficial capacity, told me over a lunch of chicken and rice in a bustling outdoor eatery in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso’s capital, in January 2019. As an anthropologist and co-director of the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute, I was in the capital to conduct research on the growing conflict in the West African Sahel and the United States’ involvement. This piece draws heavily from that research, which I’ve also written about elsewhere.
In Burkina Faso alone, the violence has had an enormous human toll, leaving over 7,000 people dead, over 1.4 million displaced, and more than 3.5 million in need of humanitarian assistance. In 2021, data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project suggests that Burkina Faso’s state forces were responsible for over 1,100 fatalities—close to half of the people killed in the conflict that year by all parties to the violence.
The officer’s comment revealed more about his own prejudice than about the true makeup of militant groups: Research has shown that people from several different ethnic groups are involved. Yet state forces, along with government-backed citizen militia groups, have systematically targeted the Fulani.
Not long after U.S. President George W. Bush launched what he called the “global war on terror” in Afghanistan in 2001, the Defense and State departments began to extend this war to Africa. Officials followed a preemptive logic that suggested that the smallest possibility of an attack warranted preventative action, and they focused particularly on “undergoverned” areas in “weak” or “fragile” states. The U.S. military started to build a network of bases and training activities across Africa, boosting what had been a limited presence across the continent since World War II.
Though U.S. strategists did not identify a significant threat of terrorism from Sahelian West Africa, the United States nevertheless created the Pan Sahel Initiative in 2003. At first training military units from Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger, in 2005 the Pan Sahel Initiative became the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership and was expanded to include Algeria, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tunisia. Though the United States saw Burkina Faso as peaceful and stable, the country was added to the counterterrorism partnership in 2009.
Only seven years later, around 2016, did Burkina Faso begin to see a surge in militant attacks. The violence spilled over from neighboring Mali in the wake of the 2011 U.S.- and NATO-backed revolution in Libya that toppled longtime Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi and contributed to the 2012 political destabilization of Mali.
According to data from the Security Assistance Monitor, U.S. security funding for Burkina Faso skyrocketed from annual rates that were in the $200,000 range before 2009 to $1.8 million in 2010 and more than $16 million by 2018. This is only an accounting of publicly disclosed funding, and investigative work suggests the total amount of U.S. security cooperation aid to Burkina Faso in 2018 and 2019 was as high as $100 million. Most of this funding has supported military operations and equipment, including vehicles, weapons, and generators.
Data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute shows a parallel spike in Burkina Faso’s military expenditures since 2009. That year the country’s military spent $110 million; 10 years later, in 2019, it spent $358 million.
The United States has also provided extensive counterterrorism training, both in West Africa and in America, to Burkinabe military and police forces. The leader of Burkina Faso’s current coup, Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, has an extensive history of participating in U.S.-sponsored military training. Among others, he participated in the United States’ Exercise Flintlock in West Africa in 2010 and 2020, a U.S.-sponsored Military Intelligence Basic Officer Course in Senegal in 2013 and 2014, and a Department of Defense Civil Military Support Element in Burkina Faso in 2018 and 2019. A prior coup in Burkina Faso in 2014 was led by a military official, Lt. Col. Isaac Zida, who had also attended U.S. counterterrorism and military intelligence training courses.
Through all this activity, the United States established the ideological framework and military supports that ensured Burkina Faso would respond to the problem of violent militant attacks, when this problem arose, with its own so-called war on terror. The state’s chosen enemy? The Fulani.
I heard stories from Fulani people about government forces arresting and disappearing Fulani men from their homes, marketplaces, and roadside checkpoints. Victims are often found shot in the head or chest. One man told me how soldiers put his brother in a military prison and prohibited visits from family members, so they could not bring him food. They heard he was tortured, starved, and even without water. After a month, he died. In July 2020, Human Rights Watch reported on mass graves found near the northern town of Djibo that held the remains of at least 180 people, most of them Fulani. Evidence suggested that state security forces were the killers.
Meanwhile, the government is arming citizen militia groups, known as the Koglweogo, who also target and kill the Fulani. Fulani people live in daily fear of being attacked. Human rights watchdogs and foreign governments have called for Burkina Faso to investigate security force abuses, and the United States has warned the country that military aid could be at risk, but so far Burkina Faso’s government has enjoyed impunity.
Beyond causing widespread death, suffering, and fear, the result of this government violence has been to fuel militancy. My interviews in 2019 and additional sources suggest the state’s targeting of the Fulani has led many people to join militant groups out of their desire to retaliate and their desperation to protect themselves and their communities. According to Diallo Souaibou, who works with Fulani religious leaders through his nonprofit organization to promote peace, “About 80 percent of those who join terrorist groups told us that it isn’t because they support jihadism, it is because their father or mother or brother was killed by the security forces. So many people have been killed—assassinated—but there has been no justice.”
At the same time, Burkina Faso’s war on jihadis obscures the government’s failure to alleviate poverty or fix state corruption, which are the deepest drivers of the militant movement.
The incessant violence and enormous suffering have led to many Burkinabes’ frustration with Kaboré’s government—a feeling that coup leaders capitalized on to justify their takeover, with the claim that they are best suited to get a handle on the violence. Yet their record suggests that their leadership will open the door to further state violence against Fulani people and an ever-worsening conflict.
13. The Bully in the Bubble: Putin and the Perils of Information Isolation
Excerpts:
Personalism may give Putin extraordinary latitude within Russia. But if he does decide to invade Ukraine, this mode of governance will ultimately hold him back. Research shows that the information problems created by personalism can hamper a country’s performance on the battlefield and distort its leader’s perception of foreign threats. The security threats Putin sees in Ukraine, for instance, are shaped by his inner circle’s pervasive belief that the West lurks behind every Color Revolution. As a result, the president may discount the degree of genuine opposition to Moscow’s actions in former Soviet states. In fact, at the end of January, U.S. spy agencies said that Putin is underestimating the costs of invading Ukraine because his advisers are withholding information about the depth of local Ukrainian opposition to Russia and, relatedly, the strength of Ukraine’s resistance. They alleged that the president “is being misinformed by his own circle of advisers, who appear unwilling to confront him with the full consequences of military action.” Although it is hard to separate fact from speculation in intelligence reports, this problem is a common feature of personalist systems.
For Putin, the consequences of miscalculating in Ukraine could be grim. Although the president’s regime can shelter him from the repercussions of mistakes, if the Kremlin launches a major invasion and the war goes south, it will be hard for him to avoid feeling the impact. Putin will not only be more isolated and dependent on Beijing; he will also face a festering insurgency that will grow unpopular at home. He would not be the first Russian leader damaged by such a quagmire. During the 1980s, the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan to try to keep Kabul firmly in its camp, and its eventual failure played a key role in undermining public trust in the system.
It is still unclear if Putin will slip up. Although Russia continues to mass forces on Ukraine’s borders, no one knows if the president will ultimately attack the country or, if he does, just how far he will go. Intelligence reports suggest Putin has not yet made up his mind, and his public statements contain mixed messages. But if he makes a miscalculation and launches a major invasion, it will likely be because of the personalist features of his regime. It will then fall on Kyiv and its partners to check him, because there is no one in Russia who will.
The Bully in the Bubble
Putin and the Perils of Information Isolation
February 4, 2022
When Western leaders and observers speculate about what will happen to Ukraine, they usually focus on one man: Russian President Vladimir Putin. And for good reason. Under Putin, Russia has increasingly become a personalist regime—an authoritarian system in which power is concentrated in a single individual rather than in a ruling party or a military elite. A similar trend has emerged in China under Xi Jinping, in Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and in Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro. Around the world, personalism is on the rise.
Personalist regimes are incredibly opaque. They lack channels of open deliberation and formal institutional procedures, functioning instead through interpersonal relationships and unofficial arrangements. Putin, for example, prefers to deliberate during small, casual meetings and is so obsessed with secrecy that he doesn’t use a cell phone. This makes it extremely difficult for analysts to understand his policymaking patterns.
But personalist systems have common characteristics that shape how their leaders operate, and studying them can help observers understand what drives strongman behavior—including Putin’s. Personalist dictators, for instance, face fewer checks on their power than do other heads of state. They are harder to punish when their foreign policy decisions fail. And critically, they choose their circle of advisers based on loyalty rather than competence, surrounding themselves by scared and sycophantic underlings who feed them limited, biased, self-censored, and overly optimistic information.
For Kyiv, this is cold comfort. Because personalist rulers are more insulated from the consequences of their actions, they can afford to be more violent and less risk averse than other kinds of autocrats. To repress domestic opposition and keep power, they staff their regimes with devotees from the military and the security services who are prone to aggression and whose hostile outlook begins to permeate foreign policy decision-making. As these courtiers compete for the ruler’s attention, they may leave out inconvenient facts and offer belligerent, eye-catching plans for how to deal with what they see as threats.
Personalist dictators can afford to be more violent than other kinds of autocrats.
That doesn’t mean more violence in Ukraine is preordained. In the past, Putin has been pragmatic and sensitive to war’s costs. But the Russian president’s circle of trust has consolidated over time, insulating him from information that does not fit with his prior beliefs. His minions share his anger toward the West, and he faces no serious internal constraints. The future of Ukraine may hinge on a man ensconced in a bubble that both feeds his aggression and shields him from its consequences.
SHOOTING THE MESSENGER
Authoritarian states are bedeviled by an inherent contradiction. To stay in power, autocrats desperately seek reliable information on the attitudes of their citizens, elite rivals, and foreign threats. But to avoid opposition, they establish political systems that make quality data exceptionally hard to obtain. Leaders suppress dissent, punish free expression, encourage personal loyalty, and divide their security agencies. They therefore struggle to understand both how their people feel and what other states are planning.
In a personalist autocracy, these problems are even worse. Government officials not only struggle to obtain factual information; they also face strong personal incentives to censor what they find. Consider, for instance, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s behavior before the 2003 Iraq war. Iraqi government records captured by the United States show that he badly underestimated the probability of a U.S. invasion and, in the event of one, expected his troops to put up much greater resistance. That is not because his advisers were (entirely) blind to reality. It is because his underlings—fearful of confronting a dictator famous for violent purges—never challenged his rosy assessments. As the political scientist David Lake has argued, “Saddam was insulated in a cocoon in which little adverse information got through to him and few subordinates dared challenge his preconceived beliefs.”
The Iraq war also, of course, illustrates that democracies can ignore information and make miscalculations, as the Bush administration did by disregarding intelligence that showed Baghdad didn’t have WMDs. But although information problems are not unique to personalist regimes, their structure greatly exacerbates the issue. There is a reason, for instance, why personalist leaders have meek advisers. For strongmen, the consequences of losing power can be extreme—prison, exile, or death—and so they tend to surround themselves by sycophants. Their governing bodies can therefore descend into groupthink, and policy can lock onto a single path. This tendency is intensified by the fact that long-standing rulers become more confident in their abilities over time, ignoring or quashing opposition.
Putin’s inner circle is almost entirely made up by members of his loyalist, hawkish security services.
Perhaps no leader of a major power illustrates these patterns better than Putin. His advisers once held a range of perspectives, especially early during the first decade of this century, when he attempted to position the Kremlin as a partner to the United States and Europe. But over time, his security agencies came to dominate Putin’s attention, especially as he grew disappointed with the West. Now, Putin’s inner circle is almost entirely made up of the siloviki—members of his loyalist, hawkish security services. The FSB, Russia’s successor to the KGB, is playing an increasingly visible role in foreign relations. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, by contrast, is now sometimes left out of decisions altogether.
The result is a dangerous feedback loop. By most accounts, the president’s advisers uniformly see the West as a grave security threat to Russia, which encourages Putin to adopt an increasingly hostile stance. This in turn provokes the United States and Europe to confront Russia, which only increases the influence of Putin’s hawks by justifying their pessimistic and often paranoid outlook. Partly as a result, Russian foreign policy has grown more belligerent over time.
This aggression has yielded territorial victories, most famously the annexation of Crimea in 2014. But it has also left Putin significantly more isolated. Russian cooperation with the United States and Europe has, of course, stalled, but its work with India and Japan has similarly stagnated. Moscow has forged a growing partnership with China, but this relationship is likely to make Putin uneasy. Rather than bringing central and eastern Europe back under Moscow’s sway, the president’s gambit in Ukraine has breathed new life into NATO. If Putin’s ultimate goal is to transform the global order to fit Russia’s ambitions, he appears to have failed.
In more rigorously institutionalized states, there would be separate groups or agencies powerful enough to tell leaders when their aggression is backfiring. Yet like many personalized regimes, the Russian government lacks any real checks and balances- or even a way to thoroughly assess the data it gathers. As the Putin expert Brian Taylor has noted, Russia has no system to create “collective judgments” from its multiple intelligence services, as is done with the National Intelligence Estimates in the United States.
TEMPTING FATE
There are notable differences between Putin and most personalist leaders. Scholars have argued that strongmen tend to be particularly aggressive and risk acceptant because they come to power through violent means, such as coups and revolutions. Putin, however, came to power by appointment in 1999. He is also not as rash as other personalist dictators, such as Saddam, who invaded Kuwait despite ample evidence that doing so would provoke a powerful international response. Although the Russian president is certainly willing to use military force if it seems necessary or beneficial, as he did in Chechnya, Georgia, Moldova, Syria, Ukraine, and most recently, Kazakhstan, he has never attempted to conquer an entire country.
But not all personalist states are alike. Indeed, part of what makes personalist regimes distinct from other autocracies is that their shape and character depend heavily on one individual, and today’s Russia clearly fits that criterion. A single person—Putin—acts as the ultimate arbiter of interelite disputes. He makes all foreign policy decisions. No group of other Russian officials has the capacity to consistently constrain him. Instead, rival elites spend their time jockeying for positions in his inner circle—sometimes succeeding, and sometimes being cast out. Putin, for example, jettisoned former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev after his personal corruption (and tendency to sleep during Putin’s speeches) became too embarrassing to tolerate.
Personalism may give Putin extraordinary latitude within Russia. But if he does decide to invade Ukraine, this mode of governance will ultimately hold him back. Research shows that the information problems created by personalism can hamper a country’s performance on the battlefield and distort its leader’s perception of foreign threats. The security threats Putin sees in Ukraine, for instance, are shaped by his inner circle’s pervasive belief that the West lurks behind every Color Revolution. As a result, the president may discount the degree of genuine opposition to Moscow’s actions in former Soviet states. In fact, at the end of January, U.S. spy agencies said that Putin is underestimating the costs of invading Ukraine because his advisers are withholding information about the depth of local Ukrainian opposition to Russia and, relatedly, the strength of Ukraine’s resistance. They alleged that the president “is being misinformed by his own circle of advisers, who appear unwilling to confront him with the full consequences of military action.” Although it is hard to separate fact from speculation in intelligence reports, this problem is a common feature of personalist systems.
For Putin, the consequences of miscalculating in Ukraine could be grim. Although the president’s regime can shelter him from the repercussions of mistakes, if the Kremlin launches a major invasion and the war goes south, it will be hard for him to avoid feeling the impact. Putin will not only be more isolated and dependent on Beijing; he will also face a festering insurgency that will grow unpopular at home. He would not be the first Russian leader damaged by such a quagmire. During the 1980s, the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan to try to keep Kabul firmly in its camp, and its eventual failure played a key role in undermining public trust in the system.
It is still unclear if Putin will slip up. Although Russia continues to mass forces on Ukraine’s borders, no one knows if the president will ultimately attack the country or, if he does, just how far he will go. Intelligence reports suggest Putin has not yet made up his mind, and his public statements contain mixed messages. But if he makes a miscalculation and launches a major invasion, it will likely be because of the personalist features of his regime. It will then fall on Kyiv and its partners to check him, because there is no one in Russia who will.
14. Troop-to-Task: A Russian Invasion of Ukraine
A very thorough (e.g.,long!) intelligence estimate from Ben Connable. please go to the link to view the graphics.
Troop-to-Task: A Russian Invasion of Ukraine
by Ben Connable
In this December 8, 2021, Real Clear Defense article, I argued that while Vladimir Putin could easily seize eastern Ukraine, he would regret his decision. Three military consequences of invasion—tied-down military power, an onerous occupation, and a NATO-backed insurgency—might be even more damaging to Russia than threatened Western sanctions. In this notional Ukraine invasion scenario, I examine likely Russian troop requirements and the many daunting challenges of a prospective post-invasion occupation. Bottom line: Even a moderate-risk invasion option intended to seize the eastern third of Ukraine will necessitate an exhausting occupation that will carry many (probably unforeseen) risks and costs for the Russian military.
On January 28th, senior U.S. military leaders warned that Putin appeared poised to significantly expand his 2014 invasion of Ukraine. As of late January 2022, Russia had positioned approximately 100,000 troops around Ukraine’s northern and eastern borders. Given the disparity between the Russian and Ukrainian armed forces, Putin has good reason to believe he could succeed. Assuming he does choose to attack—many experts on Russia offer insights into this likelihood—he can then choose to take more or less risk by seizing more or less Ukrainian territory. As my analysis suggests, for every square kilometer of terrain seized and every linear kilometer to the west Putin chooses to push, the more post-invasion risk he incurs.
In order to reduce political and economic blowback, Putin may settle for limited military advances and annexation of large parts of the separatist-dominated Donetsk and Luhansk regions in southeastern Ukraine. Or, undeterred by Western threats, he may decide to seize most of Ukraine, including the capital Kyiv and the breakaway territory of Transnistria in eastern Moldova. A middle ground option presents a good starting point for analysis: Russia invades and seizes the eastern third of Ukraine, cementing its hold on Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk while creating a buffer against perceived Western encroachment on Russia’s sphere of influence. This figure shows all three of these prospective approaches side by side.
Figure 1: Three Prospective Invasion Options
Ben Connable
My analysis centers on Prospective Option 2. In this notional scenario, Russian ground combat forces advance to a line running roughly from the northeastern city of Kharkiv, to the bend of the Dnieper River at the city of Dnipro, and then cutting southwest to the river's delta. At least, in theory, this limit of advance would allow annexation of the more pro-Russian population in Ukraine while avoiding a more costly and politically fraught attack on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. This line would also allow the Russians to use the Dnieper River as a natural boundary to help solidify the front line and defend against potential infiltration and raids. The annotated map below depicts the notional western limit, as well as the territory Russia would need to occupy and secure.
