Quotes of the Day:

“Every SF group at full strength possesses capabilities to establish a special forces operating base (SFOB) and two or more satellites, called forward operating bases (FOB), assisted by company and battalion headquarters, known as B and C detachments. Cross-trained experts in each 12- man A detachment (54 per group at full strength) excel at five fundamental pursuits: light weapons, demolitions, field communications, combat intelligence, and paramedical support. Personnel consequently are proficient at raids, ambushes, and sabotage, but employing Green Berets for such purposes when suitable alternatives are available wastes their special talent, which is to develop, organize, equip, train, and direct indigenous military and paramilitary forces in unconventional warfare (UW) and foreign internal defense (FID). UW assists selected insurgents and resistance movements, with particular attention to subversion, other underground/auxiliary activities, and guerrilla tactics. FID assists friends with counterinsurgency efforts, including military assistance and civic action. Unique reconnaissance and intelligence skills are essential in both instances. So is escape and evasion.

‘Force multiplication’ rather than direct force application, in short, is the special forces forte. Units can perform such functions as an adjunct to nuclear, chemical, and conventional operations during mid¬– and high– intensity combat, but their primary purpose is low intensity conflict of types just described.”

-John M. Collins, United States and Soviet Special Operations, p.24 (1987)

"Remote area operations are operations undertaken in insurgent-controlled or contested areas to establish islands of popular support for the HN government and deny support to the insurgents. They differ from consolidation operations in that they are not designed to establish permanent HN government control over the area. Remote areas may be populated by ethnic, religious, or other isolated minority groups. They may be in the interior of the HN or near border areas where major infiltration routes exist. Remote area operations normally involve the use of specially trained paramilitary or irregular forces. SF teams support remote area operations to interdict insurgent activity, destroy insurgent base areas in the remote area, and demonstrate that the HN government has not conceded control to the insurgents. They also collect and report information concerning insurgent intentions in more populated areas. In this case, SF teams advise and assist irregular HN forces operating in a manner similar to the insurgents themselves, but with access to superior combat support (CS) and combat service support (CSS) resources"

(From FM 3-05.202 Foreign Internal Defense 2007.) (NOTE: No longer in current FID Doctrine)

"It's no surprise that hackers working for North Korea, Iran's mullahs, Vladimir V. Putin in Russia, and the People's Liberation Army of China have all learned that the great advantage of cyberweapons is that they are the opposite of a nuke: hard to detect, easy to deny, and increasingly finely targeted."

- David E. Sanger

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, NOVEMBER 8 (Putin's War)

2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (08.11.22) CDS comments on key events

3. Army Special Ops Is Changing Psyops Training to Reflect Ukraine War

4. The Army’s Distributed Command Posts of the Future Will Need More than Videochats

5. Ukraine Calls for More Anti-Drone Gear as Air-Defense Missiles Arrive

6. Pentagon: Xi and Putin ‘edging toward an alliance’

7. Ongoing Pentagon push to arm Ukraine will have three-star general leading from Germany

8. Fresh wave of Ukrainian refugees expected as Russia targets power ahead of winter

9. The Gap Has Been Bridged! (foreign policy theory versus practice)

10. The U.S. Military Is In Decline While China Grows More Powerful

11. Breaking China’s near monopoly on rare earths will be easier said than done

12. Secret SEAL sub suffers secret mishap

13. Americans need to get over political hard feelings and confront hard enemies abroad

14. Russia seeking to poison American political discourse leading up to midterm elections

15. Russia hasn’t killed any US-supplied HIMARS in Ukraine, according to a senior defense official

16. Opinion | Taiwan is on the frontlines of China’s worldwide cyberwar

17. Strategic Ambiguity Out of Balance: Updating an Outdated Taiwan Policy

18. Report to Congress on Great Power Competition

19. Ukraine’s Zelensky Sets Conditions for ‘Genuine’ Peace Talks With Russia

20. The Return of Red China

21. Strategic Misjudgments Of The Chinese Authorities – Analysis

22. Phantom Retreats and Stolen Bones: The War of Deceit in Ukraine

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, NOVEMBER 8 (Putin's War)

