Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"Remember this your lifetime through: Tomorrow there will be more to do. And failure waits for all who stay With some success made yesterday. Tomorrow you must try once more, And even harder than before."

- John Wooden

"Leadership is intangible, and therefore no weapon ever designed can replace it."

- Omar N. Bradley

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same."

- Ronald Reagan

1. America Needs Futurists and Traditionalists to Think Clearly About War

2. Biden set to approve expansive authorities for Pentagon to carry out cyber operations

3. FBI head: China has ‘stolen more’ US data ‘than every other nation combined’

4. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, NOVEMBER 17 (Putin's War)

5. Biden set to approve expansive authorities for Pentagon to carry out cyber operations

6. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (17.11.22) CDS comments on key events

7. How Defense Department Planning Horizons Can Better Avoid Strategic Surprise

8. Ban These Chinese Chipmakers from Pentagon Purchases

9. More than 30 Western components found in Iranian-made Shahed-136 UAVs – investigation

10. Harris to Defend Biden’s Indo-Pacific Strategy in Speech to CEOs

11. Kherson euphoria highlights the folly of a premature peace with Putin

12. Debris From Ruptured Nord Stream Pipelines Shows Traces of Explosives, Sweden Says

13. For the best NDAA, what to take from the House and Senate

14. US is running low on some weapons and ammunition to transfer to Ukraine

15. Army Preps for ‘Contested Logistics,’ Works to Boost Arms Production

16. Geography, Geostrategy and Military Operations

17. NDIA Policy Points: The Precarious State of U.S. Defense Stockpiles

18. China’s Xi Stacks Government With Science and Tech Experts Amid Rivalry With U.S.

19. Russia warms to U.S. prisoner swap for arms trader Bout

20. Russia’s Missing Peacemakers

21. Ukraine 'blows up Russian oil depot 190 miles from Moscow'

22. Listen to Xi Jingping about Taiwan

23. Beijing says PH, China should ‘reject unilateralism and acts of bullying’

24. Leaked FSB letters reveal civil war among Putin's allies

25. Data centers are physical and digital targets, says Pentagon’s Eoyang

1. America Needs Futurists and Traditionalists to Think Clearly About War

Very good thoughts that we should reflect on.

America Needs Futurists and Traditionalists to Think Clearly About War

A creative, well-balanced military that fuses the acumen of prophets and historians will get results on the battlefields of tomorrow.

The National Interest · by Michael P. Ferguson · November 17, 2022

Earlier this year, two authors writing for the Brookings Institution posed an intriguing question: “Is the U.S. military’s futurism obsession hurting national security?” Their argument followed a series of exchanges in other forums on the competing relevance of futurism and traditionalism in national security thought. Futurists might argue that they are merely counterbalancing a defense community that is traditionally past-obsessed, using outdated equipment and training for the last war. The rising popularity of futurism has placed that philosophy at odds with that of traditionalism, leading to a false premise that one or the other must be right.

True creative transformation in the U.S. defense and intelligence communities will only take place once the two camps accept the reality that they could both be wrong. Thus far, this debate has occurred at the policy level among well-meaning observers not responsible for the application of their theories. This shortcoming ignores the fact that the ideas of both camps must be implemented in the tactical fights where battles are won—a grueling and often unpredictable place.

For most of its post-Cold War existence, the United States has enjoyed the luxury of tactical supremacy and has thus laid blame for its recent failures at the feet of policymakers and strategists. As Gen. James Dubik wrote in 2014, America wins battles and loses wars. This is a biting critique, but it would be more so if the former were untrue. Russia’s war on Ukraine provides valuable lessons that call into question the permanence of American tactical dominance. Those lessons reveal the need for tactical creativity that brings futurists and traditionalists together to seek a better understanding of not only how the United States would fight alongside an army like Ukraine’s, but also how it might perform against one.

To test this theory, the authors of this article are military practitioners who identify as a traditionalist and a futurist, respectively. This paper examines the characteristics of the two major thought camps, explores opportunities to bring them together by optimizing joint force creativity in a nexus camp, and considers how that camp might stack up against the creative potential of America’s pacing challenge, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China.

Why Creative Culture Matters

Senior defense leaders and critics of U.S. professional military education often point to the imperative of creativity to win future wars through “intellectual overmatch.” Most of this literature, however, focuses on policy with little regard for how those ideas might trickle down to the unit level. Analysis of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War shows that small and distributed teams developing solutions to tactical problems can be decisive when supported properly. To take a page from Gen. Charles Krulak, Ukrainian forces exercised ingenuity to gain the advantage through “strategic corporals.” This strategy was perhaps most evident in the defense of Kyiv, in which a network of drone enthusiasts passed Russian armor positions to Ukrainian targeting nodes, corrected indirect fire, and even fashioned explosives to octocopters for dropping onto Russian dismounts. These developments support the research of scholars such as John A. Nagl and Frank Hoffman, who found that the process of identifying and closing military performance gaps is most effective when pursued by those who will apply those solutions in the fog of war.

Historical precedent indicating that tactical creativity is a generator of battlefield advantage is abundant. Hedgerows stalled Allied movements in World War II until a sergeant from Chicago designed a hedgerow-cutting device known as the rhino to modify Sherman tanks. Decades later, coalition forces defeated heat-signature-initiated improvised explosives in Iraq with a battlefield modification of the same name. Future conflicts may require similar creative solutions at tempo, scale, and speed to win decisively, or perhaps to simply avoid losing.

Chartering companies to design strategies that foster creative culture is a booming private industry, yet the U.S. Army rarely extends creativity trainers to military intelligence leaders in a brigade combat team or a field artillery targeting cell within a division. In some ways, developing the creativity layer in a tactical formation is antithetical to the army’s structure. Though they may contradict the legacy of hierarchical military thought, acceptance of greater risk, charismatic instead of traditional authority, and free-thinking teams gain the competitive advantage at war. To nurture such teams, futurists and traditionalists must work together to build a third camp.

Camp One: The Prophets

A mentor of ours once said, beware of those who talk too much about the future because they cannot be held accountable for it. The American futurism craze arguably began in the post-Vietnam era, but the more recent incarnation could be attributed to the widespread assumption that—as Gen. Mark Milley said in 2016—the world is “on the cusp of a fundamental change in the character of warfare.” This might be true, but no one yet knows what that change will look like, and the unique characteristics of each war are rarely prophetic signposts of the next. Strategic theorists from Carl von Clausewitz to Colin S. Gray have cautioned against the siren song of confident prognosticating, but there seems to be more of it today than ever.

Prior to and shortly following Russia’s invasion this year, some declared that the tank is dead (a claim that still exists), or that force-on-force warfare was a thing of the past. Everything from hypersonic missiles to quantum computing and the metaverse have ignited the imagination of futurists, many of whom bet their careers on the transcendent promises of these technologies. Unfortunately, the defense enterprise struggles with long-term forecasting, as evidenced by missteps such as the M-551 Sheridan tank, Future Combat Systems, or visions of imminent transparent battlefields in the 1990s. Worse even, prophets tend to exaggerate the influence of present conditions on long-term trends. Rest assured, the fog of war is as thick as ever, which means Occam’s Razor could still apply to military estimates even as the most spectacular explanations of the future are the most appealing to the imagination.

In John Gaddis’s estimation, a good theory must explain the past, for only if it does can we justify what it might tell us about the future. On the other hand, some research shows that digital natives “have higher demands for the quality and usefulness of technology,” which means the next generation service member could be more inclined to seek digital solutions to every military problem. To allow functional creativity to thrive, prophets must humble themselves before the altar of Clausewitz’s unholy trinity of fog, friction, and uncertainty. In other words, to again call upon Gaddis, prophets must not become so confident in their theories about the future that they fail to imagine a world detached from them. The second camp can help with that.

Camp Two: The Historians

One may find the traditionalist reciting aphorisms such as, “history doesn’t always repeat itself, but it rhymes,” or Napoleonic maxims that exalt the moral dimensions of war. By its nature, this camp looks to the past, but that should not diminish its value when imagining the future. For example, while Adolf Hitler’s Blitzkrieg may have caught the last-war-focused French Army off guard in 1940, Germany’s breakthrough was nothing more than a strategic penetration that utilized armor in the maneuver. Considering Alexander the Great favored similar tactics at Boetia and Gaugamela in the fourth century B.C., the concept of a penetrating maneuver is certainly not new. Germany was creative enough to find a new way of doing something very old, thanks in part to the musings of Major General J.F.C. Fuller and Sir B.H. Liddell Hart, both historians in their own right.

Still, history is not a how-to manual, and the many insights it offers are not always transferable to the present. Historians like Sir Michael Howard and Margaret MacMillan tell us that history cannot be a guide for the future, only a window into existing and often complex truths. Indeed, the traditionalist might abuse history by grasping at obscure references and linking them to modern precedent in the hopes of anticipating outcomes. Worse still, some may draw the wrong lessons from history entirely, as U.S. officials Doug Feith and Paul Wolfowitz did by painting Saddam Hussein as a sort of Middle East Hitler to help justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The historian alone is prone to miss opportunities exclusively in the wheelhouse of prophets, such as those related to emerging panoptic digital strategies employed by the Chinese military, thereby overlooking critical vulnerabilities to mobility. Traditionalists may also fail to recognize the opportunities in an opponent’s panoptic designs. Military analysts collaborate on these problems in certain advanced intelligence readiness venues. During a recent Army Foundry Platform course on Fort Bragg, North Carolina, intelligence analysts participated in creativity workshops by examining how Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory might influence tactical and operational military challenges. These venues, where minds meet to attack wicked problems, carry us to our third and arguably most important camp—the nexus.

Camp Three: The Nexus

While exercising caution to avoid presentism, the observation of current conflicts in a historical context can and should serve as a muse for creative thought. A key component of the Ukrainian Army’s success against Russia has been its skillful balancing of what has worked with what might work. Small unit tactics, artillery barrages, and demolition of infrastructure such as bridges played as much of a role in Ukraine’s gains as repurposed drones and exploitation of the information space. Though the tank may not be dead, the proliferation of small, smart, and cheap technologies is a revolution in its infancy with implications not yet clear to observers. Ukraine found a way to allow these truths to coexist rather than pitting them against each other.

Recent developments in historical research may present opportunities to nurture such thinking elsewhere. One of these developments is the increasing popularity of applied history and the study of social or cultural military history as opposed to purely operational military history. Founded in 2016, Niall Ferguson and Graham Allison’s Applied History Project at Harvard University is a prominent example of the growing interest in the field. At the very least, applied history provides the contextual framework to help leaders close the cognitive gaps between what is possible and what is probable. Military unit historians and local university faculty, for example, are woefully underutilized resources in creative defense initiatives.

There is already a foundation of nexus-type programs within the U.S. military. Commanders simply need to expand upon them. At the service level, the Association of the United States Army’s annual Leader Solarium, inspired by President Eisenhower’s creative approach to wargaming Cold War strategy, is one example. The U.S. Army Mad Scientist Initiative’s Back to the Future conference is another, one that seems to be closest to the mark in terms of bringing traditionalists and futurists together. Yet most service members are unaware of these valuable platforms and therefore uninterested in any potential benefit provided by their existence. Some units have pursued their own innovation programs, such as the XVIII Airborne Corps’ Dragon’s Lair concept and the 82nd Airborne Division’s new-founded Innovation Lab. Many of these platforms, however, tend to attract a certain type of leader, namely, the futurist—which places them at risk of turning into self-licking ice cream cones. What these venues lack is an anchor point of deep historical knowledge that prevents them from descending into echo chambers of futurist wish lists where every attendee becomes a hammer in search of a nail.

In the spirit of Dr. Leonard Wong’s “fashion tips for the field grade” paper, there is value in questioning popular assumptions about future war because the evidence suggests that as a species we are not very good at it. Yet certain truths related to the nature of war are timeless. Integrating traditionalists into these events and others, such as digital and physical training domains at the tactical and operational levels, could better position the United States to exploit the creativity shortfalls of its pacing challenge, the PLA.

China’s Creative Capacity Woes

Despite China’s Central Military Commission elevating the status of its Science and Technology Commission in 2020, creativity is not a typical pillar of Beijing’s political system. Historical analyses comparing free nations to authoritarian ones indicate that the latter tend to stifle creativity because they see it as a threat. Divergent thoughts might challenge the legitimacy of the ruling party’s methods. Outside of procuring creativity from western democracies, there is likely a cultural terminus to the PLA’s innovative potential. When coupled with recruiting challenges, a fledgling noncommissioned officer corps, and the Biden administration’s recent embargo on semiconductor sales to China, Beijing’s creative capacity could lead to stagnation at war.

Lacking battlefield experience this century, it is hard to assess China’s ability to wage combined arms warfare, but its highly regimented, top-down command structure may provide clues as to how it would adapt in combat. Indeed, despite China’s efforts to improve its joint military capabilities, the Pentagon’s 2021 report on the matter highlighted several consistent shortcomings, including the inability of Chinese commanders to “understand higher authorities’ intentions” and “manage unexpected situations.”

The war in Ukraine might offer some insight as well, where a similarly rigid leadership model contributed to Russia’s poor performance. A supposedly capable modern army driven by New Generation Warfare and the military mind of Valery Gerasimov struggled in the face of a motivated, well-organized, and well-supported Ukrainian defense. Distributed mission command and flattened communications allowed low-level leaders in the Ukrainian Army to seek out creative solutions and test them in battle. In addition to myriad other problems, the Russian army had trouble adapting to an influx of Western arms packages, the rapid loss of its general officers, and a creative, resilient opponent. These vulnerabilities may not be exclusive to Russia.

Conclusion

The United States is uniquely positioned to use creativity as a mechanism that targets the weaknesses of its pacing challenge. A nexus camp could link futurists and traditionalists in joint force transformation with creativity as its nucleus. The U.S. defense enterprise has the human talent and the organizational capacity to turn creativity into a force multiplier through a program that brings these two camps together.

Finding this balance is critical to operationalizing U.S. strategic documents. It prevents the joint force from running so far ahead of itself that its aspirations become dislocated from reality while maintaining an anchor point in the form of what history tells us is humanly possible. After all, future war conditions are not often apparent until war is present, at which time those in the fight must adapt to them. A creative, well-balanced military that fuses the acumen of prophets and historians will, like the Ukrainian Army, get results on the battlefields of tomorrow.

Michael P. Ferguson is a U.S. Army officer with experience in various combat, staff, and security cooperation assignments throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. His analysis has been featured in more than a dozen publications and he is co-author of a forthcoming military history of Alexander the Great.

Nicholas A. Rife is a U.S. Army senior intelligence technician with a wide range of global intelligence experience. He is currently the Army’s all-source intelligence functional lead and senior technical instructor at the U.S. Army Foundry Platform.

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors alone and do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Army, U.S. Department of Defense, or U.S. government.

Image: Reuters

The National Interest · by Michael P. Ferguson · November 17, 2022

2. Biden set to approve expansive authorities for Pentagon to carry out cyber operations

Excerpt:

“In the past, the U.S. has had trouble in joint operations because State has taken a long time to to give their assent and that’s a handicap.”

James Lewis, Center for Strategic and International Studies

Biden set to approve expansive authorities for Pentagon to carry out cyber operations

cyberscoop.com · by Suzanne Smalley · November 17, 2022

Written by Suzanne Smalley

Nov 17, 2022 | CYBERSCOOP

The Defense Department has largely won out in a long-running bureaucratic battle with the State Department over retaining its expansive powers to launch cyber operations without significant input from other government agencies, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

While the exact details of which authorities to carry out operations in cyberspace the Pentagon will retain are classified, sources familiar with the matter say that the DOD has succeeded in holding on to key parts of the expansive authorities granted to it by the Trump administration in 2018 to carry out online operations with less oversight.

President Biden is set to sign off on these authorities in a newly revised version of National Security Policy Memorandum-13, according to a government official with direct knowledge of the discussions.

First instituted in 2018, NSPM-13 allowed the delegation of “well-defined authorities to the secretary of defense to conduct time-sensitive military operations in cyberspace,” according to a 2020 speech given by Paul Ney, then the general counsel for the DOD. Designed by President Trump’s National Security Council and promoted by then National Security Adviser John Bolton, NSPM-13 was intended to streamline the approval process for cyber operations that Bolton describes in his memoir as “frozen solid” when he arrived in office.

These authorities were used perhaps most famously in 2018 to disrupt internet access at a Russian troll farm infamous for its role in spreading disinformation around the 2016 election and have more recently played a role in countering Russian cyber operations in Ukraine.

The State Department and other executive branch agencies have long bristled at what they see as the outsize power and authority NSPM-13 grants DOD. NSPM-13, in their view, elevates military prerogatives in cyberspace over those of civilian agencies and fails to adequately consider the impact of military cyber operations on human rights, diplomacy and private-sector infrastructure.

Running offensive cyber operations often requires the use of such private-sector infrastructure in foreign countries, and NSPM-13 largely prevents the State Department from informing these foreign countries — and slowing down operations.

“In the past, the U.S. has had trouble in joint operations because State has taken a long time to to give their assent and that’s a handicap.”

James Lewis, Center for Strategic and International Studies

Debate over the revision has raged behind closed doors since May, when CyberScoop reported an initial deal had been forged giving the State Department additional but limited power to weigh in on cyber operations, according to a source briefed on the discussions. In recent months, the department has continued to push for more authority, but the White House has ultimately largely sided with the Pentagon and is not giving the State Department nearly as much sway as it would like, the source said.

“The debate was: ‘How much authority does State have to lay across the railroad tracks?’” the source said. “That’s been the debate in the past few months, and it’s moved in DOD’s direction.”

The Pentagon, State Department and U.S. Cyber Command did not respond to requests for comment. “The administration hasn’t changed our approach to or ability to use offensive cyber operations as a tool of national power when needed,” a senior administration official told CyberScoop.

As the Pentagon and State Department have sparred over authorities, Cyber Command’s operations in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have boosted DOD’s position in the interagency fight. By moving quickly to counter Russian operations, Cyber Command has helped to blunt Russia’s abilities in cyberspace, and these efforts have been used to make the case that the Pentagon should retain its authorities, according to a source briefed on the discussions.

“CyberCom has been able to notch a bunch of good wins, justifying the argument that having more flexibility, being able to move faster really does help operations,” the source said.

Throughout the Obama era, the State Department hobbled cyber operations, said James Lewis, who directs the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “In the past, the U.S. has had trouble in joint operations because State has taken a long time to to give their assent, and that’s a handicap.”

The State Department has worked to bolster its staff working on cyber diplomacy issues, but experts say the department has historically lacked expertise on this issue relative to other agencies.

In 2017, the Trump administration shuttered the State Department office dedicated to cybersecurity and transferred its staff and responsibilities to another bureau. It is only recently that the State Department has stood up a cyber-focused unit. The department’s Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy began operating in April, and Nate Fick, the ambassador at large for cyberspace and digital policy, was only confirmed in September.

cyberscoop.com · by Suzanne Smalley · November 17, 2022

3. FBI head: China has ‘stolen more’ US data ‘than every other nation combined’

FBI head: China has ‘stolen more’ US data ‘than every other nation combined’

BY CHLOE FOLMAR - 11/15/22 7:00 PM ET

https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/3737251-fbi-head-china-has-stolen-more-us-data-than-every-other-nation-combined/?utm_source=pocket_saves

FBI Director Christopher Wray said Tuesday at a House committee hearing that China has stolen more American data “than every other nation combined.”

“China’s vast hacking program is the world’s largest, and they have stolen more Americans’ personal and business data than every other nation combined,” Wray said at the House Homeland Security Committee’s annual worldwide threats hearing.

The director, who served as an assistant attorney general under former President George W. Bush, emphasized that the U.S. has a “national security concern” when it comes to China.

Wray referenced the prevalence of TikTok and its parent company ByteDance, based in China, as one major intelligence concern.

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“They include the possibility that the Chinese government could use to control data collection on millions of users or control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations if they so chose or to control software on millions of devices, which gives the opportunity to potentially tactically compromised personal devices,” Wray said of the problems posed by TikTok.

There are still unresolved questions about data sharing between Chinese companies and the government in Beijing, said Wray, adding that “there’s a number of concerns there as to what is actually happening and actually being done.”

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and National Counterterrorism Center Director Christine Abizaid also testified at Tuesday’s hearing.

4. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, NOVEMBER 17 (Putin's War)

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-17

Key Takeaways

Russian forces conducted another massive wave of missile strikes across Ukraine on November 17
Russian forces in eastern Kherson Oblast are likely partially vulnerable to a Ukrainian interdiction campaign such as the one Ukrainian forces successfully exploited to retake western Kherson Oblast.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree changing the composition of the Russian Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights (HRC) on November 17.
Russian sources continued to claim that Ukrainian troops are conducting counteroffensive operations along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
Russian forces continued ground attacks around Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and southwest of Donetsk City.
Ukrainian troops continued targeting Russian military assets and concentration areas on the east bank of Kherson Oblast and in the rear areas of Zaporizhia Oblast on November 17.
Russian authorities continue to face discontented mobilized personnel and low morale on the front lines.
Russian occupation officials continued to destroy Ukrainian culture in Russian-occupied territories.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, NOVEMBER 17

Nov 17, 2022 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

understandingwar.org

Karolina Hird, Riley Bailey, Yekaterina Klepanchuk, and Frederick W. Kagan

November 17, 7:45pm ET

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

Russian forces conducted another massive wave of missile strikes across Ukraine on November 17. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops launched five airstrikes and 25 cruise missile strikes at civilian infrastructure objects in Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, Kharkiv, Zaporizhia, Dnipropetrovsk, and Mykolaiv oblasts throughout the day.[1] Ukrainian Air Force Command noted that Ukrainian air defense forces destroyed four cruise missiles, five Shahed-136 drones, and two Kh-59 guided missiles.[2] Russian forces conducted the largest missile attack since the start of the war on November 15, and as ISW has previously assessed, such missile campaigns are consuming Russia’s already depleted store of precision munitions.[3]

Russian forces in eastern Kherson Oblast are likely partially vulnerable to a Ukrainian interdiction campaign such as the one Ukrainian forces successfully exploited to retake western Kherson Oblast. Several major ground lines of communication (GLOCs) run through eastern Kherson Oblast into other Russian-controlled areas in southern Ukraine: the southern T2202 Nova Kahkovka-Armiansk route, the southeastern P47 Kakovkha-Henichesk route, and the M14 highway that runs eastward into Melitopol, Berdyansk, and Mariupol. Geolocated satellite imagery indicates that Russian troops are establishing defensive positions along some of these critical GLOCs, and social media reporting indicates that Ukrainian strikes have already begun targeting Russian concentration areas and military assets on these routes.[4] The limited number of high-quality roads and railways in this area, particularly connecting Crimea to the mainland, creates potential bottlenecks that could be vulnerable to Ukrainian interdiction efforts that would gradually degrade the Russian ability to continue supplying its grouping in eastern Kherson Oblast and other areas of southern Ukraine. ISW previously reported the targeting of similar bottlenecks along key GLOCS--not just the bridges across the Dnipro River--during Ukraine’s Kherson counteroffensive in late August to mid-October culminated in the Russian withdrawal from the west bank of Kherson Oblast to positions further south of the Dnipro River. Ukrainian forces will likely find it harder to achieve such dramatic effects in eastern Kherson but may be able to disrupt Russian efforts to solidify and hold their new defensive lines.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree changing the composition of the Russian Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights (HRC) on November 17.[5] The decree notably expels four Russian human rights activists, including Ekaterina Vinokurova, who wrote a piece criticizing the rise of “patriotic” Telegram channels and nationalist milbloggers who have cornered the information space against opposition outlets who deviate from the predominant Kremlin line of the war in Ukraine.[6] Russian media previously reported that Vinokurova and other members of the HRC appealed to the Russian Investigative Committee to look into the widely circulated video of the execution of a former Wagner Group fighter who reportedly defected to Ukraine.[7] Putin’s new appointees to the HRC include a slate of Russian political and proxy members and notably Sasha Kots, a prominent milblogger and war correspondent who has been heavily involved in covering Russian operations in Ukraine.[8] Kots most recently called for Russia to maintain massive missile strikes against critical Ukrainian infrastructure on November 17.[9] This decree likely represents the Kremlin’s wider effort to stifle domestic civil opposition by continuing to platform prominent voices in the information space that propagate the Kremlin’s line on the war in Ukraine.

Key Takeaways

Russian forces conducted another massive wave of missile strikes across Ukraine on November 17
Russian forces in eastern Kherson Oblast are likely partially vulnerable to a Ukrainian interdiction campaign such as the one Ukrainian forces successfully exploited to retake western Kherson Oblast.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree changing the composition of the Russian Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights (HRC) on November 17.
Russian sources continued to claim that Ukrainian troops are conducting counteroffensive operations along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
Russian forces continued ground attacks around Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and southwest of Donetsk City.
Ukrainian troops continued targeting Russian military assets and concentration areas on the east bank of Kherson Oblast and in the rear areas of Zaporizhia Oblast on November 17.
Russian authorities continue to face discontented mobilized personnel and low morale on the front lines.
Russian occupation officials continued to destroy Ukrainian culture in Russian-occupied territories.