Figure 2: Notional Kharkiv—Dnieper Delta Invasion Option
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Ben Connable Map created using Google Earth Pro and Microsoft PowerPoint
The total area of this notional occupied space would be approximately 170,000 square kilometers. By comparison, that is equivalent in size to Florida and slightly smaller than all of Syria (183,000 square kilometers). The total perimeter, not including the land border with Russia but including Crimea—which would now be fair game for Ukrainian and NATO counteractions—would be approximately 1,750 kilometers. That is well over half the length of the U.S.-Mexico border (3,145 kilometers long) and two-thirds of the length of the entire Afghanistan-Pakistan border (the Durand Line, 2,640 kilometers long).
Building from existing order-of-battle estimates, terrain and population analysis, mission analysis, and task analysis for an occupation of eastern Ukraine, Russia would require approximately 83,000 ground and helicopter forces to secure terrain from Kharkiv city in the north to the Dnieper River delta in the south, and to the largely separatist-controlled regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in the east. This estimate assumes a modest threat from NATO-backed Ukrainian raids and infiltrations, insurgency, and civil disruption. It also assumes that Russia does not attempt to seize Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, a move that would sharply increase the burden of occupation.
This force of 83,000 troops represents approximately one quarter of Russia’s ground combat power. In order to sustain this notional occupation, the Russians would also have to commit an equivalent force to continual troop rotation. This might tie down another 80,000 troops for a total of approximately 160,000 troops. This represents about half of all of Russia’s ground forces.
Holding on to one-third of a country the size of Ukraine cannot be accomplished with Putin’s famed little green men. This will not be a cakewalk repeat of the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Occupying tens of thousands of square kilometers of ground and controlling millions of civilians—in this notional case, 170,000 square kilometers and 17 million people—will require tens of thousands of regular Russian infantry soldiers. These troops are woefully unprepared to run a counterinsurgency operation of this scale. Even a small-scale insurgency will lay bare their many vulnerabilities. Russia will almost certainly be forced to deploy many of its one-year conscript troops, risking social blowback at home.
Putin may believe an invasion gives him an advantage over NATO. Given these estimated costs and the degree to which his regular military forces will be exposed, he is likely to be disappointed. For the first time in many years, NATO will have an advantage over Russia. The little-green-men mystique is likely to be replaced by the realities of a highly visible slog. With a modest, consistent effort, NATO and Ukrainian military and special operations forces can work with resistance fighters to tie down half the Russian Ground Force for years. In this scenario, Russian military equipment will be worn down, national cash reserves will be strained, and popular support for Putin will be put to the test.
This all assumes Putin makes the fateful decision to seize a significant portion of eastern Ukraine and that he commits sufficient forces to avoid the kind of disaster the United States experienced after ill-planned withdrawals from Iraq in 2014 and Afghanistan in 2021. Findings are based on the notional scenario and troop-to-task analysis that follows.
These are my informed assumptions and estimates, with sources provided in hyperlinks. My intent is to provide a detailed basis for alternative analyses. I used techniques and referred to graphics readily available in open-source manuals produced by the U.S. military. I have also drawn from research I conducted with my colleagues at the RAND Corporation from 2009-2021, including but not limited to this assessment of Russian ground combat deployment capabilities (with an order of battle analysis and notional Ukraine invasion); this analysis of insurgency cases, this assessment of freedom of movement challenges in counterinsurgency, and this analysis of Russian irregular warfare competition with NATO.
All troop-to-task assessments of prospective military operations—including those undertaken by the staff preparing to fight the war—are inherently flawed. This one is no exception. See the end of the article for important caveats.
I present this analysis in eight steps: (1) estimating the invasion force; (2) describing the challenges of troop-to-task analysis; (3) estimating perimeter security requirements; (4) estimating key node security requirements; (5) estimating line of communication security requirements; (6) describing Russia’s challenges with counterinsurgency; (7) estimating population security and civil-military requirements; (8) totaling the estimated occupation force and providing caveats.
Invasion: Putting the Occupation Force in Place
Estimating the size of Russia’s invasion force is an exercise in informed guesswork, but it is necessary to help think through the challenges of occupation and possible counteractions. Starting with the existing order of battle estimates or the detailed lists of Russia's ground forces, it looks like the Russians might dedicate about 150,000 troops to seize Ukrainian territory. Some of these will be broken down into semi-independent battalion tactical groups (BTGs) of about 750 soldiers each. Others might remain in larger regimental-and division-sized units for easier command and control. For the purposes of occupation, motorized infantry battalions—many assembled ad hoc from other types of units like armor or logistics—will be needed to perform most tasks.
In this notional case, the invasion force centers on the reinforced 20th Guards Combined Arms Army moving into Ukraine from the north, and the 8th Guards Combined Arms Army looping in to meet them from the southeast. These units are well suited to offensive combined-arms warfare. They can field thousands of armored vehicles, rocket launchers, and artillery tubes to smash Ukrainian infantry and seize terrain. But these troops are in no way prepared for the kind of high-visibility occupation and counterinsurgency campaign that must follow; more on this below.
Special operations and airborne troops will probably be landed to secure key terrain ahead of the ground invasion, and many of these troops will remain to help secure the population and run counterintelligence and partner force advising operations. It is also safe to assume that Russia will deploy combat reserves and paramilitary forces from the new National Guard or Ministry of Interior to help mop up and hold down terrain, but it will want to limit these deployments to avoid weakening control at home.
This notional invasion is depicted on the map in Figure 3 below. In all likelihood, the invasion force will consist of a mashup of different armies, reserve forces, and independent regiments of all types. Russian forces would probably conduct a demonstration against Kyiv to keep the Ukrainians off balance and to support special operations efforts to undermine or replace the government. I include a broadly discussed possible ground, airborne, and amphibious attack to secure Transnistria, and perhaps all of Moldova. This would not be the first time Russians conducted amphibious operations in the Black Sea. The Moldova option would allow Russia to further isolate Kyiv, block another prospective European Union and NATO membership, and tie in its existing de facto occupation forces in Transnistria. Adding the Moldova corridor would significantly increase Russia’s occupation requirements.
Figure 3: Notional Invasion Scenario
Ben Connable Map created using Google Earth Pro and Microsoft PowerPoint, units informed by cited works
Keep in mind that many (perhaps most) of these Russian troops will be non-combat logistics, intelligence, maintenance, communications specialists and will not be available for security operations. In fact, these troops and their equipment are likely to become key targets for NATO-backed Ukrainian resistance attacks.
Occupation Troop-to-Task: The Analytic Challenge
Understanding how many troops the Russians will need to occupy eastern Ukraine requires troop-to-task analysis. This is a notoriously difficult and fraught process in the kinds of irregular warfare scenarios the Russians are likely to face post-invasion. While it is relatively easy to estimate the number of troops needed to perform basic tasks like setting up a checkpoint, it is quite hard to estimate how many checkpoints might be needed, and where and for how long, etc.
Arguably, no military force can claim success estimating troop to task in irregular war. The United States failed to get it right in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and even in the conventional 1991 Persian Gulf War, when it deployed more troops than it actually needed to win. Like their American counterparts, the Russians are better at publicly rationalizing troop-to-task decisions than they are at finding the right number. All of these staff have discovered that there are no easy answers to troop-to-task analysis in irregular warfare.
Nonetheless, tempting shortcuts abound. Throughout the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, American analysts and military officials referred to a 20:1,000 (2%) troop-to-population ratio for successful counterinsurgency. These troop-to-population security ratios are notoriously unreliable and have weak empirical basis for planning. They should not be blindly applied for troop-to-task analysis for the Ukraine case or any other case. As a point of reference only, the 20:1,000 ratio would mandate the deployment of 340,000 troops (2% of 17 million people in the notional occupied territories in this scenario) or nearly 38 divisions of Russian soldiers with approximately 9,000 per division.
Another popular way to analyze troop requirements is through troop-to-insurgent ratios. Planners would count the number of insurgents and then assign sufficient troops to deter, capture, or kill those insurgents. This approach falls apart at step one: counting insurgents. Historic counterinsurgency cases show that counting insurgents with any accuracy is all but impossible. In some cases, the insurgents themselves are unsure of their own numbers. Even if insurgent numbers are known, figuring out how many troops are needed to defeat them generally leads back to the hard, detailed work of troop-to-task analysis.
Troop-to-task analysis is the least bad approach to occupation and counterinsurgency planning. The best of these least bad estimates require a dedicated team of analysts and operational planners, working together to think through the complex mix of threats and tasks at street level. In 2006 I provided red cell support to a detailed troop-to-task planning effort to determine necessary forces to secure Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, Iraq. Planners pored over maps and overhead imagery of every street corner, spoke with officers who knew the terrain, and built spreadsheets detailing requirements for every phase of the operation. It was knowingly imperfect, but it provided an excellent baseline for the adaptive operations that followed.
This starting-point analysis also relies on some hard work and informed subjective opinion. It will not be objectively predictive or correct. However, it is worth keeping in mind that nobody in the entirety of the Russian military staff, from battalions to the Ministry of Defense, has a magical formula to help them plan for occupation. They, too, will fail to be objectively predictive or correct.
Troop-to-Task: Threats to Russian Occupation
Once Russia destroys, captures, or forces into hiding or retreat the defending Ukrainians, it will have to secure the north-south Kharkiv-Dnieper delta line, reinforce security in Crimea, and hold the coastline along the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Russian forces in the occupied territory will have to defend against at least three threats: (1) limited NATO-backed Ukrainian conventional force raids; (2) NATO and Ukrainian unconventional warfare operations from land, sea, and air; and (3) civil disturbances and insurgency.
A fourth threat—conventional counteroffensive by NATO forces—is highly unlikely but necessary to consider. Ukraine is not a member of the alliance, and there is little Western appetite for a ground war in Europe. In any event, NATO would be hard pressed to come up with the combat power to mount such an attack. Anyone wishing to understand the troop-to-task cost of an integrated Russian defense in depth of the notional occupied territories can review these sources. Figure 4, below, shows a Soviet Army division-level defense. In the defense, the Soviets would assign a front about 25 kilometers long (depending on the terrain) to a division. A modern Russian defense in depth would be similar.
Figure 4: Soviet Motorized Rifle Division Defense
U.S. Army, The Soviet Army: Operations and Tactics, FM 100-2-1, 1984, p. 6-5. Ben Connable
Given advances in sensors and weapons systems, I’m assuming a modern Russian division might comfortably defend 40 kilometers of front in this generally flat terrain. In my notional case, Russia would have to field 18 combined arms divisions just to secure the line between Kharkiv and the Dnieper delta (18 x 40 = 720 kilometers) while holding a bare minimum of three maneuver divisions in reserve. This mission would consume over 50% of the entire Russian Ground Forces (21 x 9,000 troops per division + ~3,000 army headquarters and attachments = 192,000 troops out of ~350,000 total) and still require thousands of more troops to secure the coastline, interior, and all of Crimea. It also would not account for conventional defense in the urban terrain in cities like Kharkiv (about 1.4 million people) and Dnipro (just under 1 million people). Nor would it account for the necessity to dedicate tens of thousands of additional troops to rotate in and out of the occupied territories, a point I address towards the end of this article.
Since a NATO counteroffensive would be unlikely, this notional scenario assumes the Russians will not set up a conventional defense in depth along the Kharkiv-Dnieper delta line or the entire 1,750 kilometer perimeter of occupied Ukraine. Troop-to-task in this notional case centers on defense against raids and unconventional warfare, civil-military operations and counterinsurgency.
Notional occupied Ukraine falls well within Russia’s Western Military District integrated air defense system (IADS). There will be no need to forward base fixed wing aircraft or set up extensive air defense capabilities. Organic division- and army-level electronic warfare units will be able to handle NATO and Ukrainian electronic attack and surveillance with little difficulty.
Defending the Perimeter Against Raids and Unconventional Warfare
While the Russians may not have to seal the perimeter of the occupied territory with massed conventional forces, they will have to protect it against raids and unconventional warfare activities. Raids are limited military operations with pre-planned withdrawals usually designed to destroy enemy equipment, kill enemy soldiers, or capture prisoners. Unconventional warfare operations enable resistance forces to overthrow (in this case) an occupying power.
Raids can be conducted by regular or special operations ground forces or by air or naval forces. In this notional case, we can expect NATO to back Ukrainian military raids into the occupied territories in order to support unconventional warfare objectives, to undermine Russian military will to fight and bolster Ukrainian national will to fight and to help generate war weariness amongst the Russian population. A Ukrainian Army unit might drive quickly into a seam in Russian defenses, attack supply depots or perhaps vulnerable electronic warfare assets, and quickly withdraw. In 2014, Ukrainian soldiers reportedly conducted a successful armored raid against separatist forces and, possibly, some Russian units. A raid might also be undertaken by armed drones flying explosives into soft Russian targets like refueling sites or communications arrays. Artillery and air raids can deliver fires over the Russian front lines.
Occupation of Ukraine presents a range of opportunities for unconventional warfare. NATO can choose to support Ukrainian special operations inside the occupied territories, send its own special operators behind Russian lines, or both. Special operations teams can conduct their own sabotage and ambush operations against key Russian targets, but according to an unclassified U.S. special operations document, they will most likely provide advice and supplies to the resistance.
A 2019 RAND report describes a prospective resistance operation in the Baltic states against a similar Russian invasion. This table, from page 16 of the report, shows the types and ranges of activities a NATO- and Ukrainian-backed resistance force might undertake against Russian occupation, including unconventional warfare (UW) support. Different elements of the population support different types of resistance activities, ranging from high-intensity combat operations to nonviolent protests. Figure 5 below is adapted from an image in that report.
Figure 5: RAND Resistance Action in the Baltic States
In the notional Ukraine case, both the Ukrainians and NATO have laid ample groundwork for a resistance campaign against the Russians. They have cached weapons and communications equipment, trained partisans, and set up networks of stay-behind agents to disrupt Russia’s occupation. While these Ukrainian agents can conduct some independent operations, they will need allied special operators to cross Russian lines to provide them with support.
Technology Is Not Enough
If conventional defense requires one combined arms division to cover every 40 kilometers of front, how much linear space can one division protect against ground and low-flying air raids and special operations infiltration? Advanced technology can help the Russians identify movement and cue response forces to stop them. Ground and aerial radars can spot vehicles and even individuals on foot. For example, a Russian military equipment distributor claims the Credo-1E (also see the Credo-M1) moving ground target locating radar is able to detect individual people at ranges of up to 15 kilometers along a 40-kilometer-wide arc. Russia’s Beriev A-100 and other airborne surveillance planes might be able to provide ground detection capabilities similar to the U.S. Air Force E-8C Joint Stars radar aircraft. The E-8C can detect moving ground targets from over 250 miles away. Ground forces can flesh out a network of sensors with long-range thermal imagers, cameras, aerostats, and remote detection systems.
Russia’s electronic detection and warfare capabilities are impressive. But military analysts are too often inclined to oversell adversary strengths. In practice, securing even short borders is a costly, manpower-intensive, and almost always imperfect activity. The United States military and law enforcement agencies have ample experience failing to seal the border with Mexico, the border between Syria and Iraq, and the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In all of these cases (and others), America's best technologies and people have proven insufficient to stop infiltration. Even with advanced technology, some movement is spotted while some movement goes undetected. Sometimes infiltrators are stopped, and other times they elude interception. NATO and Ukrainian forces will continuously seek out even the smallest gaps in Russian sensors and the narrowest seams of terrain that provide concealment. At least in this notional scenario, they would also use electronic disruption to reduce the efficacy of Russian sensors.
One of the biggest challenges to Russian perimeter security is physical response. It is one thing to detect movement and cross-cue multiple sensors to confirm that movement. It is another thing entirely to mobilize a quick reaction force, move that force to the interdiction site, identify the target, and stop the target. Every refugee, smuggler, fisherman, and even herd of sheep detected by advanced sensors can trigger a new interdiction operation, distracting and exhausting security forces.
Border checkpoints and posts will have to be permanently manned. Russian troops will find themselves continually negotiating civilian movement over their new, artificial boundary as people try to visit relatives and sell goods. Securing the perimeter of the occupied territories will consume Russian manpower until a large, dependable occupied-force militia can be established. This might take many months or years.
Troop-to-Task: Defending the Perimeter
The figure below depicts a detailed view of a 40-kilometer length of the notional Kharkiv-Dnieper delta line. This perimeter section lies 75 kilometers directly west of the city of Kharkiv, near the town of Kolomak. It shows what is probably a minimal troop presence to deter and help prevent low-flying air raids, ground raids, and infiltration. Russian units are presented using modified U.S. military operational graphics.
In Figure 6, below, a reinforced Russian infantry company located in Kolomak maintains three checkpoints, one each along the generally east-west roadways along the line. Each checkpoint requires one platoon of about 30 soldiers, with about 8-10 soldiers on duty at any one time for 8-hour shifts. Posting fewer soldiers on the forward-most Russian line of troops would significantly increase risk. Similarly, the two patrol areas require one platoon each for 24-hour coverage. A reinforced sensor section monitors unmanned ground sensors in the densely forested area and in the gaps between checkpoints, as well as a ground radar system like the Credo-1E.
Figure 6: Securing a 40-Kilometer Linear Boundary
Ben Connable
This notional 40-kilometer perimeter security operation requires 190 Russian troops upfront. Different terrain around the entire 1,750 kilometer perimeter might necessitate more or fewer troops in different areas. The Kharkiv-Dnieper delta line would require the most forces, while the coastal areas on the Aral Sea, well within a Russian security envelope, would probably require the least attention. Assuming differences will average out, securing only the outermost perimeter of the occupied territory will require approximately 8,400 full-time frontline soldiers (1,750 kilometers / 40 kilometer sections = 44 sections, 44 x 190 troops = 8,360 rounded up).
Perimeter security troop-to-task analysis does not account for the command, logistics, supply, maintenance, communication, aviation, medical, administrative, electronic, engineering, and other support these troops will need. These assets are provided at battalion, regimental, and division levels. According to one U.S. Army source, a Russian motorized rifle battalion contains approximately 540 troops, of which 339 are infantry.