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-8

Key Takeaways

• Iranian sources announced—without Russian confirmation—that Russian National Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev arrived in Tehran on November 8, likely to discuss the potential sale of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia. Iran likely announced Patrushev’s arrival to highlight the deepening cooperation between Moscow and Tehran to an international audience, as well as to implicitly highlight that a high-ranking Russian official turned to Iran for help in Ukraine.
• Wagner Group forces are continuing to exaggerate their claimed territorial gains in Donbas to further distinguish themselves from proxy and conventional Russian forces.
• Ukrainian forces likely made marginal gains northwest of Svatove, Luhansk Oblast, and Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces intensified offensive operations toward Kreminna.
• Russian forces continued offensive operations around Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and in western Donetsk Oblast.
• Ukrainian authorities attempted to counteract Russian authorities’ continued efforts to strengthen control of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP).
• The disproportionate financial burden of Russian force generation efforts continues to fall primarily on Russian regional governments’ budgets, prompting public backlash.
• Financial and bureaucratic issues are continuing to hinder Russian efforts to replenish formerly elite units defending critical areas of the front line, potentially threatening the integrity of Russian defenses in occupied parts of Ukraine.
• Russian occupation authorities in Kherson Oblast may be trying to force residents out of the western part of the oblast by cutting communications on the west bank of the Dnipro River.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, NOVEMBER 8

Nov 8, 2022 - Press ISW

understandingwar.org

Karolina Hird, Grace Mappes, Madison Williams, Yekaterina Klepanchuk, and Mason Clark

November 8, 7:45 pm 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.

Iranian state-run outlet Nour News Agency reported that Russian National Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev arrived in Tehran on November 8, likely to discuss the potential sale of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia.[1] Nour News Agency announced Patrushev’s arrival in an English-language tweet, stating that Iranian Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Secretary Ali Shamkhani invited Patrushev and noted that Patrushev will also meet with other high-ranking Iranian political and economic officials to discuss Russo-Iranian cooperation.[2] Nour News Agency is affiliated with the SNSC. The SNSC likely announced Patrushev’s arrival in Iran to highlight the deepening cooperation between Moscow and Tehran to an international audience (rather than domestically), as well as to implicitly highlight that a high-ranking Russian official turned to Iran for help in Ukraine. Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani notably traveled to Moscow in 2015 to appeal to Russia to intervene in the Syrian Civil War. Tehran is likely eager to publicly signal this rebalancing of its strategic partnership with Moscow, especially to regional Iranian adversaries with which the Kremlin occasionally cooperates, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia.[3] Patrushev’s visit to Iran notably comes amid reports that the Iranian regime is seeking Russian help with protest suppression, although it is unclear if this will be discussed by Patrushev and his Iranian counterpart.[4]

The Kremlin is continuing efforts to covertly acquire munitions for use in Ukraine to mitigate the effects of international sanctions and backfill Russia’s ongoing depletion of domestic munitions stockpiles. British outlet Sky News reported on November 8 that the Kremlin flew 140 million euros in cash and a selection of captured British-made NLAW anti-tank missiles, US-made Javelin anti-tank missiles, and a Stinger anti-aircraft missile to Tehran on August 20 in exchange for 160 additional Shahed-136 drones for use in Ukraine.[5] The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on November 8 that Tehran continues to supply Moscow with Mohajer, Arash, and Shahed-type drones by air and sea via both Iranian state-owned and privately-owned entities.[6] The Ukrainian Resistance Center additionally reported that due to failures of the Russian military-industrial complex, Russian military leaders are continuing their efforts to procure dual-use (military and non-military use) goods such as computer chips, quadcopters, night vision devices, and bulletproof vests from Turkey and are using cryptocurrency transactions to avoid purchase tracking.[7] Taken in tandem, these reports indicate that the Kremlin seeks to circumvent sanctions by engaging in quid-pro-quo and under-the-table negotiations with foreign actors.

Wagner Group forces are continuing to exaggerate their claimed territorial gains in Donbas to further distinguish themselves from proxy and conventional Russian forces. Russian sources began reporting on November 7 that a detachment of Wagner forces and troops of the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) 6th Cossack Regiment broke through Ukrainian defensive lines in Bilohorivka, Luhansk Oblast.[8] On November 8, however, Russian coverage largely shifted and Russian milbloggers began claiming that reports of the 6th Cossack Regiment’s involvement in operations near Bilohorivka are false and that Wagner troops were solely responsible for purported gains.[9] As ISW has previously observed, Wagner has taken sole credit for Russian gains around Bakhmut in order to bolster their own reputation as the Kremlin’s favored strike force, despite not being the only force deployed in the area.[10] Wagner will likely use Bilohorivka to accomplish a similar effect.