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

Ukrainian Counteroffensives—Eastern Ukraine
Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and two supporting efforts);
Russian Subordinate Main Effort—Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
Russian Supporting Effort—Southern Axis
Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
Activities in Russian-occupied Areas

Ukrainian Counteroffensives (Ukrainian efforts to liberate Russian-occupied territories)

Eastern Ukraine: (Eastern Kharkiv Oblast-Western Luhansk Oblast)

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in the directions of Svatove and Kreminna on November 17. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian air and artillery strikes prevented Ukrainian forces from attacking in the direction of Novoselivske and Kolomychikha (both within 15km northwest of Svatove); near Makiivka, Ploshchanka, and Chervonopopivka (all within 22km northwest of Kreminna); and near Dibrova (5km southwest of Kreminna).[10] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on November 17 that Ukrainian forces also repelled Russian assaults within 16km northwest of Svatove near Stelmakhivka and south of Kreminna near Bilohorivka.[11] Russian mibloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces tried to attack Russian defenses near Svatove and conducted offensive operations near Kuzemivka (13km northwest of Svatove) on November 16.[12] A milblogger cited a BARS-13 (Russian Combat Reserve) commander who claimed that Ukrainian forces are preparing for a large offensive along the Orlianka-Zatizhne-Svatove line, although ISW offers no assessments about future Ukrainian operations.[13]

The BARS-13 commander also claimed that Ukrainian forces tested Russian defenses near Kreminna on November 16 and that Ukrainian operations south of Kreminna have created another active sector of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Luhansk Oblast.[14] Another BARS-13 source claimed that fighting is ongoing 12km south of Kreminna in Bilohorivka, Luhansk Oblast as of November 16.[15] Russian sources also claimed that Ukrainian forces struck Myrne, Zymohiria, Starobilsk, Svatove, Biloukrakyne, and Kadiivka in Luhansk Oblast with HIMARS rockets.[16] Ukrainian forces will likely continue to target Russian military concentrations and logistics in Luhansk Oblast as the eastern Ukrainian counteroffensive progresses.

Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort—Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Russian forces continued to prioritize offensive operations in Donetsk Oblast on November 17. Ukrainian Deputy Chief of the Main Operational Directorate, Brigadier General Oleksiy Hromov, stated that the most difficult situation is in eastern Ukraine, where Russian forces are attempting to cross the administrative border of Donetsk Oblast.[17] Hromov stated that there have been 500 combat clashes between Ukrainian and Russian forces in Donetsk Oblast within the last week alone.[18] ISW has previously reported that the Russian military is likely trying to use mobilized personnel and troops who were previously deployed on the west bank of Kherson Oblast to revitalize the Donetsk offensive but will likely continue to fail to achieve operationally significant gains.[19]

Russian forces continued offensive operations around Bakhmut on November 17. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian Forces repelled Russian assaults within 34km northeast of Bakhmut near Verkhnokamianske and Soledar.[20] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces also attacked Vesele and Bilhorivka to cut the road in the Soledar area.[21] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Wagner Group formations southeast of Bakhmut retain control over Vesela Dolyna, Odradivka, the western outskirts of Opytne, and the southeastern outskirts of Bakhmut.[22]

Russian forces continued offensive operations in the Avdiivka-Donetsk City area and western Donetsk Oblast on November 17. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults within 28km southwest of Avdiivka near Nevelske, Marinka, and Pervomaiske.[23] A Russian milblogger claimed that the 100th Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) People’s Militia established control over a stronghold on the southeastern outskirts of Nevelske that they claimed would allow Russian forces to control the Krasnohorivka-Pervomaiske-Avdiivka supply road.[24] The Russian milblogger also claimed that Russian forces southwest of Avdiivka are clearing the northern outskirts of Opytne and the eastern part of Vodiane.[25] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces attacked a Ukrainian stronghold within the city limits of Avdiivka itself.[26] Russian milbloggers claimed that the developed network of Ukrainian strongholds in the Avdiivka-Donetsk City area makes the Russian advance in the area particularly slow.[27] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) also claimed that Russian forces took full control of the road between Pavlivka and Mykilske (47km southwest of Donetsk City).[28] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces deployed 400 personnel from the Rosgvardia rapid response special forces units to Mariupol, Donetsk Oblast.[29] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Russian forces continued routine indirect fire along the line of contact in Donetsk Oblast on November 17.[30]

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

Note: ISW will report on activities in Kherson Oblast as part of the Southern Axis in this and subsequent updates. Ukraine’s counteroffensive in right-bank Kherson Oblast has accomplished its stated objectives, so ISW will not present a Southern Ukraine counteroffensive section until Ukrainian forces resume counteroffensives in southern Ukraine.

Russian forces continued to conduct defensive operations on the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast on November 17. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Russian forces are attempting to secure safe supply lines on the east bank and withdrawing further into the rear of Kherson Oblast to avoid Ukrainian fire damage.[31] Deputy Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the Ukrainian General Staff Brigadier General Oleksiy Hromov noted that Ukrainian control of the west (right) bank of the Dnipro River allows Ukrainian troops to control territory near the occupied Crimean Peninsula (presumably by fire, since Ukrainian forces are not yet operating on the east bank of the river), and that Ukrainian troops are continuing to target Russian positions on the east bank at maximum range.[32]

Geolocated satellite imagery from November 15 shows that Russian troops have constructed additional defensive positions in Chkalove, a settlement approximately 55km south of the current Dnipro River frontline.[33]

Ukrainian troops continued targeting Russian military assets and concentration areas on the east bank of Kherson Oblast and in the rear areas of Zaporizhia Oblast on November 17.[34] Social media reports indicate that Ukrainian strikes hit Chaplynka (50km south of the Dnipro River) and Kalanchak (58km south of the Dnipro River).[35] Footage posted by Ukrainian military sources shows Ukrainian troops striking a Russian armored personnel carrier in Oleshky, just south of Kherson City.[36] A Russian media outlet additionally reported Ukrainian strikes on an administrative building in Nova Kakhovka.[37] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that a Ukrainian strike destroyed Russian headquarters in Melitopol, Zaporizhia Oblast.[38]

Russian forces targeted areas in Zaporizhia, Dnipropetrovsk, and Odesa oblasts during a missile strike on November 17. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Russian forces launched air and sea-based missiles at infrastructure facilities in Odesa Oblast on the morning of November 17.[39] Russian missiles additionally struck critical infrastructure in Dnipro City, which the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed was a defense enterprise.[40] Russian and Ukrainian sources additionally reported a Russian missile strike on infrastructure in Zaporizhzhia City and the Vilniansk Raion of Zaporizhia Oblast and Ochakiv, Mykolaiv Oblast.[41] Russian sources reported that Russian forces shot down a Ukrainian drone near Feodosiia, Russian-occupied Crimea.[42] Russian forces otherwise continued routine artillery strikes along the line of contact in western Zaporizhia, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kherson oblasts.[43]

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

Russian authorities are continuing force-generation efforts across occupied Ukrainian territory and the Russian Federation. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian officials are preparing a draft law that provides for the legalization of conscription for military service for Ukrainian citizens in the temporarily occupied territories who possess a Russian passport from the spring of 2023.[44] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Russian forces recruited about 650 prisoners from correctional institutions in the Russian Federation during the previous week and sent them for training in Rostov Oblast.[45] A Russian source reported that the military registration and enlistment offices in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug will continue issuing summonses to all persons liable for military service, allegedly to verify information on eligibility for service.[46] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) continues to share videos of conscripted soldiers being called up for service in Murmansk Oblast, Khabarovsk Krai, Saint Petersburg, Sevastopol, and Stavropol Krai as well as training in Stavropol and Chelyabinsk Oblast.[47]

Multiple sources reported the movement of Russian military equipment in the temporarily occupied territories, presumably in support of incoming Russian recruits. Video footage shows Russian forces unloading heavy equipment, including tanks, off of trains in Bilokurakyne, Luhansk Oblast.[48] Video footage also shows Russian trucks carrying prefabricated concrete bunkers near Melitopol and Russian forces unloading self-propelled artillery in the Luhansk Oblast.[49]

Russian authorities continue to face discontented mobilized personnel and low morale on the front lines. A Russian source reported that mobilized soldiers from Novosibirsk Oblast wrote reports stating that they received insufficient training and therefore refused to fight without further training.[50] Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Defense Hanna Malyar stated in a briefing that Russian forces are experiencing an increase in panic and declining morale as a result of successful Ukrainian counteroffensive operations.[51] Malyar stated that Russian forces are engaging in mass abuse of alcohol and in some cases, committing self-mutilation to leave the front lines. Details continue to emerge about holding cells for deserting mobilized Russian personnel in the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, with one source identifying eight such cells across the regions.[52]

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

Russian occupation officials continued to destroy Ukrainian culture in Russian-occupied territories on November 17. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian occupation officials seized all Ukrainian history textbooks in Enerhodar, Zaporizhia Oblast, and plan to destroy them.[53] Social media sources amplified pictures posted on November 17 showing Ukrainian books and portraits in a waste pile in an unspecified location in Luhansk Oblast.[54] The Ukrainian Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov reported that Russian occupation educational institutions teach Ukrainian schoolchildren about the greatness of the Russian Federation and force them to write letters to Russian military personnel.[55] Fedorov reported that Russian occupation officials plan to introduce a new curriculum emphasizing that Ukrainians and Russian are ”one people” and justifying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.[56] Russian occupation officials will likely continue to enact measures aimed at minimizing and destroying Ukrainian cultural identity as Russia pursues what ISW has previously assessed likely amounts to a deliberate ethnic cleansing campaign.[57]

Russian occupation officials and forces continued to intensify filtration measures and restrictions on movement in Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine on November 17. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian occupation officials and forces are increasing filtration measures in Rubizhne, Luhansk Oblast as well as in the Kakhovka raion in Kherson Oblast.[58] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Russian forces have instituted restrictions on movement in Rubizhne from the directions of Kreminna and Varvarivka in Luhansk Oblast.[59] A Russian source reported that Kherson Oblast occupation head Vladimir Saldo signed a decree on November 15 instituting a new network of checkpoints in Russian-occupied Kherson Oblast to prevent the ”export” of special equipment and trucks from the Oblast.[60] Russian occupation officials and forces will likely continue to intensify filtration measures and restrictions on movement as the Ukrainian counteroffensive progresses.

Russian occupation officials continued to coerce residents of occupied areas of Ukraine into supporting the Russian war effort Zaporizhia Oblast occupation head Yevgeny Balitsky stated on November 17 that residents of occupied areas are receiving a full range of social support measures for donating blood.[61] Balitsky stated that his administration intends to offer 736-ruble ($12) payments to popularize blood donations.[62] The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on November 17 that many companies in Russian-occupied Donetsk Oblast have received a plan with a designated number of employees who must donate blood, indicating that the blood donation measures may not be voluntary.[63] Russian occupation officials are likely pursuing some level of a coercive blood donation scheme to aid a substantial number of wounded Russian military personnel in occupied territories and address the Russian military’s likely shortage of blood supplies.

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

[6] https://yarnovosti dot com/news/mejdu-molotom-i-nakovalney-o-chem-govorit-reakciya-gosudarstva-na-kazn-byvshego-vagnerovca/; https://t.me/ekvinokurova/22598

[50] https://ngs dot ru/text/world/2022/11/16/71817767/

[51] https://armyinform(dot)com.ua/2022/11/17/na-foni-ukrayinskyh-peremog-okupanty-panikuyut-masovo-zlovzhyvayut-alkogolem-ta-zdijsnyuyut-samokalichennya/

understandingwar.org

5. Biden set to approve expansive authorities for Pentagon to carry out cyber operations

Excerpt:

“In the past, the U.S. has had trouble in joint operations because State has taken a long time to to give their assent and that’s a handicap.”

James Lewis, Center for Strategic and International Studies

Biden set to approve expansive authorities for Pentagon to carry out cyber operations

cyberscoop.com · by Suzanne Smalley · November 17, 2022

Written by Suzanne Smalley

Nov 17, 2022 | CYBERSCOOP

“In the past, the U.S. has had trouble in joint operations because State has taken a long time to to give their assent and that’s a handicap.”

James Lewis, Center for Strategic and International Studies

“CyberCom has been able to notch a bunch of good wins, justifying the argument that having more flexibility, being able to move faster really does help operations,” the source said.

The State Department has worked to bolster its staff working on cyber diplomacy issues, but experts say the department has historically lacked expertise on this issue relative to other agencies.

cyberscoop.com · by Suzanne Smalley · November 17, 2022

6. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (17.11.22) CDS comments on key events

CDS Daily brief (17.11.22) CDS comments on key events

Humanitarian aspect:

Two Ukrainian nuclear power plants, Khmelnytskyi (KHAES) and Rivne (RAES), were affected by the massive Russian missile attack on November 15, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Mariano Grossi said.

The morning of November 17 started with an air raid warning throughout Ukraine which lasted 3,5 hours. Russia launched another massive missile attack on Ukrainian critical infrastructure.

- An infrastructure object was hit in Odesa Oblast even before the air raid siren sounded.

- In the Izyum district of Kharkiv Oblast, Russian missiles hit a critical infrastructure facility, injuring at least 8 people, including police officers. The first strike injured 4 employees of the enterprise and the second one was launched when police officers came to examine the scene.

- Oleksiy Chernyshov, head of Naftogaz Ukraine, said that the gas production infrastructure of JSC Ukrgazvydobuvannya in the east of Ukraine was attacked. Several facilities were destroyed and several others were damaged as a result of the attacks.

- On the morning of November 17, several rockets hit two infrastructure objects in the city of Dnipro. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said later that the Pivdenmash plant was bombed. The Southern Machine-Building Plant (Pivdenmash) in Dnipro is an enterprise for the production of rocket and space equipment and technologies for defense, scientific and national economic purposes.

- On the morning of November 17, air defense forces shot down four cruise missiles and 5 Iranian-made "Shahed" kamikaze drones over Kyiv.

The large-scale destruction of Ukraine's energy facilities caused by Russia on November 15 and 17 may lead to power outages for several days and "scheduled power-ups" in some areas for only a few hours, DTEK Executive Director Dmytro Sakharuk said. According to DTEK, about 40% of consumers in Ukraine are currently without electricity. And when the situation will change, it is impossible to say yet. Partial restoration work has already begun, but in some places, rubble is still being dismantled, sometimes equipment is destroyed, in some cases, the territory needs to be demined, Saharuk said.

In Donetsk Oblast, there will be no heating in 11 communities located along the front line because it’s impossible to restore heating there, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the Donetsk Oblast Military Administration, said. He said that residents of these communities are offered to move further away from the frontline to the specially prepared facilities.

A total of more than 23,000 citizens were evacuated from the liberated territory of Kharkiv Oblast, Deputy Prime Minister - Minister of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine Iryna Vereshchuk said.

Russian forces continued shelling Ukrainian cities within the reach of their artillery and rocket forces.

- About 70 Russian shells hit the Nikopol amalgamated community in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast on the night of November 16-17. 20 civilian buildings were damaged in the city of Nikopol as well as a gas pipeline and electricity grid. 6 thousand customers remained without electricity. In addition, the pumping station of the local water supply was cut off leaving more than 40,000 families without water.

- A Russian missile was fired at Vilnansk, Zaporizhzhya Oblast. It hit a residential building where 3 families (about 10 people) lived. Rescue workers working on the rubble confirmed the death of 4 people.

- At night and in the morning of November 17, the Russian Armed Forces launched missile strikes on the Kupyansk district, Kharkiv Oblast. As a result of the shelling, an enterprise in the city of Kupyansk was completely destroyed.

- Russian rockets injured 23 people in Dnipro. 15 of them are in the hospital. One was seriously injured. Apart from the industrial enterprise, the Russian attack damaged houses, trolleybuses and a busy street.

The police ensured the restoration of law and order in 577 towns and villages in the liberated territories of Donetsk, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv and Kherson Oblasts. The operation of 15 police units has been restored, and 3,559 war crimes have been documented. The bodies of 991 civilians were found, the Head of the Department of Organizational Analytical Support and Operational Response of the National Police of Ukraine (NPU), Police General of the Third Rank Oleksiy Sergeev said.

In the liberated Snihurivka, Mykolaiv Oblast, a person hit a mine for the second time in a week, head of the Snihurivka city military administration, Ivan Kukhta said. He warned the residents of the recently liberated territories of the danger of moving around the city before the territory is inspected and cleared of mines.

The Russian military took away about 15,000 museum exhibits that they had stolen from the recently liberated territories of Kherson Oblast, the Permanent Representative of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea Tamila Tasheva said at a briefing. Since May 12, the Russian military conducted targeted raids on the homes of local historians, collectors, and antique shops. Everything that has even the slightest artistic or historical value was selected. They were guided by information received from local collaborators. The artifacts were taken to the occupied Crimea.

Occupied territories:

The Security Service of Ukraine announced the detention of one of the leaders of the Russian Interior Affairs Directorate for the occupied Kherson Oblast. He is charged with collaborationism, the name of the detainee was not reported.

Ukrainians continue to resist the occupation despite Russian repression, the Center of National Resistance reported. In Berdyansk, Zaporizhzhya Oblast, teenagers tore down the Russian flag from the headquarters of Putin's United Russia party, which the Russians placed in the occupied center of public initiatives on Shevchenko Boulevard, 12. At the same time, in the village of Yelyseivka, Berdyansk district, unknown persons hung the Ukrainian flag over the administrative building in the village.

Operational situation

(Please note that this section of the Brief is mainly on the previous day's (November 16) Developments)

It is the 267^th day of the strategic air-ground offensive operation of the Russian Armed Forces against Ukraine (in the official terminology of the Russian Federation – "operation to protect Donbas"). Over the past day, units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces have repelled Russian attacks in the areas around Stelmakhivka and Bilohorivka in Luhansk Oblast and Verkhnokamyanske, Soledar, Nevelske, Mar'inka and Pervomaiske in Donetsk Oblast.

The Russian military does not stop shelling towns and villages and positions of the Ukrainian troops along the contact line. Over the past day, the Russian forces have launched 4 missile strikes and 6 air strikes and fired over 40 MLRS rounds. Civilian infrastructure objects in the city of Zaporizhzhya were hit by a missile. The towns of Nikopol and Chervonohryhorivka of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast were affected by the Russian barrel and jet artillery fire.

The Republic of Belarus continues to support the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, providing it with infrastructure, territory, and airspace. The threat of missile and air strikes on the territory of Ukraine persists.

Near the state border, the Russian military fired mortars and barrel artillery at Starytsa and Ambarne in Kharkiv Oblast.

The Russian occupiers do not stop trying to plant their own and destroy Ukrainian culture on the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine. According to available information, all textbooks on the history of Ukraine were seized in the city of Enerhodar, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, to be destroyed. Upon request from the Russia-installed authorities of the temporarily occupied territory of Donetsk Oblast, the so-called "honorary titles" were awarded to the cities of Horlivka and Mariupol by the decrees of the President of the Russian Federation.

During the past day, the aviation of the Ukrainian Defense Forces struck 2 positions of the Russian anti-aircraft missile systems.

The rocket and artillery troops’ units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces hit 2 control points, 6 areas of manpower, weapons and military equipment concentration, 3 ammunition depots, and 3 other important enemy targets.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin noted on November 16 that the NASAMS anti-aircraft missile system provided by the US has 100% success in intercepting Russian missiles.

The morale and psychological state of the Russian troops in the Luhansk and Donetsk Oblast remain extremely low. Significant losses on the battlefield, mobilization to the front without proper training, and poor supplies led to incidents of desertion. The independent Russian media ASTRA reported that the Russian authorities hold about 300 Russian conscripts in a basement in Zaitseve, Luhansk Oblast, for refusing to return to the front line. ASTRA reported that it had discovered at least seven such places of detention for Russian citizens in Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts.

The Russian occupation authorities continued mobilization in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. Russia is preparing to mobilize the holders of Russian passports in the south of the occupied territories since no volunteers were found. The occupying authorities mobilized 70% of municipal employees in Makiivka and Donetsk of Donetsk Oblast. They conduct a door- to-door mobilization campaign in Kadiivka, and search for Luhansk residents who want to avoid mobilization.

Kharkiv direction

• Topoli - Siversk section: approximate length of combat line - 154 km, number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 23-28, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 5.5 km;

• Deployed enemy BTGs: 26th, 153rd, and 197th tank regiments (TR), 245th motorized rifle regiment (MRR) of the 47th tank division (TD), 6th and 239th TRs, 228th MRR of the 90th TD, 25th and 138th separate motorized rifle brigades (SMRBr) of the 6th Combined Arms (CA) Army, 27th SMRBr of the 1st Tank Army, 252nd and 752nd MRRs of the 3rd MRD, 1st, 13th, and 12th TRs, 423rd MRR of the 4th TD, 201st military base, 15th, 21st, 30th SMRBrs of the 2nd CA Army, 35th, 55th and 74th SMRBrs of the 41st CA Army, 275th and 280th MRRs, 11th TR of the 18th MRD of the 11 Army Corps (AC), 7th MRR of the 11th AC, 80th SMRBr of the 14th AC, 2nd and 45th separate SOF brigades of the Airborne Forces, 3rd and 14th separate SOF brigades, military units of the 1st AC of so-called DPR, 2nd and 4th SMRBrs of the 2nd AC, PMC

The Russian military fired at the positions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces in the areas around Kupyansk, Kislivka, Krokhmalne, Berestove, Novoselivske, Stelmakhivka, Makiivka and Ploshanka.

The Ukrainian defense forces continued their counteroffensive in the direction of Svatove and Kreminna near Kuzemivka. They tried to block the section of road and railway in this area, and continued shelling areas of concentration of the units of the Russian Armed Forces and logistical support facilities in Luhansk Oblast. Ukrainian defense forces struck Russian positions in Myrne, Perevalsk, Belourakine and Zymohirya. Ukrainian intelligence groups operate 6 km northwest of Kreminna near Chervonopopivka. Fighting continues 12 km south of Kreminna in Bilohorivka. The Ukrainian attack on the area of concentration of the Russian Armed Forces near Denizhnykove killed and wounded at least 50 Russian soldiers.

Russian airstrikes prevented Ukrainian troops from conducting an attack near Berestove and Kolisnivka in Kharkiv Oblast and Novoselyvske in Luhansk Oblast, artillery units repelled Ukrainian attacks on Russian positions near Kolomiychikha in Luhansk Oblast.

Donetsk direction

● Siversk - Maryinka section: approximate length of the combat line - 144 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 13-15, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 9.6 km;

● Deployed BTGs: 68th and 163rd tank regiments (TR), 102nd and 103rd motorized rifle regiments of the 150 motorized rifle division, 80th TR of the 90th tank division, 35th, 55th, and 74th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 41st Combined Arms Army, 51st and 137th parachute airborne regiment of the 106 airborne division, 31st separate airborne assault brigade, 61st separate marines brigade of the Joint Strategic Command "Northern Fleet," 336th separate marines brigade of Baltic Fleet, 24th separate SOF brigade, 1st, 3rd, 5th, 15th, and 100th separate motorized rifle brigades, 9th and 11th separate motorized rifle regiment of the 1st Army Corps of the so-called DPR, 6th motorized rifle regiment of the 2nd Army Corps of the so-called LPR, PMCs.

The Russian military shelled the areas around Serebryanka, Spirne, Rozdolivka, Yakovlivka, Soledar, Bakhmutske, Bakhmut, Opytne, Zelenopylla, Andriivka, Kurdyumivka, Ozaryanivka, New York, Krasnohorivka, Kamianka, Avdiivka, Pervomaiske, Nevelske and Maryinka with tanks and artillery.

The Russian military continued to attack near Bakhmut and Avdiivka. The Ukrainian joint forces repelled Russian attacks in the area of Bilohorivka, Vesele, Kurdyumivka, Avdiyivka, Novokalynoe, Pervomaiske, Vodyane, Vremivka, and Novomykhailivka.

In the area of Soledar and Spirne, the positions of the Joint Forces were attacked by the assault units of the "Wagner" PMC and the so-called “aviation of the LNR People's Militia". The Russian occupying forces captured Mayorsk. Up to a half of the fighters of the "1st Horlivka battalion of the DNR" died or were wounded in the fighting, the rest lost morale and the leadership of the so- called "DNR" was forced to disband the unit. The Russina military managed to achieve minor successes in the districts of Nevelske, Vodyane and Pervomayske. Russian troops repelled Ukrainian counterattacks in the area of Kurdyumivka, near Avdiyivka, in the area of Hryhorivka, Stepne.

Zaporizhzhia direction

● Maryinka – Vasylivka section: approximate length of the line of combat - 200 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 17, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 11.7 km;

● Deployed BTGs: 36th separate motorized rifle brigade (SMRBr) of the 29th Combined Arms (CA) Army, 38th and 64th SMRBrs, 69th separate cover brigade of the 35th CA Army, 5th separate tank brigade, 37th of the 36th CA Army, 135th, 429th, 503rd and 693rd motorized rifle regiments (MRR) of the 19th motorized rifle division (MRD) of the 58th CA Army, 70th, 71st and 291st MRRs of the 42nd MRD of the 58th CA Army, 136th SMRB of the 58 CA Army, 46th and 49th machine gun artillery regiments of the 18th machine gun artillery division of the 68th Army Corps (AC), 39th SMRB of the 68th AC, 83th separate airborne assault brigade, 40th and 155th separate

marines brigades, 22nd separate SOF brigade, 1st AC of the so-called DPR, and 2nd AC of the so- called LPR, PMCs.

The Russian military shelled positions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces in the areas of Vuhledar, Bohoyavlenka, Prechystivka, Vremivka, Hulyaipilske, Novoandriivka and Shcherbaky. The Russian military continued regular shelling west of Hulyaipol, in Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts. Russian troops attacked Zaporizhzhia with three S-300 missiles, and shelled Nikopol, Marhanets and Chervonohryhorivka of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.

In the city of Melitopol, Ukrainian soldiers destroyed the headquarters of a Russian military unit. As a result of the actions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces, two ammunition depots, two BM-21 "Grad" and a S-300 anti-aircraft missile complex were destroyed in the areas of Kinsky Rozdory, Vladivka and Blahovishchenka. Also, the enemy lost about 100 in KIA and MIA. Defense forces struck and disabled a railway bridge in Chernihivka, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, and destroyed an ammunition depot in Tokmak.