Of these, removing lower echelon command elements (e.g., company commanders, radio operators), I estimate 300 soldiers would be available to patrol and stand checkpoint duty. Grenade launcher, mortar, and anti-tank troops would be repurposed for security duties, adding another estimated 100 security troops (300 + 100). The remaining troops (140 of 540) would perform command, medical, and support duties. All battalion estimates are based on the availability of 400 troops per battalion for security duties. Given the need for what is effectively two companies per 40 kilometers, it is safe to say a battalion could reorganize those troops into two companies and be assigned an 80 kilometer length of territory for perimeter security.
Battalion depth—the point from the perimeter front to the battalion rear area—with so many forces pushed forward would be about 10 kilometers from front to rear area. If a battalion of three infantry companies and its organic support units of approximately 540 soldiers covers 80 kilometers of perimeter length, covering the whole perimeter would require 11,900 battalion level troops (1,750 kilometers / 80 kilometers = ~22 battalion-sized perimeter sections, 22 sections x 540 troops = 11,880, rounded up).
Since all of these battalions will need divisions and an army to report to, and because the physical distance between battalions will require additional command and control, it is safe to assume that the perimeter security troop-to-task would require two reinforced brigade or division-level headquarters.
Estimating the total troop numbers of Russian brigade, independent regiment, and division headquarters and support is tricky. This Bellingcat report on the 200th Motorized Infantry Brigade is helpful to understand brigade-level equipment. Russian divisions are smaller than Western counterparts, with more dispersed resources. Order of battle estimates of headquarters units vary. Some brigades have extensive independent capabilities.
Given the disparities in estimates, ad hoc reorganization needed for occupation duties, and reduced need for brigade-level headquarters, all division-level troop counts in this notional scenario are estimates. They roll together a rough estimate of brigade, regimental, and division support assets.
Order-of-battle sources cited above suggest some brigades, and probably division troops include, at least, a signal battalion of 220 troops, a reconnaissance battalion of 130 troops, an electronic warfare company of 120 troops, an engineer battalion of 300 troops, a chemical-biological-nuclear defense company of 70 troops, and logistics and maintenance battalions that may have approximately 300 troops. Each division would also receive a rotary-wing (helicopter) independent regiment in support. Given the lack of good order-of-battle information on helicopter regiment troop numbers, adding this regiment’s pilots, crews, staff, fuel, ammunition, and maintenance troops adds an estimated 1,000 troops. Command elements at the division level, expanded with intelligence and logistics support, might add 250 additional troops. Given these estimates, division echelons add 2,400 troops.
One of the invading army headquarters would stay in Ukraine to run the occupation. A rough estimate adds 1,000 staff and support troops for this headquarters and logistics element. A coastal security unit of approximately 1,000 troops (naval units, maintenance, supply, communications, etc.) would help protect the expanded coastline running east and west out of Sevastopol, Crimea. In total, perimeter security would require approximately 24,400 soldiers (17,600 + 2x reinforced brigade or division staffs at 4,800 = 22,400 + army staff at 1,000 = 23,400 + coastal security 1,000 = 24,400). Figure 7, below, depicts the battalions, divisions, and army headquarters, as well as the 40-kilometer company level inset for scale comparison.
Figure 7: Perimeter Security Disposition and Troop Requirements
Ben Connable
Perimeter security troops will have to contend with all of the challenges associated with establishing the new boundary, including NATO-backed Ukrainian raids, infiltrations, deception operations. Russian infantry troops will have to adjust from a combat role to an occupation role for which they most likely have not been trained. But these frontline forces may have an easier job than those tasked with securing the interior of the occupied territory.
Securing Vulnerable Nodes and Lines of Communication
Assuming some Ukrainian and NATO raids and infiltrations will succeed and that Ukrainian resistance fighters will conduct acts of sabotage, ambushes, and raids against rear-area Russian forces, additional troops will be needed to secure key nodes and lines of communication. Key nodes include rail yards, airports, communications arrays, supply depots, command centers, ammunition storage sites, and refueling points for the Russian Army's thousands of tactical vehicles. Lines of communication include main and secondary roadways used to move and resupply troops, rail lines used to move supplies and heavy vehicles, and air corridors and sea lanes like the one from the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov east of Crimea.
Given the large security area—approximately 170,000 square kilometers, generally equivalent to Florida or Syria—this could be a daunting task. For example, the most direct route from Dnipro (western edge of the territory) east to the Russian border requires traveling along approximately 440 kilometers of road. By comparison, that is just shy of the Freeway 1 route from the Kuwaiti border to Baghdad, Iraq, and equivalent to the Kandahar-to-Kabul route in Afghanistan, or the drive from St. Louis to Chicago in the United States.
There are many thousands of kilometers of roads and rail lines in the notional occupied territories. It would be all but impossible for the Russians to secure every node and every inch of road and rail. But it would also be safe to assume that resistance attacks would focus on the least secure areas, forcing the Russians to reactively move and add security forces just as insurgents forced the American-led coalition forces to do in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Figures 8-11 below show what key node and line of communication security might require. The first figure shows a notional example of key node security at the Kharkiv International Airport, located at the southern edge of Kharkiv city. This civilian airport is not designed for physical protection and would require significant Russian engineering efforts to build up a fence line, add security towers, improved fuel and ammunition storage, billeting for troops, etc. Similar engineering operations were applied by American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Russians have put extensive work into protecting their airfields and seaports in northwestern Syria.
In Figure 8, Russians have established a perimeter with three checkpoints for ingress and egress, four sentry posts to help protect against saboteurs, and four active vehicle or foot patrols to help deter and prevent light mortar or drone attacks on the parked Russian military aircraft or facilities. Securing this airfield would require a full company of soldiers, approximately a quarter of one battalion strength. Like the units on border duty, this Russian security company and the aviation unit stationed on the airfield would require fuel, food, medical, administrative, maintenance, ammunition, and other support. Troops from the supporting independent helicopter regiments might provide security forces to help out.
Figure 8: Example Securing a Key Node, Kharkiv Airport
Ben Connable
Assuming Russian military units would provide their own security for key military nodes like unit command posts and refueling sites, troop-to-task analysis requires an estimate of key civilian nodes the Russians will need to protect in order to sustain their military operations and support the population. The most important targets in this notional scenario are those most likely to be targeted by resistance forces. Ukrainian resistance fighters would probably not target hospitals or food storage depots, but they might target airfields with dual military and civilian use, rail yards where military equipment would be stored alongside civil equipment, power generation stations used to support Russian military units and keep the population happy, civilian fuel storage sites Russian units draw from, television and radio stations, and, if the Russians coopt the local government and government centers.
The city of Dnipro, on the western edge of the Russian occupied zone, has at least five key nodes. Each of these is identified in Figure 9, below: (1) the government center and adjacent television station; (2) the rail yard; (3) the power plant; (4) the central city power distribution station; and (5) the airport.
Figure 9: Notional Key Nodes in Dnipro
Ben Connable
Definitions of key node vary depending on the situation, on the objectives of the resistance, on the degree to which the Russians seek to win over the population. For the purposes of this notional scenario, each urban area in the occupied territory has five key nodes like the ones identified in Dnipro. At a minimum, there are thirteen urban areas in the notional occupied territories: Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Kakhovka-Nova Kakhovka, Sevastopol, Simferopol, Kerch, Melitopol, Mariupol, Donetsk, Luhansk, Severodonetsk, and Kup’yans’k.
With five key nodes per urban area, Russians would be pressed to secure approximately 65 key nodes. While they would certainly put more effort into securing western nodes over eastern nodes, security requirements would effectively average out (e.g., more than average needed in Dnipro, less in Luhansk). Assuming local Russian units could provide quick reaction forces, the physical security of the key nodes would still require ~140 troops or a reinforced company of soldiers rotating through checkpoint and patrol duties.
Key node security in the occupied territories would therefore require 9,100 troops (65 nodes x 140 troops). Assuming 400 troops per battalion are available for node security, individual battalions could be reinforced to 420 security troops. Every three nodes would require a battalion staff of 140 troops, so the total battalion-level cost for this task would be ~3,100 troops (65 / 3 = 21.6 rounded up, 22 x 140 = 3,080, rounded up). Total battalion cost would be 12,180 troops (9,100 security troops + 3,080 battalion-level). This equates to a reinforced division, adding division-level 2,400 troops for a total of 14,600 key node security troops. Adding this to the perimeter security force of 24,400, the running total for perimeter security and key node security is 39,000 troops.
Troop-to-Task for Line of Communication Security
Key nodes cannot be protected in isolation. Line of communication security is a separate task requiring additional forces. In the figure below, the Russians notionally attempt to secure a key segment of the M03 highway generally running from Kharkiv southeast towards Crimea, the Russian border, and the generally (but inconsistently) pro-Russian Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. Points suitable for resistance ambushes and mine attacks are highlighted with inset images. Russian forces could choose to avoid using the M03 highway and support Kharkiv from the much closer northern border. But taking too many security risks along interior lines of communication would undermine their control of the occupied territories and effectively create an interior haven for the resistance.
In Figure 10, below, the Russians choose to secure this 36 kilometer segment of the M03 from Chuhiv to Volokhiv with a reinforced motorized infantry platoon. Soldiers stand rotating 8-hour shifts on checkpoints and in patrol vehicles. These shifts could be stretched to 12 hours each at the cost of speeding troop exhaustion and increasing vulnerability to infiltration and attack.
Figure 10: Securing Interior Lines of Communication, Tactical
Ben Connable
Extrapolating from this road section, every ~40 kilometers of secured roadway will require two checkpoints and one mobile patrol manned by a reinforced platoon of 63 Russian soldiers. Risks will be taken on other routes, and troops will have to be shifted (or increased) according to the need for freedom of movement and threats.
Figure 11, below, shows the routes the Russians choose to secure, providing basic lines of communication between the front line and the Russian border, as well as between key cities likely to require high concentrations of Russian forces (see below). There are approximately 2,635 kilometers of secured roadway in this scenario. This equates to sixty-six 40-kilometer sections requiring the attention of approximately 4,160 Russian security troops. Dotted red lines indicate the most important primary and secondary roads that would be left unsecured, or periodically patrolled, or patrolled only by surveillance drones or aircraft.
Figure 11: Lines of Communication Estimate
Ben Connable
Some rail lines parallel major roads, so in some cases, these troops could do double duty protecting both road and rail. But the westernmost rail lines—easiest for Ukrainian interdiction—would need separate protection. At the very least, the Russians would want to keep open the approximately 650 kilometer rail line from the Russian border north of Kharkiv to Sevastopol in Crimea to help supply the entire front line. Using the same calculations for roadways (63 troops / 40 kilometers), this adds another ~1,010 troops, setting the rail and road lines of communication cost for the Russians at ~5,100 security troops. At 400 troops per battalion, this equates to 13 battalions totaling 6,900 troops (5,100 / 400 = 12.75 rounded up, 13 x 140 battalion-level headquarters troops = 1,820, 1,820 + 5,100 = 6,920 rounded down = 6,900). This equates to a division totaling 9,300 troops (6,900 + 2,400 division and attachments = 9,300).
Adding these 9,300 troops to the running total (perimeter security 24,400 + key node security 14,600 + lines of communication security 9,300) the running notional occupation subtotal is 48,300 troops.
Securing the Population: Russia’s Mixed History and Likely Approach
In theory, and in many recorded cases, successful counterinsurgency by an external or occupying force requires a capable and willing partner force, thoughtful cultural training, restrained use of force, and the careful development of government legitimacy over time. Brute force can be used to break insurgent forces. Sri Lankan operations against the Tamil Tigers of Elam and the Russian 1999-2000 operation in Chechnya are sometimes cited as examples of successful brute force operations. But in both of these cases, the terrain and relatively small scale of the problem gave the government advantages the Russians would not have in notionally occupied Ukraine. Crushing resistance in Chechnya (~10,000 square kilometers, equivalent to the island of Jamaica) is not the same as defeating a NATO-backed insurgency in an occupied space the size of Syria. Figure 12, below, shows an area comparison between the notional occupied territory and Chechnya.
Figure 12: Comparison Chechnya to Notional Occupied Ukraine
Ben Connable
Russia’s performance in counterinsurgency and peacekeeping is poor. The occupation of Afghanistan from 1979-to 1989 killed approximately 15,000 Soviet soldiers and contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Abusive behavior by Soviet troops, including wanton killing of civilians, murder, and rape, alienated the Afghan population and fed the ranks of the opposing mujaheddin. Russia's first incursion into Chechnya in 1994 was disastrous. Troops were ill-prepared to fight an irregular war in urban terrain, and they were effectively defeated.
Russia’s tactical performance against Chechen fighters was much improved in the successful 1999-2000 campaign. Under Ramzan Kadyrov, the Russians have also successfully pacified Chechnya. Pacification has been primarily achieved through killing and oppression, an approach that would be unacceptable to many Americans but is sufficient to meet Vladimir Putin’s need for stability. The absence of chaos, however, does not necessarily denote strategic success. Anti-Russian sentiment and outright violence have been partially and temporarily displaced, not fully quelled.
Russian troops nominally took part in peacekeeping operations in Kosovo in 1999 but played only a minor role. In the wake of the 2020 Armenia-Azerbaijan armistice, Russia stationed approximately 2,000 peacekeepers in Upper (Nagorno) Karabakh. At least one report suggests they have performed basic checkpoint and patrol tasks well. They have also provided some limited civil-military support. This official Russian website provides photos of checkpoint operations and describes some technical capabilities. Despite this reportedly successful performance of basic security duties, not much can be extrapolated from this generally peaceful and relatively minuscule operation amongst a population of approximately 120,000 people.
In Syria (2015-), Russians have mostly stayed out of the direct ground fighting and worked through proxy Syrian Arab Army and militia forces. Russian warplanes appear to have used unguided munitions to attack insurgent positions in populated areas, reportedly killing thousands of civilians. Ambassador Jim Jeffries recently called this approach Russia’s “Syria rules,” a reflection of their decidedly nonhumanitarian behavior in irregular warfare.
But while Russia's airpower has been on display in Syria, its regular ground forces have mostly stuck to defending port and airfield facilities along the northwestern coast. Russia has relied primarily on special operators, advisors, and mercenaries to do its counterinsurgency work in Syria. They have taken the same approach to irregular warfare in conflicts across Africa, mimicking the U.S. “by, with, and through” approach to counterinsurgency. Like the Americans, the Russians have relied heavily upon special operations forces and private military companies. Increasingly, the Russians appear to prefer outsourcing their military operations.
Russian occupation of Crimea and its de facto control over the southeastern corner of Ukraine demonstrates the combination of these two approaches. In Crimea, Russian special operations troops and mercenaries seized territory of approximately 2.7 million people (based on dated official census data) and later occupied it with several thousand troops. In the Donetsk and Luhansk oblast operations, the Russians helped build a partner force of tens of thousands of troops, allowing them to hold approximately half of both regions without committing significant ground forces.
But in both of these cases—Crimea and Donetsk-Luhansk—the Russians have had significant advantages with both terrain and popular support. Crimea is an isolated peninsula. Donetsk and Luhansk are adjacent to the Russian border, much of the fighting has taken place within range of Russian long-range rocket and artillery forces, and some of the population might be favorable to annexation (though support for Russia is not as clear cut as some may assume). While some pro-Russian sentiment exists in other parts of eastern Ukraine, these isolated, almost entirely favorable conditions will not exist in places like Dnipro or Kharkiv.
A by, with, and through approach led by a few thousand special operations troops would almost certainly be insufficient to control the notional occupied territory. Little green men can be effective in small-scale cases, but their chances of success would almost certainly decrease at larger scales and in areas with less popular support. Population control and counterinsurgency in the notional occupied territory will require the presence and direct interaction of thousands of regular Russian troops.
Regular Russian Ground Force troops have rarely conducted hands-on civil-military operations. It is highly unlikely that any of the regular officers and enlisted soldiers in the units threatening eastern Ukraine have counterinsurgency training. Acknowledging this reality and hoping to reset conventional military power for other conflicts, Russian planners would probably seek to defeat the Ukrainian military using regular forces then quickly withdraw them to allow specialized troops and local militias to handle the occupation. At least in this notional scenario, this would be wishful thinking due to the scale of the occupation and uneven support for Russia. Regular troops will become occupying troops.
Troop-to-Task Requirements for Securing the Population
Regular force counterinsurgency in occupied Ukraine will be a large-scale activity requiring the occupying troops to provide physical security (perimeter, key nodes, and lines of communication) and population security (protection of the population from attack) and partner force recruiting and training (build a local force so Russian troops can go home, or “as we stand up, they stand down”) and civil-military operations to build government legitimacy in the occupied territories (construction projects, humanitarian operations, institution building).
Russian occupation leaders could dedicate some of the 46,000 security troops to support population control and civil-military activities. However, every platoon withdrawn from perimeter security, key node security, or line of communication security creates a gap for resistance exploitation and increased stress on remaining security units (longer shifts, etc.). Therefore, in this notional scenario, additional forces will be needed for population security, partner force recruiting and training, and civil-military operations.
Population security missions center on checkpoints and patrols in populated areas, with additional forces needed for advising and civil-military operations. These activities will help isolate and deter resistance forces, increase confidence in the Russian-backed occupation government, generate human intelligence, and deter civilians from joining the insurgency by presenting an image of control and strength. Troop-to-task analysis for population security missions is heavily subjective. Troop requirements depend on local popular support for the insurgency, the availability of reliable local police, and a range of other factors.
Partner force recruiting and training focuses on building paramilitary police units to relieve Russian troops from security duties and to increase the legitimacy of the occupied territory government. Russian special operations and airborne forces will probably be required to assist in these missions, and some training operations could be carried out by mercenaries. Tasks include recruiting in urban areas, building and running training centers, equipping and paying partner forces, and building security institutions.
Civil-military operations center on engaging with the population, providing humanitarian support for internally-displaced persons, repairing war-damaged infrastructure, issuing recompense for war-related suffering, and contracting development projects to help build infrastructure and improve government service provision. All of these activities are intended to help build confidence in the Russian occupation and, primarily, in the occupied territory government the Russians would erect in the absence of Ukrainian government control.
Kharkiv City Troop-to-Task Baseline
Kharkiv city presents a good baseline case for securing the population troop-to-task analysis. The population estimate for 2021 is 1.73m people in Kharkiv district, in and directly adjacent to the city. By comparison, Kharkiv district alone has approximately five times the estimated population of all of Chechnya (~350,000) in 1999, when the Russians began their successful invasion and immediate post-conflict occupation with approximately 23,000 soldiers. It is also approximately five times the probable population of Ramadi, Iraq, in early 2006 when U.S. military forces found themselves hard-pressed to secure the city with approximately 4,000 troops.
Figure 13, below, shows the notional occupation of Kharkiv city, assuming few civilians have an opportunity to leave during or just after the initial invasion. Russian planners have divided the city into ten sectors, generally running along the lines of existing neighborhoods, major roads, and water features. Kharkiv security forces will have to provide separate security measures for 20 kilometers of the north-south rail line (dashed light green line) and approximately 80 kilometers of key intracity roadway (red lines). Callout boxes show the different types of urban terrain the Russian forces will have to secure.
Figure 13: Notional Occupation of Occupied Kharkiv
Ben Connable
Each sector has a different population density, different terrain features, different types of infrastructure (e.g., light industrial or high-rise apartments). Some sectors, like Sector 3 in the north, will require more troops, while other sectors, like Sector 10 in the west, will require fewer troops. Breaking the population of 1.73 million into ten sectors while accepting the uneven population distribution across sectors—and the need to balance forces accordingly—troop-to-task analysis can be generally broken down into population control of 173,000 people. This is roughly equivalent to the population of the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2003, or Sar-e-Pol in Afghanistan, Huntsville, Alabama, or Kansas City, Kansas.
A review of historical cases suggests that a competent light or motorized infantry battalion reinforced with additional vehicles, civil-military experts, advisors, and intelligence support could secure a city of approximately 173,000 people. However, this assumes a relatively small insurgency with limited ability to seize and hold terrain. A Russian motorized infantry battalion probably would not be sufficient to hold down dense urban terrain at this scale against hundreds of insurgents armed with heavy weapons and explosives.
This estimate also assumes that other Russian troops—those dedicated to securing the perimeter, key nodes, and lines of communication throughout the occupied territory—would help prevent the development of a hybrid urban-rural insurgency. Hybrid insurgencies are particularly difficult to eradicate. Starting at the battalion level to secure 173,000 people also assumes that standard Russian Ground Force motorized rifle battalion of (according to one U.S. government source) 540 personnel would be increased to approximately 650 soldiers for the population security mission. Additional troops would be detailed primarily to civil-military, advisory, checkpoint and patrol duties.
Figure 14, below, shows troop-to-task analysis for Sector 4. Assuming an active but relatively small insurgency armed with light weapons and some improvised explosives, a reinforced Russian Ground Force motorized rifle battalion with civil-military and advisory attachments is assigned to secure this sector. The battalion establishes a forward operating base in a field to the northeast of the urban area, as well as a smaller combat outpost in the center of the urban area to increase presence, improve intelligence collection, and reduce reaction time to support patrols or checkpoints that might be attacked. Adjacent to the combat outpost, the Russians have established a civil-military operations center to engage the population and deal with humanitarian issues. A training advisory team works out of both the base and outpost to recruit and train local militia and police to help improve security. Checkpoints are established at entryways into the sector, with the assumption that adjacent battalions will help secure some of the roadway boundaries to the northwest and south.
Figure 14: Detail of Notional Kharkiv Occupation, Sector 4
Ben Connable
The ideal approach to determine troop-to-task numbers for the entire occupied territory would be to conduct a similar analysis on every populated area. Extrapolating from the Kharkiv city Sector 4 baseline necessarily adds subjective judgment to the overall total. This analysis is driven by extrapolation, but the Kharkiv baseline offers a good starting point for a more detailed analysis.
Extrapolating Troop-to-Task for Population Security
According to the State Statistics Committee of Ukraine 2001 census data, the occupied territories would be home to approximately 17 million people (Kharkiv oblast, or region, 2.9 million; Luhansk oblast 2.5; Donetsk oblast 4.8; Zaporizhzhia oblast 1.9; Kherson oblast 1.1; Crimea 2.0; and approximately half of the Dnipropetrovs’k oblast, 1.75 of 3.5, not accounting for population growth since 2001 or displacement from Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk, or refugee displacement from the Russian invasion). By comparison, the state of New York has approximately 20 million people and Florida has approximately 21 million. Syria may have approximately 17 million people, making it the best point of comparison for both land mass and population.
Some segments of this population will support the Russian invasion. There is already at least mixed support for annexation in the eastern sections of Donetsk and Luhansk. Russia has already effectively annexed Crimea. It would be safe to assume that after seizing the remaining portions of Donetsk and Luhansk, population control in these three areas can be handled with existing police and militia forces and key node security. Removing these three oblasts from the population security troop-to-task burden leaves 7.7 million people in the remaining regions. Many of these people live in urban areas, some do not. Security requirements will differ for battalions working in cities like Kharkiv and those working in small farming towns like Rhavchyk, located about 70 kilometers south of Kharkiv city.
Given the necessary uncertainty included by these variations, securing 7.7 million people would require approximately 45 infantry battalions of 650 soldiers each, for a total of approximately 30,000 soldiers (7.7m / 173,000 = 44.5 rounded up, 45 x 650 = 29,250). These do not all need to be trained infantrymen. The United States and its allies demonstrated adaptability in Iraq and Afghanistan by repurposing artillery, armor, air, and support personnel for infantry and advisor tasks.
This troop-to-task requirement—45 battalions to secure the population—equates to three (3.25) reinforced Russian divisions. Adding division headquarters elements and deployed attachments generates a total requirement for 37,000 troops (30,000 + 3 division headquarters and attachments 2,400 each, rounded down). Assuming a low-intensity insurgency and the need to constantly defend against NATO-backed raids and infiltration, the running total for occupation is 83,000 ground and rotary-wing air forces (38,000 for perimeter security + 8,000 for key node security + 37,000 for population security = 83,000).
A Vast Hidden Cost: Troop Rotations
In this notional case, the Russians will need to maintain 83,000 troops on the ground in the occupied territories. There will also be thousands of troops and civilians in Russia who will be required to support these troops with supplies, air support, and a range of other services. I do not include these in my calculations, but they should be considered. More importantly, Russia cannot simply station the same 83,000 troops in perpetuity. It will have to come up with a rotation plan to insert fresh units, allowing deployed forces to return home, visit families, rest, retrain, and then later redeploy.
American military forces discovered how quickly large occupations can eat up available troops. A 2011 RAND report showed that the U.S. armed forces deployed a total of two million troop years to Afghanistan (2001-2011) and Iraq (2003-2011). A snapshot analysis found that over 70% of U.S. Army soldiers had deployed to one or both theaters. These deployments effectively consumed the U.S. armed forces for a decade. They generated thousands of casualties and wore down expensive gear, including high-end jet aircraft. Ground units in the Army and Marine Corps were, in some years, on a 1:1 dwell time between deployments and recovery.
Russian combat troops deployed to the notional occupied territories would have to be quickly reorganized or replaced to increase available foot soldiers for patrol and checkpoint duties and to repair equipment worn or damaged in combat. Russia might be able to keep its invasion force in place for about a year before requiring a rotation. But they will have to prepare replacement forces, tying down perhaps an equal number of troops—another 80,000 or so—for ongoing occupation.
This would tie down approximately 160,000 Russian Ground Force troops, which equates to approximately half of the force (taking into account the independent helicopter regiment support units). It would also require the sensitive deployment of Russian conscripts, a challenge I have written about in previous articles and reports.
Social and political pressures at home might lead President Putin to draw down forces too quickly, leaving the occupied territory exposed to raids, infiltration, and insurgency. American drawdown in Iraq in 2003 contributed to disastrous security conditions from 2004-2007, requiring a surge in forces. Its next premature drawdown in 2011 contributed to the collapse of the Iraqi Army in 2014, and another surge. Drawdowns in Afghanistan forced a surge there in 2010, and the final 2021 withdrawal led to enemy victory. Russia, too, has made errant withdrawal announcements, most recently in Syria in 2017. Rotational military occupation is onerous, costly, and politically dangerous.
Caveats
All troop-to-task estimates are imperfect and will be proven wrong to some extent. In this notional scenario, I have done my best to point out assumptions and data that are less certain and which require more subjective estimation (e.g., total key nodes needing protection). Unclassified order-of-battle information on Russian Ground Force units is too often insufficiently detailed, dated, and contradictory. Census data I was able to find (better data may exist) is over 20 years old, and recent estimates add additional uncertainty to population counts. Other data challenges should be apparent in the narrative above.
Perhaps more importantly, this is my interpretation of Russian tasks in the given scenario. Russian planners may see things differently. For example, they may be far less concerned about infiltration and raids and, therefore, more willing to take risk along the perimeter. Or they may be more concerned about securing the population in Donetsk and Luhansk and feel the need to station thousands of troops there to cement their gains. Russian planners may also be more concerned with NATO or Ukrainian counteroffensives and feel the need to sustain conventional combined arms forces indefinitely along the occupied border.
Population security requirements assume a low-threat insurgency. This term is subjective and adds considerable uncertainty to the population security troop-to-task assessment. For the Russians, a low-threat insurgency might be quite violent compared to American experiences. This term is important because it reflects my subject-matter expert opinion on insurgency intensity. Troop-to-task estimates for securing the population are low compared to comparable cases cited above.
Russia may be able to reduce the use of its own troops by substituting local police and militia forces. It would certainly do so in Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea. Russian special operations advisors and mercenaries would work to build up these local forces to help reduce the burden on, particularly, the Russian Ground Forces.
Measurements and calculations are necessarily inaccurate to some extent. Google Earth Pro is tied to the WGS 84 Earth-centered references and geodetic datum, but its inherent imperfections are exacerbated by the use of a computer mouse cursor to trace lines and areas for these troop-to-task calculations. I used a range of hyperlinked official U.S. and Ukrainian government land mass and population estimates, all of which have inherent inaccuracies and margins of error.
Normally, a troop-to-task estimate of this scale would be conducted by a team of analysts working together for weeks or months, using advanced mapping tools and building from the best available (and perhaps classified) information. This estimate was conducted by one person in one week using publicly-available desktop tools and information.
Modifying the Estimate
Occupied territory along the Kharkiv-Dnieper delta line is notional. If the invasion goes forward, Russian planners may select a completely different limit of advance. They may bite off less territory or more. While it is unlikely they would try to seize the capital, Kyiv, they might take that risk as well. This notional scenario provides a baseline case from which adjustments can be made. Changes in perimeter length may add or reduce 40-kilometer sections. Taking more or fewer urban areas will increase or decrease key node security requirements. And assuming control of more or fewer civilians will increase or decrease population security requirements.
Anyone with different or better order-of-battle data, different assessments of security tasks, and different interpretations of low-intensity insurgency can change the baseline troop data (e.g., number of soldiers in a motorized infantry battalion) and task calculations (e.g., number of troops to secure a 40-kilometer line), match these up with adjusted population data and generate their own assessment. Figure 15, below, shows the prospective options from Figure 1, above, along with geographic area and population comparisons to help readers compare the scale of these challenges. Country and state size comparisons are drawn from these sources.
Figure 15: Prospective Invasion Options with Scale Comparisons
Ben Connable
Dr. Ben Connable is a senior nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, the Director of Research at DT Institute, and adjunct professor of security studies at Georgetown University.
15. Invading Ukraine would be a terrible idea for Putin. He might do it anyway.
And this is one way miscalculation happens.
Excerpts:
And yet, from Putin’s perch at the Kremlin, the risk may still look manageable. Russia has already been under heavy Western sanctions for years, and while they have had an adverse impact on Russia’s economy, they’ve done little to threaten Putin’s grip on power. (Russia’s agriculture sector may actually have gotten stronger and more self-sufficient in the sanctions era.) Russia’s substantial gold and dollar war chest and its ever-closer economic relationship with China could also help blunt the impact of more sanctions. Past events have probably done little to disabuse Putin of the notion that military interventions are a good option for increasing Russian power and influence abroad. Its invasion of Georgia in 2008 drew little more than expressions of outrage from Western countries. With the annexation of Crimea, it pulled off the largest seizure of territory in Europe since World War II. And it has used its military to help keep its ally Bashar al-Assad in power in Syria.
None of which means things would go smoothly for Russia this time around. Nor is it clear that an invasion would actually accomplish any of its goals. But this wouldn’t be the first time that robust warnings from the West failed to prevent Putin from rolling the dice. And Putin would hardly be the first world leader to delude himself into an ill-advised war.
Invading Ukraine would be a terrible idea for Putin. He might do it anyway.
The world is running out of time to stop a war.
Global Security Reporter
Would Vladimir Putin really order Russian troops into Ukraine? From an outside perspective, the idea seems irrational: the ultimate high-risk, low-reward proposition. The Russians would face a determined adversary that’s had plenty of time to prepare. Casualties would be high. Moscow would be hit with more Western sanctions and potentially lose access to lucrative European energy markets. The Russian president would risk all this to punish a smaller, weaker neighbor that — while perhaps an ongoing irritant — poses little real threat to Russia’s security or sovereignty. More than that: Putin’s aggressive stance has to date been counterproductive, only pushing Ukraine closer to his adversaries.
None of this means he won’t do it.
Over the last few months, Putin has deployed more than 100,000 Russian troops along the Ukrainian frontier, accompanied by a range of heavy weaponry, including battle tanks and ballistic missile systems. The buildup is hardly a secret — few such shows of force can be in this day and age; satellite imagery first showed signs of the buildup in November. It came at a moment of higher-than-normal violence between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists, including a Ukrainian drone attack on rebel forces that prompted the Russians to scramble fighter jets. A U.S. intelligence document obtained by the Washington Post in December detailed Russian plans for a “multi-front offensive” against Ukraine in the coming months, “involving up to 175,000 troops.” U.S. and Russian diplomats have held several rounds of talks since mid-January, along with parallel negotiations involving NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Tensions between Russia and the West were already high before the current crisis. Russia has objected to what it says is an uptick of military activity by the U.S. and its allies on the Black Sea, while European Union officials have accused the Kremlin of helping Belarus to orchestrate a migrant crisis on its borders. It’s a dangerous moment for Ukraine, and an increasingly tense one for Europe and the NATO alliance. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters, in advance of this week’s NATO-Russia meetings: “The risk of conflict is real.”
We don’t know exactly what Putin is planning in Ukraine. In all likelihood, he hasn’t yet made up his mind. But this much we know: The man who has led Russia since the dawn of the century is animated by a desire to restore Moscow’s sphere of influence over the areas once controlled by the Soviet Union, a determination to reduce U.S. and Western European influence in the region, and a desire to stay in power.
Unfortunately, from what we know of Putin’s worldview, war may have a certain logic. And so the possibility of invasion cannot be dismissed.
How did we get here?
The Russia-Ukraine showdown is the latest flare-up in a military conflict that began in 2014. That’s when a Kremlin-backed Ukrainian president was forced from power amid mass protests by Ukrainians supporting closer ties to Europe. In the West, this “Revolution of Dignity” was seen as a democratic triumph over a corrupt leader; for Putin, it was a double offense — a blow to his regional ambitions and to his wish to push the West out of his neighborhood. In Russia, the events were portrayed as a Western-backed coup, akin to U.S.-led regime-change wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the chaotic days following the revolution, Russian special forces — with almost no opposition — seized and annexed Crimea, a largely Russian-speaking peninsula that belonged to Ukraine. Sanctions and statements of outrage from the Obama administration and other Western governments did nothing to stop them.
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Russian troops then entered Ukraine to support pro-Russian separatists in the country’s east, helping to create two separatist enclaves. (The Russian government has consistently denied that the “volunteers” who entered Ukraine from Russia were actually active-duty troops.) Though a series of peace deals known as the Minsk agreements were signed in 2014 and 2015, the conflict, which has taken more than 13,000 lives, stills sees periodic violence. Seven percent of Ukraine’s territory remains under de facto Russian control.
Ever since, the government in Ukraine has sought closer ties to Western Europe to escape Russian influence and to recover its lost territory. And ever since, Putin has looked for opportunities to expand Russian influence in the country. The conflict continues. This may be its most fraught moment yet.
In response to the latest Russian provocations, the Biden administration has launched a diplomatic offensive and set forth a mix of economic and military penalties that amount to what some in Washington have called a “porcupine strategy” for Ukraine — as in, making the country too painful for Putin to swallow. While President Joe Biden has ruled out sending in U.S. troops to defend Ukraine, the U.S. has stepped up its military assistance to the country. The U.S. and EU have threatened a range of new sanctions that would limit Russian access to global financial markets, and export controls that could prevent Russia from importing smartphones as well as aircraft and automobile components. The U.S. is also pressuring Germany to use a controversial new pipeline, which if put into operation would carry Russian gas directly into Western Europe, as leverage against Russian military aggression.
Putin’s game
Putin once served the Soviet state as a KGB agent, and he has described the breakup of the Soviet Union as a “geopolitical catastrophe.” Time and again he has returned to this theme — the idea that 1991 was a moment of shame and humiliation for Moscow, and for Russia, and that every effort ought to be made to repair the damage. In his two decades in power, he has intervened in different ways in Ukraine but also in the former Soviet republics of Belarus, Armenia and Georgia. In January, when violent protests roiled the ex-Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, Putin quickly answered a call from the Kazakh president to send troops.
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But for Putin, the post-Soviet separation of Ukraine and Russia is a particular tragedy.
He once told President George W. Bush, on the sidelines of a NATO summit, “Ukraine is not a country.” He elaborated on this in extreme length last summer, in an article published on the Kremlin website that claimed that Russia and Ukraine occupy “essentially the same historical and spiritual space,” dating to Kievan Rus in the late ninth century. Putin blamed the idea of Ukrainian independence on the nefarious designs of Polish elites, Austro-Hungarian colonialists and the Bolsheviks.
Ideas like these are not exactly outside the mainstream in Russia. Even Putin’s fiercest and most influential critic, the jailed activist Alexei Navalny, has suggested that Russia’s annexation of Crimea was logical — even if he didn’t approve of the way it was done.
While Putin accepts that Moscow is unlikely to directly rule all of Ukraine again, he believes that “true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.” Thus, Ukraine’s 2004 “Orange Revolution” and the 2014 “Revolution of Dignity,” both of which forced Russia-backed leaders from power, were, in his view, infringements on Ukraine’s true geopolitical destiny and threats to Russia’s own sovereignty.