Tavriysk direction

• Vasylivka – Stanislav section: approximate length of the battle line – 296 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 39, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 7,5 km;

• Deployed BTGs of: the 8th and 49th Combined Arms (CA) Armies; 11th, 103rd, 109th, and 127th rifle regiments of the mobilization reserve of the 1st Army Corps (AC) of the Southern Military District; 35th and 36th CA Armies of the Eastern Military District; 3rd AC of the Western Military District; 90th tank division of the Central Military District; the 22nd AC of the Coastal Forces; the 810th separate marines brigade of the Black Sea Fleet; the 7th and 76th Air assault divisions, the 98th airborne division, and the 11th separate airborne assault brigade of the Airborne Forces.

Zelenivka, Chornobayivka and Kherson were subjected to artillery fire.

Russian troops continued to build fortifications and defensive positions and regroup. They conducted defensive operations on the left bank of the Dnipro River, shelled Dudchany, Kachkarivka, Prydniprovskyi of Kherson Oblast, and Illinka of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.

The Ukrainian defense forces continued shelling Russian troops and logistical supply nodes in the rear areas. They struck Russian positions near Skadovsk (at the intersection of P57 and T2213 roads), Novomykolaivka (on P57 road) and Nova Mayachka (near T2210 road), inflicted more than 50 artillery strikes on the positions of Russian troops on the left bank of the Dnipro River, destroying two Russian ammunition depots in Nova Kakhovka and Oleshky, injuring 17 people and damaging 15 armored vehicles.

In the Kakhovsky district, the Russian forces intensified filtering after the Ukrainian Defense Forces inflicted effective fire damage on their positions. In Kakhovka itself, Russian invaders mine infrastructure and destroy cell towers.

The Russian forces expect a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Hulyaipole-Orihiv area. Russian troops build secondary defensive lines along the canal near Armyansk, Crimea.

Azov-Black Sea Maritime Operational Area:

The forces of the Russian Black Sea Fleet continue to stay ready to carry out two operational tasks against Ukraine:

to project force on the coast and the continental part of Ukraine by launching missile strikes from surface ships, submarines, coastal missile systems, and aircraft at targets in the coastal zone and deep into the territory of Ukraine and readiness for the naval amphibious landing to assist ground forces in the coastal direction;

to control the northwestern part of the Black Sea by blocking Ukrainian ports and preventing the restoration of sea communications (with the exception of the areas of the BSGI "grain initiative") by carrying out attacks on ports and ships and concealed mine laying.

The ultimate goal is to deprive Ukraine of access to the Black Sea and extend and maintain control over the captured territory and Ukraine’s coastal regions.

The Russian fleet keeps 6 surface ships and a submarine at sea. Due to stormy conditions, part of the ships returned to their base points. At sea, ships patrol along the southwestern coast of Crimea. Among them is one submarine carrying 4 Kalibr missiles.

In the Sea of Azov, the Russian military continues to control sea communications, keeping 2 boats on combat duty.

Russian aviation continues to fly from the Crimean airfields of Belbek and Hvardiyske over the northwestern part of the Black Sea. Over the past day, 16 combat aircraft from Belbek and Saki airfields were involved.

After the liberation of the right bank of the Dnipro River, the shelling of Mykolaiv significantly decreased. The S-300 air defense systems, which were shelling the city and port of Mykolaiv, were moved to the left bank of the Dnipro. Meanwhile, Shahid-136 kamikaze drones and cruise missiles continue to be actively used. On November 17, the coastal territories of Ukraine were again attacked by rockets, some of the rockets hit their targets in Odesa.

The Grain Initiative: Oleksandr Kubrakov, Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine: "The initiative for the safe transportation of agricultural products across the Black Sea" has been extended for another 120 days. This decision was made on November 17 in Istanbul. The United Nations and Turkey remained guarantors of the Initiative. Today, Ukrainian agricultural exports remain an effective tool for countering the global food crisis. From August 1, when the Grain Initiative began, to November 17, Ukraine exported more than 11 million tons of agricultural products to 38 countries around the world. This is a significant amount, but not enough. The world market cannot replace Ukrainian agricultural products in the near future. At the same time, it is possible to increase the amount of Ukrainian food for the world. Ukraine officially appealed to the

partners of the Initiative with a proposal to extend the initiative for at least 1 year and to include the port of Mykolaiv.

Ukraine is waiting for their answer. It is also important to ensure the effective operation of the Joint Coordination Center. Ukraine submitted its proposals for solving existing problems. Ukraine must use all the available export potential of Ukrainian ports so that the world quickly receives the necessary amounts of food.

Russian operational losses from 24.02 to 17.11

Personnel - almost 83,110 people (+400);

Tanks 2,878 (+7)

Armored combat vehicles – 5,804 (+7);

Artillery systems – 1,860 (0);

Multiple rocket launchers (MLRS) - 393 (0); Anti-aircraft warfare systems - 209 (0); Vehicles and fuel tanks – 4,362 (+2); Aircraft - 278 (0);

Helicopters – 261 (0);

UAV operational and tactical level – 1,531 (+6); Intercepted cruise missiles - 474 (0);

Boats/ships - 16 (0).

Ukraine, general news

Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law on the protection of the financial system of Ukraine, which provides for the restriction of transactions with residents of the Russian Federation and Belarus, the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine reported.

Ukrainian railway service provider "Ukrzaliznytsia" has started selling symbolic tickets for the first train to Sevastopol within its project “Tickets to victory”. One can get a symbolic ticket now and use it immediately after the liberation of the city. Sevastopol is the sixth city which is currently occupied but to which you can buy Ukrzaliznytsya tickets. So far, Ukrainians have bought 2.5 symbolic tickets to these destinations.

International diplomatic aspect

"Protecting the sky is our priority #1 and topic #1 at Ramstein 7. Together with our partners, we're working on an integrated and echeloned air defense system. We are preparing for winter on the battlefield," Ukraine's Defense Minister tweeted before the Ukraine Defense Contact Group's meeting.

"We're going to maintain our momentum throughout the winter so that Ukraine can continue to consolidate gains and seize the initiative on the battlefield," the US Defense Secretary said. Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, believes that Russia failed in Ukraine

significantly. "They failed to achieve their strategic objectives, and they are now failing to achieve their operational and tactical objectives."

"Since our last contact group, seven countries have either delivered critical air defense systems to Ukraine or committed to sending them," Austin said. The Netherlands and Czechia are helping to modernize 90 T-72-B tanks for Ukraine. The UK pledged to train another 19,000 Ukrainian troops next year. Canada will provide approximately $34 million in additional military aid to Ukraine (satellite imagery, high-resolution drone cameras, winter gear). Finland will provide the most significant tranche of aid so far, worth €55.6 million. Sweden announced a $287 million package that includes air defense systems. In addition to two surface-to-air missile launchers, Spain will send a battery of six light howitzers and provide training for Ukrainian howitzer crews. Greece will send batches of 155 mm shells, while Poland will supply additional ammunition for artillery and tanks, as well as short-range air defense systems.

Meanwhile, Lithuanian citizens crowdfunded $250,000 and bought a naval UAV for the Ukrainian Navy. With "best wishes for peace for the Russian Black Sea Fleet," the drone was named "PEACE Дец" (the interplay of the English word and Russian ending, which means F-up). Now, Andrius Tapinas, a journalist who has already led the initiative of sending the UAF a Bayraktar combat drone, kicked off another bid for yet another UAV for Ukraine.

As a result of worsening relations, Türkiye was kicked out of the F-35 production chain, denied the ability to buy F-35 and some forty F-16s, as well as modernization of almost eighty F-16s it operates. Türkiye's President hopes to solve the issue of purchasing F-16 jets from the United States. In the meantime, his country still hasn't ratified the protocols of Finland and Sweden's accession to NATO.

After claiming that Russia is only after the targets with military value, Putin's spokesperson said, "reluctance of the Ukrainian side to solve the problem, to enter into negotiations" is the reason for continuing missile attacks on energy and other critical infrastructure.

According to DTEK, Ukraine's significant electricity generating and distributing company, about 40% of consumers in Ukraine are currently without electricity. The scale of the damage caused by missile barrages on November 15 and 17 is so significant that Ukrainians might face power outages for several days and "scheduled power-ups" in some areas for only a few hours. It happens while the temperature is within the range of -1 and -6 throughout the coming days.

The Hague District Court found three of the four main suspects guilty of murdering almost 300 passengers and the crew onboard the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over the Donetsk region in 2014. The fourth suspect was acquitted.

Igor Girkin (also known as Strelkov) is among pledged guilty. At the time, a former colonel in Russia's Federal Security Service was a "defense minister" of the Russian proxy entity "Donetsk People's Republic." The MH17 was hit by a Russian-made missile that was fired from a field in

eastern Ukraine. The judges found that Russia had "control" over so-called separatists in Eastern Ukraine in 2014.

The Bellingcat Investigation Team has previously published several reports tracking the Buk-M1 missile launcher to the Russian military unit that sent it into Ukraine (53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, based in Kursk, Russia), as well as reviled the chain of command that involved Russia's Ministry of Defense and its military intelligence agency (the GRU/GU).

In spite of various court decisions and OSIT investigations, as well as confessions of Russian intelligence operatives and military, the Western governments and media still refer to Russian proxy forces and entities as separatists or rebels. While it was politically convenient and possibly justifiable in the hope of resolving the conflict diplomatically, the all-out invasion made it irrelevant and even damaging. It's difficult to explain why the Donetsk "separatists" were led not by President Yanukovych's entourage but by Russian intelligence officers. Alexander Boroday, a Russian citizen and FSB officer, was the first "head" of Donetsk's "republic," while war criminal Igor Girkin, a Russian citizen and FSB operative, was a "minister" of defense. Recently, Alexander Boroday revealed that from the beginning, his plans were not to secure the autonomy of the special status of Donetsk within Ukraine but annex it to Russia. So, new judicial facts and the results of investigations must trigger a reassessment of what happened in 2014 and till the overt invasion on 24 February 2022. It's required to understand the reasons for the Russian aggression as well as won't let mistakes when the time for diplomacy arrives.

Russia, relevant news

German Siemens has sold its entire financial and leasing business in Russia, according to the company's quarterly report.

Russian citizens Ihor Girkin and Serhiy Dubinsky, sentenced in absentia today to life imprisonment in the case of the downed Malaysian Boeing-777 near Donetsk, will not be extradited to the Netherlands, a Russian law enforcement source told the Russian Interfax news agency.

Centre for Defence Strategies (CDS) is a Ukrainian security think tank. We operate since 2020 and are involved in security studies, defence policy research and advocacy. Currently, all our activity is focused on stopping the ongoing war.

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7. How Defense Department Planning Horizons Can Better Avoid Strategic Surprise

I know a guy ... who has the foresight to help prevent strategic surprise.

Excerpts:

It is time to account for the role of those factors in the process for force design as well. Retired Australian Army Major General Mick Ryan, in a recent interview on his book War Transformed, articulated the case for balancing current and future when he described the cultural paradigm that needs to be overcome. He opined that democracies are good at leveraging 24-hour news cycles and 3 to 4-year electoral cycles. Conversely, he stipulated that if leaders want to exploit microseconds of opportunity that may only be possible through building the societal patience to think in decades.

The Horizons of Innovation model provides discipline to forecasting decades into the future. Although the future is uncertain, it is not a fact-free activity solely left for conjecture. Future planning can be a very informed process with logical designs and reasonable outcomes. When the Horizon model is used, these designs and outcomes will help define how current means satisfy requirements when adapted to new circumstances. The model also shows where the potential for disruptive innovation may be needed to avoid strategic surprise and overcome anticipated concerns. Famed Disney Imagineer and consultant to the DoD on future innovation, Bran Ferren stated, “We don’t do strategic or long-term thinking anymore. If anything, we may do long-term tactical thinking and call it strategic, but it’s really just a spreadsheet exercise…That’s not a survivable model.” Bran Ferren’s words articulate a pressing problem, and the Horizon model may just be the prescription to fix it.

How Defense Department Planning Horizons Can Better Avoid Strategic Surprise

cimsec.org · by Guest Author

By Travis Reese

“One of the greatest contributions of net assessment is that it calls for consciously thinking about the time span of the competition you are in.” –Dr. Paul Braken

“Short term thinking drives out long term strategy, every time.”–Herbert Simon, Nobel Prize-winning economist

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” The oft-repeated phrase from renowned author Peter Drucker continues to echo throughout defense circles and think tanks to catalyze change. Defense of the nation is a never-ending task achieved by balancing readiness for today’s threats and tomorrow’s challenges as part of a connected continuum. Yet, when it comes to addressing either current or future challenges, there is excessive lag between identifying needs and often stipulates that the best assessments of needed capabilities come from operational commanders facing current problems. This is done while unironically pointing out the struggle to deliver capabilities in a relevant timeframe, often due to complex discovery relying on large human and capital investments. This dialogue is usually accompanied by a declaration that somewhere in industry exists a magic fix to the solutions delivery problem.

In response, industry and government research centers point to all the ways that the Department of Defense (DoD) is ineffective at discussing these problems earlier, while potential solutions wither away due to a lack of funds, institutional initiative, consistency of effort, or all three. To the DoD’s credit, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks and Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu have spearheaded initiatives for the DoD to improve future vision and analytic synchronization. Despite these initiatives, however, the culture around force design planning still eats strategy for breakfast, hindering if not outright stopping the delivery of timely capabilities. It is time to change the accepted practices of solutions discovery with a better method. A better method requires the DoD to establish multiple planning horizons with interactive comparisons between near-term and far-term designs stretched over 30 years.

The Problem

The DoD’s current planning horizons are ineffective at anticipating future needs and avoiding emergent gaps. This condition upsets the timely delivery of resources and capabilities because it keeps drawing the focus back to the “here and now” instead of the “there and later.” This leads to the constant refrain to “ask the warfighters” as the place where capability developers and program managers seek to find solutions to “here and now” problems as opposed to developing solutions for increasingly more capable “there and later” adversaries. This reactive response has the institution perpetually lagging. It also results in an abrogation of the Office of Secretary of Defense and the Service Chiefs’ responsibility to use their institutional mandates to forecast the “train, man, equip, and deploy” demands of the future. Instead, they often retrograde future force design issues onto current force employment problems.

This abrogation runs the risk of the entire defense enterprise doing what the late Colonel Art Corbett, designer of the Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Advance Base Operations and Stand-in Forces concepts, used to characterize as solving today’s problems with yesterday’s logic and being constantly surprised by the future. Relying on “warfighter” discovery followed by pressurizing the research, engineering, and acquisition communities to satisfy those demands should be a rare exception and not the norm. Warfighter discovery should exist for only the most unanticipated and untested concerns when the experience of conflict and day-to-day competition reveals unknown capacity of the adversary.

DoD must avoid strategic surprise by delivering well-considered solutions based on long-term forecasts coupled with risk-managed and informed investment. Implementing a process that preempts this persistent short fusing of acquisition effort and priorities can be done by conducting force development and force design based on three distinct time horizons paced over 30 years for the major security scenarios the DoD expects to face. With a long-term forecast model, the DoD can achieve a proactive strategy long before the majority of future challenges manifest as emergent gaps as is so often the case with today’s compressed institutional planning horizons of 10 years or less.

Static Logic Challenge

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford stated in 2015 that “… adaptation is the things we’re doing right now with the wherewithal that we have, and to me innovation is…when you’re looking really for a fundamentally different way to do things in the future – disruptive, if you will. And so we’ve got to be able to do both of those things.”

General Dunford’s statement indicates that adaptation and innovation are unique ways to address solutions for emergent concerns and future challenges. The ability to identify the full range of innovative or adaptive solutions is often frustrated by the fact that future force planning frequently falls into two habits that create static logic: 1) fixation on the current security challenge which becomes an anchor to perceptions of the future which results in using the current state as the model for all future conditions (sometimes for 10 to 20 years) or 2) establishing a single point in the future and then using that point alone to design a future force with a constant interpretation of the threat regardless of new information or changes. This case frequently occurs due to the institutional inertia that builds up around a model as agencies work to align their programs and efforts to an accepted framework. Each change in the model often generates a halting effect on force development or design as organizations take years or better to adjust to a new conception of the future or threat.

A fix to the static logic problem to maintain innovation and adaptation would be to sustain a constant flow of future projections that mature in detail the closer to the period under question. For example, analysis in the 20-year timeframe may only be able to inform decisions to investigate options in basic or applied research and operating concepts whereas analysis in a 10-year timeframe, informed by years of prior learning, would focus on prototypes and tactical experimentation.

The logic of static time periods also generates a fixed appreciation of the adversary and does not account for their reaction to a U.S. action. The moment the U.S. introduces a capability it should expect an adversary to develop countermeasures. The cost imposing strategy of responding to a well-developed measure with a cheap countermeasure should change the timeframe the U.S. could expect usefulness from initial capabilities for a given timeframe and consider their replacements. For this reason, force developers should construct planning horizons that reflect adversary transitions vice working from a single model for 10 years. However, almost every major acquisition undertaken by the DoD requires 10, 15, or 30 years to develop and, in many instances, is used for 30 to 40 years. In 2016, then-Army Chief of Staff General Mark A. Milley described the purpose of exploring new operational concepts as simply to “get this less wrong than whoever opposes us.” It is the task of future force planning to avoid strategic surprise and orient the institutions into “less wrong” outcomes. This is especially true when force design and the capabilities development process requires 10 years just to move through the initial stages of identification, explanation, buy-in, and approval.

A problem of fixing the DoD on a single assigned year for force design is that potential solutions outside the window of consideration often get set aside in a conceptual limbo. The irony is that somehow these solutions are expected to emerge when the enterprise decides they are ready for the next 10-year horizon. The inability to hold multiple time horizons in consideration becomes a technology and solutions decelerator. Planning in more than one timeframe can overcome the “cold start” gap of discovery, convincing the institution of viability, and accepting it as a suitable option. When discovery and analysis take place on a consistent basis long before a solution is needed, the speed of execution and delivery will meet the judgment of relevance. Potential solutions will require less modification since they will be refined with increasing levels of detail or discarded earlier if determined to be unachievable. That which is not explicitly covered under the near-term approach could be considered and placed into a less committing but equally informing future case. It will give context to any range of research and experimentation rather than merely evaluating an option based on its technical interest or amorphous potential.

Developing 30-year horizons will facilitate continuity of institutional thought, long-term vision, and iterative tests of ideas before requesting or committing scarce resources for what becomes a strategy-defining requirement, that if unrealized, compromises the potential for future success. It is not about hedging bets but maximizing the exploration of options under managed timeframes to identify the greatest range of acceptable solutions, refined through iterative institutional learning and shared understanding.

What does the solution look like? The model for a new process.

The Horizons of Innovation model provides a framework for three interactive but distinct institutional design horizons spanning from 10 to 30 years. The Y-axis, labeled “solutions” spans the spectrum from unsuitable to perfect. The X-axis, labeled “time” spans from the present into the future. Solutions are constrained by the positively sloped “innovation” line and negatively sloped “adaptation.” All solutions constrained in the angle formed between adaptation and innovation are acceptable where the bisecting dashed line represents the best performance. Solutions that exist below the adaptation line are unacceptable while solutions that exist above the innovation line are unattainable. DoD force planners should look at the limiting lines of innovation and adaptation across the three different horizons of 10, 20, and 30 years to develop the framework to address future challenges.

The Horizons of Innovation Model is adapted from the Three Horizons model introduced to business strategists around the turn of this millennia. Critics argue that horizons are too sequential and do not account for rates of change brought on by modern access to information. The combination of process and human factors in DoD force design, however, can still benefit from sequential framing because the Horizons of Innovation account for likely rates of change regardless of the potential spontaneity of innovation. The horizons model distinguishes between short and near-term achievability and distant long-term possibilities. The model shows the difference in thinking that simply makes sequential improvements, usually by only achieving competitive parity, along with paradigm shifting conditions, colloquially known as “game changers,” which create exponential changes in understanding that result in distinct advantages.

Horizons of Innovation model. (Click to expand.)

The Horizons of Innovation model provides a framework for three horizons. The Y-axis, labeled “solutions” spans the spectrum from unsuitable to perfect. The X-axis, labeled “time” spans from the present into the future. Solutions are constrained by the positively sloped “innovation” line and negatively sloped “adaptation.” All solutions constrained in the angle formed between adaptation and innovation are acceptable where the bisecting dashed line represents the best performance. Solutions that exist below the adaptation line are unacceptable while solutions that exist above the innovation line are unattainable. DoD force planners should look at the limiting lines of innovation and adaptation across the three different horizons of 10, 20, and 30 years to develop the framework to address future challenges.

Outside of the boundary formed by innovation and adaptation, two observations are readily apparent: 1) some desired innovation may be unachievable, but that possibility lessens over time and 2) some adaptations are suitable until obsolescence. Future opportunities are revealed as each new change gives a glimpse of the degree of disruption and benefit from that new understanding. The longer a problem is considered, the more likely abstract concepts of the future can be quantified. It is not a perfect understanding of the future but provides a model to identify areas that need investment to benefit from forecasted change.

The further one looks out, the greater the institutional freedom of action between innovation and adaptation. While the lines are linearly divergent, the difference between optimal and suboptimal solutions becomes greater with time. Any adaptation can be assessed to meet future demand and innovations can be identified that generate disruptive change. The model also shows that the closer in time to execution, the less institutional freedom of action there is. The longer future issues are considered, more possibilities could be explored. If a desired innovation is available sooner than expected, it could be seamlessly transitioned into an earlier horizon. This would create a phase shift up the vertical “solutions” axis, increasing advantage over an adversary. Conversely, if an expected innovation cannot be realized in time, the innovations can phase shift down. However, the loss of innovation is managed by shifting the lines of efforts from innovation to adaptation. The longer the institution looks into the future and evolves that understanding, the more risk accepting and opportunity seeking it becomes, vice risk averse and opportunity limiting. Allowing current force commanders to contribute their concerns to future analysis will prevent pinning the DoD just on “hear and now” concerns that in turn alleviates anchoring and availability bias in DoD planning.

While the Horizon’s model is agnostic of personal bias or viewpoints, there is still a human element in force design methodology. Novel solutions that change paradigms and alter the inertial course of massive institutional ships takes time. A contemporary example is found in the efforts of the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General David Berger, to accelerate the naval service toward modernization by 2030. To casual observers, it seems that General Berger is the initiator of this effort. That is far from the truth. The lineage of the Force Design 2030 efforts trace themselves back to his predecessors throughout recent times. General Dunford began a force redesign in 2015, followed by the 37th Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Neller, and his introduction of Marine Corps Force 2025. Current iterations continuing under General Berger will cover a span of seven years. Despite having the full support of the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Berger’s effort to modernize require explanation, convincing, testing, and advocacy. By the conclusion of his tenure as Commandant, the transition to a new force design will have taken nearly 10 years. This transition period beckons several questions: even as FD2030 falls into place, where is the next horizon? Have strategic leaders considered the frame that will emerge after 2030? Where is the guidance to evaluate the potential outcomes of the 2030 force? How will the adversary respond? What countermeasures/innovations must be developed?

Too often near-term executors are segregated from future visionaries as if they have mutually exclusive institutional roles. The model shows they are not distinct but complementary. Immediate pressures force the DoD to emphasize the near-term challenges and solutions that are biased and anchored in the present. These current concerns generate responses that are often risk averse because of the perceived potential for loss. Future speculation promotes a greater propensity to accept risk because the focus shifts from potential loss to potential gain. Collective discussion with involved stakeholders should be held in all three horizons simultaneously. This ensures that choices for institutional readiness can be assessed over the different time horizons which allow for an informed approach. Focusing exclusively in one time frame generates collective ignorance since it disregards the existence of the next range of options and opportunities. It is possible to be both a contemporary and future thinker simultaneously, which is necessary to assesses risk and balance the forces that are “here and now” with the forces that will be “there and later.”

An additional opportunity from this method is that younger generations will be inculcated in strategic thought and be exposed to the strategic environment they will face earlier in their careers. Advancing in one’s career with a sense of ownership over the potential challenges and being involved in the likely solutions will generate career-long strategic thinking. If adopted, the Three Horizons model enables transition of the future environment to successor generations. This could catalyze an educational shift to think critically and creatively both at the individual and institutional level ensuring the proper shaping of the future design of the force with each turnover of leadership. Current leaders can manage force sustainment challenges while sponsoring and investing in the contributions of future generations on an informed basis led by those who will inherit the outcomes.

Leaders that are reticent to engage in timelines beyond 10 years may do so because they fear how future considerations can be viewed as path determinant once they are discussed in public. This happens because there is no running institutional method of discourse to encourage evolution of thought over time. Rather, it remains a leader-managed process subject to the whims of the next decider rather than being a participant-driven enterprise with clear transitions and gates between ideation, iteration, and ultimate leader-required decisions based on legal obligations and restraints. Nothing substitutes for a well-considered problem with persistent investments of time and resources. Nothing improves support of an institutional direction like transparent stakeholder engagement on a persistent basis. The Horizons of Innovation model, with its three frames of replacement, transition, and exponential change, supports both and invites rigorous analysis at each step.

Conclusion

Horizons are not fixed limitations but rather means of effectively organizing referred to as “chunking,” and based on likely periods of technology development or institutional transition. This model can serve as an institutional tool for facilitating change, stabilizing the disruptive effects of innovation, programing the arrival of new capabilities, and replacing obsolete practices and models in a managed timeline. It enables detailed analytic approaches based on the continuous refinement of institutional design for the future with iterative adjustment. The Horizon model can enhance acquisition, programming and budgeting, and capability development processes by organizing stakeholders into common appreciation of long-term force design.