Any expansion of Western influence and military power into Ukraine is viewed as a threat to Russia, a continuation of NATO’s enlargement and spread into post-Communist Eastern Europe which — according to the Russian narrative — have gone against assurances given to Moscow at the end of the Cold War. All these must be countered.
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The situation in Kazakhstan was in some ways utterly different. Most important, the Kazakh president asked for reinforcements from Moscow, and it seems the Kazakh protesters were motivated primarily by economic factors rather than objections to their government’s geopolitical orientation. Still, the Kazakh example underlines Moscow’s willingness to use military force to control events and help its allies in what it calls its “near abroad.” It was an easy win for the Kremlin and for Putin in his broader ambition. Certainly far easier than an invasion of Ukraine.
Overplaying his hand?
Can Putin win at this game? As the crisis moves from the Russia-Ukraine border to the meeting halls of Geneva and Brussels, the Russian foreign ministry has published a series of demands for “legal security guarantees from the United States and NATO.” These included a pledge to never admit Ukraine to the NATO alliance and to refrain from deploying any military forces into any country that was not a NATO member as of 1997 — i.e., Poland, where the U.S. now has around 4,500 troops stationed, and all of post-Communist Eastern Europe.
From Washington’s point of view, the Russian fixation on Ukrainian NATO membership looks a little odd. It’s true that at that 2008 summit NATO, at Bush’s urging, promised eventual membership to Ukraine and fellow post-Soviet state Georgia, but it offered them no concrete roadmap for membership, and there is little chance of it happening in the foreseeable future. (Asked earlier this year if Ukraine should join NATO, Biden responded, “School’s out on that question” and “they still have to clean up corruption.”)
None of this mollifies the Russians. “Ukraine de facto is already a NATO member,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the Wall Street Journal pointing out that NATO members train Ukrainian forces and conduct military exercises in the country. Indeed, Ukraine was the fourth-largest recipient of U.S. military aid last year and the largest outside the Middle East.
“From the perspective of the paranoid old men in the Kremlin, they do feel that the West is fairly implacably hostile,” Mark Galeotti, a Russia analyst at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, told Grid. “This fear that Ukraine could become some kind of NATO advanced base, it’s easy to dismiss using logic, but logic doesn’t necessarily apply.”
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Meanwhile, in Ukraine itself, the Putin approach has backfired, at least in terms of public opinion.
“Ukraine is much more pro-European and much more unified today than it ever was before the events of 2014. And Russia’s aggression is the sole, the most important factor in that development,” Serhii Plokhy, professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University, told Grid.
In 2013, roughly 43 percent of Ukrainians approved of the Russian government; in 2018, the figure was 7 percent. Some 64 percent of Ukrainians now favor NATO membership compared with 15-25 percent before the war. When Ukraine’s current president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was elected on a platform of ending the conflict in eastern Ukraine, some feared he would make too many concessions to Russia. Given the current state of public sentiment in Ukraine, he couldn’t make many concessions even if he wanted to.
“Russia’s capacity to misunderstand Ukraine is hard to overstate,” says Olga Oliker, program director for Europe and Central Asia at Crisis Group. “When they look at what’s happening in Ukraine, they don’t see it as Ukraine making choices. They see it as Western influence. They see it as Western pressure. There’s this belief that there’s a silent majority in Ukraine that actually loves Russia, and that the Ukrainian government is acting against their interests.”
Meanwhile, Putin’s aggressive stance on Ukraine has emboldened hard-line anti-Russian positions in other parts of the world. It has driven NATO and the EU to threaten punitive measures; it has made it more likely, not less, that NATO forces move closer to the Russian frontiers; and it has even driven longtime neutral states Sweden and Finland to say they would consider joining NATO were Putin to attack Ukraine.
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What happens next?
For now, the best outcome in the Ukraine crisis may be that this current round of talks leads to … more talks. Biden and the NATO allies are unlikely to agree to the demands the Russian government has put forward, but those demands haven’t been dismissed out of hand, and it’s possible Russia could win some concessions.
Angela Stent, director emerita for the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University, tells Grid she reads Russia’s list of demands as them “starting off with a maximalist position … and hoping that by the time the negotiations are through, they will have gotten at least some of what they what they want.”
In the lead-up to the Biden-Putin summit during a Russian troop buildup last April, the Biden administration put a hold on a proposed $100 million military aid package to Ukraine. In recent days, it has indicated a willingness to put disarmament measures in Eastern Europe on the table. Some reports have also suggested Biden might pressure Ukraine to grant more autonomy to the country’s Russian-speaking eastern regions. The Ukrainians agreed to this as part of the 2015 peace deal but haven’t been in any hurry to do so since then.
Of course, all of this depends on the notion that Russia is serious about finding any form of negotiated solution. And notably, the Russians don’t seem to be offering any concession of their own (abandoning support for the eastern separatists, say, or even turning over Crimea) other than not invading Ukraine. There are also reasonable concerns in the U.S. and Europe that giving further concessions to Moscow at the point of a gun would only encourage further aggression.
Perhaps just being at the table with the Americans, being taken seriously as a peer superpower, would be enough. Perhaps not.
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This much is clear: The U.S. and its allies are not going to formally endorse a Russian sphere of influence or definitively rule out Ukraine ever joining NATO. So if that’s really Putin’s price, it’s going to be hard to find an outcome acceptable to both sides at the negotiating table.
If it comes to war
If Putin decides war is the only option, there is a range of scenarios for how it might unfold. In a recent analysis, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a D.C.-based think tank, laid out three potential Russian military actions: deploying Russian forces into neighboring Belarus under the pretext of defending against NATO military action, deploying troops into areas of Ukraine currently controlled by Russian-backed militias and sending troops into unoccupied Ukrainian territory.
The ISW says the latter all-out invasion scenario is the least likely. Any military incursion beyond already-occupied areas wouldn’t be an easy fight. The Ukrainian military, while much smaller than Russia’s, is in far better shape that it was in 2014, and the Russians wouldn’t have the benefit of surprise this time. Again, this being a very 2022 conflict, the entire Russian buildup has happened in full view of satellites.
A Nov. 9, 2021, satellite image shows hundreds of Russian tanks, self-propelled artillery and other military equipment, deployed approximately 160 miles north of the Russia–Ukraine border. (Satellite image ©2021 Maxar Technologies.)
Once Russian forces pushed beyond Ukraine’s eastern regions, they would find their supply lines stretched and the local population deeply hostile. As the Ukrainian defense analyst Illia Ponomarenko writes, “The costs of subduing such a big and hostile nation would be extreme. Occupying it would be almost impossible. The stream of soldiers’ coffins that would flow back to Russia would shock its population.”
And yet, from Putin’s perch at the Kremlin, the risk may still look manageable. Russia has already been under heavy Western sanctions for years, and while they have had an adverse impact on Russia’s economy, they’ve done little to threaten Putin’s grip on power. (Russia’s agriculture sector may actually have gotten stronger and more self-sufficient in the sanctions era.) Russia’s substantial gold and dollar war chest and its ever-closer economic relationship with China could also help blunt the impact of more sanctions. Past events have probably done little to disabuse Putin of the notion that military interventions are a good option for increasing Russian power and influence abroad. Its invasion of Georgia in 2008 drew little more than expressions of outrage from Western countries. With the annexation of Crimea, it pulled off the largest seizure of territory in Europe since World War II. And it has used its military to help keep its ally Bashar al-Assad in power in Syria.
None of which means things would go smoothly for Russia this time around. Nor is it clear that an invasion would actually accomplish any of its goals. But this wouldn’t be the first time that robust warnings from the West failed to prevent Putin from rolling the dice. And Putin would hardly be the first world leader to delude himself into an ill-advised war.
This article has been updated.
16. Russia Couldn’t Occupy Ukraine if It Wanted to
We are all over the map with assessments.
Russia Couldn’t Occupy Ukraine if It Wanted to
The Russian military has too much experience to think a full-scale invasion is a good idea.
By Alexander Clarkson, a lecturer in German and European Studies at King's College London.
Many analysts in the United States and Europe are convinced that an invasion of Ukraine is now the most likely outcome of Russian troop movements near the border. Some have gone further in concluding that Russian President Vladimir Putin hopes to impose a Russian military occupation on all or part of Ukraine. They believe the Russian military will try to establish a new social order in Ukraine, replacing the government under President Volodymyr Zelensky with a puppet administration.
There is little doubt that the build-up of what are now around 80 battalion tactical groups, which include tanks, artillery, and around 130,000 troops, represents a profound threat to Ukraine. The apparent presence of airborne military units and amphibious assets indicate how multifaceted any military onslaught could become. Perhaps most worrying are the movements of Rosgvardiya detachments, or Russian National Guard troops, who would be responsible for providing security on territory behind the frontlines, managing prisoners of war and securing logistics. These are all potential signals that a comprehensive plan for occupation may be in place.
Yet any discussion of potential Russian action toward Ukraine needs to take into account the resources available to the Russian state, and the history of previous Russian, Soviet, and other great-power military occupations. And here the picture becomes less clear cut than a lot of speculation over the potential occupation of Ukraine acknowledges.
Many analysts in the United States and Europe are convinced that an invasion of Ukraine is now the most likely outcome of Russian troop movements near the border. Some have gone further in concluding that Russian President Vladimir Putin hopes to impose a Russian military occupation on all or part of Ukraine. They believe the Russian military will try to establish a new social order in Ukraine, replacing the government under President Volodymyr Zelensky with a puppet administration.
There is little doubt that the build-up of what are now around 80 battalion tactical groups, which include tanks, artillery, and around 130,000 troops, represents a profound threat to Ukraine. The apparent presence of airborne military units and amphibious assets indicate how multifaceted any military onslaught could become. Perhaps most worrying are the movements of Rosgvardiya detachments, or Russian National Guard troops, who would be responsible for providing security on territory behind the frontlines, managing prisoners of war and securing logistics. These are all potential signals that a comprehensive plan for occupation may be in place.
Yet any discussion of potential Russian action toward Ukraine needs to take into account the resources available to the Russian state, and the history of previous Russian, Soviet, and other great-power military occupations. And here the picture becomes less clear cut than a lot of speculation over the potential occupation of Ukraine acknowledges.
A vast move to seize and hold large cities, including Kyiv, Kharkiv, or Odessa, would require enough troops to destroy the Ukrainian army, crush a potential insurgency and back up any permanent security force that can be recruited from local collaborators or hired from outside Ukraine. Kyiv alone has a population of 3 million in a dense urban landscape, while Kharkiv has 1.5 million and Odessa has 1 million. Smaller cities east of the Dnieper River, such as Dnipro or Zaporizhya, have populations in the hundreds of thousands. If Crimea and the parts of the Donbas region occupied by Russia are removed, the population of Ukraine as a whole is still officially 41 million, though recent estimates by the national statistical service that take mass migration into account now place it at 37 million.
The level of manpower that previous occupations at this scale required provide a hint of the challenges Russia would face when occupying all or a large part of Ukraine. The occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, which faced no armed resistance, was initiated by a move of nearly 250,000 Soviet and other Warsaw Pact troops that in weeks was bolstered to nearly 500,000 in order to hold down a population of 14 million. From 1999 to 2003, during the second Chechen War, the Russian army surged over 90,000 troops into a territory with a population of less than 1 million to brutally suppress an armed insurgency.
During the same period, the United States launched its 2003 invasion of Iraq, a country with a population of 26 million with around 190,000 U.S. and allied forces as well as 60,000 Kurdish Peshmerga auxiliaries in support. Analysts concerned that this force would be too small to stabilize Iraq were proven right as swift victory over Saddam Hussein’s regime on the battlefield slid into multiple insurgencies that shattered U.S. control. For all the strengthening of the Russian military in the past decade and differences in context between these examples, the precedents they set make it more difficult to see how 130,000 Russian troops currently on Ukrainian borders could sustain a stable occupation regime unless their numbers were substantially increased further.
Whatever potential political gains can be achieved by the Russian state in an occupation of Ukraine need to be balanced by consideration of the pressure it would put on the Russian military to hold down large regions while having to fund their economic reconstruction in the long term. The price that Ukrainian society would pay for even moderate resistance in such a scenario, never mind a full insurgency as in Syria, would be brutal in ways that many in the United States or European Union pondering these options should consider more carefully. With such a substantial number of war veterans who are hostile to Russia, at least in some areas of each region in Ukraine, however, a degree of resistance is still a distinct possibility.
Yet in Syria, the Russian military could rely on Wagner mercenaries or Iranian-backed militias to do the dying for it. In Ukraine it would be professional Russian soldiers and even conscripts that would have to shoulder the burden until a local proxy force can emerge. As the Soviets discovered in Afghanistan, and the Americans in Vietnam and Iraq, a commitment that is leapt into quickly can drag out into a struggle to sustain stable outcomes however many tactical victories are won along the way. And Russia in 2022 does not have the military or economic power the United States still has or the Soviet Union once had.
Of course, it is important not to dismiss such worst-case scenarios out of hand. From Vietnam to Afghanistan, great powers have regularly shown a propensity for promising quick results before discovering that realities on the ground did not match their geopolitical fantasies. The article written by Putin last year on relations between Russia and Ukraine indicates a level of wishful thinking that has crossed into delusional realms.
Yet for all this presidential blogging, the intellectual skill and operational realism of the Russian military should not be discounted. From the disastrous lurch of Boris Yeltsin and Pavel Grachev into Grozny in 1994, the chaotic campaign in Georgia in 2008, and the shrewd balancing of risks with careful application of resources in Syria after 2015, Russian generals have spent entire careers dealing with these dilemmas. It is an open question whether a Russian officer corps with such depth of experience is so drawn to delusions of imperial grandeur that it has not looked at less risky options to drag Ukraine back into the Russian sphere of influence.
Worryingly, there are a range of other possible pathways the Russian generals could consider. Purely in military terms, a campaign to destroy the Ukrainian military as well as the foundations of its arms industry would remove a security challenge from along Russian borders as the Ukrainian government would then face years of work to rebuild defense capacity even with NATO support. While the political gains of an operation with entirely military goals would be more questionable, the instability it would generate would severely hamper Ukrainian efforts to build a strong state.
Another approach short of full occupation of all or most of Ukraine could also be a drawn-out effort to destabilize the Ukrainian state, culminating in military attacks to force Zelensky to accept Moscow’s interpretation of the Minsk Protocol signed between both states in 2015 through Franco-German mediation. The Russian military build-up and possible attack could provide one of several means to break the scope that Ukrainian society has to prevent reintegration of occupied Donbas into the Ukrainian state on Moscow’s terms. Over the long term, such a structure designed to embed a constitutional veto for Moscow’s proxies in Donbas is unlikely to be sustainable, but it would mark a major success over the next few years for Putin that would linger until his successor faces the eventual fallout.
Each of these scenarios involving a large-scale military campaign, along with more localized military operations down to limited political or economic destabilization, would still have a devastating effect on Ukrainian society. Any military move will inevitably cause enormous damage to infrastructure as well as tragic civilian casualties. Destabilization operations short of war would weaken already vulnerable institutions safeguarding the rule of law, while escalation could push greater support toward extreme nationalist movements hostile to democracy. The Ukrainian economy is already experiencing such a level of systemic stress that Zelensky has asked U.S. counterparts to ratchet down their warnings of imminent conflict.
At the moment, the Western alliance system only has clarity when it comes to the sheer scale of the Russian military build-up and the level of damage it can do to Ukraine in the initial phase of a military invasion. That in and of itself is enough to merit the level of effort now being undertaken by NATO members to provide assistance to Ukraine and find the right balance between deterrence and diplomacy to prevent Putin from taking destabilizing actions that could also rebound on Russia itself. Rather than getting distracted by specific speculative timelines, Western efforts need to focus on information that is concerning enough and stay disciplined for the weeks or months it might take until a pathway to deescalation is found.
In the process, such efforts can generate opportunities for NATO members to also learn more about Russian military weaknesses. As Putin puts all his cards on his table, Western analysts and scholars can work out which ones he does not have in his deck. The shift of so many assets from the Eastern Military District already seems to be stripping the Russian defense capacity in its Eastern regions to a bare minimum.
Such an unprecedented build-up can provide information about the limits of Russian power, especially when it comes to establishing the point at which Moscow can no longer sustain such a surge without disruptive political and economic consequences for the Putin regime. If Ukraine, the United States, and the European Union manage to get through this crisis intact, this information could help Western policymakers develop a more calibrated policy mix that balances pressure with positive incentives to prod the Russian state into backing away from this cycle of escalation.
The challenge Russia represents is not intractable for Ukraine or its friends in the United States and Europe. While the crisis facing this partnership is now entering an acute stage, with enormous risks to the stability and security of Ukraine, the finite nature of Russian power might open up enough space for a deescalation pathway to be found. Though assessing the worst of worst-case scenarios is crucial for military planning, on the political level focusing too much on their supposed inevitability can engender a sense of fatalism rather than the mobilization and coordination needed to prevent them from unfolding. Perhaps such greater awareness of Western strengths can over time even open up the space for Russia after Putin to join Ukraine, the EU and UK as a partner in a shared European home.
17. Airborne Almighty: Examining the Role of Static Line Jumps in Army Special Operations
Yes this will stir things up.
Airborne Almighty: Examining the Role of Static Line Jumps in Army Special Operations | Small Wars Journal
By Meg Tucker
I wish I could say an airborne operation is as exciting now as it was when I got my wings as a new Captain. Sadly, a familiar tedium has slowly replaced the thrill that once came with jump day. Today, my soldiers and I wait tentatively, crammed into the long benches that run the length of a dusty, oversized shoebox known as a jump shed. Jump masters are finalizing pre-jump checks. I have not seen my detachment sergeant, my right-hand man, in a few days. He has been performing jump master duties, and now darts around making final preparations. They ensure parachutes are properly packed, the harnesses tightly cinched to our bodies and static lines routed to avoid any unplanned midair amputations. It’s a comforting thought, really. We have sat for over an hour in this rigged-up configuration, fighting the urge to use the facilities because doffing equipment is not an option.
I shudder imagining how many hours the 82nd Airborne soldiers, whose jump operations are much larger than ours, must spend practicing bladder Zen. We did pre-jump rehearsals in a gaggle on the Battalion lawn yesterday, awkwardly pantomimed the maneuver to escape power line entanglement, and got the don’t-let-your-reserve-chute-rip-you-out-the-door brief for the umpteenth time. Stuck in the shed for now, I attempt to distract myself with a mental list of the million things I must do tomorrow, as today’s a wash. When we’re through, we will have jumped away a minimum of 400-man hours that could have been applied to training operational skills we actually use. Many times before, while sitting and waiting to jump, I’ve wondered if it was all worth it. After giving this question much thought, investigation and discussion with peers, my answer is a firm and confident “No.”
It is time for U.S. Army special operations forces to redirect effort and resources away from airborne operations toward more urgent training needs in the 2021 battlespace. As an innovative organization, Army SOF is well-suited to lead in modernization, economizing assets and honing the most relevant capabilities. What better time than now to reexamine how SOF applies its resources, especially as the Department of Defense pivots to focus on Cold War 2.0?
The question of airborne relevance in the Army at large is nothing new. RAND Corporation gives it thorough and favorable treatment, arguing that the capability can be adapted for the future fight. Conversely, political scientist Dr. Marc Devore applies a robust critique on this topic in his 92-page report for The Army Press, likening airborne units to self-licking ice cream cones. Yet the brightest Army special ops minds have not meaningfully weighed in on the conversation despite the role of airborne operations as a gravitational force on all SOF training calendars. The legacy arguments to keep sustained airborne operations training across the formation do justice neither to the complexity of SOF mission sets, nor to the need for adaptability and combat relevance therein.
The Big Picture of Army Airborne
Perhaps the most commonly cited justification for keeping airborne in the Army at large is its deterrent effect in strategic competition. As such, airborne ops are regularly part of joint training exercises with U.S. allies. These exercises are often advertised as deterrent activities in American press releases, undoubtedly with the understanding that America’s foes will study them. These exercises are designed, at least in part, to deter belligerent states or “encourage adversary restraint.” The problem with the deterrence argument is that America’s main adversaries already have this capability. For deterrence to work, a state’s military power must pose a threat through more advanced capability or creating a perception of this superiority. America and its adversaries maintain comparable airborne insertion and anti-air capabilities: there is not much upper hand to be found except in the former’s arguably superior quick global air response.
In that vein, the air survivability aspect most strongly defeats any slim margin of deterrence the Department of Defense gains from maintaining airborne operations. Troop-filled aircraft are at extreme risk of being shot down by anti-air weapons while flying the low altitudes and slow airspeeds needed to safely drop their payload. The modern threat environment pits the most advanced anti air weapons ever known against a relatively unchanged airborne force. As Devore points out, “The spread of surface-to-air missiles and armored vehicles has rendered airborne operations extremely hazardous unless they are conducted against the least sophisticated opponents. For this reason, the only airborne operations conducted since the 1956 Suez Campaign have been against extremely weak enemies.”
This hazard is likely the strongest reason commanders have not employed airborne in combat since the 173rd conducted a “mass tac” jump in 2003, under no enemy threat, into a drop zone Green Berets had already secured. There may be future situations where mass tac could be applicable, but not without extreme risk of casualties by anti-air. In those missions with minimal or no air-defense threat, other insertion options reduce risk of troop injury, separation, or disorientation, and mitigate weather impacts. The Army is maintaining a capability that its commanders wisely leave shelved.
Perhaps reminding the adversary that America maintains a particular capability justifies the deterrence argument. It is not outwardly threatening to maintain a matched asset, but at least it demonstrates zero capability degradation. This is probably why China and Russia maintain their own airborne capabilities. This point lends support to conventional Army forces keeping the airborne option in either the current or an adjusted form. Maybe it is “better to have it and not need it.” Nonetheless, Airborne’s mass applicability to Army special operations units, and maintaining this burgeoning task in an increasingly more irregular global battlespace, remains a target for intense scrutiny.
Airborne’s Tenuous Place in Special Operations
While the topic of airborne is normally addressed in the bifurcated terms of “keep it or scrap it,” considering it on a utility spectrum lends some nuance. On one end are units whose airborne ops are the core mission, rendering standard cost-benefit considerations moot. Imagine 1st Battalion, 507th Infantry Regiment on this end of the spectrum: it is the Army’s paratrooper school, and therefore has no purpose without airborne. In the middle are units for which airborne enhances capabilities but also imposes significant tradeoff costs—consider all the Brigade Combat Teams in 82nd Airborne. Jump status maintains the designation and soldier currency, but these units mostly deliver troops to combat by other means, and soldiers primarily serve as infantrymen, or support to that effort. The far end of the spectrum is units whose airborne ops provide no mission enhancement while imposing negative impacts on training and readiness: U.S. Army SOF fall in the last category.
What makes airborne irrelevant for SOF? Foremost, much like in the broader Army, operators do not jump into combat via static line anymore. They are inserted into theater in conventional ways (e.g., air lift followed by ground transportation), and sometimes via unconventional ways, such as high-altitude low-opening or high-opening jumps. These jumps are most comparable to free-fall skydiving on the civilian side. In this configuration, the soldier deploys her own canopy.
Theoretically—and with proper training—military free-fall is safer and lower-impact because of more steerable parachutes, and due to the variance in insertion airspeed and altitude that mitigate air defense threats. MFF chutes also provide softer landings, without the requirement for an aircraft to pull the static line away from the soldier to deploy the chute. Unfortunately, the static-line method carries risk for brutal outcomes when things go wrong. While the tribes of Psychological Operations, Civil Affairs and Special Forces are all required to maintain airborne currency, only the Green Berets also maintain a military free-fall capability. The solution is simple: eliminate airborne to free up training time and funding for free-fall qualification in those units that may need it for upcoming combat deployments.
What makes airborne costly to special operations? It takes money, time, and key leaders away from vastly more important tasks. The airborne expense does not reflect responsible and mission-focused resource allocation. It is hard to imagine the price tag that comes with maintaining $150 a month in jump pay per operator, parachute purchase and maintenance aircraft maintenance, fuel, and rigger pay and training.
The long-term medical costs are more incomprehensible. The U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs must cover expenses for those operators that retire with disability claims from airborne injuries for the rest of the retirees’ lives. Some are medically retired because they can no longer serve due to their injuries. Thus, the system pays to make an operator, wittingly breaks an operator, then pays for the fix indefinitely.
Lost training hours are a bit easier to figure. Per quarter, each unit dedicates about two hours for pre-jump refresher, five to twelve hours for jump operations, and anywhere from two to ten hours of duty per tasked jump master to prepare for a capability SOF has not used in nearly twenty years. Regular airborne operations re-direct a substantial amount of key leaders’ finite time to support jump efforts, and when soldiers must convalesce from injury, also pose challenges to unit readiness. With thinning numbers to fill intense deployment cycles, operators are a rare and critical resource, yet they are regularly pulled off the real training mission to support airborne ritual.
What critical Army SOF missions are suffering because of airborne? The answer is all of them. It is no mystery that the American military is in a state of transition, moving mission focus away from “forever wars” in the Middle East and toward strategic, or great power, competition. It is past urgent time to focus on tradecraft. From personal perspective as a Psychological Operations leader, we have failed to win the narrative game in recent conflicts, and are falling woefully behind in competition with Chinese and Russian information operations. The Russian 2016 election meddling and Chinese narrative manipulation regarding Taiwan are just a few examples of these problems. Especially with the Psychological Operations Regiment building a new Information Warfare Center at 1st Special Forces Command, all resources need to be applied to the competition realm. Certainly, Special Forces and Civil Affairs also have more critical points of focus in the threat environment. The money, time, and key leader losses to ARSOF airborne training are unnecessary casualties.
A common but significant drain on unit resources is soldier injury. There is no question that jumping is inherently risky even in ideal conditions. Airborne landings cause significant musculoskeletal injuries, Though Army special operations use the steerable MC6, touted as a safer parachute than other versions, these chutes are still designed for expedient descent. This equates to a hard landing despite extensive parachute landing—or controlled fall—training. The community knows well that soldiers often do not report injuries to avoid losing jump status, pay, or deployment opportunities, so the numbers are likely higher than believed.
In the least severe injuries, soldiers may miss training to attend medical appointments and recover, detracting from deployment readiness. In some cases, a servicemember may be pulled off a team he has been training with for months. In the worst scenarios, commanders could force operators into medical retirement. While the Army typically does not release these statistics to the public, soldiers know said injuries are common. It is proper to acknowledge that injury and death can also occur during military free-fall training; but yet again, applying this more controllable and frequently-employed capability to fewer soldiers could significantly reduce risk across the SOF formation.
Airborne’s Tenuous Role in Special Operations Culture
Some have defended airborne in SOF as a key part of the culture, claiming that it adds to the unit’s “eliteness.” The reality is that these units are remarkable irrespective of airborne operations. The concept of special ops “eliteness” conjures ideas of unique skills and training, high intellect, performance under pressure, and extreme courage, cognition, and endurance. While these characteristics apply to some paratroopers willing to jump from the proverbial “perfectly good airplane,” they do not apply to everyone. In fact, the Army airborne school produces about 14,000 paratroopers annually: a key principle of Army SOF is that special operations forces “cannot be mass produced.” What makes the organization elite primarily lies outside of airborne parameters.
Similarly, some airborne advocates argue that it builds esprit de corps. Yet one can find the real bonding agent in the nature of special operations missions. Frankly, quarterly jump operations hold no candle to the sense of community built in a SOF detachment. Operators train in extremely small, tight-knit teams, leaving their families and the comforts of home to deploy to the most dangerous regions of the world and do the DoD’s bidding. They live, work and fight as a family in extremely challenging conditions.
That airborne develops SOF leaders is another recurrent argument. While airborne leaders are critical to safe and effective jump operations, these skills extend little beyond technical and planning aspects. The principal leader development comes in executing one’s core specialization. Special operations troops are not only technical experts in their roles and in planning, but they also manage extreme responsibility and travel in high-ranking circles of both American and allied forces when deployed. It is common for mid-grade SOF noncommissioned officers to work with diplomats and military leaders several echelons above them in rank. They develop and manage subordinates, communicate effectively, navigate tense situations, and endure immense stress, all in politically sensitive environments where a simple mistake can have catastrophic strategic impact. Simply put, SOF develops extraordinary leaders with or without airborne operations.
Waving Off the Jump
In the year 2022, the U.S. Army will not have started the next chapter in its story: it will have picked up a whole new book. Gone are the days of protracted counterinsurgency in the purgatorial Middle East. The resources and planning emphasis already being reallocated to strategic competition are sobering. It is time for Army SOF leaders to take a hard look at the organization, and recognize we are wasting time, money, and human capitol on an irrelevant capability that commanders will likely never used again.
The sunk cost constituency would disagree. They would say it is a waste of a massive investment, an argument that has undoubtedly echoed for years across conference rooms to influence key decision-makers. Yet recent failures in Afghanistan have taught us to abandon this fallacy. It would be a mistake to sit idly by while America’s greatest adversaries adapt to the environment and develop relevant capabilities. Recent history could repeat if Army SOF does not reallocate investments that build competitive capacity on the global scale.
What about airborne’s role in the broader Army? Though that question is beyond the scope of this piece, points herein could contribute to the conversation. Sooner or later, the Army at large must conduct the cost-benefit analysis. It may be most sensible to keep initial airborne qualification as a capability-in-reserve, for leader development or soldier incentive, while dissolving sustained training requirements. There are, after all, thousands of air-assault qualified soldiers who have not rappelled from a helicopter since just before they pinned their wings. They wear the badge, nonetheless. Pathfinder qualified soldiers continue to sport their badges as well, despite the Army eliminating the school.
No remedy is strong enough to heal the airborne love spell. However, if critical thinking is not dead, it’s worthwhile to entertain a change that is radical in theory but logical in practice. The affection some have for airborne is undeniable, and for good reason. It is genuinely an institution, rife with history and honor—but so was the U.S. horse-mounted Calvary. After all, the Army kept the Stetsons and got rid of the horses. Army SOF can keep the heraldry and still hang up the static line.
Note: The opinions expressed in this piece are the author’s own, and do not represent the official or unofficial position or opinion of the U.S. Army, the U.S. Department of Defense, or any branch of the U.S. Government.
[1] For the purposes of this article, “airborne” refers to inserting soldiers into the battlespace via static line jumps from fixed or rotary-wing aircraft, with the assumption that soldiers conduct this training quarterly to maintain proficiency. It does not refer to all configurations of military parachute operations, nor their associated jump frequencies.
[2] “Mass tac” refers to air insertion of hundreds of soldiers at once by static line.
[3] The VA’s website did not yield any statistics on retiree compensation rates directly related to airborne jump injuries, nor did other open-source sites. The VA does provide disability compensation from injuries sustained during military service, the incidence of which is presumably much higher in airborne units than the rest of the force. The Army Public Health Center Parachuting Injuries fact sheet shows impact injuries as a concern, and acknowledges that “some injuries can have permanent career or life-long impacts.”
Major Meg Tucker has been in the Army for ten years, serving first as a Kiowa Warrior pilot in the 82nd Airborne Division, then as a Psychological Operations officer in 1st Special Forces Command (Airborne). She is Airborne, Air Assault and Accelerated Free-Fall qualified, and has commanded two PSYOP Detachments in SOUTHCOM and CENTCOM. She has been published in Special Warfare Magazine and CrossFit Journal and served as a panelist for the Special Warfare Center Commanding General’s Distinguished Lecture Series in 2020. She is currently pursuing a Master of Science degree in Information and Political Warfare at the Naval Postgraduate School.
18. White House on Ukraine and Syria: If you don’t trust us, then f--k you
The government - press adversary relationship is necessary for a healthy democracy. But....
White House on Ukraine and Syria: If you don’t trust us, then f--k you
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Top White House and State Department officials tried to shut down reporters’ questions on Thursday about the veracity of Biden administration claims on Russia and Syria.
To wit: U.S. officials claim that Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi killed himself, his wife, and two children when he detonated an explosive device during a special operations forces raid in Syria. The Pentagon is further claiming that all the civilians killed during the raid died as a result of actions taken by Al-Qurayshi and one of his deputies, who fought U.S. troops along with his wife.
Separately, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters Thursday that the U.S. government has information that Russia may launch a false flag attack and blame it on the Ukrainian military or intelligence forces.
“As part of this fake attack, we believe that Russia would produce a very graphic propaganda video which would include corpses and actors that would be depicting mourners and images of destroyed locations as well as military equipment at the hands of Ukraine or the West – even to the point where some of this equipment would be made to look like it was Western-supplied into Ukraine equipment,” Kirby said during a Pentagon news briefing.
Yet no one from the Biden administration has presented evidence to back up any of its statements absolving the U.S. military of all blame for the civilian casualties in Syria or its accusation that Russia could create a glorified snuff film as a pretext to invade Ukraine.
— CSPAN (@cspan) February 3, 2022
In fact, administration officials became hostile when reporters pressed them to provide at least some proof to back up their claims. Associated Press reporter Matthew Lee offered a master class in dogged questioning when he refused to accept State Department spokesman Ned Price’s assertion that the Biden administration’s public statements alleging the Russians plan to make a false flag video constitute evidence.
“If you doubt the credibility of the U.S. government, of the British government, of other governments and want to find solace in information that the Russians are putting out, that is for you to do,” Price told Lee during Thursday’s State Department news briefing.
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki tried to dismiss a question on Thursday when a reporter asked if the administration would provide evidence that Al-Qurayshi had set off the deadly explosion during the Syria raid that killed civilians, noting that some people may be skeptical of that assertion.
“Skeptical of the U.S. military’s assessment when they went and took out an ISIS terror – the leader of ISIS?” Psaki shot back while briefing reporters on Air Force One.
Psaki then asked if the reporter was asking if ISIS was putting out accurate information while the U.S. military was not.
“Well, not ISIS, but, I mean, the U.S. has not always been straightforward about what happens with civilians,” the reporter countered. “And, I mean, that is a fact.”
FILE PHOTO: Smoke after the shelling of Islamic State’s last holdout of Baghouz by Kurdish-led forces backed by US warplanes. (Getty Images.)
That’s very true. Remember when Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, initially described an Aug. 29 drone strike in Kabul as a “righteous strike”? It wasn’t. In fact, 10 civilians were killed, including seven children, in what the military later admitted was a mistake. It was one of the last tragedies of a war that had no shortage of terrible tragedies.
What made the Kabul strike so unique was the sheer amount of media attention it received. Both the military and CIA have carried out countless other airstrikes over the past 20 years with little or no mention whatsoever. The total number of civilians who have been killed is unknowable.
The New York Times revealed in November that a 2018 airstrike in Syria may have killed dozens of innocents, yet military officials stymied every effort to investigate the incident and showed that the American public can’t simply take the Defense Department’s word for it when it says it is doing everything possible to avoid civilian casualties. Especially since the unit that ordered the strike determined it had done nothing wrong.
Let’s also not forget that this country went to war in Iraq on little more than a wink and a nod that President George W. Bush’s administration had more evidence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction than it could reveal publicly. In retrospect, it was probably a bad idea to trust information about Saddam’s supposed WMD’s stockpile that came from a source codenamed “Curveball.”
The Biden administration can spare the pearl clutching and the gnashing of teeth. These are the same people who assured the American public that the Afghan security forces had 300,000 troops and police who were ready to fight, ignoring that the ranks of Afghan security forces had long been artificially inflated by “ghost soldiers” who never existed. Kabul fell even before the last U.S. troops had left Afghanistan, and the world watched in horror as people fell from the sky.
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is the senior Pentagon reporter for Task & Purpose. He has covered the military for 15 years. You can email him at schogol@taskandpurpose.com, direct message @JeffSchogol on Twitter, or reach him on WhatsApp and Signal at 703-909-6488. Contact the author here.
19. Learning the Wrong Lessons: Biases, the Rejection of History, and Single-Issue Zealotry in Modern Military Thought
This should not be either/or but rather both/and. Information supports tanks and tanks can support the information objective)\.
Conclusion:
In 2022, Ukraine and the Baltic republics are arguably menaced not by cyber effects, information warfare, or influence operations, but by tanks and artillery of which some Western armies have largely divested themselves. Perhaps the lesson that should be learned, possibly too late, is that the character of war changes by evolution, not revolution, and that revolutionary solutions to age-old problems should only be adopted based on facts, not science fiction.