The current capabilities development process requires 10 years to move through the initial stages of identification, explanation, buy-in, and approval to generate needed solutions to likely military challenges 15 to 20 years on the future, let alone solve current problems and readiness challenges. Competitors and adversaries are executing on their long-term strategies and steadily growing their capabilities and capacities having followed a similar process of decades-long planning and organized action.

They have however accelerated towards their goals by harnessing steady and persistent momentum rather than attempting radical lurches based on short-term forecasts and near-term focus. Their ability to capitalize on a long-view approach, while critically analyzing our force (and that of our allies) is enabling them to progress toward strategic and operational overmatch. Adversaries’ planned transitions from current to future through managed modernization have resulted in our present challenges.

It is time to account for the role of those factors in the process for force design as well. Retired Australian Army Major General Mick Ryan, in a recent interview on his book War Transformed, articulated the case for balancing current and future when he described the cultural paradigm that needs to be overcome. He opined that democracies are good at leveraging 24-hour news cycles and 3 to 4-year electoral cycles. Conversely, he stipulated that if leaders want to exploit microseconds of opportunity that may only be possible through building the societal patience to think in decades.

The Horizons of Innovation model provides discipline to forecasting decades into the future. Although the future is uncertain, it is not a fact-free activity solely left for conjecture. Future planning can be a very informed process with logical designs and reasonable outcomes. When the Horizon model is used, these designs and outcomes will help define how current means satisfy requirements when adapted to new circumstances. The model also shows where the potential for disruptive innovation may be needed to avoid strategic surprise and overcome anticipated concerns. Famed Disney Imagineer and consultant to the DoD on future innovation, Bran Ferren stated, “We don’t do strategic or long-term thinking anymore. If anything, we may do long-term tactical thinking and call it strategic, but it’s really just a spreadsheet exercise…That’s not a survivable model.” Bran Ferren’s words articulate a pressing problem, and the Horizon model may just be the prescription to fix it.

Travis Reese retired from the Marine Corps as Lieutenant Colonel after nearly 21 years of service. While on active duty he served in a variety of billets inclusive of tours in capabilities development, future scenario design, and institutional strategy. Since his retirement in 2016 he was one of the co-developers of the Joint Force Operating Scenario process. Mr. Reese is now the Director of Wargaming and Net Assessment for Troika Solutions in Reston, VA.

Featured Image: JAPAN (Aug. 18, 2022) – U.S. Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II’s assigned to Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 121 participate in an aerial refueling mission during a 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit Certification Exercise over the East China Sea, Aug. 18, 2022. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Pfc. Justin J. Marty)

cimsec.org · by Guest Author

8. Ban These Chinese Chipmakers from Pentagon Purchases

Excerpts:

There is no credible national security case for keeping the door open to Chinese semiconductors in federal procurement networks. This is especially true given the nature of the entities being targeted. SMIC is a Defense Department-designated Chinese military company. YMTC, the Chinese government’s “national champion” memory-chip producer, has ties to China’s military-civil fusion strategy and has reportedly helped Huawei evade export-control restrictions.

Beyond this rap sheet, the reality is that the entire semiconductor ecosystem in a Chinese Communist Party-led China threatens U.S. national and economic security interests.

Ensuring that the federal government’s systems and the supporting systems of its trusted suppliers are not corrupted with high-risk Chinese semiconductors is a bare minimum measure to protect U.S. national-security interests.

Ban These Chinese Chipmakers from Pentagon Purchases

Congress should pass a proposed expansion of the law that keeps the federal government from buying certain companies’ products.

By MASEH ZARIF and MARK MONTGOMERY

NOVEMBER 17, 2022 01:23 PM ET

defenseone.com · by Maseh Zarif

American chipmaking companies and government focus are finally putting the United States back on the offensive in the semiconductor field. This is a welcome development, but it must be paired with a good defense, which starts with ensuring that federal government networks are free of Chinese-made chips that pose a national-security risk to the United States.

Congress could, and should, do just that as it negotiates a final defense authorization bill in the coming weeks. A provision in the Senate’s version of the annual defense-policy bill would expand the Section 889 government procurement ban to cover chips made by high-risk Chinese companies.

Section 889, a provision in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, prohibits the federal government from obtaining telecommunications and surveillance equipment or services from certain entities, including those the Defense Department has identified as Chinese military companies, like Huawei and Hikvision. The law also prohibits the federal government from contracting with companies that make significant use of the equipment and services of these Chinese entities.

The Section 889 expansion that focuses on semiconductors, which was proposed by Senators Chuck Schumer and John Cornyn, is in Section 5871 in the Fiscal Year 2023 NDAA substitute amendment filed in the Senate on October 11. Like the existing ban it seeks to amend, the proposed prohibition would have two elements, both of which are critical to its effectiveness.

The first element will prevent the federal government from purchasing and using goods that contain Chinese chips made by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, or SMIC; ChangXin Memory Technologies; or Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp., or YMTC. Given the evolving nature of China’s semiconductor industry and its proclivity to “re-imagine” named entities and provide them with new names, the provision also includes “any subsidiary, affiliate, or successor” of these companies.

The language also gives the defense secretary, in consultation with the director of national intelligence, the discretion to extend the ban to other Chinese chip companies of concern. This underscores that risk mitigation related to Chinese semiconductors must account not just for today’s environment, but for Beijing’s long-term strategy and future industrial ambitions.

The second element of the new provision will encourage federal contractors to eliminate the use of Chinese chips made by the listed companies in any “substantial or essential” parts of their systems. This should be a simple choice for companies: you can do business with the federal government or you can have a significant dependence on Chinese chips, but you cannot do both. Companies that choose the latter path, placing U.S. security at risk, will be ineligible for government contracts.

In a show of considerable—perhaps excessive—flexibility, the prohibition would only kick in three years after the language becomes law.

The prospects for passing the language remain unclear as the Senate and House negotiate over a final version of the NDAA.

There are also hurdles beyond procedural ones. The federal contractor community will again put up resistance on several fronts. Some contractors are attempting to persuade lawmakers to extend the implementation period beyond three years. Additionally, some could attempt to have Congress carve out loopholes for existing Chinese chips and retain the flexibility to use Chinese semiconductors in their businesses. Such dramatic changes would undercut the impact of the proposed policy. The existing chips are the risk; in reality, U.S. weapons are generally manufactured with these larger chips, not the smaller, cutting-edge chips produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

There is no credible national security case for keeping the door open to Chinese semiconductors in federal procurement networks. This is especially true given the nature of the entities being targeted. SMIC is a Defense Department-designated Chinese military company. YMTC, the Chinese government’s “national champion” memory-chip producer, has ties to China’s military-civil fusion strategy and has reportedly helped Huawei evade export-control restrictions.

Beyond this rap sheet, the reality is that the entire semiconductor ecosystem in a Chinese Communist Party-led China threatens U.S. national and economic security interests.

Ensuring that the federal government’s systems and the supporting systems of its trusted suppliers are not corrupted with high-risk Chinese semiconductors is a bare minimum measure to protect U.S. national-security interests.

defenseone.com · by Maseh Zarif

9. More than 30 Western components found in Iranian-made Shahed-136 UAVs – investigation

A friend who flagged this for me asked, how can these components make it into the Iranioan systems?

More than 30 Western components found in Iranian-made Shahed-136 UAVs – investigation

https://euromaidanpress.com/2022/11/17/more-than-30-western-components-found-in-iranian-made-shahed-136-uavs-investigators/?utm_source=pocket_saves

More than 30 components manufactured by Western companies were found in the Iranianian-made Shahed-136 one-way attack drones, according to the investigators of the Trap Aggressor project. The Trap Aggressor experts examined a kamikaze drone shot down by the Ukrainian military on 13 October 2022 above the Black Sea near the southern city of Odesa. The drone lost its warhead, but the rest of its parts remained intact.

The investigators examined the parts of the Iranian Shahed-136 in partnership with the Independent Anti-Corruption Commission (NAKO).

Composite image stitched from the screenshots of the video by Trap Aggressor.

Since early September, Russians have been attacking Ukrainian civilians with the Shahed-136 Iranian drones which were colloquially dubbed “mopeds” for the peculiar sound they produce during the flight.

The Shahed-136s were developed by HESA, an Iran-based aircraft manufacturing industrial company. The UAV weighs approximately 200 kilograms, 40 of which are its warhead. The explosive charge and optics for accurate attack are placed in the front of the UAV. These kamikaze drones are launched from a truck in series and can reach a velocity of more than 185 kilometers per hour midair. The Russian military renamed the aerial vehicle Geran-2 to disguise the Iranian origin of this weapon.

The Ukrainian intelligence disassembled several Shahed-136s and found that almost every part of the drone is of American or European origin. The only domestically-produced component is its engine.

Engine of the Iranian-made Shahed-136 kamikaze drone. Photo: Trap Aggressor

The manufacturer of the Shahed-136’s engine is the Iranian Oje Parvaz Mado Nafar Company (MADO). It specializes in drone component production and imports-exports of commercial products. According to the US Treasury Department, MADO procured UAV engines for organizations affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. On 29 October 2021, the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on the company and its managers for purchasing engines and parts for Iran’s military industry, freezing its assets under US jurisdiction. The same sanctions apply to foreign parties who facilitate the organization’s transactions or otherwise help it.

Electronics of the Iranian-made Shahed-136 kamikaze drone. Photo: Trap Aggressor

All parts inside the Shaheds but their engines are foreign-made. The Ukrainian intelligence managed to identify more than 30 European and American companies that had produced the components used in the Shahed. Most of the parts are US-made. Its servo drive comes from the American Hitec USA Group, its batteries are from the Japanese Panasonic, and its ceramic chip antenna was produced by the Canadian Tallysman. The Shahed’s control board is assembled from Japanese and American parts. The power supply board is made of German and Chinese components. The control unit was produced by the Russian plant Zapadpribor.

Components of the Iranian Shahed-136 drone. Photo: Trap Aggressor

The Shahed’s boards, digital signal processors, transceivers, drivers, and receivers were manufactured by the infamous Texas Instruments company, which continued to work with Russia after Russia had annexed Crimea and unleashed the war in the Donbas in 2014. After the last month’s TrapAgressor’s report on the Russian Iskander cruise missiles that shed light on their production, Texas Instruments finally answered regarding whether they were going to continue to trade with the Russian Federation: the company said it doesn’t supply anything directly to the Russian market.

Electronics of the Iranian-made Shahed-136 kamikaze drone. Photo: Trap Aggressor

Texas Instruments even promised to remove all references to Russia from its website which included the address of its Moscow branch and the phone number, yet those references remain on the site to this day (the contact Russian phone has been removed as of Nov 17 evening, the time of the publication of this English-language version of the material, the original video was published on YouTube on Nov 16, – Ed.). Instead, they added the following note: ” If you need to contact us in a country not listed above, please reach out to our customer support center” (the note remains, – Ed.).

Screenshot: Trap Aggressor

Also, Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence identified a Ukrainian part in the Shahed-136s – an electrical relay manufactured by the Ukrainian state-owned Kharkiv-based enterprise Radiorelé:

The Radiorele enterprise is a subsidiary of the State Property Fund of Ukraine. In 2020, the enterprise was put up for privatization due to inefficient management but no investor has been found to this day. The company’s chief Anatolii Donets, who’s been running the Radiorele since 2007, continues to manage the loss-making asset. In 2020, in an interview with local journalists, Donets complained that back in 2016, the company lost its largest sales market, which “was mainly Russia for us.” In this way, he actually confirmed that the Ukrainian state company was trading with the aggressor state of Russia up to 2016. Probably, it was the Ukrainian relays supplied to Russia that ended up in Iranian weapons, which have been now destroying Ukrainian cities and killing civilians.

Experts from the Independent Anti-Corruption Commission have sent over 35 letters to all the companies whose parts were discovered in Iranian UAVs. And to date, only three of those sent their responses.

“Their answers continue a classic tradition of Ukrainian bureaucratic responses – ‘yes, we know about the story, we are actively following it, but we cannot give you any specific response’,” said Viktoriia Vyshnivska, NAKO’s Advocacy and Communications Manager.

Mass attacks on the civilian population often occurring on the so-called “black Mondays” and the use of Iranian drones against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure rather indicate Putin’s inability to win any, so to say, victories on the front. Ukrainian soldiers give a worthy rebuff to the enemy. Our task, together with the world community, is to help them in their efforts.

Watch the TragAgressor’s investigation on YouTube.

10. Harris to Defend Biden’s Indo-Pacific Strategy in Speech to CEOs

Harris to Defend Biden’s Indo-Pacific Strategy in Speech to CEOs

US rejects notion that trade deals are only measure of success
Harris to call out Russia, China in leaders’ meeting Friday
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-17/harris-to-defend-biden-s-indo-pacific-strategy-in-speech-to-ceos?sref=hhjZtX76

ByJenny Leonard

November 17, 2022 at 6:00 PM EST

Vice President Kamala Harris in a speech to business executives will defend the Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy against skeptics who question the US commitment to the region and economic staying power, according to a White House official.

Harris will directly address those critics in remarks she is set to deliver Friday afternoon in Bangkok to an audience of several hundred business executives from the Indo-Pacific region and US.

The White House believes it’s important to lay out a comprehensive vision because many countries and businesses in the region worry the US is lacking an agenda, the official said on condition of anonymity to preview her speech.

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Harris will challenge critics who think the only measure of success is the number of free trade agreements negotiated or that the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, formerly TPP, is the only way to engage with countries in the Indo-Pacific. She intends to reaffirm the US commitment to economic leadership and engagement in the region amid calls for increased US economic presence, the official said.

Harris is in Bangkok to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ summit and is traveling to the Philippines later this week.

The US and some of the nations at the summit are negotiating the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, the Biden administration’s alternative to the Trans-Pacific Partnership that former President Donald Trump withdrew from during his first week in office.

Many countries in the region have pressed for the US to return to the deal or, in its absence, deepen economic engagement with them. US Trade Representative Katherine Tai is also at the APEC summit and seeking to advance talks on the framework.

Some members of Congress in the US have also pushed for deeper integration, though it’s unlikely at this point that there’s enough political support to negotiate a full-fledged trade deal.

In meetings with other world leaders Friday morning, Harris will also call out Russia directly for its invasion of Ukraine and urge all responsible nations to do the same, according to the official.

In a swipe at China, she will criticize unfair economic practices and push for all economies to reject the use of economic coercion for political gains.

Both Russia and China are part of the APEC grouping, and Chinese President Xi Jinping will be present at the summit.

The US is set to host APEC leaders in 2023, though a city has not yet been announced.

11. Kherson euphoria highlights the folly of a premature peace with Putin

Excerpts:

For now, there is little public indication that Western leaders are listening to calls for a return to negotiations. Instead, they remain insistent that any decision to resume diplomatic efforts can only be made by Ukraine. However, as the war drags on and the economic costs for Ukraine’s partners continue to mount, the voices currently pushing for Ukrainian concessions will grow louder.

As the war enters a potentially decisive period, it is vital to keep in mind that any compromise would come with crippling costs. For Ukraine, it would mean betraying and abandoning millions of citizens. For Western leaders, it would mean empowering Putin while sacrificing the foundational values of the democratic world. The problems posed by an aggressive and revisionist Russia would be unresolved, but the West’s position would be significantly weaker.

Nobody wants peace more than the Ukrainians themselves. Their country has been devastated by Russia’s invasion and their population left deeply traumatized. Thousands have been killed and millions have been forced to flee. Nevertheless, Ukrainians also understand that Putin must be defeated before peace can return to Europe. All they ask for is the continued support of their international partners. One way to demonstrate this support is by ending unhelpful appeals for a premature peace.

Kherson euphoria highlights the folly of a premature peace with Putin

atlanticcouncil.org · by Peter Dickinson · November 17, 2022

Last week’s liberation of Kherson produced some of the most iconic scenes since the beginning of the Russian invasion. The arrival of Ukrainian troops in the city sparked wild celebrations from a civilian population brutalized by eight months of Russian occupation. “This is what liberation looks like. This is what liberation feels like,” commented CNN’s Nic Robertson in one of many memorable reports from the city. Sky News correspondent Alex Rossi described the atmosphere as “euphoric” as he was mobbed by joyous locals cheering Russia’s retreat.

Despite harsh conditions and a lack of basic amenities in Kherson, the party began almost as soon as news of the Russian military withdrawal was confirmed. Speaking to AFP, one Kherson resident summed up the mood in the liberated city. “We have no electricity, no water, no heating, no mobile or internet connection. But we have no Russians! I am extremely happy. We can survive anything but we are free.”

This footage should be compulsory viewing for anyone who still believes in the possibility of a negotiated settlement with Putin’s Russia. Despite overwhelming evidence of the Kremlin’s genocidal agenda in Ukraine, opinion pieces continue to appear with depressing regularity in the international media arguing that the time has come for Ukraine’s Western partners to pressure the country into peace talks.

The authors of such articles typically acknowledge Russia’s criminality before emphasizing the alleged inevitability of compromise. The wave of emotion that swept Kherson following the city’s liberation is a timely reminder for advocates of appeasement that compromising with the Kremlin actually means condemning millions of Ukrainians to the horrors of Russian occupation.

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At this point, it is no longer possible for any honest observer to deny knowledge of Russian war crimes in occupied Ukraine. In every single liberated region of the country, Ukrainian forces have encountered the same grim revelations of mass graves and torture chambers along with accounts of abductions, executions, sexual violence, and forced deportations involving millions of victims.

Meanwhile, the methodical Russian bombardment of cities such as Mariupol is believed to have killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians. Attempts to document these atrocities are still at an early stage, but United Nations inspectors have already confirmed that Russia has committed war crimes against the Ukrainian civilian population.

Russian occupation forces have also made no secret of their desire to eradicate all traces of Ukrainian national identity. Wherever the Kremlin has established control, the Ukrainian language has been suppressed and the Ukrainian currency phased out. Access to Ukrainian media has been blocked. Teachers have been brought in from Russia to indoctrinate Ukrainian schoolchildren. At the same time, Kremlin officials and regime propagandists have explicitly declared their intention to extinguish Ukrainian statehood and proclaimed their genocidal denial of Ukraine’s right to exist. This is the ghoulish reality that so-called foreign policy realists believe Ukraine must be made to accept.

Russia currently occupies around 20% of Ukraine. Any peace agreement reached in the near future would inevitably involve ceding some or all of this territory to Moscow for an indefinite period. Millions of Ukrainians would then face a desperate future. Many would make the agonizing choice to flee their homes for free Ukraine, leaving behind their former lives and worldly possessions. Those who remained would be forced to adopt a Russian imperial identity or risk savage repression if they continued to resist.

Despite the risks involved, resistance would likely continue. The outpouring of emotion in liberated Kherson highlighted the strength of Ukrainian national feeling in occupied areas of the country and made a mockery of the idea that Moscow enjoys the support of the local population. Just weeks before Putin’s troops retreated from Kherson, the Kremlin claimed 87% of residents had voted in favor of joining Russia. The widespread public jubilation that greeted Russia’s withdrawal vividly illustrated the absurdity of that figure.

Nor is it clear exactly what everyone is so afraid of. Ukraine has already shattered the myth of Russia’s military invincibility and has successfully liberated more than half the territory occupied since the invasion began nearly nine months ago. Putin’s once vaunted army is demoralized and decimated, while the Russian dictator himself is an international pariah. His energy weapon has been partially disarmed and he has recently been forced to distance himself from earlier attempts at nuclear blackmail following rebukes from China and stern warnings from the United States. It makes no strategic sense whatsoever to offer Putin a face-saving peace deal at this point.

For now, there is little public indication that Western leaders are listening to calls for a return to negotiations. Instead, they remain insistent that any decision to resume diplomatic efforts can only be made by Ukraine. However, as the war drags on and the economic costs for Ukraine’s partners continue to mount, the voices currently pushing for Ukrainian concessions will grow louder.

As the war enters a potentially decisive period, it is vital to keep in mind that any compromise would come with crippling costs. For Ukraine, it would mean betraying and abandoning millions of citizens. For Western leaders, it would mean empowering Putin while sacrificing the foundational values of the democratic world. The problems posed by an aggressive and revisionist Russia would be unresolved, but the West’s position would be significantly weaker.

Nobody wants peace more than the Ukrainians themselves. Their country has been devastated by Russia’s invasion and their population left deeply traumatized. Thousands have been killed and millions have been forced to flee. Nevertheless, Ukrainians also understand that Putin must be defeated before peace can return to Europe. All they ask for is the continued support of their international partners. One way to demonstrate this support is by ending unhelpful appeals for a premature peace.

Peter Dickinson is Editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert Service.

12. Debris From Ruptured Nord Stream Pipelines Shows Traces of Explosives, Sweden Says

Debris From Ruptured Nord Stream Pipelines Shows Traces of Explosives, Sweden Says

nytimes.com · by Melissa Eddy Matthew Mpoke Bigg Matthew Mpoke Bigg Carly Olson Ivan Nechepurenko Ruth Maclean Marc Santora · November 18, 2022

Here’s what we know:

A series of undersea explosions ripped holes in the pipelines in late September, damaging the links that had been built to carry Russian natural gas to Germany.

Debris collected from the site of the ruptured Nord Stream gas pipelines revealed evidence of explosives, indicating an act of “gross sabotage,” Swedish prosecutors said on Friday, backing up European authorities’ earlier assertions that blasts had deliberately targeted the critical infrastructure.

A series of undersea explosions ripped holes in the Nord Stream pipelines in late September, damaging the links that had been built to carry Russian natural gas to Germany and rendering them unusable.

Denmark and Germany are also carrying out investigations into the explosions. The European authorities have called the leaks “a deliberate act” aimed at exacerbating an energy dispute between Europe and Russia that has escalated since Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February.

Mats Ljungqvist, the prosecutor in charge of the Swedish investigation, said in a statement that “extensive seizures” had been made and that the area surrounding the sites where the pipes were damaged had been thoroughly documented. He gave no further details on the evidence collected or a potential suspect.

“Analyses now carried out show residues of explosives on several of the foreign objects found” at the site, Mr. Ljungqvist said. “The advanced analysis work continues in order to draw more reliable conclusions about the incident.”

Mr. Ljungqvist described the Swedish investigation as “very complex and extensive” and said that it would continue with the aim of indicating “whether anyone can be suspected of a crime.”

The two main leaks occurred in busy international waters: one northeast and the other south of the Danish island of Bornhom.

Nord Stream AG, the company that owns and operates the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, has said that it was allowed to send its own investigative teams to each of the main sites in the waters that fall under Danish and Swedish economic control. They have not yet released information about their findings.

Russia has accused the British Navy of targeting the pipelines. London has denied any involvement and called the claim a distraction.

Buoyed by its recent success in retaking the southern city of Kherson, Ukraine has pressed its counteroffensive in the eastern province of Luhansk even as winter approaches.

But the fighting there over villages and roads outside the Russian-held cities of Svatove and Kreminna has slowed to a grind in recent weeks, and military experts say that both sides have started to adapt their approach as the weather worsens.

Each has claimed to have taken territory in recent days, as well as to have repulsed attacks, though it was not possible to assess the claims independently.

Direct combat has ended, for now, in the Ukrainian village of Makiivka, but a local official gave a sense of the scale of destruction: “There is not a single living soul on the streets, and there is almost no surviving house. Not even the cellular tower survived.”

Ukraine said it had recaptured the village close to the front line in Luhansk’s north in recent days, but Serhiy Haidai, the regional military governor, said Russian forces continued to rain shellfire on to it. He posted photographs on the Telegram messaging app of abandoned and damaged houses, and the bodies of some Russian soldiers who had died in the battle for the village.

“Ukraine’s further offensives are going to be more challenging,” said Michael Kofman, research program director for Russia studies at CNA research group. “They will take more time. They will take more ammunition. They’ll be more costly, potentially,” he said on the Brussels Sprouts podcast.

Ukraine has won a series of battlefield victories in recent weeks that have shifted the momentum in the nine-month war. In September, it took a large slice of territory in Kharkiv in the northeast. It then struck farther south, taking the city of Lyman in Donetsk Province. Last week, its forces swept triumphantly into the city of Kherson in the south of the country.

Military experts say that those victories have increased morale and provided a trusted counteroffensive strategy, and that Ukraine would seek to maintain the momentum in Luhansk and Donetsk Provinces, collectively known as the Donbas. In addition, it could now transfer some forces and artillery from the south to its campaign in the east.

Russian commanders seem to be increasingly pursuing a “defensive strategy,” Mr. Kofman said. Moscow appears to have improved its ability to match its resources to its military objective, citing what he said was a relatively orderly withdrawal of Russian forces from an exposed position on the western bank of the Dnipro River in the Kherson region.

Russia could benefit from the influx of newly mobilized troops and could transfer some of the forces it withdrew from Kherson to the Donbas region. The British Ministry of Defense noted on Friday that Russian forces had been digging new trench systems near the Siversky Donets River between the Donetsk and Luhansk Provinces, suggesting that they were making preparations “in case of further major Ukrainian breakthroughs.”

One area of the Donbas where Russian forces are most obviously on the offensive is Bakhmut, a city around 50 miles south of the fighting in northern Luhansk region. There, Moscow is pressing an offensive led by the Wagner Group, a private Russian military force, which has close ties to President Vladimir V. Putin.

Fighting over the largely abandoned city, which is in Donetsk, has been continuing for months and has become a symbol of the Kremlin’s objective, announced in April, of securing the whole Donbas region, though analysts say it offers little strategic value.

“Reports and messages from Donetsk region are unchanged,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said a speech. “Fierce battles continue at the same points as before. We hold our positions despite dozens of attacks.”

Explosion in Poland: A Ukrainian air-defense missile — not a Russian weapon — most likely caused a deadly explosion in a Polish village, a top NATO official and Poland’s president said, easing fears that the military alliance would become more deeply embroiled in the war.
Retaking Kherson: On Nov. 11, Ukrainian soldiers swept into the southern city of Kherson, seizing a major prize from the retreating Russian army and dealing a bitter blow to President Vladimir V. Putin. Days after the liberation, evidence and accounts of torture are emerging.
Infrastructure Attacks: In a relentless and intensifying barrage of missiles, Moscow is destroying Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, depriving millions of heat, light and clean water. For Ukraine, keeping the lights on as winter looms has become one of its biggest battles.
Beta Testing New Weapons: Ukraine has become a testing ground for state-of-the-art weapons and information systems that Western officials predict could shape warfare for generations to come.

Ukraine has started to build a fortified wall along its border with Belarus, a senior Ukrainian official has said, to protect it against its northern neighbor, whose territory Moscow has used as a staging ground for its invasion and a launchpad for missile attacks.

The wall could also be aimed at preventing the government in Belarus, a repressive former Soviet republic, from allowing asylum seekers to traverse its territory into Ukraine, according to Yohann Michel, a research analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank.

Construction so far extends only a few miles in the northwestern region of Volyn, a region that also borders Poland, a country that is a staunch Ukrainian ally. Video posted by Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a senior official in the office of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, showed a concrete barrier topped with coils of razor wire and watchtowers painted green.

While the wall was guarded by soldiers, its value so far appeared largely symbolic, given that the border between the two countries runs 650 miles, although some of its length runs through terrain such as swampland that would be difficult for a military force to navigate. It was also unclear what protection the completed wall might offer against tanks or artillery.

“This is one of the elements of the engineering barriers that are being installed to protect our border,” Tymoshenko said in a video he posted on the Telegram messaging app on Sunday that showed him inspecting the wall. “Of course, the work is going on not only in Volyn. This applies to all regions bordering Belarus and Russia.”

President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus is a staunch ally of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and the United States and European Union have imposed sanctions on Belarus over its support of the war. Since last month, Russia has launched a series of raids using drones made in Iran from Belarus that have damaged Ukraine’s towns, cities and energy infrastructure.

At the same time, Russia has amassed thousands of troops in Belarus along the Ukrainian border, according to Ukrainian officials, although their mission was unclear. The defense minister of Latvia, Artis Pabriks, said last month that the assembled force would likely be too weak to mount a successful thrust across the border, and military experts say it would be difficult for it to penetrate into western Ukraine in order to disrupt the flow of Western military supplies to Ukraine via Poland.

Poland built a wall this year along its border with Belarus to make it harder for asylum seekers to gain access, following a crisis a year ago in which thousands of people attempted to access the European Union via Poland. European leaders accused the government in Belarus of allowing asylum seekers from the Middle East into the country and then funneling them westward toward Poland and Lithuania.

“Belarus can create more problems for Ukraine by forcing immigrants to cross by foot,” Mr. Michel said.

President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed more skepticism on Thursday that an errant Ukrainian air defense missile most likely caused a deadly explosion in Poland earlier this week, continuing a rare display of public disagreement between Ukraine and its allies, including Washington.

Two Polish citizens were killed on Tuesday when a missile hit a grain silo in Przewodow, a small village near the Ukrainian border.

A top NATO official and Poland’s president said on Wednesday that a Ukrainian air-defense missile had most likely caused the explosion, easing initial fears that Russia might have attacked a NATO ally, but Mr. Zelensky still expressed doubt about who fired the missile.

He reiterated on Thursday that he was not convinced that the missile was fired from Ukraine. “I don’t know what happened. We don’t know for sure. The world does not know,” he said in a virtual appearance at a forum.

President Biden told reporters he disagreed. “That’s not the evidence,” he said on Thursday, when asked about Mr. Zelensky’s skepticism. On Wednesday, Mr. Biden said that “the trajectory” of the missile made it unlikely “that it was fired from Russia.”

Western officials have made it clear that they do not blame Ukraine, regardless of who fired the missile. “Let me be clear: This is not Ukraine’s fault,” Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, said on Wednesday. “Russia bears ultimate responsibility as it continues its illegal war against Ukraine.”

Mr. Zelensky has pushed Poland to include Ukraine in the investigation into the blast, but Poland has not yet said whether Ukraine will be brought on fully as a partner.

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, spoke with his Polish counterpart, Zbigniew Rau, to discuss the issue on Thursday. In a statement, Mr. Kuleba said that the two agreed that Ukrainian experts would “swiftly get access to the site” of the blast and that “Ukraine and Poland will cooperate constructively.”

Mr. Zelensky went a step further, saying that Ukrainian investigators had been authorized to not only gain access, but also to join Poland’s investigation. “Yesterday, we insisted that we be included in the joint international investigative commission, and already late in the evening we received confirmation,” he said on Thursday.

Polish officials said on Thursday that no other countries had been invited to join its investigation yet. Jacek Siewiera, Poland’s secretary of state and the head of its national security bureau, said in a statement on Twitter that Ukraine had been told that its experts would be allowed at the scene, but discussions about a potential foreign partnership were still underway.

On Wednesday, President Andrzej Duda of Poland said that Ukraine would get some access but would likely not join Poland’s independent investigation.

“If Ukrainian guests want to see the investigation, we will be able to show them, just as I have been shown,” Mr. Duda said according to the news agency Reuters. For Ukraine to participate in their investigation, Mr. Duda said, it would require “specific treaty provisions, international law provisions, international agreements.” He declined to say whether or not Poland would grant that access.

The American basketball star Brittney Griner was transferred to a penal colony outside Moscow on Thursday, her lawyers said, where she will begin to serve a nine-year prison term after a Russian court convicted her on a drug charge.

Ms. Griner, 32, had been moved to the IK-2 female penal colony in the small town of Yavas, about 300 miles southeast of Moscow, the lawyers said in a statement. According to the website of the Russian prisons’ service, the colony is capable of holding 820 inmates.

“Brittney is doing as well as could be expected and trying to stay strong as she adapts to a new environment,” the lawyers, Maria Blagovolina and Aleksandr Boikov, said in the statement, adding that this is “a very challenging period for her.”

Her agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas, also released a statement, saying: “Despite the fact she is alone and now nearing her ninth month in detention separated from her loved ones, she is trying to stay strong.” She also expressed gratitude to the Biden administration, which has been under pressure from Ms. Griner’s wife and supporters to work more aggressively to secure her release.

A 2017 article by Moskovsky Komsomolets, a Russian newspaper, described widespread torture, harsh beatings and slave labor conditions in the IK-2. Inmates often work from 7 a.m. until midnight or later and are not allowed to use a washroom, the article said, quoting former inmates.

Yavas was founded in early Soviet times as a penitentiary center. Apart from the IK-2 there are two other penal colonies in the town.

Ms. Griner was arrested on the brink of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February, and her fate became entwined with high-stakes geopolitics and tense Russia-U.S. relations. She pleaded guilty to the drug charge, stemming from hash oil found in her luggage, but insisted she had no intent to break the law. The Russian court hearing her case sentenced Ms. Griner to nine years in prison for drug smuggling.

The harshness of the sentence — described by her lawyers as having little precedent — has been denounced by the U.S. government and Ms. Griner’s supporters as evidence that the punishment was politically motivated.

Late last month, a Russian court upheld Ms. Griner’s sentence, setting the stage for her transfer to a penal colony, even as American and Russian officials broached the possibility of a prisoner exchange. Little has emerged from those negotiations so far.

Some prisoners are tortured, or beaten by fellow inmates. Some have to work 16-hour days. A few are forced to watch Russian propaganda on repeat.

This is the world of the Russian penal colony, into which Brittney Griner has been inducted for a nine-year term after her sentencing on drug smuggling charges was upheld in October.

Ms. Griner’s lawyers said on Thursday that the American basketball star was transferred to the IK-2 female penal colony in the small town of Yavas, about 300 miles southeast of Moscow. According to the website of the Russian prisons’ service, the colony is capable of holding 820 inmates.

Penal colonies are the descendants of gulags, the notorious Stalin-era labor camps where millions of Russians lost their lives. The treatment of prisoners has improved markedly since then, according to rights groups.

But the penal colonies, many of them scattered across Siberia as gulags were and laid out in barracks, are still characterized by brutality, overcrowding and harsh conditions, and they are often governed by a rigid prison culture.

In an interview from a penal colony last year, Russia’s most famous prisoner, the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, described a schedule of calisthenics, sweeping the yard and games of chess or backgammon, as well as five daily sessions of screen time where inmates are forced to watch state television and propaganda films.

“You need to imagine something like a Chinese labor camp, where everybody marches in a line and where video cameras are hung everywhere,” he said. “There is constant control and a culture of snitching.”

In June, Mr. Navalny was transferred to a maximum-security prison, where he said he spends seven-hour shifts at a sewing machine.

In 2012, a member of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot said that there was no hot water, warm clothes or medicine in the penal colony where she and a bandmate were imprisoned, and that people who got sick could die as a result.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said in 2010 that “The Gulag Archipelago,” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s indictment of the Soviet penal system, should be essential reading for Russian students.

During her detention so far, Ms. Griner’s reading material has reportedly been books by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a Russian writer whose work was marked by his harrowing experiences in the country’s penal system, after he was sentenced to four years’ hard labor in Siberia. Dostoyevsky once wrote: “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”

Asked whether foreigners incarcerated in a Russian penal colony were treated any differently, a senior official with the Federal Penitentiary Service said some years ago that they were not. The only difference was that they have a right to visits from consular officials from their home country, the official, Sergey Esipov, was quoted as telling the RIA Novosti news agency.

“There are no special conditions,” he said. “All foreigners serve their sentences on the grounds and in the manner prescribed by Russian law.”

KYIV, Ukraine — The Ukrainian military said it had carried out a series of strikes this week aimed at destroying Russian supply routes and command centers across southern Ukraine, extending a campaign that helped drive Russian forces from western Kherson to new targets deeper in occupied territory.

Having lost more than half of the territory they controlled since launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian forces are scrambling to establish new defensive positions across a radically altered front line. Military analysts and the Ukrainian military have said that with a smaller area to defend, Moscow is trying to consolidate its efforts and stem its sweeping losses.

Since driving the Russians across the Dnipro River from the city of Kherson in an embarrassing defeat for the Kremlin, Ukrainian forces have used new forward positions to target Russian supply chains far deeper behind the front line than previously possible.

Brig. Gen. Oleksii Hromov, a member of Ukraine’s General Staff, said on Thursday that the military had damaged or destroyed 36 Russian command posts and 47 warehouses of ammunition and fuel, as well as key supply routes.

That came after the Ukrainian military said on Wednesday night that it had destroyed a railway bridge in Chernihivka in the Zaporizhzhia region, cutting off a major supply route for the Russians moving equipment and reinforcements from the east. The claim could not be independently verified.

Russian forces continue to dig trenches and build up new defenses east of the river, according to satellite imagery and the Ukrainian military, looking for ways to set up logistic routes that would allow them to evade Ukrainian fire.

Natalia Humeniuk, the spokeswoman for the Ukrainian military southern command, said on Tuesday that Russian forces who had abandoned the city of Kherson were moving around 10 to 15 miles farther to take them out of range of Ukrainian artillery.

Residents of towns and villages on the eastern banks of the Dnipro reported soldiers stealing cars, drinking alcohol and looting homes as they retreated. But starting on Sunday night, the same residents said they noticed that at least some of the Russians appeared to be clearing out.

“I went to the river walk today and it was completely empty,” a woman named Tetiana, who lives in the town of Oleshky, which is just across the river from the city of Kherson, wrote in a text message on Monday. She asked that her surname not be used for security reasons

nytimes.com · by Melissa Eddy Matthew Mpoke Bigg Matthew Mpoke Bigg Carly Olson Ivan Nechepurenko Ruth Maclean Marc Santora · November 18, 2022

13. For the best NDAA, what to take from the House and Senate

Some solid recommendations (though I leave it to the experts to question the Turkey recommendation).

I would add this recommendation; Keep the provision in Sec. 1205: "The mission of the Irregular Warfare Center shall be to support the institutionalization of irregular warfare as a core competency of the Department of Defense by " (See elbow of the five critical tasks)

Strengthen shipbuilding procurement.

Increase funding for the National Defense Stockpile (NDS).

Boost the US capacity to produce munitions.

Keep the mandates to maintain an inventory of 186 F-22s.

Remove the House provision that prohibits procurement of the Bridge Tanker aircraft.

Keep the Senate provision requiring a funding plan for acquiring at least 64 Next-Generation Interceptors (NGIs).

Remove the House amendment that bars the sale of new F-16s, F-16 upgrade kits or modernization technology to Turkey.

For the best NDAA, what to take from the House and Senate - Breaking Defense

The Heritage Foundation's Thomas Spoehr has seven tips for lawmakers as they consider how to shape the final NDAA.

breakingdefense.com · by Thomas Spoehr · November 17, 2022

U.S Army Spc. Breyana Semans, a military police officer with the 46th Military Police Company, Michigan National Guard, secures an area near the U.S. Capitol in Washington, March 1, 2021. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. 1st Class R.J. Lannom Jr.)

The National Defense Authorization Act is a complicated bill, grown out of a complicated process of rewrites that try to contend with military needs, political impulse and financial realities. In the op-ed below, the Heritage Foundation’s Thomas Spoehr says there are key provisions in both the House and Senate versions of the bill, and the final version should combine their wisdom.

Now that the midterm elections are (mostly) over and Congress is reconvening, lawmakers will need to tend to the work they were supposed to have done before the fiscal year ended on Sept. 30. That includes funding the federal government and finalizing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

There is broad bipartisan agreement that President Joe Biden’s budget request for defense was woefully inadequate. With inflation pushing past 8 percent, he asked for a fiscal year 2023 bump up of only 4 percent.

The House responded with a bill authorizing $22 billion more than the president requested. It passed the lower chamber by a more than three-to-one margin in July. In June the Senate Armed Services Committee approved, by an even more lopsided margin, a version exceeding the president’s request by $29 billion.

The full Senate, however, has yet to take it up the committee’s bill. And since June, senators have offered over 900 amendments for consideration. On Sunday Majority Leader Sen Chuck Schumer suggested the Senate would work “long hours” in the lame duck session to accomplish the work remaining. There is also the report that Schumer is going to pull the bill and move right to a conference a version of the NDAA that has been worked on behind the scenes.

It’s normally the issues that are only tangentially related to national defense that cause the biggest challenges in conference, in this case most likely some ill-considered social provisions. But after those are summarily dealt with, the leaders will need to adjudicate a few key issues in order to build the most powerful military possible. Here are seven steps that will allow Congress to take from each to resolve seven key issues in the final bill:

Strengthen shipbuilding procurement. Lawmakers should settle on a procurement of no fewer than 13 ships: three destroyers, two nuclear submarines, two frigates, one amphibious transport, two oilers, two medical ships and one salvage and rescue ship, as outlined by the House bill. The Senate version calls for only eight ships. For a Navy fleet that is already well short of the 355 ships experts tell us is necessary to deter China, every ship counts.

Increase funding for the National Defense Stockpile (NDS). The US relies on China for many raw materials vital to our national defense. The NDS is critical “insurance” against defense supply-chain disruptions. The final NDAA should reflect the language in the Senate version of the bill, which authorizes $1 billion for the National Defense Stockpile to acquire strategic and critical minerals currently in short supply—effectively doubling the value of the stockpile. It should also update the stockpile’s operating practices to give its manager more flexibility in acquiring new material.

Boost the US capacity to produce munitions. US munitions manufacturers are struggling to replace—for both US and allied forces—the stocks that have been drawn down to support Ukraine’s resistance to Russian aggression. The final bill should respond by authorizing multi-year procurements for munitions. This would allow the industry to increase its capacity, so that American munitions stocks can be replenished in two or three years, rather than seven or 10. Additional Defense Production Act Title III funding should also be included, allowing the president to directly invest money in the munitions industrial base to increase manufacturing capacity.

Keep the mandates to maintain an inventory of 186 F-22s. The F-22 is the most dominant air-to-air fighter in the world, and it is one of the youngest fleets in the Air Force. With the pending retirement of the F-15C, the F-22 will be the only fighter that is dedicated to this role. Any decision to retire it would prioritize cost over capability. Both versions of the bill contain similar language on this issue, but the House language is clearer and should be used in the final bill.

Remove the House provision that prohibits procurement of the Bridge Tanker aircraft. A critical capability, air refueling is in short supply, especially in any Indo-Pacific scenario. The Air Force should open the Bridge Tanker contract to competition now to ensure that the procurement of modern, fully capable replacement tankers continues without interruption.

Keep the Senate provision requiring a funding plan for acquiring at least 64 Next-Generation Interceptors (NGIs). The ballistic missile threat is rapidly increasing. This Senate version supports the eventual procurement of 64 NGIs to replace the entire existing fleet of ground-based interceptors. A uniform fleet of more capable interceptors is needed to keep pace with North Korea’s expansions and advances of their missile and nuclear programs.

Remove the House amendment that bars the sale of new F-16s, F-16 upgrade kits or modernization technology to Turkey. Turkey is a long-standing (albeit frustrating) ally of the United States and a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Prohibiting Turkey from buying new F-16s or even upgrading its current fleet would likely force Ankara to turn to Russia or other providers to refit its fleet of fighters.

Lawmakers and their staffs have labored to make the 2023 NDAA a bill that would strengthen national defense, and it shows. National defense remains one of the few areas where some bipartisanship still exists. Deciding these seven issues in favor of increased warfighting capability will help make a good bill better and will demonstrate Congress’s effective oversight of our armed forces.

A retired US Army Lt. General, Thomas Spoehr is the director of The Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense.

breakingdefense.com · by Thomas Spoehr · November 17, 2022

(1) MISSION. – The mission of the Irregular Warfare Center shall be to support the institutionalization of irregular warfare as a core competency of the Department of Defense by

(A) coordinating and aligning Department of Defense education curricula, standards, and objectives related to irregular warfare and strategic competition;

(B) providing a Center for research on irregular warfare, strategic competition, and the role of the Department of Defense in supporting interagency activities relating to irregular warfare and strategic competition;

(C) engaging in coordinating with federal departments and agencies other than the Department of Defense and with academia, non-governmental organizations, civil society, and international partners to discuss and coordinate efforts on security challenges in irregular warfare and strategic competition;

(D) developing curriculum and conducting training and education of military and civilian participants of the United States and other countries, as determined by the Secretary of Defense; and

(E) serving as a coordinating body and central repository for irregular warfare resources, including educational activities and programs, and lessons learned across components of the Department of Defense.

14. US is running low on some weapons and ammunition to transfer to Ukraine

Will the US ever again be the Arsenal of Democracy? We can only be part of one along with our allies who can contribute. It is good to see the ROK doing so.

US is running low on some weapons and ammunition to transfer to Ukraine | CNN Politics

CNN · by Jim Sciutto,Jeremy Herb,Katie Bo Lillis,Oren Liebermann · November 17, 2022

CNN —

As the first full winter of Russia’s war with Ukraine sets in, the US is running low on some high-end weapons systems and ammunition available to transfer to Kyiv, three US officials with direct knowledge tell CNN.

The strain on weapons stockpiles – and the ability of the US industrial base to keep up with demand – is one of the key challenges facing the Biden administration as the US continues to send billions of dollars of weapons to Ukraine to support its fight against Russia. One of the officials said the stockpiles of certain systems are “dwindling” after nearly nine months of sending supplies to Kyiv during the high-intensity war, as there’s “finite amount” of excess stocks which the US has available to send.

Among the weapons systems where there’s particular concern about US stockpiles meeting Ukrainian demands are 155mm artillery ammunition and Stinger anti-aircraft shoulder-fired missiles, the sources said.

Some sources also raised concerns about US production of additional weapons systems, including HARMs anti-radiation missiles, GMLRS surface-to-surface missiles and the portable Javelin anti-tank missiles – although the US has moved to ramp up production for those and other systems.

For the first time in two decades, the US is not directly involved in a conflict after withdrawing from Afghanistan and transitioning to an advisory role in Iraq. Without the need to produce weapons and ammunition for a war, the US has not manufactured the quantities of materiel needed to sustain an enduring, high-intensity conflict.

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA - NOVEMBER 16: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley speaks during a press briefing after a virtual Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting at the Pentagon on November 16, 2022 in Arlington, Virginia. The Ukraine Defense Contact Group met again to discuss aiding for Ukraine amid Russia's invasion. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Top US general argues Ukraine may be in a position of strength to negotiate Russian withdrawal

Defense officials say the crunch is not affecting US readiness, as the weapons sent to Ukraine don’t come out of what the US keeps for its own contingencies.

But the seriousness of the problem is a source of debate within the Defense Department, officials say. While the US will not be able to provide high-end munitions to Ukraine indefinitely, assessing whether the US is “running low” on stockpiles is subjective, one senior defense official said, as it depends on how much risk the Pentagon is willing to take on.

Multiple officials underscored that the US would never put at risk its own readiness, and every shipment is measured against its impact on US strategic reserves and war plans. Both Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley monitor levels of US stockpiles closely, officials said.

A major manufacturing challenge

One reason for the concern about low stockpiles is that the US industrial base is having difficulty keeping up with demand quickly enough, the sources said. In addition, European allies cannot sufficiently backfill Ukrainian military requests due to their need to maintain to their own forces’ supplies.

“It’s getting harder and harder,” Rep. Mike Quigley, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN. “This is a war we thought would be over in days but now could be years. At a time when global supply chains are melting down, the West is going to have a very difficult time to meet demands at this very high level.”

Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder told CNN that the US will continue to support Ukraine “as long as it takes,” while adding that no weapons transfers to Ukraine have diminished US military readiness.

“DoD takes into consideration the impacts on our own readiness when drawing down equipment from US stocks” Ryder said. “We have been able to transfer equipment from US stocks without degrading our own military readiness and continue to work with industry to replenish US inventories and backfill depleted stocks of allies and partners.”

At a press conference Wednesday following a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, Austin touted the commitments of a half-dozen countries providing additional weapons to Ukraine, including Greece pledging more 155mm ammunition.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and US President Joe Biden

CNN Exclusive: US intelligence suggests Russia put off announcing Kherson retreat until after midterm elections

“All Ukraine is asking for is the means to fight, and we are determined to provide that means. Ukrainians will do this on their timeline, and until then, we will continue to support all the way for as long as it takes,” Milley said at the press conference. “It is evident to me and the contact group today that that is not only a US position, but it is a position of all the nations that were there today. We will be there for as long as it takes to keep Ukraine free.”

The degree to which weapons stockpiles are running low varies system by system, as the US defense industrial base is better equipped to ramp up production of some weapons, while others are more difficult – or the production line has been shut down altogether and can’t be easily resumed.

“In most instances, the amounts given to Ukraine are relatively small compared to US inventories and production capabilities. However, some US inventories are reaching the minimum levels needed for war plans and training,” Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in a September article. “The key judgment for both munitions and weapons is how much risk the United States is willing to accept.”

The Pentagon said in a September fact sheet it had committed more than 806,000 155mm artillery rounds to Ukraine, for instance. Cancian wrote that ammunition for the 155mm howitzers was “probably close to the limit that the United States is willing to give without risk to its own warfighting capabilities.” At the same time, he wrote that a dozen other countries could supply the same ammunition, and Ukraine was unlikely to be constrained in what it needed thanks to the global market.

“Someone saying uncomfortably low - that’s a judgment,” Doug Bush, Assistant Army Secretary for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, told reporters. “You know, that’s a judgment about risk between sending munitions to an ally to use them in combat versus a hypothetical other contingency that we need to stockpile for. You know, that’s a judgment call.”

‘No question’ there is pressure on stockpiles

Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for policy, told reporters in a recent roundtable, “there’s no question” the weapons pipeline to Ukraine has put pressure on the stockpiles and industrial base of the US as well as its allies.

“Look, we’re seeing the first example in many decades of a real high intensity conventional conflict and the strain that that produces on not just the countries involved but the defense industrial bases of those supporting, in this case supporting Ukraine,” Kahl said. “I will say Secretary (Lloyd) Austin has been laser-focused since the beginning in making sure that we were not taking undue risk. That is that we weren’t drawing down our stockpiles so much that it would undermine our readiness and our ability to respond to another major contingency elsewhere in the world.”

Kahl added that the support the US has provided to Ukraine has not put the US military “in a dangerous position as it relates to another major contingency somewhere in the world,” but he said it has revealed there’s more work to do to make sure the US defense industrial base is more nimble and responsive.

The questions about weapons stockpiles comes as Congress is finalizing the Pentagon budget for the current fiscal year through the annual National Defense Authorization Act as well as the government spending package Congress is expected to try to pass before government funding expires on December 16.

A crater is seen near the small village of Przewodów, Poland where Polish officials confirmed that two people were killed after an explosion.

From Facebook

Poland, NATO say missile that killed two likely fired by Ukraine defending against Russian attack

The US military often turns to Congress for a funding boost – lawmakers have routinely added billions to the Pentagon’s budget requests in annual spending bills.

The Biden administration on Tuesday sent a letter to Congress seeking an additional $37.7 billion in funding for Ukraine. The funding includes $21.7 for the Pentagon to be spent in part to address weapons shortages, according to a White House fact sheet that says the money the Defense Department spending is for “equipment for Ukraine, replenishment of Department of Defense stocks, and for continued military, intelligence and other defense support.”