Learning the Wrong Lessons: Biases, the Rejection of History, and Single-Issue Zealotry in Modern Military Thought - Modern War Institute
In 1904, war broke out between Tsarist Russia and Imperial Japan; Western nations sent observers to the seat of war to observe the effect of modern technology on the character of warfare. The British Indian Army’s lead observer was Lieutenant General Sir Ian Hamilton, an infantryman and veteran of several significant colonial wars, including the First and Second Boer Wars, and who would later command the forces of the British Empire at Gallipoli during World War I. Attached to the Imperial Japanese Army advancing from the Korean peninsula northward, Hamilton observed a succession of battles in which the modern, disciplined, and well-led Japanese forces defeated the poorly commanded Russian field army. Russian forces, using equipment, methods, and tactics largely unchanged since the Crimean War of half a century earlier, were simply outclassed by the Japanese. Incompetent Russian generalship flattered the attacking Japanese army, which nevertheless suffered grievous casualties and was often unable to exploit success as a result. The lesson Hamilton reported back to the British Indian Army was that, even on the early-twentieth-century battlefield, disciplined and determined infantry would always carry the day—even against entrenched positions. If Hamilton had been present at the Japanese army’s attempts to force its way through the modern defences of Port Arthur, far to the south, he would have seen a very different picture: piles of Japanese infantry hanging on barbed wire, stopped in their tracks by machine guns and artillery fire. Inevitably perhaps, Hamilton, a former commandant of the British Army’s School of Musketry, formed an analysis based on unconscious bias. Dr. Philip Towle quoted described it this way, in Richard Connaughton’s Rising Sun and Tumbling Bear:
The British armed forces tried harder to learn from the Russo-Japanese War than from any foreign war before or since, as the number of officers sent as observers and the number of official histories clearly demonstrated. But each observer tended to draw lessons which reinforced his own belief and the interests of his regiment or corps.
Only ten years later the results of his bias would be made clear to Hamilton at the Dardanelles. That bias is known as presentism—privileging the observed present over the experience of the past—and it is a growing trend in those whose job is to direct military strategy.
Of course, there is more to bias than merely the turning of a blind eye to inconvenient evidence. After the end of World War I, Major General J.F.C. Fuller, the military theorist and arch-advocate of tank warfare, would claim that the tank had completely revolutionized warfare. Throughout the interwar period, Fuller was outspoken in his belief that the modern battlefield was no place for cavalry, infantry, or unmechanized artillery. In future wars between Western nations, he claimed that the tank alone would dominate the battlefield, maneuvering in vast formations, akin to naval fleets, across the terrain of Europe, leaving the role of infantry as mere occupiers of territory, mopping up already broken enemy resistance in the wake of the landships. Although his intellect was widely admired, Fuller’s theories met with a mixed reception in the United Kingdom, something he ascribed to the innate conservatism of the British military. They were, however, viewed with interest by Soviet military theorists and consumed wholeheartedly by pioneers of the German panzerwaffe like Colonel Heinz Guderian. As a result, Germany pushed ahead with the creation of armored formations dominated by tanks, adopting tactics in which tanks and aviation, acting as flying artillery, would strike deep into enemy territory, dislocating and disrupting the defenders, using shock to paralyze them. The German infantry followed on in horse-drawn transport and on foot, in the manner of their predecessors, reducing any remaining resistance. The successful application of these tactics against Poland in the autumn of 1939, and against West European nations in the spring and early summer of 1940, appeared to vindicate Fuller’s theory. Operation Barbarossa would prove its undoing, as German tank formations left their infantry and combat service support elements trailing many miles behind, forcing the tanks to slow or even halt, unable to exploit the tanks’ advances and thereby allowing Soviet defending forces to regroup. Additionally, the tank was found to be far more vulnerable than the theory suggested. The solution to this problem was a combined arms approach as identified by officers like Lieutenant Hermann Balck, whose Chir River valley operation remains a model of combined arms maneuver. Tanks fought best not when operated independently, but when fought in mixed formations protected by, and protecting, infantry and artillery. Despite the evidence, Fuller would remain an enthusiast for all-tank formations until his death in 1966.
Single-issue zealotry in military affairs, of the kind demonstrated by Fuller, is far from a twentieth-century curiosity. Recent and ongoing conflicts in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe have been used to promote the pet theories of zealots, often against the run of evidence. The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War of 2020 is a suitable case study, providing any number of lessons, depending on the enthusiasms of the teacher. The war has been used to prove that the tank is dead as a weapon of war, that the tank remains a useful weapon in a combined arms context, that the drone has replaced the manned aircraft, and even that urban warfare has become the dominant and decisive environment. Like scavengers picking over a carcass, each advocate is keen to get the lion’s share. Nagorno-Karabakh is an ethnically majority Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan. The collapse of the Soviet Empire in the early 1990s led to the growth of a separatist movement that claimed independence for the enclave, which it named the Republic of Artsakh, enjoying military support from both Armenia and Russia. Over the next quarter century, the conflict rumbled on, until in the autumn of 2020 Azerbaijan sought a definite military solution. The Nagorno-Karabakh War was a classic combined arms maneuver battle, albeit fought with some novel methods and technology. The Armenian and Artsakh side operated a formidable and integrated radar-controlled antiaircraft defense system; the Azerbaijanis knew it would be expensive and difficult to try to penetrate this “snow dome” conventionally. Instead, by flooding the airspace in front of Artsakh territory with antiquated aircraft and drones they forced the Armenian operators to activate their defense system, generating recognizable radiation signatures, and giving away the defensive system’s shape and position. Precise targeting by Azerbaijani artillery and loitering munitions destroyed the identified positions, gifting the Azerbaijanis air superiority and allowing ground-based formations to break in, disrupting Armenian and Artsakh defenses and shattering cohesion. Simultaneously and at high tempo, long-range artillery and aerial assets were used to seal the battlefield, preventing Armenian reinforcement. This was the decisive moment of the war, a surprise attack creating shock among the defenders, leading to their psychological and physical collapse. The final act of the war was the capture of the city of Shusha, the key defensive position protecting the capital of the breakaway enclave. Contrary to the evidence, it has been claimed by some that the fight for the city was, in fact, the decisive action. This interpretation is correct only in the same sense that World War II in Europe ended on the streets of Berlin; the final act was a consequence of decisive action, not the cause of decision itself. The lessons that can be extracted from the war are clear: Tanks operating in combined arms formations proved effective, while tanks that did not proved vulnerable. Airpower, much of which was remotely piloted, proved critical for success. If the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War proved anything, it was that age-old problems could be solved in age-old ways, supported by modern technology.
The existential threat to military thought comes not from bias, misinterpretation, or misrepresentation; after all, historical investigation and the use of evidence are the stock in trade of students of war. Rather, it comes from those who reject or ignore history as a source of understanding. The danger of this approach is that by rejecting the lessons of the past and inflating the importance of evidence from the present, military development becomes rudderless, its guiding star merely a vision of a possible future, creating “a witch’s brew of high-tech fantasies and basic unpreparedness” of the type that unhinged the Israel Defense Forces in the country’s 2006 war with Hezbollah. The current struggle for the intellectual soul of militaries is thus one between those who are guided by history and those guided by science fiction. In his Christmas speech to the Royal United Service Institute in 2018, then Chief of the Defence Staff General Sir Nick Carter asserted a view that the world is experiencing a period of political instability unparalleled in over a century. This belief, combined with the observation that technology and its effect on society are advancing at an unprecedented rate, have become key drivers of military transformation. Evidentially, believers in this notion of exceptional instability point to recent, multiple emergent threats to what they term the liberal rules-based system—the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008 and annexation of Crimea in 2014, Chinese attempts to control access to the South China Sea, and the actions of belligerents in civil wars in Syria and Yemen. At the same time, technologists use advances in information and cyber technology, artificial intelligence, and autonomy to rationalize their own arguments regarding military transformation. Their case seems compelling from an early-twenty-first-century perspective. But perhaps more important than what is seen—the trends of eroding stability and rapidly growing technological advancement—is the lens through which these are viewed. When that lens is characterized by presentism and neophilia, rather than placing the present in the context of history, the consequences may be dire.
In 2022, Ukraine and the Baltic republics are arguably menaced not by cyber effects, information warfare, or influence operations, but by tanks and artillery of which some Western armies have largely divested themselves. Perhaps the lesson that should be learned, possibly too late, is that the character of war changes by evolution, not revolution, and that revolutionary solutions to age-old problems should only be adopted based on facts, not science fiction.
Paul Barnes is a serving warrant officer in the British Army with almost thirty years’ military experience. He served on operations in Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Iraq, and Afghanistan and is currently employed as a doctrine writer at the British Army’s Land Warfare Centre. He is a Chief of the General Staff’s Fellow, a Chief of the Air Staff’s Fellow, and former Fellow of the Modern War Institute at West Point.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense, or that of any organization the author is affiliated with, including the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence and the British Army.
Image: Illustration of Japanese assault on a Russian defensive position during the 1904 Battle of Nanshan
20. The Reason Putin Would Risk War
Conclusion:
Putin is preparing to invade Ukraine again—or pretending he will invade Ukraine again—for the same reason. He wants to destabilize Ukraine, frighten Ukraine. He wants Ukrainian democracy to fail. He wants the Ukrainian economy to collapse. He wants foreign investors to flee. He wants his neighbors—in Belarus, Kazakhstan, even Poland and Hungary—to doubt whether democracy will ever be viable, in the longer term, in their countries too. Farther abroad, he wants to put so much strain on Western and democratic institutions, especially the European Union and NATO, that they break up. He wants to keep dictators in power wherever he can, in Syria, Venezuela, and Iran. He wants to undermine America, to shrink American influence, to remove the power of the democracy rhetoric that so many people in his part of the world still associate with America. He wants America itself to fail.
These are big goals, and they might not be achievable. But Putin’s beloved Soviet Union also had big, unachievable goals. Lenin, Stalin, and their successors wanted to create an international revolution, to subjugate the entire world to the Soviet dictatorship of the proletariat. Ultimately, they failed—but they did a lot of damage while trying. Putin will also fail, but he too can do a lot of damage while trying. And not only in Ukraine.
The Reason Putin Would Risk War
He is threatening to invade Ukraine because he wants democracy to fail—and not just in that country.
There are questions about troop numbers, questions about diplomacy. There are questions about the Ukrainian military, its weapons, and its soldiers. There are questions about Germany and France: How will they react? There are questions about America, and how it has come to be a central player in a conflict not of its making. But of all the questions that repeatedly arise about a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine, the one that gets the least satisfactory answers is this one: Why?
Why would Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, attack a neighboring country that has not provoked him? Why would he risk the blood of his own soldiers? Why would he risk sanctions, and perhaps an economic crisis, as a result? And if he is not really willing to risk these things, then why is he playing this elaborate game?
To explain why requires some history, but not the semi-mythological, faux-medieval history Putin has used in the past to declare that Ukraine is not a country, or that its existence is an accident, or that its sense of nationhood is not real. Nor do we need to know that much about the more recent history of Ukraine or its 70 years as a Soviet republic—though it is true that the Soviet ties of the Russian president, most notably his years spent as a KGB officer, matter a great deal. Indeed, many of his tactics—the use of sham Russian-backed “separatists” to carry out his war in eastern Ukraine, the creation of a puppet government in Crimea—are old KGB tactics, familiar from the Soviet past. Fake political groupings played a role in the KGB’s domination of Central Europe after World War II; sham separatists played a role in the Bolshevik conquest of Ukraine itself in 1918.
Putin’s attachment to the old U.S.S.R. matters in another way as well. Although he is sometimes incorrectly described as a Russian nationalist, he is in fact an imperial nostalgist. The Soviet Union was a Russian-speaking empire, and he seems, at times, to dream of re-creating a smaller Russian-speaking empire within the old Soviet Union’s borders.
But the most significant influence on Putin’s worldview has nothing to do with either his KGB training or his desire to rebuild the U.S.S.R. Putin and the people around him have been far more profoundly shaped, rather, by their path to power. That story—which has been told several times, by the authors Fiona Hill, Karen Dawisha, and most recently Catherine Belton—begins in the 1980s. The later years of that decade were, for many Russians, a moment of optimism and excitement. The policy of glasnost—openness—meant that people were speaking the truth for the first time in decades. Many felt the real possibility of change, and they thought it could be change for the better.
Putin missed that moment of exhilaration. Instead, he was posted to the KGB office in Dresden, East Germany, where he endured the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 as a personal tragedy. As the world’s television screens blared out the news of the Cold War’s end, Putin and his KGB comrades in the doomed Soviet satellite state were frantically burning all of their files, making calls to Moscow that were never returned, fearing for their lives and their careers. For KGB operatives, this was not a time of rejoicing, but rather a lesson about the nature of street movements and the power of rhetoric: democracy rhetoric, antiauthoritarian rhetoric, anti-totalitarian rhetoric. Putin, like his role model Yuri Andropov, who was the Soviet ambassador to Hungary during the 1956 revolution there, concluded from that period that spontaneity is dangerous. Protest is dangerous. Talk of democracy and political change is dangerous. To keep them from spreading, Russia’s rulers must maintain careful control over the life of the nation. Markets cannot be genuinely open; elections cannot be unpredictable; dissent must be carefully “managed” through legal pressure, public propaganda, and, if necessary, targeted violence.
But although Putin missed the euphoria of the ’80s, he certainly took full part in the orgy of greed that gripped Russia in the ’90s. Having weathered the trauma of the Berlin Wall, Putin returned to the Soviet Union and joined his former colleagues in a massive looting of the Soviet state. With the assistance of Russian organized crime as well as the amoral international offshore-money-laundering industry, some of the former Soviet nomenklatura stole assets, took the money out of the country, hid it abroad, and then brought the cash back and used it to buy more assets. Wealth accumulated; a power struggle followed. Some of the original oligarchs landed in prison or exile. Eventually Putin wound up as the top billionaire among all the other billionaires—or at least the one who controls the secret police.
This position makes Putin simultaneously very strong and very weak, a paradox that many Americans and Europeans find hard to understand. He is strong, of course, because he controls so many levers of Russia’s society and economy. Try to imagine an American president who controlled not only the executive branch—including the FBI, CIA, NSA—but also Congress and the judiciary; The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Dallas Morning News, and all of the other newspapers; and all major businesses, including Exxon, Apple, Google, and General Motors.
Putin’s control comes without legal limits. He and the people around him operate without checks and balances, without ethics rules, without transparency of any kind. They determine who can be a candidate in elections, and who is allowed to speak in public. They can make decisions from one day to the next—sending troops to the Ukrainian border, for example—after consulting no one and taking no advice. When Putin contemplates an invasion, he does not have to consider the interest of Russian businesses or consumers who might suffer from economic sanctions. He doesn’t have to take into account the families of Russian soldiers who might die in a conflict that they don’t want. They have no choice, and no voice.
And yet at the same time, Putin’s position is extremely precarious. Despite all of that power and all of that money, despite total control over the information space and total domination of the political space, Putin must know, at some level, that he is an illegitimate leader. He has never won a fair election, and he has never campaigned in a contest that he could lose. He knows that the political system he helped create is profoundly unfair, that his regime not only runs the country but owns it, making economic and foreign-policy decisions that are designed to benefit the companies from which he and his inner circle personally profit. He knows that the institutions of the state exist not to serve the Russian people, but to steal from them. He knows that this system works very well for a few rich people, but very badly for everyone else. He knows, in other words, that one day, prodemocracy activists of the kind he saw in Dresden might come for him too.
Putin’s awareness that his legitimacy is dubious has been on public display since 2011, soon after his rigged “reelection” to a constitutionally dubious third term. At that time, large crowds appeared not only in Moscow and St. Petersburg but several dozen other cities as well, protesting electoral fraud and elite corruption. Protesters mocked the Kremlin as a regime of “crooks and thieves,” a slogan popularized by the democracy activist Alexei Navalny; later, Putin’s regime would poison Navalny, nearly killing him. The dissident is now in a Russian jail. But Putin wasn’t just angry at Navalny. He also blamed America, the West, foreigners trying to destroy Russia. The Obama administration had, he said, organized the demonstrators; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, of all people, had “given the signal” to start the protests. He had won the election, he declared with great passion, tears seeming to well up in his eyes, despite the “political provocations that pursue the sole objective of undermining Russia's statehood and usurping power.”
In his mind, in other words, he wasn’t merely fighting Russian demonstrators; he was fighting the world’s democracies, in league with enemies of the state. Whether he really believed that crowds in Moscow were literally taking orders from Hillary Clinton is unimportant. He certainly understood the power of democratic language, of the ideas that made Russians want a fair political system, not a kleptocracy controlled by Putin and his gang, and he knew where they came from. Over the subsequent decade, he would take the fight against democracy to Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, where he would support extremist groups and movements in the hope of undermining European democracy. Russian state-controlled media would support the campaign for Brexit, on the grounds that it would weaken Western democratic solidarity, which it has. Russian oligarchs would invest in key industries across Europe and around the world with the aim of gaining political traction, especially in smaller countries like Hungary and Serbia. And, of course, Russian disinformation specialists would intervene in the 2016 American election.
All of which is a roundabout way of explaining the extraordinary significance, to Putin, of Ukraine. Of course Ukraine matters as a symbol of the lost Soviet empire. Ukraine was the second-most-populous and second-richest Soviet republic, and the one with the deepest cultural links to Russia. But modern, post-Soviet Ukraine also matters because it has tried—struggled, really—to join the world of prosperous Western democracies. Ukraine has staged not one but two prodemocracy, anti-oligarchy, anti-corruption revolutions in the past two decades. The most recent, in 2014, was particularly terrifying for the Kremlin. Young Ukrainians were chanting anti-corruption slogans, just like the Russian opposition does, and waving European Union flags. These protesters were inspired by the same ideals that Putin hates at home and seeks to overturn abroad. After Ukraine’s profoundly corrupt, pro-Russian president fled the country in February 2014, Ukrainian television began showing pictures of his palace, complete with gold taps, fountains, and statues in the yard—exactly the kind of palace Putin inhabits in Russia. Indeed, we know he inhabits such a palace because one of the videos produced by Navalny has already shown us pictures of it, along with its private ice-hockey rink and its hookah bar.