The $37.7 billion request comes as Republicans are projected to reclaim the House majority in the next Congress, which could make it more difficult for the Biden administration to authorize funding to Ukraine next year. House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy has said Republicans won’t give Ukraine “a blank check” – though he also clarified to his conference’s foreign policy hawks that he supports continuing to fund Ukraine’s war – and there are numerous Republicans pushing for a significant curtailing of US aid to Ukraine.

CNN · by Jim Sciutto,Jeremy Herb,Katie Bo Lillis,Oren Liebermann · November 17, 2022

15. Army Preps for ‘Contested Logistics,’ Works to Boost Arms Production

Employment of Unrestricted Warfare concepts would lead to attacks (direct, indirect, sabotage, and subversion) against the industrial base and the supply chain.

Army Preps for ‘Contested Logistics,’ Works to Boost Arms Production

Logistics win wars—but not if new enemy capabilities can disrupt supply lines.

defenseone.com · by Elizabeth Howe

Enemies can be expected to target U.S. supply lines in tomorrow’s wars—with drones, cyber attacks, and other new methods—so the Army and DARPA are working to stay a step ahead, officials said Wednesday.

“We've gone to war in the past with extremely large and, frankly, vulnerable supply lines. It's an American way of war—war through logistics. It's one of our greatest strengths,” Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Doug Bush said at a DARPA event. “But in doing so we do create a vulnerability that a sophisticated enemy could interdict.”

Bush and others described logistics as a top Army modernization priority.

“We need less energy demand in the front and we need more energy capacity produced at the front to dramatically shrink what those supply lines look like,” Bush said. He identified “dramatically reducing the energy demand of our weapons systems and platforms” while concurrently “dramatically increasing our ability to generate energy in the field” as one of DARPA’s top Army priorities.

The supply playbook also needs an update to prepare for possible near-future conflicts in the Pacific region.

“One of the things the Army does well is logistics. We just have to move it by sea, and we have to make sure we work with the Navy,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said at a POLITICO Live event. “We believe we’ll have what we call contested logistics. We’re going to have to work our way through it, just like we’re doing in Europe. And we will apply the appropriate measures to make sure we can do that.”

Meanwhile, the Army is working to produce more weapons and equipment to keep up with the consumption rates of ammunition in Ukraine.

“We’re in the process,” McConville said. “You’ve probably seen the news, we’re replenishing ammunition and weapons systems as we go along. We need to do that.”

The Army is also working to “ramp up our organic industrial base, both in the United States and around the world,” McConville said. So the next time a foreign country requires significant portions of America’s weapons stockpile, it can replenish more quickly.

Just this week, the Army announced several contracts—$520.814 million to Lockheed Martin for Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems and $14.357 million to Lockheed Martin to increase funding for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System. Both contracts specifically included that they aimed to “replenish” DOD stocks provided to Ukraine.

But the process itself also needs to be updated. Bush identified modernizing ammunition production processes as one of his top two priorities for Army modernization, the other being networks for unmanned systems.

“Everybody forgets about producing ammunition until there's a conflict,” Bush said. “We need much more modern ways to do it. I think if any of you were to go and tour some of our ammunition plants, you would see just how old these processes are. We have great Americans working there, but we should find a way to make it safer and more automated.”

“It isn’t the sexiest thing, frankly, the Army does, but it is very important,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said at the DARPA event. “Just look at how the Russian military in Ukraine has struggled to resupply and feed its soldiers. That shows you the importance of logistics today on a contested battlefield.”

defenseone.com · by Elizabeth Howe

16. Geography, Geostrategy and Military Operations

Excellent anecdotes and wise advice.

Conclusion:

We need to understand geography in the round to comprehend the nature of our insecurities both now and in the future. The purpose of politics is to resolve insecurities. Geo-strategic analysis will show the dependencies and relationships that will drive geopolitics in the future—geography shapes the strategy and politics shapes the execution of that strategy within the geography.

The core of all PME should consist of five critical subjects:

History, Military Theory, Geography, Operational Art (Campianging) , and Strategy.

Geography, Geostrategy and Military Operations

mackinderforum.org · by admin · November 15, 2022

by General Sir Rupert Smith

Unlike the majority of my school fellows, I enjoyed geography. Apart from the generally held opinion that the subject was for ‘thick’ boys, nobody took A levels in geography unless that was all they could do; I could not understand their aversion, not that I took a Geography A Level. Perhaps, with hindsight, I had been fortunate at an earlier age and had seen rudimentary geography in use. Since those days I have found the geography I learnt as a school boy of great value in the practice of the profession of arms. The ability to navigate and analyse the terrain for tactical advantage is obviously important and taught in military training establishments. At more senior levels the use of the discipline as an element of Geo-Strategy and Geo-Politics is not taught although it was as a senior commander that I took the greatest value from the geography I learnt at school.

As a small boy I had travelled with my parents, my father was in the RAF, taking long car journeys in late 1940s early 50’s Europe, and we sailed whenever my father could borrow a boat. Although not fully competent to use them or understanding of all that they displayed I came to understand the significance of maps, charts and the compass. I attended a number of schools sometimes for only a term or two, no syllabus seemed to be the same except Geography, where we coloured maps, learnt the names of capitals, the major rivers, and mountain ranges. In some cases, I had travelled through or in the country concerned. In matching my memory of the place with the map I began to comprehend that the geography of the place explained the difference of that place to others.

Later, at boarding school and with a text book that I recall was called something like an Atlas of Imperial Geography, these exercises were developed further. We gained a rudimentary understanding of geology, of climate and how glaciers and river systems develop. We studied a region’s natural resources, agriculture and industries, the trade routes between the regions and the economies that depended on them. I have memories of one particular exercise when we studied the Kariba Dam project in the Zambezi valley between the then North and South Rhodesia. Apart from examining the course and nature of the Zambezi and calculating the volume of water that would be stored behind the dam we considered the possible consequences of creating the dam. We discussed the disadvantages and advantages of the project to animal life, agriculture, mining and industry, and whether these pros and cons were the same for those upstream of the barrier in contrast to those below it, and whether those displaced by the rising waters would benefit as much as those in more distant the towns. The knowledge gained from this instruction gave me the foundation of my understanding of what I learnt much later came to be called physical and human geography. Furthermore, one came to see that such geography altering events as the building of the Kariba Dam had political and economic consequences.

In much the same way historical events were sometimes explained with reference to geographic factors: perhaps to explain the political or strategic significance of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, or the Nile Delta and the Suez Canal. I do not think anyone was suggesting that the geography of a particular place in itself caused the political confrontation or war, but rather it was those factors that shaped the event and on occasions served to identify the objective or contentious issue.

I recall one exercise or class project that consumed a great deal of what we considered was our free time, we were asked something like: “For what geographical reasons is Belgium known as the ‘Cockpit of Europe’, and why is it in Britain’s interest to have the Scheldt Estuary in the Netherlands while the port of Antwerp is in Belgium”?—assume 1000 men occupy —and consume —per day etc” After much work assessing east west communications across the Rhine, it became apparent that the only axis capable of carrying and sustaining a large army was that through the Low Countries. The other two: that from Metz to either Koblenz or Saarbruken, or east from Belfort into the head waters of the Rhine, were too constricted and the potential for forage was limited. It took a lot of prodding to get us to see the answer to the second half of the exercise. Eventually we grasped that it was a consequence of the Industrial Revolution and the development of steam powered ships. Thus, for Britain the westerly prevailing winds no longer defined the threat axis, Antwerp became “a pistol pointing at the head of England”. So, as the Belgians revolted and formed a state, it suited the British that the Belgian border with the Netherlands was such that both states had to be allied or conquered for Antwerp to be the mounting port for an invasion of England. In 1839 to increase the probability of this not happening Britain with other states guaranteed Belgium’s neutrality. In 2014 we had the centenary of this guarantee being presented.

In the background of my childhood was a great uncle, Professor Frank Debenham, we visited him occasionally in Cambridge. Once or twice, I went there for some of the school holidays when my parents were abroad. He had been on Scott’s last expedition as a geologist and I enjoyed being taken round the Scott Polar Institute that he had co-founded in 1920. Staying with him was always fun and amongst other things his explanations of the techniques of triangulation and astronavigation have stayed with me to this day. With hindsight I realize that he too was trying to get me to consider geographical factors when seeking to understand something or other; such as what it was about a place that shaped and forged the culture, economy and life of the people that lived there. I remember one long walk when we discussed at length, “why do Eskimos and not Britons live in Greenland?” Such analysis very quickly disabused you of any idea of one culture being superior to another, although perhaps one or the other could be more fortunate in their circumstances.

The more practical aspects of my education and childhood came into immediate use during my training and on being commissioned. The frequent use of maps and charts and the analysis of their content meant that I could see a map or chart in 3D; the shape of the ground, its folds and slopes, was evident at a glance. Apart from making navigation easier this ability was an advantage tactically. Battlefield tactics are intimately associated with the ground, at small unit level the depth of a ditch or whether a slope is convex or concave can alter the balance between life and death. Furthermore, my knowledge of astro-navigation was of value when we were deployed in Libya. Where we used sun compasses for direction and theodolites to fix our position. For during those early years of my military career, I served in all five continents, in the final stages of what some historians are calling ‘The Retreat from Empire’, and, while not understanding matters in this way at the time, began to play a very minor part in the worlds daily geopolitical drama.

This experience was crystallized when it came to study for the promotion exam. This programme of education to qualify you for promotion to Major and for selection for the Staff College involved attending three-day courses at various universities. Amongst other matters we were introduced to the ideas of geo-politics; this sought to explain the world of the Cold War in terms of economies, military power, domestic politics and international diplomacy. To a large degree the geographic factors were considered as a given, stable and immutable; the Cold War world was a frozen world.

At about the same time as I was preparing for the promotion exam the battalion I was posted to deployed on operations to Northern Ireland. The operation in support of the civil power had been underway for about two years, and the battalion had already done one tour in the Province. It was during this and three subsequent tours that my understanding of human geography and its significance in the conduct of military operations began to develop.

In this campaign the tactics of our opponent, the IRA, were those of the terrorist and guerrilla fighter; they remained concealed amongst the population. So, to begin to see what might be about to threaten us we had first to understand what was normal and routine for the population as a whole. To understand what was normal, to have some foundation against which to analyse the behaviour of a person or groups of people, one needed a map or model of the society in question—mapping the pattern of life.

This realization developed slowly. We started by plotting incidents on a map, such as bombings or shootings, and the time they occurred and then we would look to see whether or not a pattern resulted. For example, we plotted shootings and it became apparent that in most cases the firing point was a house with access to a road parallel to the one the target was on, to give an escape route, and the incidents generally occurred in the afternoon. We planned our patrols accordingly, placing patrols in parallel and increasing our patrols in the mornings, but shootings in the forenoon did not increase. Why? Were the gunmen in bed or what?

I recall another example: I was plotting the bombings of shops in Belfast, looking for a pattern in the type and or location of the shops, when I noticed that these events never occurred on alternate Thursdays. It took me nearly a day to discover the Thursdays in question were those when unemployment benefit was paid out. Later we established the main reason we were not shot at in the mornings was that the weapon had to be moved from its safe hiding place and this was done best when plenty of people were about. Both examples helped to shape the human geographic map or model, which was slowly built up on the foundation of the routine and events of everyday existence in the place in question. But what had to be remembered was that the model was never stable and that we, the Security Forces, were part of it.

In 1980 I was sent to the newly independent Zimbabwe as, in effect, the commanding officer of a small advisory and training team. The three armies that had fought what I learnt to call ‘The Liberation Struggle’ were still at large; in Assembly Places in the case of the guerrilla armies of the Patriotic Front, while the ‘Former Rhodesian Army’ was in barracks. As a result of the Lancaster House Agreement, which had inter alia ended the war, they were all under a Joint Command. Our task was to advise and help the Joint Commander to create a new Zimbabwe Army. The most urgent requirement was to prevent any drift back to armed violence and to bring all the weapons and ammunition under central control. There followed a most interesting and rewarding three years as we played our part in amalgamating the three armies, starting their training, including a Staff College, and introducing a demobilization scheme. I thought our role was to act as a catalyst for positive change and then to leave.

If we were to be credible our advice had to be thoroughly practical and be based in the context of the new Zimbabwe as its leaders understood it. To this end it was necessary to quickly understand the significant elements of the regions geography and grasp how that determined its history. Fortunately, my school’s Kariba Dam exercise gave me a small foundation on which to start. Amongst other things this enquiry exposed the different geo-political narratives of those engaged. Firstly, there was the imperial and colonial Rhodesian narratives which were not as aligned as might be imagined, the difference leading to the Rhodesian’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain. Then there was the Zimbabwean narrative in contrast to the Rhodesians, and this soon broke down into the tribal narratives of the Shona and Matabele. Externally there were more narratives all more or less dissonant with each other: the South African, imperial, colonial and republican; Mozambique, revolutionary and Portuguese colonial: the Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, and Tanzania narratives all different and associated with different internal parties; and then those of the powers that backed the ‘Struggle’, Russia, China and North Korea. Particularly in the case of the parties internal to Zimbabwe this enquiry was ‘work in progress’ as more information became available and I learnt to ask more searching questions.

By examining these differing narratives, I found I could usually comprehend the view of one party or another, in so far as it was based on past events. I could be reasonably certain as to what issues would have to be resolved and the parameters of a probable outcome. However, as tensions between the tribally based political parties increased and the ruling party became more secure, I found I had to learn more. I turned to anthropology to understand the way different cultures might think about a matter. This reading was most useful. I leant how decisions were made in the cultures in question. I found I could predict with some certainty where in the institutional processes, all based on British culture, the new decision makers would either short circuit or ignore the process and not necessarily to disadvantage. Amongst other things I realized that the concept of ‘Her Majesties Loyal Opposition’ was incomprehensible in practical terms to many of those now in power and yet the process of government rested on the implicit assumption that his concept was understand and practiced by all.

I left Zimbabwe to command a battalion that served in Cyprus and Belize as well as the United Kingdom; geography and its subordinate disciplines continued to be of value. In late 1985 I went to Germany, first as the Chief of Staff of a Division and then as a Brigade Commander. Here I was part of the NATO forces deployed to deter and contain the Warsaw Pact and found myself playing a part in the long running geo-political drama of the Cold War, in fact, it turned out to be the final act.

In the 1975, after some two years of patient negotiation, the Helsinki Accords were signed by the states of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. I expect I read about this but their significance escaped me, as did the stalling of the parallel talks over arms reduction, the Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions. However, ten years later at about the time of my arrival in Germany, the matter of arms reduction had begun to move, agreements to negotiate further were signed. By 1987 as the talks proceeded, we were hosting on our major exercises visitors from the Warsaw Pact armies as a confidence building measure and it was not long before we too were being invited to view their exercises. These negotiations led eventually to the signing of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe in 1990. By which time the Berlin Wall had fallen and revolutions had broken out in many of the states of the Warsaw Pact.

I think our military visits by both NATO and the Warsaw Pact helped play a part in this process in two ways. The first was to fulfil their intention as confidence building measures which they did. The second effect was that the professional militaries of both sides came to meet, observe each other and discuss their profession. We saw as we drove around the exercises the armies and the society in which they operated, and carried the impressions home to inform others; the Iron Curtain had become porous. In addition, we bonded. I remember the first time I briefed some visiting observers I explained that my brigade had failed to cross completely some obstacle the night before and were dangerously exposed as a result. After the briefing two senior officers, one Polish the other Russian, took me to one side and explained that I must not declare mistakes as I had just done or I would never get promoted! Later in 1989 when I was the Deputy Commandant of the Army Staff College visiting my opposite numbers in Moscow, another confidence building event, I met the Russian again. “See”, he said as we shook hands, “you are still a brigadier”.

In 1990, promotion came and I was appointed to command 1st Armoured Division. Within ten days of taking up this position I was told to deploy to Saudi Arabia with my HQ, to command the division which was to be the British Army’s contribution to the US led coalition facing the Iraqis who had occupied Kuwait. Once again the disciplines of geographic analysis stood me in good stead, as did the tactics and techniques of my previous 30 years service. Kuwait was liberated and we were withdrawn back to Germany. At the time I and many others saw the Gulf War 90/91 as a culmination of everything we had trained for, and to a large extent and in its practicalities it was.

But with hindsight it was the harbinger of a re-set in the geo-politics of the world. It was in this aftermath that the last decade of my service began. In late 1992 I started a new job at the Ministry of Defence, new to me and to the Ministry. I was the Assistant Chief of Defence Staff (Operations and Security). One of the lessons of the recent Gulf War was that there was a need for a single operations officer to coordinate the operations of the single services with other government departments. This activity and much more is now done by the Permanent Joint HQ at Northwood. On arrival I found my desk covered with files concerning the No Fly Zones established over North and South Iraq and the Balkans. The Balkans was to be the matter I dealt with the most during my time in the MOD and then in 1995 I was posted to Sarajevo to command the UN Protection Force or UNPROFOR.

Yugoslavia was breaking up into its component parts and new Balkan states were being formed based on past history and ethnicity. Generally, where there was an ethnic mix inter-ethnic violence followed. Initially our focus was on Croatia where a substantial minority of Serbs had lived for centuries planted there by the Hapsburgs in the border region with the Ottoman Empire. The Serbs used the word Krajina to designate this area much as in medieval English a border region was called a March. When Croatia declared its independence in 1991 the Croatian Serbs declared themselves the Republic of Serbian Krajina. Fighting broke out between Croatian and Krajina Serb forces. A UN force, UNPROFOR, was deployed to protect the Serb areas, while peace negotiations proceeded. At this time after much debate the UK contributed a medical unit to this force. However, during 1992 Bosnia and Herzegovina, another new state, formed. Inter ethnic fighting on an even worse scale than that in Croatia took place and elements of UNPROFOR were redeployed to Sarajevo. In late 1992 the Security Council decided to reinforce UNPROFOR in Bosnia. The UK decided to send a battle group

Our policy both in the UK and in the International Community as a whole over the breakup of Yugoslavia seemed to be: to recognise the new states, such as Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, but not the new Serb states, such as the Republika Srpska in Bosnia or the Republic of Serbian Krajina. Then, as the Serb minority states continued to fight, with the active support of Serbia, to use the UN to ameliorate the consequences of the fighting and where possible keep the peace, although there was usually no peace to keep. Meanwhile a series of peace plans were proposed: first the Carrington-Cutileiro Plan, then the Vance–Owen Plan, then the Owen-Stoltenberg Plan; and when these had all failed a Contact Group (U.S., Russia, France, Britain, and Germany) was formed in late 1993. In late August 1994 the Contact Group Plan was rejected. By this time NATO was conducting air operations over Bosnia and Herzegovina in an uneasy relationship with the UN and UNPROFOR. The implementation of our policy, such as it was, was weak and uncertain. It was all politics, usually the politics of the allies and their domestic politics, we were not thinking geographically or strategically.

As we agonised over what to do I explained in meeting after meeting that Bosnia and Herzegovina was landlocked, it traded into two navigations: the Adriatic, dominated by Croatia, and the Sava/Danube River system, dominated by Serbia. This geo-strategic fact meant that for Bosnia to have any meaningful independent existence it had to be able to trade into both navigations and thus be able to play Croatia off against Serbia and vice versa; and so, our strategy should seek to achieve this balance. Indeed, both Serbia and Croatia were backing their ethnic group in Bosnia so as to achieve an advantageous position relative to each other and to reduce Bosnia and Herzegovina to an irrelevance. It would be no good intervening to contain the fighting or, as we did eventually, to stop it, if we did not establish the conditions for Bosnia and Herzegovina to act independently thereafter. It was frustratingly difficult to get anyone to act on this geostrategic argument or even to see its significance.

The idea of UN Safe Areas was another concept without a firm grounding in geographical reality. The areas in question were isolated in Bosnian Serb territory some distance from the front line and the ground made it easy for a defender to conceal himself from air observation and attack. Thus, to support the safe areas the UN would need the permission of the Serbs or to be able to fight their way into the area with supplies, air power alone was not a solution; the will and the forces to do this were absent. It was hoped that the small UN detachments supported by air power would by their presence deter attacks on the safe areas, but it was never going to prevent the Bosnians in the areas attacking out from within them. UNPROFOR had been placed in a position of being a hostage of one side and the shield of the other.

My time as Commander UNPROFOR in 1995 led to me try to understand the Serb and Bosnian strategies. My geostrategic and geopolitical analysis of the Bosnian Serb position in February/March of that year led me to what I called my ‘thesis’—or what I thought they would do. Of course, I could not prove my thesis and being a UN force there was no intelligence agency to collect information to prove it or not. While the Bosnians and Serbs had strategies, the UN and NATO operations were being conducted in a political and strategic vacuum and nobody seemed interested in the thesis. Nevertheless, and with the benefit of hindsight, one can see events unfolding much as my analysis supposed. Although I had anticipated the ‘squeezing’ of the Safe Areas I had not anticipated the nadir of the collapse of the UN Safe Area of Srebrenica and the subsequent murder of some 8000 men; however, this atrocity proved to be a turning point.

In the aftermath of Srebrenica decisions were made that led to NATO air attacks, the breaking of the siege of Sarajevo, Croatian forces invading Republika Srpska and the deployment of the American Richard Holbrook to negotiate initially a cease fire. By November 1995 the Dayton Peace Accords were signed.

In November 1998 I was appointed Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and in early 1999 we started the operation to force Milosevic, the President of Serbia, to withdraw his forces from the Serbian province of Kosovo. Once again, we were intervening, this time without a UN mandate, and thus taking responsibility for a landlocked area; an area with four different states on its borders, whose infrastructure very largely bound it to Serbia and whose people were ethnically similar to only one of the bordering states, Albania, and that with by far the worst communication links. Although this was not acknowledged at the time, we were intervening to change the borders of the state of Serbia; as recall phrases like “this is not establishing a precedent” were being used when awkward questions were asked. In 2008 Kosovo declared its independence and this was recognized by some 100 other states including the US, UK and France. Since 1945 it had been an accepted rule that borders stayed where they were; I do not think the long-term geopolitical consequences of breaking this principle in 1999 were considered at the time. Russia has justified its actions in Georgia and now Ukraine, in part at least, on the basis of the Kosovo intervention by NATO.

In contrast to my Balkan experience my three years (96-98) as GOC Northern Ireland gave an example of great geopolitical courage. It was during my time in command that the Good Friday Agreement was signed in April 1998 and the long campaign against the IRA came to an end. In the agreement between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland the Irish agreed, subject to the agreement being ratified by referendum, to alter their constitution. Since the founding of the State, the Constitution of Ireland had asserted a territorial claim over Northern Ireland, they agreed to remove this claim and in effect remove the principle plank of the Republican argument.

Nevertheless, on the evidence of the last decade of my service I think our ability to think geo-strategically has atrophied, whether we consider the performance in capitals or in the intergovernmental institutions they form. What is more from my observation of our endeavours in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya I do not think we have got any better.

I think this parlous state of affairs in the institutions of governance is a consequence of the Cold War. From 1945 or thereabouts the majority of governments have been able to assume a stable geo-strategic state—what mattered was the politics. Of course, the politics were vitally important but they were based on the safe assumption of a more or less stable geography and strategy. Generations of decision makers grew up and passed their responsibilities on to their juniors on the foundation of these assumptions. But with the end of the Cold War the tectonic plates began to shift, the geostrategic assumptions were no longer safe, the geostrategic factors needed to be assessed anew on each occasion. It is necessary to examine in the first instance the deeper and more stable truths of physical and human geography, before considering the more short-term political factors.

As we have seen frequently this was not done and politics led to decisions that ran contrary to geographical factors. For example, take the case of Libya after Gaddafi was deposed and killed. Released from the tyranny of Gaddafi’s rule, Libya fractured into its tribal groupings, each remaining more or less armed and autonomous. The southern grouping supporting their cousins, the Touareg, in Mali, and the two northern groups based on Tripoli and Benghazi opposed to each other. That Libya is a fractious tribal society with loyalties to tribes in other states was known before Gaddafi. I was briefed on this human geography when on standby in Malta in the late 1960s, preparing for an operation to extract RAF personnel from El Adem, should Gaddafi mount a coup against King Idris. Why were we taken by surprise this time?

My profession, particularly in the command of operations has shown me the value of the discipline of geography that I was taught at school. That the earth shapes the society of man and man seeking advantage shapes the earth. Geography with all its specializations records and explains this dynamic relationship. Hitherto the changes have been relatively local or superficial but are now increasingly regional and global. We are now becoming so interdependent and interconnected, that we are increasingly systemically dependent; particularly now that over half the world’s population lives in cities. The demand for finite resources is increasing; the environment is being degraded and depleted; the climate is changing; as is the demographic balance in many societies. Man is changing the earth on a global scale.

We need to understand geography in the round to comprehend the nature of our insecurities both now and in the future. The purpose of politics is to resolve insecurities. Geo-strategic analysis will show the dependencies and relationships that will drive geopolitics in the future—geography shapes the strategy and politics shapes the execution of that strategy within the geography.

R A SMITH

Ed.: For General Sir Rupert Smith’s biography, please see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Smith

mackinderforum.org · by admin · November 15, 2022

17. NDIA Policy Points: The Precarious State of U.S. Defense Stockpiles

This is a critical capability that we must never neglect.

NDIA Policy Points: The Precarious State of U.S. Defense Stockpiles

nationaldefensemagazine.org

ARMAMENTS

11/18/2022

By Chris Laudati

Defense Dept. photo

The United States has provided a staggering volume of military aid to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began Feb. 24. The Stingers, Javelins, HIMARS, and 155mm howitzer have upended Russia’s invasion, and Ukraine has successfully regained territory in the east.

Behind this operational success lies an uncomfortable reality: the war in Ukraine has left U.S. defense stockpiles significantly depleted. Current inventories do not undergird a national security strategy that continues to support Ukraine while retaining the ability to assist Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.

According to the Defense Department, in the six months from March to September, the United States supplied Ukraine with more than 800,000 155mm artillery rounds. From Sept. 28 to Oct. 28, it donated another 100,000 rounds. The September production capacity, meanwhile, was only 14,400 rounds per month. While the exact number of 155mm artillery rounds the United States possesses is unknown, this gap between utilization and production will significantly deplete its reserves over time.

The current plan to increase production capacity would incrementally bring the total number of 155mm rounds produced per month to 36,000 over the next three years. While this represents an improvement, even this will not address and backfill a depletion rate of more than 100,000 per month.

Other weapon systems face even more dire production challenges. The United States has delivered more than 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft systems to Ukraine, helping prevent Russian domination of contested airspace. Having been focused on counterinsurgency operations over the past 20 years, the Pentagon has not procured Stingers in more than a decade. Raytheon Technologies — the manufacturer of the Stinger — reported earlier this year that several materials used in the production of the Stinger are no longer available. As such, Raytheon will not be able to resume Stinger production until 2023.

As for the Javelin, the Pentagon has continued to procure the anti-armor system over the years. Ramping up production of both the system and missiles will be less challenging than the Stinger. In an interview with CBS News, Lockheed Martin’s CEO Jim Taiclet stated the production of Javelin missiles could be upgraded from approximately 2,000 missiles per year to 4,000 over the span of several years. The required multi-year window to upgrade production capabilities is an evident issue across the defense industrial base. Furthermore, it is also not clear that 4,000 missiles per year will be sufficient, given the need to replenish depleted supplies, the strong potential for the war in Ukraine to continue and Taiwan’s need for similar systems.

The weapons used to devastating effect in Ukraine are already in high demand in Taiwan. The Biden administration has signaled support for turning Taiwan into a “porcupine” that would be costly to invade, thus deterring the People’s Republic of China from attacking. This strategy would take the form of asymmetric warfare — placing an emphasis on the use of systems such as Stingers and Javelins as opposed to tanks and helicopters.

The war in Ukraine has already strained defense procurements for Taiwan. In August, the island abandoned a contract to purchase 155mm M901 self-propelled howitzers after a 2023 delivery date was pushed back to 2026 due to supply chain stress.

The replacement for the M901 will hardly relieve strains on the defense industry. Taiwan now plans to increase its purchase of HIMARS systems from 11 to 29 by 2027.

The U.S. defense industrial base is operating in a distinctly different environment than it was five years ago — great power competition is again paramount, and there is an unexpected need to replenish U.S. military stockpiles.

To properly support Ukraine, enhance Taiwan’s ability to defend itself against attack and maintain its own readiness, the U.S. government must work to enhance the production capacity of critical weapons systems in the short and long term.

A bipartisan group of senators recently introduced the Securing American ARMS Act, legislation that would allow the Defense Department to replenish depleted stockpiles through the award of noncompetitive contracts to defense industry members. Although noncompetitive procurement practices should not become the norm, this will allow for the backfilling of stockpiles without a lengthy procurement process.

Multi-year procurement contracts will provide a more long-term solution to replenish defense stockpiles. Many contracts of now-stressed critical weapons systems are renewed yearly. Longer contracts that span 24 to 36 months will allow defense industry partners to confidently ramp up production processes of critical systems — such as the Stinger — over several years at low financial risk.

The fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act calls for a study into the production surge capacity of several critical weapons systems, including Stingers, Javelins, Patriot surface-to-air missiles and Harpoon anti-ship missiles. Passage of the act will allow for this study to commence, and for the department to identify future procurement challenges.

While the war in Ukraine shocked U.S. defense stockpiles, a future conflict over Taiwan should not. Understanding future defense production vulnerabilities and temporarily changing procurement contracts will allow for the replenishment of current supplies while enhancing U.S. readiness for a potential future conflict.

Chris Laudati is an NDIA junior fellow.

nationaldefensemagazine.org

18. China’s Xi Stacks Government With Science and Tech Experts Amid Rivalry With U.S.

Graphics at the link.

China’s Xi Stacks Government With Science and Tech Experts Amid Rivalry With U.S.

Number of people with backgrounds in strategically important areas among the Communist Party elite has more than doubled to nearly 40%

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-xi-stacks-government-with-science-and-tech-experts-amid-rivalry-with-u-s-11668772682?mod=hp_lead_pos4

By Karen HaoFollow

Nov. 18, 2022 6:58 am ET

HONG KONG—Chinese leader Xi Jinping has packed the top ranks of the Communist Party with a new generation of leaders who have experience in aerospace, artificial intelligence and other strategically important areas, as Beijing seeks to become a science and technology superpower that rivals the U.S.

The roster of officials with backgrounds in science and technology on the party’s 205-member Central Committee has rebounded to roughly the length it had during former leader Jiang Zemin’s first five-year term, beginning in 1992, when he kicked off a rapid acceleration of scientific research and innovation. The increase comes as the White House takes steps both to contain China’s tech sector and boost U.S. innovation.

Chinese officials with technical expertise occupy 81 seats, nearly 40% of the total, in the new Central Committee—the elite body that decides major national policies—according to data compiled by the Washington-based Brookings Institution think tank and shared exclusively with The Wall Street Journal. That compares with less than 18% in the previous Central Committee. The new one was announced last month during a twice-a-decade conclave in Beijing.

On the party’s ruling 24-person Politburo, the core of the Central Committee, the number of science- and tech-savvy decision makers rose to eight from two.

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For most of its 73 years in power, the Communist Party has wrestled with the value of recruiting elites with technical knowledge, so-called technocrats, as opposed to purely political operators—the “red vs. expert” debate, as it’s known. Though Mr. Xi often draws ideological comparisons with Mao Zedong, who was skeptical of experts, he has repeatedly espoused his belief in the importance of science and technology to bolster China’s economic and military might.

“We must regard science and technology as our primary productive force, talent as our primary resource, and innovation as our primary driver of growth,” Mr. Xi said at last month’s Communist Party congress.

“Those are not just empty words or an empty goal,” says Cheng Li, director of the China Center at Brookings, who compiled and analyzed the data. “He deliberately promoted leaders from that area to enter the Chinese leadership.”

Under Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, several top leaders had engineering backgrounds, but the party’s lower ranks were thin on such experience. This left few candidates available in subsequent years to promote to more influential positions in the central government. Those roles went instead to leaders with training in economics and social sciences.

The new wave of appointments came a month after U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan announced the U.S.’s own strategic shift to start maintaining “as large of a lead as possible” over competitors like China in foundational technologies. In October, the U.S. Commerce Department released sweeping export controls to throttle China’s ability to make and access advanced chips, one of Beijing’s self-identified chokepoints critical to a wide swath of its economic and military ambitions.

Many of the new technocrats in the Central Committee come from emerging industries that Beijing has identified as strategic priorities, including semiconductors, environmental science and biotechnology. Brookings counted only individuals who earned a degree in science or engineering and subsequently practiced in the field. It didn’t include those who specialized in economics and finance.

Aerospace experts lead with 20 seats, forming what is sometimes known as the “aerospace clique” or “cosmos club” in Chinese politics. Their dominance highlights the importance Mr. Xi places on the industry’s role in Beijing’s civil-military fusion strategy and as a source of national pride, Brookings’ Mr. Li says.

Given the success of China’s aerospace industry, such experts have also demonstrated “impeccable credentials” for managing large teams and complex projects, skills integral to overseeing national and provincial governance, according to Ruihan Huang, a research associate at Chicago-based think tank MacroPolo, which studies China’s economy.

The sudden jump in science and technology experts is abetted in part by the changing makeup of China’s political elite. Most senior officials under Mr. Hu had come of age during the Cultural Revolution and so were denied educational opportunities, said Mr. Huang, who analyzed the backgrounds of provincial leaders in a report released in May.

By contrast, the generation of experts now being promoted is highly educated and boasts extensive research or industry experience, according to the Brookings analysis. Many earned graduate and doctoral degrees, studied abroad and ran universities or multinational companies, including some listed among the Fortune 500, Mr. Li said.

Only one member of China’s ruling seven-member Politburo Standing Committee is a technocrat by Brooking’s definition. Ding Xuexiang, a political protégé of Mr. Xi who split his career between materials research and government administration, is sometimes seen as a bridge between the old-guard bureaucrats and the newer technocratic elite, according to Tristan Kenderdine, research director at political-risk consulting firm Future Risk.

Xu Dazhe, Ding Xuexiang and Yin Li

CHINA DAILY/REUTERS; TINGSHU WANG/REUTERS; ROMAN PILIPEY/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK

One rung below, in the Politburo, the technology experts have backgrounds more characteristic of the up-and-coming generation.

Ma Xingrui, a member of the “cosmos club” seen as another Xi protégé, had a 25-year career in aerospace that included leadership roles across university administrations, a state-owned aerospace contractor and government agencies including China’s National Space Administration. He was also chief commander of several space missions, including China’s first for lunar surface exploration.

In 2013, he entered government, working his way up to governor of the southern province of Guangdong, one of China’s economic engines, which elevated him to the Central Committee. In 2021, he was transferred to the fractious northwestern region of Xinjiang to serve as party secretary—a sign of Beijing’s significant trust in his capabilities, China watchers say. In October, he was promoted to the Politburo.

Yin Li, another new addition to the Politburo, is an internationally respected public-health expert who served as a vice chairman of the World Health Organization and was a visiting scholar at Harvard University. At China’s Ministry of Health, he helped shape the country’s response to the SARS crisis in 2003.

The new tech-heavy Central Committee was announced at last month’s Communist Party congress.

PHOTO: LINTAO ZHANG/GETTY IMAGES

Dr. Yin entered government in 2015, swiftly rising to become governor of Sichuan province and gain a seat on the Central Committee. In 2020, he was named party boss of the southeastern province of Fujian, one of Mr. Xi’s power bases. On Sunday, he was named municipal party chief in Beijing, where China watchers expect his expertise to play an important role in management of Covid-19 and the eventual reopening of the capital city.

Experts in science and technology are also being promoted in provincial governments, a sign that their influence will continue to grow. A preliminary MacroPolo analysis found that many provincial-level experts are matched with the province whose industries fit their expertise, which could improve management of high-tech industries and strengthen their development, MacroPolo’s Mr. Huang said.

Aerospace-industry veteran Xu Dazhe, for example, held key government roles from 2016 to 2021 in Hunan province, a major center of aerospace research that helped develop the Beidou Satellite Navigation System, China’s homegrown alternative to the U.S. Global Positioning System. During his tenure, Mr. Xu intensified investment in Beidou and expanded the local industrial base through partnerships with state-owned aerospace companies, Mr. Huang says.

Upon his retirement last year, Mr. Xu was succeeded as Hunan party secretary by another aerospace-industry veteran, Zhang Qingwei, former party secretary of Heilongjiang province, a manufacturing hub for commercial aircraft. Mr. Xu served on the Central Committee, and Mr. Zhang remains a member.

Write to Karen Hao at karen.hao@wsj.com

19. Russia warms to U.S. prisoner swap for arms trader Bout

I hope reports like this do not jinx any deal.

Russia warms to U.S. prisoner swap for arms trader Bout

Reuters · by Guy Faulconbridge

Summary
Russia says it is seeking Bout's return
Griner transferred to Russian region of Mordovia
Russia counts on "positive" result

LONDON, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Russia said on Friday it hoped to clinch a prisoner swap with the United States to return convicted Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout, known as the "Merchant of Death", in an exchange that would likely include U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner.

Amid the deadliest war in Europe since World War Two, Russia and the United States are exploring a deal that could see imprisoned Americans including Griner return to the United States in exchange for Bout.

"I want to hope that the prospect not only remains but is being strengthened, and that the moment will come when we will get a concrete agreement," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying by Interfax.

"The Americans are showing some external activity, we are working professionally through a special channel designed for this," Ryabkov said. "Viktor Bout is among those who are being discussed, and we certainly count on a positive result."

For the two former Cold War foes, now grappling with the gravest confrontation since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the exchange would mark one of the more extraordinary prisoner swaps in their history.

The distinctly upbeat remarks from Ryabkov, the foreign ministry's point man for the Americas and arms control, contrast with previous statements from Moscow which have cautioned Washington against trying to engage in megaphone diplomacy over the prisoner swap.

The possible swap includes Griner, facing nine years behind bars in Russia after being convicted on drug charges, and Paul Whelan who is serving a 16-year sentence in Russia after being convicted of espionage charges that he denies.

BOUT FOR GRINER

Variously dubbed "the merchant of death" and "the sanctions buster" for his ability to get around arms embargoes, Bout was one of the world's most wanted men prior to his 2008 arrest on multiple charges related to arms trafficking.

For almost two decades, Bout was one of the world's most notorious arms dealers, selling weaponry to rogue states, rebel groups and murderous warlords in Africa, Asia and South America.

But in 2008, Bout was snared in an elaborate U.S. sting.

Bout was caught on camera agreeing to sell undercover U.S. agents posing as representatives of Colombia's leftist FARC guerrillas 100 surface-to-air missiles, which they would use to kill U.S. troops. Shortly afterwards, he was arrested by Thai police.

Bout was tried on the charges related to FARC, which he denied, and in 2012 was convicted and sentenced by a court in Manhattan to 25 years in prison, the minimum sentence possible.

Ever since, the Russian state has been keen to get him back.

Griner has been transferred to a penal colony in the Mordovia region, southeast of Moscow, her lawyers said on Thursday, confirming a Reuters report.

At her trial, Griner - who played basketball for a Russian team in the U.S. off-season - said she had used cannabis for relief from sports injuries but had not meant to break the law. She told the court she made an honest mistake by packing the cartridges in her luggage.

Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge, Editing by Mark Trevelyan

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by Guy Faulconbridge

20. Russia’s Missing Peacemakers

Conclusion:

Given all the horrible things Russia has done, this outcome would not be terribly satisfying for Ukraine or its Western partners. But under the current circumstances, Putin believes he has no choice but to continue bombing and attacking Ukraine. And unlike many of Russia’s elites, Putin believes that Ukraine is still doomed. His present personal goal is tactical—stopping Kyiv’s attacks, holding the line, and then waiting until the Ukrainian state collapses, which he believes is just a matter of time. Putin could even escalate, turning to nuclear weapons. Signaling to the realists that peace with Ukraine will not inevitably cause Russia to collapse is a dramatically challenging task. But it may be the only way to get the Kremlin to end its catastrophic invasion. Until then, even the realist elites have no choice but to bet on the strong state and the strongman.

Russia’s Missing Peacemakers

Why the Country’s Elites Are Struggling to Break With Putin

By Tatiana Stanovaya

November 18, 2022

Foreign Affairs · by Tatiana Stanovaya · November 18, 2022

Even in a war that has gone poorly for Russia, the Russian Defense Ministry’s November 9 announcement of a full retreat from the city of Kherson marked a special kind of disaster. Kherson was the first major Ukrainian city seized by Moscow after the invasion, and it was one of the four regions that Russia had illegally annexed just five weeks earlier, following sham referendums. In October, the city’s occupying authorities had plastered its streets with billboards declaring that Russia would be there “forever,” and Moscow had told Russian citizens that the city’s occupation was one of the war’s major successes. But by the time of the annexation, Russian forces were already struggling to hold their lines in the face of continued Ukrainian advances. Eventually, Russian leaders were forced to withdraw and to shore up defenses around Crimea and in the east.

This embarrassing retreat—which follows Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive in Kharkiv province in September—has caused many Russian elites to question and challenge the invasion. People who opposed the war from the outset (but who stayed silent to stay safe) have been joined by many people who actively supported the war but are now convinced that the invasion has been mishandled from the start and privately want it to end. Some of them worry that Russian President Vladimir Putin is unfit to lead, prone to missteps, and overly emotional in his decision-making.

People from Russia’s prominent “patriotic,” pro-war political forces, who recently called on Moscow to fight until it reaches Kyiv, have now started to sound much more realistic. On the popular pro-military Telegram channel Obraz Buduschego (the Image of the Future), an anonymous correspondent wrote that Moscow should try to freeze the conflict and carry out domestic reforms. Yury Baranchik, a prominent Russian patriot on Telegram, argued that Moscow’s blitzkrieg had failed and that Russia should stop trying to push forward, and that it should instead entrench its existing positions and focus on domestic issues. The famous state television pundit Aleksander Medvedev recently said that Russia has to admit that the situation in Ukraine is poor, and he acknowledged that Moscow will face more defeats. Even aggressive nationalists, such as Aleksei Zhivov, have argued that the war shows that Russia’s political system has failed. Many of these analysts insist that Russia, instead of fighting in Ukraine, should do some housekeeping to deal with domestic issues—including corruption.

Some in the West may believe that Russia’s growing domestic discord presents an opportunity, and that there may even be an influential Russian constituency that wants Moscow to soften its rhetoric and engage in genuine negotiations with Kyiv and the West to end the war. But even if there is growing domestic demand to “rethink” the war and focus on internal problems, there are serious complications that make it hard for these realists to turn into peacemakers. Russia’s realists are wary of any negotiations that might lead to a humiliating resolution, which could threaten their political future—or even their physical safety. Notably, no one in Russia’s leadership has publicly supported any form of territorial concessions, which would amount to an acknowledgement of Russia’s defeat and could lead to criminal prosecution. (Russian law forbids any calls for territory disintegration, and Moscow now considers much of Ukraine to be part of Russia.) For the same reason, the country’s elites will not dare turn against Russian President Vladimir Putin. For all his failures, Russia’s leader remains their best bet for preserving the regime that keeps them safe.

If the West wants these realists to transform into a party of peace, it should make it extremely clear to Moscow that peace would not lead to a Russian strategic disaster or state collapse. Otherwise, domestic politics will continue to favor war. No one will suggest peace out of fear of being purged, even if Russia continues to lose. Instead, as the defeats pile up, Moscow will become more unhinged.

NO WAY OUT

In Putin’s Russia, there are many ways to define defeat. For its military leadership, defeat is an accumulation of battlefield setbacks; for the nationalist hard-liners, it entails allowing Ukraine’s “anti-Russia” state to exist at all; and for the security services, it means losing a major Russian confrontation with the West. For the regular elites, it means anything that threatens their personal and political security. But for almost all of Russia’s main constituencies, including the realists, withdrawing Russian forces to their pre-invasion lines of control would meet their criteria. Such a move would not only mark the end of Russian influence over Ukraine but also usher in a humiliating new geopolitical reality for Moscow.

And to Russia’s elites, a withdrawal would be more than humiliating; it would be dangerous. They do not think that if they simply agree to withdraw to Russia’s pre-February 24 positions and negotiate to control parts of Donetsk and Luhansk they can reconcile with Ukraine. They don’t believe that Moscow can end hostilities without risking losing Crimea. In fact, they believe that if Russia withdrew its troops to where they were at the start of 2022 it would leave Russia itself vulnerable to collapse. As Dmitri Trenin, the former director of the (now-shuttered) Carnegie Moscow, wrote in May, “the strategic defeat” that the West “is preparing for Russia” means that “the theater of the ‘hybrid war’ will simply move from Ukraine further east, into the borders of Russia itself, the existence of which in its current form will be in question.” On Russian telegram channels, many Russians have implied that the West would insist on dismissing Putin as a part of possible agreement. Many conservatives believe that if Putin fell as a result of such a deal, his regime would eventually be followed by a more pro-Western government that would betray Russia’s strategic interests and allow the country to physically disintegrate. To put it simply, the Russian elite sees the war against Ukraine not as expansionary but as a war for self-preservation.

Many Russians believe that the collapse of the state would be followed by international criminal investigations, perhaps even a war crimes tribunal. This prospect frightens even Russian elites not involved in the fighting. Since the war began, Putin’s regime has not allowed any leading members of Russia’s public or private sector to stay on the sidelines. Officials who tried to distance themselves from the invasion—as Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, central bank head Elvira Nabiullina, and Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin all apparently did—have been effectively conscripted into the war effort. Mishustin, for example, was appointed by Putin to lead the “special coordination council,” which Putin created to bring together civilian and military leaders to meet the government’s wartime needs. But far from empowering technocrats to check and balance the influence of the military and security apparatus, the council has been incorporated into the military’s agenda and made to act in accordance with the military’s priorities. Mishustin now serves the armed forces’ needs by securing the economy’s wartime mobilization. He has little time to move forward on his own peacetime agenda and focus on the development of Russia’s modern economy.

The Russian elite sees the war against Ukraine as a war for self-preservation.

The war has also changed Sergey Kiriyenko, Putin’s domestic policy chief. Once a technocrat, Kiriyenko seemed to take advantage of the war to bolster his position, becoming responsible for the political integration of the occupied parts of Ukraine into Russia. But in reality, Kiriyenko was ill prepared for the challenges of military occupation, and he has been pushed to cooperate more closely with the security services. In response, he has begun imitating the hawks around him and largely shed his past reputation as a pragmatic, if sycophantic, operator.

Many other once moderate elites have had a similar trajectory. Today, the Putin regime has been adopting elements of a military dictatorship. Despite recent criticism of Russia’s war strategy, the hawks are ascendant, and political repression has destroyed any real opposition by quickly silencing displays of outright dissent against the regime itself. The pro-war fervor has made militaristic but previously marginal elites, such as Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the mercenary Wagner Group, even more noisy and provocative. And it has pushed many other figures within the regime to adopt extreme views they previously shunned. Even Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chair of Russia’s security council, who as president from 2008 to 2012 was considered a liberal, has started issuing wild diatribes against NATO and Ukraine over Telegram. Today’s political mainstream consists of a rising univocal, powerful, and intolerant pro-war movement for which the invasion is existential. To them, victory must be secured by all means possible—including through nuclear weapons. They see no place for peace initiatives.

In this context, the rise of the realists could prove critical to ending the conflict. They understand that Russia’s current path is suicidal, and that carrying out more atrocities and wasting shrinking resources would worsen Russia’s already deteriorating position in a conflict that Moscow will eventually have to end. But even though they want to halt the invasion, they have a complicated path.

DIVIDE AND CONQUER

For Russia’s elites, demonstrating support for the war—if not for the way it is currently being fought—is the key to political survival. Many increasingly voice support for escalation, a theme that has become mainstream. Despite the different interests in play, technocrats, security operatives, conservative nationalists, and business leaders are largely united in believing that Russia cannot lose, lest it result in the collapse of the regime on which they all depend.

But Moscow is becoming deeply divided on how to accomplish that task. The war’s biggest proponents, including ideological conservatives such as Nikolai Patrushev and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, want to carry out a full mobilization, conscripting Russia’s entire eligible population and putting the entire Russian economy on wartime footing, and hit Ukraine with everything they have—including nuclear weapons. (Russia has recently been carrying out a large-scale media campaign aimed at making the world believe that Russia can and would use these weapons if needed.) These ultranationalists still envision a clear victory, with Kyiv eventually falling into Russian hands. The growing chorus of realists, by contrast, has come to see that Moscow does not have the resources that it needs to win. Instead, they favor an approach in which Russia avoids more defeat by freezing the war where it is, digging defensive lines around their current positions and using reinforcements to stop the Ukrainian advance.

There is no one in the Russian elite who will support a Russian withdrawal to the country’s February 24 positions. It is possible, however, that the realists could publicly push for freezing the conflict in a temporary agreement with the West (sealed with Ukraine). First, however, they would need to overcome the radical hawks, who are ready to fight in Ukraine until the bitter end and who remain dominant in domestic political discourse. To do so, they will have to convince Putin to personally acknowledge reality and opt for a more sober approach to the conflict. But even if Putin gives up and admits that the best Russia can do is freeze the war, it will not assuage elite fears about Russia’s survival and territorial integrity in face of the West, which even the realists believe wants to subjugate Russia.

There is little that the United States and Europe can do to insulate realists from domestic threats. But if the West wants to strengthen its voice in the Kremlin, it should outline a proposal in which Russian-Ukrainian peace talks would result in a simultaneous Russian-U.S. dialogue over Moscow’s strategic concerns. This dialogue would be designed to firmly guarantee to Moscow that Russia would continue to be a stable, autonomous state. The United States could do this by agreeing to discuss the future of NATO. The West would also have to offer Russia guarantees that Ukraine will not be used as part of a Western “anti-Russia” project, as Putin alleges.

Given all the horrible things Russia has done, this outcome would not be terribly satisfying for Ukraine or its Western partners. But under the current circumstances, Putin believes he has no choice but to continue bombing and attacking Ukraine. And unlike many of Russia’s elites, Putin believes that Ukraine is still doomed. His present personal goal is tactical—stopping Kyiv’s attacks, holding the line, and then waiting until the Ukrainian state collapses, which he believes is just a matter of time. Putin could even escalate, turning to nuclear weapons. Signaling to the realists that peace with Ukraine will not inevitably cause Russia to collapse is a dramatically challenging task. But it may be the only way to get the Kremlin to end its catastrophic invasion. Until then, even the realist elites have no choice but to bet on the strong state and the strongman.

TATIANA STANOVAYA is a Nonresident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Founder and CEO of the political analysis firm R.Politik.

Foreign Affairs · by Tatiana Stanovaya · November 18, 2022

21. Ukraine 'blows up Russian oil depot 190 miles from Moscow'

Ukraine seems to have the capabilities to act boldly.

Ukraine 'blows up Russian oil depot 190 miles from Moscow'

Ukraine 'blows up Russian oil depot 190 miles from Moscow in drone strike' hours after Putin's forces launched barrage of 90 missiles

The 4am attack is reported to have taken place in the settlement of Stalnoi Kon
One account said alleged strike 190 miles from Moscow left a crater 12ft deep
Ukrainian official Anton Geraschenko posted an image of the facility in flames
Pictures later showed significant damage to the oil storage complex

By WILL STEWART FOR MAILONLINE and REUTERS

PUBLISHED: 04:59 EST, 16 November 2022 | UPDATED: 07:33 EST, 16 November 2022

Daily Mail · by Will Stewart for MailOnline · November 16, 2022

Images show a suspected Ukrainian military drone attack on a Russian oil depot just 190 miles from Moscow.