Putin’s subsequent invasion of Crimea punished Ukrainians for trying to escape from the kleptocratic system that he wanted them to live in—and it showed Putin’s own subjects that they too would pay a high cost for democratic revolution. The invasion also violated both written and unwritten rules and treaties in Europe, demonstrating Putin’s scorn for the Western status quo. Following that “success,” Putin launched a much broader attack: a series of attempted coups d’état in Odessa, Kharkiv, and several other cities with a Russian-speaking majority. This time, the strategy failed, not least because Putin profoundly misunderstood Ukraine, imagining that Russian-speaking Ukrainians would share his Soviet imperial nostalgia. They did not. Only in Donetsk, a city in eastern Ukraine where Putin was able to move in troops and heavy equipment from across the border, did a local coup succeed. But even there he did not create an attractive “alternative” Ukraine. Instead, the Donbas—the coal-mining region that surrounds Donetsk—remains a zone of chaos and lawlessness.
It’s a long way from the Donbas to France or the Netherlands, where far-right politicians hang around the European Parliament and take Russian money to go on “fact-finding missions” to Crimea. It’s a longer way still to the small American towns where, back in 2016, voters eagerly clicked on pro-Trump Facebook posts written in St. Petersburg. But they are all a part of the same story: They are the ideological answer to the trauma that Putin and his generation of KGB officers experienced in 1989. Instead of democracy, they promote autocracy; instead of unity, they try constantly to create division; instead of open societies, they promote xenophobia. Instead of letting people hope for something better, they promote nihilism and cynicism.
Putin is preparing to invade Ukraine again—or pretending he will invade Ukraine again—for the same reason. He wants to destabilize Ukraine, frighten Ukraine. He wants Ukrainian democracy to fail. He wants the Ukrainian economy to collapse. He wants foreign investors to flee. He wants his neighbors—in Belarus, Kazakhstan, even Poland and Hungary—to doubt whether democracy will ever be viable, in the longer term, in their countries too. Farther abroad, he wants to put so much strain on Western and democratic institutions, especially the European Union and NATO, that they break up. He wants to keep dictators in power wherever he can, in Syria, Venezuela, and Iran. He wants to undermine America, to shrink American influence, to remove the power of the democracy rhetoric that so many people in his part of the world still associate with America. He wants America itself to fail.
These are big goals, and they might not be achievable. But Putin’s beloved Soviet Union also had big, unachievable goals. Lenin, Stalin, and their successors wanted to create an international revolution, to subjugate the entire world to the Soviet dictatorship of the proletariat. Ultimately, they failed—but they did a lot of damage while trying. Putin will also fail, but he too can do a lot of damage while trying. And not only in Ukraine.
21. Reds: Russian and Chinese spies under every rock
Or were they? And more importantly what is happening now?
Reds: Russian and Chinese spies under every rock
Tokyo in the ’60s was considered a nest of communist spies but sometimes the sightings were exaggeratedTokyo in the ’60s was considered a nest of communist spies but sometimes the sightings were exaggerated
At Fuchu Air Station’s Elint, we were constantly reminded that our enemy was communism – Russian, Chinese, North Korean communism – and warned that there were communist spies in our midst. We were instructed to always be on guard.
That was not new. In Tokyo before my time, starting in 1946 in the early Occupation period, there had been the black ops Canon agency. Lieutenant Colonel Jack Canon’s anti-communist spook agency was all about guns, midnight assignations and the third degree, .
“Loose lips sink ships” was the pet phrase of the aphoristic Navy chief petty officer who was my immediate boss, “If you are asked what you do, just say you are a radar operator. Don’t get drunk in the presence of strangers – and that includes the women off-base.”
The author at Fuchu Air Base. Photo: courtesy Robert Whiting
The Japan Communist Party had been active since the days of the Occupation. It had only 50,000 members, but it was supported by both China and the Soviet Union, which had helped to subsidize demonstrations against the U.S. presence in Japan.
Tens of thousands of ordinary Japanese, normally apolitical, had opposed the extension of the US-Japan Security Treaty in 1960 and marched in protest in the months of May and June of that year.
But the most virulent opposition came from the ideologically committed students of the Zengakuren, the tightly disciplined communist-led All-Students Association, who spearheaded violent clashes with the riot police and who, according to first-hand reports, were financially supported by the JCP. Student protestors were said to have been paid 200 or 300 yen a day plus a free bento (boxed lunch).
On the evening of June 5, 1960, some 14,000 members of the Zengakuren had attacked the Diet Building compound in a futile attempt to block the passage of the extension of the revised Security Treaty, throwing stones and wooden spears at a phalanx of 4,000 steel-helmeted riot police. In the melee, a 22-year old Tokyo University student was trampled to death. The protests were so violent that a planned visit by US President Dwight Eisenhower had to be canceled.
“Moscow and Peking have made it abundantly clear that the neutralization and eventual take-over of Japan, is their number one objective,” said the previous US Ambassador to Japan, Douglas MacArthur II, nephew and namesake of the Pacific War and Occupation generalissimo.
In the minds of most US military officers, everybody outside the center was suspect – Japanese nationals waving political banners near the entrance, photographers on the other side of the chain-link fence taking photos of the facility through zoom-lens cameras.
We were told to be vigilant at all times, to beware of the Japanese papa-san who drove us on intelligence exchange trips to the Yokosuka and Atsugi naval bases, the Japanese waitresses who served us in the Airman’s Club, the manager of the Korean style yakiniku restaurant up the road where we sometimes ate, the Chinese proprietor of the Daihanten restaurant down the street and any patron of the bars on the strip who was not an identifiable American military or civilian worker, such as the old White Russian drunk, a longtime Fuchu resident, who hung around the bars on the strip speaking to us in his broken English. They were all potentially spies.
There were also the odd shady characters hanging around outside the gate, in the bars, and on the strip, looking to buy weapons. It was hard to tell whether they were simply yakuza doing yakuza business or red agents with more sinister motives.
Some ‘family’ friends of the author. Photo: Tokyo Junkie
Others were there to peddle drugs – some for profit; others, so we were told, for the purpose of addicting GI’s so that they would spill military secrets or, at the very least, be useless as enemy soldiers.
If there was a visible trade in weapons, however, I never saw it, although there were occasional reports of GI’s arrested in other base towns, Tachikawa or Yokosuka, selling guns.
I knew an air policeman who was stupid enough to sell his sidearm for a couple of hundred bucks and then claim it was stolen. He wound up in the brig. (He was almost as dumb as the AP guard doing an overnight at the Elint Center who was so bored he started playing with his sidearm and wound up shooting himself in the hand. The desk by the entrance was covered in blood and bits of flesh as we walked in that morning. They sent him back to the States.)
Drugs
Drugs were a little more conspicuous. Every now and then you would be approached by someone on the strip who asked if you were interested in shabu (speed). I never took the bait but I knew of a couple of guys who did and who were caught and cashiered back to the States and out of the military.
There were also heroin dens outside the base in Tachikawa. A large population of Chinese and Koreans residing in Tachikawa City was said to be sympathetic to the communist cause, engaging in espionage and sabotage. According to one report in the Nippon Times, by the end of the Korean War in July 1953 there were dozens of heroin dens and hundreds of single users.
GI’s serving in South Korea added to the mix. They would develop the habit there, usually getting their heroin from bar girls in South Korea, and bring their drugs back to Japan. Some of them were even dealing, selling it to the yakuza.
The military had cleaned it up some since then, but not completely. I knew a guy named Deckman, an airman in the admin department who lived in the room next to mine in the barracks. He went to one of the dens and wound up hooked. He pointed it out to me as we walked by one day on our way from Tachikawa train station to the base.
It was just a house, a non-descript western-style house not far from the main gate. He said you went in and sat down in the living room and some mama-san presented you with a menu. “Of course, this being Japan,” he said, “you always get a nice hot towel and a cup of steaming green tea to go with it.”
The options were the pipe, the cigarette, and the needle. You licked the cigarette and dipped it in a bowl of heroin powder, then lit up. Well, he kept going back and soon he had graduated to the needle. Medics responding to an emergency call from the house found him writhing on the floor in agony. They shipped him back to the States, as well. The last I heard he was living on the streets of downtown Los Angeles.
We were told to exercise particular caution in the Roppongi/Akasaka area on our sojourns to central Tokyo because, according to the Navy chief I worked for, it was a “hotbed of communist spies.” The Soviet Embassy was just steps away from Club 88 and Nicola’s pizza parlor, to both of which Soviet agents were frequent visitors.
We received reports of Russian agents attempting to bribe American employees of the military’s Stars and Stripes newspaper, for example, to get information on the activities of the US military inside American bases.
One who was approached, an editor named Tom Scully, whom I later became friends with, was wined and dined repeatedly by a Soviet agent, who offered Scully thousands of dollars in cash and other perks to come over to the other side. Scully enjoyed the wining and the dining but turned down the money. He reported the agent to the Japanese authorities, who deported the man.
Hounding Dr Aksenoff
A locus of activity that aroused interest was the International Clinic, directly across the street from Nicola’s. It was run by Dr Eugene Aksenoff, a White Russian whose parents had fled to Harbin, China during the Bolshevik Revolution.
From there he had come to Tokyo before the war as a medical student. He’d paid his tuition by acting in Japanese war propaganda films – playing captured American pilots, never mind that he spoke his American English lines with a thick Russian accent.
He’d stayed on, stateless, a man without a passport, setting up his clinic. The doctor spoke fluent Russian and the leather chairs in his waiting room were filled with patients from the nearby Russian Embassy, reading Russian language periodicals.
Aksenoff was known as a man of integrity and honor, and politically neutral. But with the Cold War at its peak, that fact alone was enough to attract the attention of Japanese authorities, who suspected that a communist lurked behind every cherry tree.
They based their suspicions in part on a report prepared by US military intelligence in 1954 that designated Aksenoff as a communist agent, after a defecting Soviet diplomat had fingered him as such. The diplomat had been an associate of the infamous Soviet secret police chief Lavrenty Beria who had just been executed in Moscow.
Fearful for his life, the diplomat had decided to cross over to the American side. Lacking anything substantial in the way of information to barter, he’d concocted a story that Aksenoff had been providing treatment for young GIs with venereal diseases – STDs as they are now called – who were afraid to go to the base hospital and thus run the risk of being discovered and punished by their superior officers.
In return for doing this, according to the diplomat, the GIs were giving Aksenoff US military secrets, which Akensoff then passed on to his friends at the Soviet Embassy.
There was never any evidence produced that this was remotely true, but because of these reports and the indisputable fact that Aksenoff’s clinic was, in fact, only a city block from the Soviet Embassy in Azabu, Aksenoff had been under constant surveillance as a result.
Undercover detectives followed him around Tokyo in taxis and unmarked cars. They dined at the same restaurants and they tapped his phones (so badly, in fact, that Aksenoff remarked to friends that he could hear the cops talking to one another).
The Japanese police eventually arrested him, years later, on charges that he had installed a radio transmitter in Kawasaki, south of Tokyo, near a new clinic he had ostensibly set up for visiting sailors. The authorities had received an unconfirmed report from an unidentified witness that Aksenoff had been seen burying equipment at the site and when they unearthed it, they found that part of the device was marked with what looked like a Russian Cryllic number four.
That was the clincher and the detectives had come to Aksenoff’s residence, clapped with handcuffs, tied a rope around his body, as per police custom, and led him off to jail, where they kept him for several days.
He was released only when an embarrassed Toshiba engineer came forth, after reading about the matter in the newspaper, and explained that the transmitter was an experimental device that belonged to his company and the symbol that had so impressed the police as evidence of Russian espionage was in fact a symbol Toshiba used for digital equipment.
Whoever identified Aksenoff as being at the scene, Aksenoff later surmised, was probably a business rival unhappy that the new Kawasaki clinic was taking away patients.
Speaking of patients, Aksenoff was known as “doctor to the stars”: He treated Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Michael Jackson, Madonna and John Wayne – not to mention Jacques Chirac and Nick Zappetti.
I knew Aksenoff very well, interviewed him several times for Tokyo Underworld and Tokyo Outsiders. He told me in detail the story of his bizarre relationships with the police. He said one reason he remained stateless was to remain as apolitical as possible so as not to interfere with his medical practice – and, I might add, his pursuit of wealth. He owned a couple of buildings.
Said Aksenoff summing up the whole experience when it was all over, “In both cases, the police knew there was nothing there. They had to create fear that there were Russians in the country to keep anti-communist feeling high. They needed a Russian spy and I was it.”
Follow Robert Whiting on Twitter: @robertwhiting_ and, starting this week, readers can find the author’s regular commentary on Japanese sports, politics and business on Substack.
22. The Rise Of A Sovereign Digital Currency In ChinaThe Rise Of A Sovereign Digital Currency In China
The Rise Of A Sovereign Digital Currency In China
According to a Bank of International Settlements (BIS) 2021 survey, 86% of the 65 central banks surveyed are exploring a central bank digital currency (CBDC), with 14% moving towards pilot development.
In February 2021, the People’s Bank of China conducted the third test of its digital currency across several major cities in China. Later that year, the People’s Bank of China banned all cryptocurrency transactions and mining of private sector currency like Bitcoin in China. China’s ban comes as cryptocurrencies become more popular because they lower costs and accelerate transactions by cutting out commercial banks and other financial institutions. This ban has forced consumers to shift their transactions to their government-issued digital yuan, eliminating the anonymity that usually comes with cryptocurrency from the private sector. This push to the digital yuan is a U.S. national security risk for three reasons: it facilitates Chinese state surveillance of U.S. entities such as businesses; it allows both well-meaning and malign actors to circumvent the existing banking system (including sanctions); and it constitutes the latest step in Chinese endeavors to undermine the dollar’s place as the leading international currency.
According to aBank of International Settlements (BIS) 2021 survey, 86% of the 65 central banks surveyed are exploring a central bank digital currency (CBDC), with 14% moving towards pilot development. In early 2021, central banks from China, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, and Hong Kong explored facilitating cross-border foreign exchange among their countries to bypass the traditional dollar-based exchange process and fees. The chaos of the covid-19 pandemic also accelerated cryptocurrency’s investment internationally. But China has been ahead of the pack in the development of CBDC, starting way back in 2014, with recent trials across several provinces. It is the second CBDC in the world to launch (after the Bahamian sand dollar).
One major risk with any CBDC is the potential for domestic government surveillance and financial censorship. In China’s Digital Currency: Adding Financial Data to Digital Authoritarianism, authors Yaya J. Fanusie and Emily Jin emphasize that China’s CBDC will improve its capability to monitor illegal activities like money laundering – but it will also enhance their data collection of private transactions and strengthen their authoritarian power over Chinese citizens. In fact, a national digital currency in China will also supplement their national surveillance programs targeting dissenters and increase human rights abuse of certain ethnic minorities. This surveillance may also be applied to international partners conducting business within or outside their borders.
The move toward government crypto has popular support in some places though. For example, 32% of Nigerians use cryptocurrency like Bitcoin because transactions are cheap and can be done through cellphones. In addition, several Nigerian businesses that import products from China used Bitcoin instead of the Central Bank of Nigeria because of these low-cost advantages. One goal for China is to force international partners to use their digital currency for cross-border transactions, for example to streamline transactions between countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative. These transactions would allow China and their business partners to bypass the dollar-based foreign exchange process and increase their control over the entire system. At the same time, China may compel those reluctant to shift from the dollar-based system to adopt a Chinese CBDC to conduct business with them for their goods and services across borders, thus putting those companies and governments’ privacy and security at risk only to do business with China. And there is an increased risk this data can be misused by the Chinese government for their interests.
Another risk of this digital currency is China’s ability to facilitate illegal transactions and avoid U.S. imposed sanctions. TTreasury 2021 Sanction Review claims that “technological innovations such as digital currencies, alternative payment platforms, and new ways of hiding cross-border transactions all potentially reduce the efficacy of American sanctions. These technologies offer malign actors opportunities to hold and transfer funds outside the traditional dollar-based financial system. They also empower our adversaries seeking to build new financial and payments systems intended to diminish the dollar’s global role.” Consequently, China’s CBDC may also be used by adversaries like North Korea or multinational corporations that do not work with the U.S. but work with China to conduct business outside the U.S. financial system, therefore creating another international payment system for adversaries to conduct transactions outside the regulated traditional dollar-based process.
Moreover, this may damage the entire global financial system, as China sets the example for other countries to bypass the traditional dollar-based system.
Justin Muzinich, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of the Treasury (December 2018–2021), claims that a Chinese digital currency can become a platform for adversaries to purchase weapons. In America’s Crypto Conundrum: Protecting Security Without Crushing Innovation, Muzinich wrote that if a foreign company that does no business in the U.S. wants to sell weapons to North Korea, both parties can use China’s CBDC to conduct transactions without going through any commercial banks. This increases an adversary’s military capabilities and enables them to avoid any sanctions imposed by the U.S., ultimately undermining the power behind U.S. sanctions. Moreover, this may damage the entire global financial system, as China sets the example for other countries to bypass the traditional dollar-based system.
As the primary U.S. competitor, China continues to invest in its economic power to meet its strategic interests. For this reason, the U.S. must be aware of the strategic risks associated with China’s ambitions for creating a national digital currency. This move creates conditions for the yuan to compete with the traditional dollar-based system or, worse, become an alternate financial system that adversaries can use to purchase weapons and sanction evasion. Experts disagree on the likelihood and timeline of the yuan’s replacing the dollar, but that does not make it less of a strategic threat. In sum, China’s CBDC provides the Chinese Communist Party with another means to collect data and monitor their citizens’ financial activity. Moreover, this information, combined with other surveillance data, can be used to discipline individuals or groups for noncompliance to government demands. These privacy infringements may also apply to multinational corporations and developing countries dependent on China’s CBDC to conduct business with them. This puts U.S. national security at risk, as most of these countries have relations with the U.S., and several multinational corporations are U.S.-based firms. For all the reasons mentioned, the U.S. must continue to closely monitor China’s implementation of its CBDC. If not, the digital yuan can threaten the traditional dollar-based system and U.S. influence as countries see it as a more cost-effective alternative over time.
Assad Raza is an active-duty U.S. Army Civil Affairs officer serving at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). He holds a Bachelor of Art in psychology from the University of Tampa, a Master of Art in diplomacy with a concentration in international conflict management from Norwich University, and a Master of Military Art and Science from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army War College, the U.S. Army, or the Department of Defense.
Photo Description: Miscellaneous digital currencies Top (L-R): Ark, Iota, Bitcoin, Neo; Bottom (L-R): Dash, Ethereum, The Graph, Binance Coin; Center: Notional Digital Yuan
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