The 4am attack 'blew up an oil depot in the settlement of Stalnoi Kon', said regional governor Andrey Klychkov.

Unverified images on social media showed what appeared to be a single rupture on the side of an oil storage tank, blackened by soot.

The logo of Russia's state-controlled pipeline operator Transneft can be seen on the tank, which state television said was believed to be empty. The alleged drone attack left a crater some 12ft deep, according to one report.

Since the start of Russia's offensive in Ukraine, several fuel or ammunition depots in southern Russia have been attacked by drones or helicopters, with authorities blaming Ukrainian forces.

The latest apparent attack comes a day after Russia fired almost 100 missiles at cities across Ukraine, causing three deaths and cutting the power supply to millions.

Images show a suspected Ukrainian military drone attack on a Russian oil depot just 190 miles from Moscow. Ukrainian official Anton Geraschenko posted an image of the facility in flames (pictured) - which it was not possible to verify - and a caption: 'Smoking in the wrong place reached the Oryol region'

The 4am attack 'blew up an oil depot in the settlement of Stalnoi Kon', said regional governor governor Andrey Klychkov

Unverified images on social media showed what appeared to be a single rupture on the side of an oil storage tank, blackened by soot

The blast happened in the settlement of Stal'noi Kon' about 190 miles from Moscow

Ukrainian official Anton Geraschenko drew attention to the depot blast without claiming responsibility.

He posted an image of the site in flames - which it was not possible to verify - and a caption: 'Smoking in the wrong place reached the Oryol region.'

Pictures later showed significant damage to the oil storage complex.

The site is around 100 miles from the border with Ukraine.

If it was Ukrainian, it would be a record reach for a Kyiv attack on Russia.

The site is around 100 miles from the border with Ukraine. If it was Ukrainian, it would be a record reach for a Kyiv attack on Russia

The alleged drone attack on a Russian oil depot comes a day after Russia fired more than 100 missiles at cities across Ukraine, causing three deaths and cutting the power supply to millions. At least three Russian missiles hit the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on Tuesday, with mayor Vitali Klitschko saying they all struck residential buildings (pictured)

'There are no casualties. All emergency services are working at the site,' said Klychkov.

On the previous night, there were reports of a similar incident in the neighbouring Bryansk region.

Telegram channel SHOT said explosions caused by drone-dropped ammunition were heard at the Zhecha oil terminal, about 30 miles from the border with Ukraine.

It comes as US president Joe Biden told G7 and Nato partners that a missile blast in eastern Poland yesterday was caused by a Ukrainian air defence missile, a Nato source told Reuters on Wednesday.

The blast, which killed two people, raised global alarm that the Ukraine conflict could spill into neighbouring countries.

Ukraine blamed Russia. Russia denied its missiles struck Poland.

Biden told reporters in Indonesia that the missile was unlikely to have been fired from Russia.

Nato ambassadors were scheduled to hold an emergency meeting this morning to respond to the explosion at a grain dryer near the Ukrainian border, which happened while Russia's missile barrage hit cities across Ukraine.

Daily Mail · by Will Stewart for MailOnline · November 16, 2022

22. Listen to Xi Jingping about Taiwan

Excerpts:

Pessimists will dismiss Xi’s speech as nothing more than Communist propaganda whose jargon is meant to conceal more than reveal and provide diplomatic cover to bide time for when China has the military capability to “solve” the Taiwan question by force. To be fair, Xi’s words should be continually compared against facts on the ground. And the facts, no doubt, suggest a much more coercive and muscular military posture around Taiwan.

But it would be a mistake to not take seriously the words of Xi in a major speech crafted for both domestic and international audiences. For Xi and China, the 20th Party Congress work report represents the most authoritative assessment of China’s policy towards Taiwan. It also sets the tone for Taiwan policy in the next several years during Xi’s third term as General Secretary.

And nowhere in the 20th work report does Xi suggest a more belligerent, impatient, or coercive policy towards Taiwan. Nor does it suggest that Xi has a set a timeline for reunification. What it does suggest is that Xi cares more about signaling policy continuity highlighted by “peaceful unification” with Taiwan in the near term.

But the United States and other like-minded countries should not interpret this as a sign that time is on their side. For peace to prevail — and for the risks of military conflict with Taiwan to continue to outweigh the benefits for Xi — countries must continue to send unambiguous signals to Xi and his government that any military aggression to compel unification of Taiwan will be met with a forceful military, economic, and diplomatic response.

Listen to Xi Jingping about Taiwan - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Lyle Morris · November 18, 2022

A Chinese invasion of Taiwan is not imminent. If we listen to the words of China’s leader, Xi Jinping, that is.

Xi’s much-anticipated Party Congress work report, delivered last month at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, offered sinologists the most authoritative assessment of the Chinese Communist Party’s approach to a range of domestic and foreign policy issues, to include Taiwan. Like forensic evidence, each word of the speech should be dissected, scrutinized, and analyzed for clues — and possible changes — to China’s approach to Taiwan.

Such a fine-toothed comb approach is warranted. The Party Congress work report is vetted and approved by Xi himself, cognizant that his words will be examined closely by a domestic and global audience on edge for signs of policy shifts.

Become a Member

That is why what Xi said — and didn’t say — on Taiwan was noteworthy. In this latest document, Xi signaled more continuity than change over China’s overall approach to Taiwan. Most importantly, he did not signal a heightened sense of urgency to “solve” the Taiwan issue using military means. This should reassure a jittery global audience increasingly skeptical of Xi’s designs over Taiwan.

That hasn’t stopped a chorus of predictions these days from senior U.S. government officials about an invasion “timeline.” It started with the now-infamous “Davidson window,” in which the former commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Philip Davidson, suggested during testimony to Congress in March 2021 that the threat of military action against Taiwan may manifest “in the next six years.” Similar predictions followed from the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, CIA Director Bill Burns and Deputy Director David Cohen, and Undersecretary of Defense Colin Kahl. The latest voice from inside the U.S. government expressing concern about Beijing’s designs on Taiwan came from Secretary of State Blinken, who said last month that China wants to seize Taiwan on a “much faster timeline.”

Certainly, assessments from senior government officials should be taken seriously. These officials undoubtedly have access to intelligence and feel compelled to raise public concerns over Xi’s thinking regarding Taiwan. But absent access to classified materials, and the ability to read Xi’s mind, the voice we should be paying closest attention to is that of Xi himself. And the bottom line is if Xi wanted to change course or tone on Taiwan, he could have done so in his speech. But he didn’t. That should be cause for relief in the near term.

But the long-term military threat from China’s government will not disappear anytime soon. That is why the United States must continue to meaningfully support Taiwan’s defense capabilities, to include asymmetric capabilities that will materially affect outcomes on the battlefield, coupled with economic and diplomatic initiatives that ensure Taiwan’s participation in international fora, while at the same time assuring Beijing that the United States does not seek to move fundamentally away from its “One China” policy premised on “strategic ambiguity.” No easy task, to be sure.

Parsing The Taiwan Section of the Speech

Every work report features a section dedicated to Taiwan and cross-strait relations. This section merits the most scrutiny and should be compared to the Taiwan sections of prior work reports for changes in language and tone.

A review of this year’s section yields several core themes: most importantly, it highlighted Xi’s preference for “peaceful unification” (和平统一) on the basis of the “one country, two systems” model, and warned “secessionist forces” that Beijing would not renounce the use of force to safeguard China’s interests. This formula, which is repeated in the 19th work report, reaffirmed longstanding policy towards Taiwan.

The first sentence, for example, repeats almost verbatim what was written previously:

Solving the Taiwan question and realizing the complete reunification of the Motherland is the unswerving historical task of the Party, the common aspiration of all Chinese sons and daughters, and an inevitable requirement for realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

The latest report then devotes the bulk of the section to China’s need to pursue “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan.

Some highlights include:

The policies of peaceful reunification and One Country, Two Systems are the best way to realize reunification across the Taiwan Strait; this best serves the interests of Chinese people on both sides of the Strait and the entire Chinese nation.

We adhere to the one-China principle and the “1992 Consensus.” On this basis, we will advance extensive and in-depth consultations on cross-Strait relations and national reunification with people from all political parties and groups in Taiwan, and jointly promote the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations and the peace of the motherland.

We will continue to strive for peaceful reunification with the greatest sincerity and the utmost effort, but we will never promise to renounce the use of force, and we reserve the option of taking all measures necessary.

This [warning] is directed solely at interference by outside forces and the few separatists seeking ‘Taiwan independence’ and their separatist activities; it is by no means targeted at our Taiwan compatriots.

Most noteworthy in these passages is the continuity of emphasis to solve the Taiwan issue using “peaceful” means — meaning not using military force to compel or otherwise persuade Taipei to unify with Mainland China. Had Xi intended to signal a shift from this goal, he would have done so with tougher language, warnings, or the removal of the term “peaceful” from the above phrases.

To be sure, Xi reiterated that China would not renounce the use of force — a warning repeated by every General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party since Mao Zedong. Thus, this phrase was not a surprise to China watchers who follow Party Congress work reports closely.

A Warning to “External Forces”

Despite Xi’s assurances to pursue “peaceful unification,” other issues are clearly bothering him. Namely, U.S. policy towards Taiwan.

This year’s work report included the judgement that “interference by external forces” (外部势力干涉) in Taiwan affairs continue to pose “serious provocations” (严重挑衅) for the Chinese government. Xi used this phrase three different times in the report. In contrast, he did not use this term once in the 19th Party Congress work report.

Xi elevates the gravity of said “outside forces” by mentioning the issue early in the report — in the fifth paragraph, in fact — a clear signal that he believes that the United States and its allies and partners are exacerbating the Taiwan problem more than in the past. For Xi and other government strategists, the U.S. factor of aiding and supporting “independence forces” in Taiwan has increased, not decreased, greatly complicating any effort to coerce Taiwan back to the negotiating table. At the top of the list of actions that China regards as “outside interference” undoubtedly include U.S. arms sales and congressional delegation visits to Taiwan.

Xi follows the assessment about external forces with equal parts triumphalism and deterrence, by saying:

We resolutely carried out major struggles against separatism and interference, demonstrating our strong determination and determination to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity and oppose “Taiwan independence”.

In other words, independence forces were thwarted once again by Xi and the People’s Liberation Army. Even here, though, Xi could have been more aggressive in his delivery. At the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party on July 1, 2021, for example, Xi dropped this phrase to would-be foreign provocateurs and oppressors:

The Chinese people will never allow any foreign forces to bully, oppress, or enslave us. Anyone who dares try to do so will have their heads bashed bloody against the Great Wall of Steel forged by the flesh and blood of 1.4 billion Chinese people!

In the context of current cross-strait relations, how long Xi can forestall Taiwanese and foreign “forces,” and how much patience Xi has for the perceived independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party government in Taipei, remain key questions going forward.

History and Initiative are on China’s Side

Two phrases made appearances in this year’s Party Congress work report that were particularly noteworthy. First, Xi made two references of the need to grasp “strategic initiative/dominance” (主动权/主导权) over Taiwan.

The need to “seize the initiative” has a long history in China’s Communist Party political and military orthodoxy, made famous, of course, by Mao Zedong. But it’s inclusion in the report — and not in the last work report — merits further examination.

Two examples from the report include:

Adhere to the party’s overall strategy for resolving the Taiwan issue in the new era, firmly grasp the dominance and initiative in cross-strait relations, and unswervingly advance the great cause of national reunification.

Resolutely oppose “Taiwan independence” separatist acts, resolutely oppose interference by external forces, and firmly grasp the dominance and initiative of cross-strait relations.

It is noteworthy that this phrase is invoked entirely in the context of reunification with Taiwan. Likely, Xi conceives of this “grasping initiative” strategy in whole-of-government terms, to include military counter-measures in response actions by “external forces,” such as the missile tests near Taiwan after U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit in August, but also long-term political and economic measures to tempt Taiwan into political talks with Beijing in the future.

Finally, Xi concludes the Taiwan section of the speech with a metaphor:

The historical wheels of national reunification and national rejuvenation are rolling forward and will certainly be achieved.

This is a new twist to an oft-repeated phrase in Party work reports that historical trends are pushing the two sides closer together. While some may interpret a coercive undertone of “inevitability” in unifying Taiwan with China, it is nonetheless a softer pitch for cross-strait reproachment than previous formulations.

Continuity Prevails

Pessimists will dismiss Xi’s speech as nothing more than Communist propaganda whose jargon is meant to conceal more than reveal and provide diplomatic cover to bide time for when China has the military capability to “solve” the Taiwan question by force. To be fair, Xi’s words should be continually compared against facts on the ground. And the facts, no doubt, suggest a much more coercive and muscular military posture around Taiwan.

But it would be a mistake to not take seriously the words of Xi in a major speech crafted for both domestic and international audiences. For Xi and China, the 20th Party Congress work report represents the most authoritative assessment of China’s policy towards Taiwan. It also sets the tone for Taiwan policy in the next several years during Xi’s third term as General Secretary.

And nowhere in the 20th work report does Xi suggest a more belligerent, impatient, or coercive policy towards Taiwan. Nor does it suggest that Xi has a set a timeline for reunification. What it does suggest is that Xi cares more about signaling policy continuity highlighted by “peaceful unification” with Taiwan in the near term.

But the United States and other like-minded countries should not interpret this as a sign that time is on their side. For peace to prevail — and for the risks of military conflict with Taiwan to continue to outweigh the benefits for Xi — countries must continue to send unambiguous signals to Xi and his government that any military aggression to compel unification of Taiwan will be met with a forceful military, economic, and diplomatic response.

Become a Member

Lyle J. Morris is a senior fellow for foreign policy and national security at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Lyle Morris · November 18, 2022

23. Beijing says PH, China should ‘reject unilateralism and acts of bullying’

If the Philippines accepts this advice then Manila would have to reject Beijing.

Beijing says PH, China should ‘reject unilateralism and acts of bullying’

rappler.com · by Bea Cupin · November 18, 2022

BANGKOK, Thailand – During what Malacañang called a “historic” bilateral meeting, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. and Chinese President Xi Jinping talked about a gamut of issues – including the South China Sea.

Marcos and Xi met late Thursday afternoon, November 17, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Bangkok.

In a statement hours after the one-on-one meeting, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said “the two sides must stick to friendly consultation and handle differences and disputes properly.”

The Philippines’ Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), in a statement sent almost 12 hours after the meeting, said “the two leaders agreed that maritime issues do not define the totality of Philippines-China relations.” Marcos himself has said as much in the past.

China’s statement added that the two countries should “work together to reject unilateralism and acts of bullying, defend fairness and justice, and safeguard peace and stability in the region.”

China did not specify the “acts of bullying” but it has repeatedly called the United States a bully. China, however, itself is accused of bullying in the South China Sea.

During the bilateral meeting, the Philippine government said the two countries “reaffirmed their support for the early conclusion of a Code of Conduct on the South China Sea to help manage differences and regional tensions,” referring to the code that has yet to be agreed upon 20 years after the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China agreed on its creation.

‘Cold war mindset’

The bilateral talks between Marcos and Xi, and China’s participation at regional meets come amid increasing competition between the regional giant and the United States.

The Philippine President, just days ago, attended the ASEAN Summit in Phnom Penh while Xi flew in from Bali, Indonesia, where he attended the G20 summit.

Xi, in a written statement for an APEC business summit, warned against Asia-Pacific turning into an “an arena for big power contest.”

“No attempt to wage a new cold war will ever be allowed by the people or by our times,” Xi said.

Marcos’ statement at the bilateral meeting echoed Xi’s earlier message. “Our foreign policy refuses to fall into the trap of a Cold War mindset. Ours is an independent foreign policy guided by our national interest and commitment to peace,” said Marcos, according to the DFA.

This was Marcos and Xi’s first time to meet as heads of state.

Malacañang – through a news release and a recorded interview with Marcos – said the two leaders spoke about “regional issues” and “agriculture, energy, infrastructure and people-to-people connections.”

China’s foreign ministry said in a statement that Xi agreed to “import more quality agricultural and sideline products from the Philippines.”

“The Philippines is ready to engage in active consultations with China and find ways to advance the joint exploration of maritime oil and gas resources,” it also said.

Marcos said they “mostly” talked about his upcoming state visit to China in early January 2023 – his first state visit outside of Southeast Asia.

Topics during bilateral meetings – particularly those between the highest officials of a country – are normally decided upon even before two leaders shake hands.

Marcos earlier said he “hoped” to talk to Xi about disputes in the West Philippine Sea or the South China Sea.

Marcos’ meeting with Xi happens in the new Philippine president’s first few months in office – a crucial time in creating a good first impression on the international community.

Philippine and China relations went through ups and downs in the past three administrations. Links were thriving during the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo administration, icy under the late Benigno Aquino III, and again growing under Marcos’ immediate predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte. Aquino is remembered as the Philippine leader who brought China to court over the West Philippine Sea.

Marcos seems committed to his “friend to all and enemy to none” foreign policy. He has affirmed – very overtly – his belief that US-Philippine relations will and should be strengthened.

But he has also sought to improve ties with China. Arroyo, whom China Foreign Minister Wang Yi has called “an old and good friend of the Chinese people,” was part of the Philippine panel in the bilateral meeting. – Rappler.com

rappler.com · by Bea Cupin · November 18, 2022

24. Leaked FSB letters reveal civil war among Putin's allies

Accurate, disinformation, or wishful thinking? What comes next?

Leaked FSB letters reveal civil war among Putin's allies

Newsweek · by Isabel van Brugen · November 18, 2022

Leaked emails from a whistleblower at Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), shared with Newsweek, reveal a civil war among President Vladimir Putin's closest allies as his invasion of Ukraine continues to falter.

The agent, dubbed the Wind of Change, writes regular dispatches to Russian dissident exile Vladimir Osechkin, revealing the anger and discontent inside the FSB over the war that began when Putin invaded neighboring Ukraine on February 24.

Vladimir Putin, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov and Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner Group.

Osechkin is a Russian human rights activist who runs the anti-corruption website Gulagu.net.

The emails were shared in full with Newsweek by Igor Sushko, the executive director of the Wind of Change Research Group, a Washington-based non-profit organization. Sushko has been translating the correspondence from Russian to English since they began on March 4.

Previous FSB letters authored by the whistleblower, and published by Osechkin, have been analyzed by Christo Grozev, an expert on the FSB. He said he had shown the emails to two FSB officers who had "no doubt it was written by a colleague."

'Abyss of Terror'

Dated November, the agent's latest emails detail inner turmoil and conflict within the Kremlin, predicting an "inevitable" civil war, and that Russia will soon "descend into the abyss of terror" as people grow increasingly tired of the war.

The whistleblower focuses on Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Putin ally and founder of the mercenary outfit the Wagner Group, and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

Both Prigozhin and Kadyrov have continued to criticize how Putin's war against Ukraine is being handled, appearing to be siding with each other in rare displays of dissent, suggesting that rifts may be emerging inside the Kremlin.

U.S. think tank the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) also assessed in late October that Prigozhin and his military group could "pose a threat to Putin's rule."

The FSB agent, however, said that "there is no model of 'just changing power'" in Russia.

"There is no way to 'change everything' in Russia so that the country as a whole will function and does not descend into the abyss of terror," the email said, laying out how a civil war would play out in the country.

"In the beginning we may get a haphazard riot, with only looting and chaotic skirmishes between everyone. Let me try to explain: the struggle of security agencies against Prigozhin's structures, a real war against each other, is bad, but generally inevitable," they wrote.

"Or there will be battles of the regions for the division of resources. Or a scramble of various forces for control over regions or chunks of the country (Russia)."

But the country could collapse into total chaos, the agent said.

Chaos, Civil War

"Believe me—that is far more terrifying. I assert, and this is by no means the solitary private opinion of one simple (FSB) employee: we have f***ed up the country. We (FSB) screwed up the country not on February 24, when this whole affair began, but much earlier, when February 24 became possible in principle."

"Chaos, civil war, collapse—yes, it's all ahead of us. It is inevitable," the FSB agent said. "Too many in Russia have crossed the point of no return. They plan to be little czars in the areas they manage to capture. At least, that's the way they are thinking."

The whistleblower suggested that it won't be easy for the Kremlin to suppress Prigozhin should he eventually pose a threat to Putin's rule.

"And when the especially 'smart' leaders in the FSB engage in whitewashing Prigozhin as non-systemic, and say that we have a structure that can neutralize him if it became necessary – that's nonsense."

The ISW has said Prigozhin is effectively building a "constituency" of supporters and his own fighting force that aren't under the direct control of the Russian military or the ministry of defense.

Prigozhin therefore holds a uniquely advantageous position within the Russian state structure and information space that allows him to expand his constituency in the country more readily than the higher military command, allowing him to freely promote himself and his forces while criticizing Kremlin officials or the Russian armed forces without fear of push back, according to the think tank.

Domestic Terror

In a more urgent email dated on November 8, the FSB whistleblower warned Osechkin that Prigozhin is preparing brigades for "domestic terror" in Russia, amid a surge of protests and riots in several regions of Russia over reports that more than 1,000 Russians were killed in the space of three days during intense fighting in Ukraine.

During a meeting Prigozhin's Wagner mercenaries were delegated authority and guaranteed a regime of impunity and tacit approval for acts of aggression and intimidation against those who protest against the war and Putin's policies, the agent said.

"Our analytics and reports go up the chain and they understand there that the level of popular discontent is growing exponentially and we will not be able to extinguish it using legal methods," the whistleblower wrote.

"The Service (FSB) is not ready for internal terror, and Prigozhin and Kadyrov think that their time has come, and moment to shine has arrived. Both realize that if they stop fighting and start a dialogue, both will cease to be necessary to Putin."

According to the agent, both Kadyrov and Prigozhin will then be "cut off in funding" and will "return to their places in the system."

"But both characters are no longer willing to accept that, each of them imagines themselves indispensable."

The whistleblower said the FSB expects the pair to carry out a series of provocations that will smear the service (FSB) and point to its "alleged inability to control the situation in the country."

"If everything goes according to Prigozhin's scenario, we will lose both control and the country," they concluded.

Newsweek has contacted Russia's foreign ministry for comment.

Newsweek · by Isabel van Brugen · November 18, 2022

25. Data centers are physical and digital targets, says Pentagon’s Eoyang

This is one for the triad (SOF, Cyber, and Space) - attack of adversaries' data centers through varied means. Probably based on an updated CARVER analysis.

Data centers are physical and digital targets, says Pentagon’s Eoyang

Defense News · by Colin Demarest · November 17, 2022

WASHINGTON — The role cyber plays in military campaigns needs reexamination after Russia’s failure to cripple computer networks during its invasion of Ukraine likely forced it to physically strike the country’s infrastructure instead, according to a senior Pentagon official.

Mieke Eoyang, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, on Nov. 16 said the conflict in Eastern Europe is critically important for the U.S. Department of Defense to understand, noting that day-to-day fighting and devastation are outstripping the consequences of cyberattacks.

“When you think about cybersecurity as a risk-managed exercise, and one of the risks you are trying to manage in the context of that is armed conflict, you have to think very differently about what you are dealing with,” Eoyang said at the Aspen Cyber Summit in New York. “When you think about the cybersecurity of data centers, for example, it is not just about patching and closing those things. It is about the physical security of those data centers. It is about whether or not those data centers are within the range of Russian missiles.”

The number of assaults on Ukrainian networks and critical infrastructure has ballooned since Russia’s invasion in late February. The finance and commercial sectors as well as national and public authorities were among “the major targets for hackers,” according to the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine. In recent months, electricity and energy resources have come under intense barrage by Russian missiles, leaving huge parts of Ukraine without power or heat as winter approaches.

Microsoft in April reported that cyberattacks were conducted in concert with real-world kinetic attacks, across land, sea and air. Together, the company said, the efforts sought to disrupt and degrade Ukrainian government and military functions and foment public distrust in the institutions.

Advance work in Ukraine blunted Russian cyber advantage, US says

The Pentagon sought $11.2 billion for cyber in fiscal 2023. That's $800 million, or nearly 8%, over the Biden administration’s previous ask.

“What you’re seeing is a cyber-capable adversary bring those capabilities to bear in the context of an armed conflict. And one of the things we’re seeing is the context of the armed conflict dwarfs the cyber impacts of that,” Eoyang said. “When you think about the physical destruction relative to the cyber disruption of what happens here, things the Russians tried to disrupt via cyber did not have the strategic impact that they wanted, and they sought to destroy those things physically.”

Russia, which has historically denied accusations of cyber aggression, is nevertheless blamed for using state-sponsored hacking to advance its political aims.

The U.S. has increasingly invested in cyber and broader security paradigms, such as zero trust, as it attempts to counter the ambitions of China and Russia, the Nos. 1 and 2 security threats, according to the National Defense Strategy. A Defense Department zero-trust strategy is expected to be made public any day now.

The department sought more than $11 billion for cyber in fiscal 2023, some $800 million more than the Biden administration’s previous request. Budget documents previously published by the White House describe cyber spending as a priority.

About Colin Demarest

Colin Demarest is a reporter at C4ISRNET, where he covers military networks, cyber and IT. Colin previously covered the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration — namely Cold War cleanup and nuclear weapons development — for a daily newspaper in South Carolina. Colin is also an award-winning photographer.

De Oppresso Liber,

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Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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David Maxwell

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Phone: 202-573-8647

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Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

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If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

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