Key Takeaways

• Iranian sources announced—without Russian confirmation—that Russian National Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev arrived in Tehran on November 8, likely to discuss the potential sale of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia. Iran likely announced Patrushev’s arrival to highlight the deepening cooperation between Moscow and Tehran to an international audience, as well as to implicitly highlight that a high-ranking Russian official turned to Iran for help in Ukraine.
• Wagner Group forces are continuing to exaggerate their claimed territorial gains in Donbas to further distinguish themselves from proxy and conventional Russian forces.
• Ukrainian forces likely made marginal gains northwest of Svatove, Luhansk Oblast, and Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces intensified offensive operations toward Kreminna.
• Russian forces continued offensive operations around Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and in western Donetsk Oblast.
• Ukrainian authorities attempted to counteract Russian authorities’ continued efforts to strengthen control of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP).
• The disproportionate financial burden of Russian force generation efforts continues to fall primarily on Russian regional governments’ budgets, prompting public backlash.
• Financial and bureaucratic issues are continuing to hinder Russian efforts to replenish formerly elite units defending critical areas of the front line, potentially threatening the integrity of Russian defenses in occupied parts of Ukraine.
• Russian occupation authorities in Kherson Oblast may be trying to force residents out of the western part of the oblast by cutting communications on the west bank of the Dnipro River.

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—Southern and 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)

Ukrainian forces likely made marginal gains northwest of Svatove, Luhansk Oblast on November 8. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian army aviation (helicopters) struck a Ukrainian formation in Novoselivske (14km northwest of Svatove), indicating that Ukrainian troops have advanced at least as far as that point.[11] Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian troops attacked Novoselivske on November 7, and the Russian MoD seemingly confirmed that Ukrainian forces advanced into the settlement between November 7 and 8.[12] A Russian milblogger also claimed that Ukrainian troops attempted to attack Kuzemivka, 13km northwest of Svatove.[13]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces intensified counteroffensive operations in the Kreminna direction on November 8. Several Russian milbloggers indicated that Ukrainian troops resumed attacks towards Kreminna, Luhansk Oblast after a brief pause in operations and that Ukrainian troops are attacking Kreminna from concentration areas around Chervonopopivka, about 5km northwest of Kreminna.[14] A Russian source indicated that elements of the Russian 20th Combined Arms Army are responsible for the defense of the Kreminna area and that Russian troops are launching counterattacks in this area to complicate attempted Ukrainian advances towards Kreminna.[15] Russian forces additionally conducted a limited ground attack 10km south of Kreminna to regain lost positions around Bilohorivka.[16] Russian sources claimed that Wagner Group fighters broke through Ukrainian defensive lines in Bilohorivka, but ISW has not observed independent confirmation that Russian troops have entered or taken control of Bilohorivka.[17]

Southern Ukraine: (Kherson Oblast)

Russian forces continued defensive preparations in Kherson Oblast on November 8. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Russian troops are conducting active defense and trying to hold occupied positions throughout Kherson Oblast.[18] Geolocated footage and images posted to Twitter on November 8 show Russian pillboxes (concrete defensive structures) in Hola Prystan, about 8km south of Kherson City on the east bank of the Dnipro River.[19] A Russian milblogger reiterated that Russian forces maintain positions in Kherson Oblast and claimed that there are no indicators that Russian troops intend to withdraw.[20]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian troops conducted limited and unsuccessful ground attacks throughout Kherson Oblast on November 8. Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces attempted to attack near Pravdyne (25km northwest of Kherson City), in western Kherson Oblast near the Kherson-Mykolaiv Oblast border around Sukhyi Stavok and Davydiv Brid, and in northern Kherson Oblast towards Sukhanove (35km north of Beryslav).[21] A Russian source indicated that elements of the Russian Airborne Forces (VDV) continue defensive operations in these areas.[22]

Ukrainian forces continued their interdiction campaign against Russian concentration areas in Kherson Oblast on November 7 and 8. Ukrainian military sources confirmed that Ukrainian strikes destroyed Russian equipment concentrations and significant fuel reserves in Hola Prystan and other Russian concentration areas in the Kherson and Beryslav raions.[23] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian troops launched a missile attack on Oleshky, 5km south of Kherson City.[24] Social media users posted imagery of Russian air defense activating over Kalanchak (65km southeast of Kherson City).[25]

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 offensive operations around Bakhmut on November 8. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks on Bakhmut itself and south of Bakhmut near Ivanhrad (4km south), Klishchiivka (7km southwest), Mayorsk (20km south), and Opytne (4km south).[26] Spokesperson for Ukraine’s Eastern Group of Forces, Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty, stated on November 8 that the Bakhmut-Avdiivka-Vuhledar line is the hottest area of the front, and that Wagner Group troops comprise the majority of Russian strike groups in the Bakhmut direction.[27] A Russian source reported that Russian forces have made little to no progress on the Donetsk Oblast front line, specifically near Soledar, due to Ukrainian resistance.[28] Russian forces continued routine shelling along the line of contact in the Bakhmut area.[29]

Russian forces continued offensive operations in the Avdiivka-Donetsk City area on November 8. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults in Krasnohorivka (on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk City) and Marinka (on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City).[30] A Russian source published video footage on November 8 of the Donetsk People‘s Republic (DNR) “Sparta” Battalion flag raised in the vicinity of the Donetsk City Airport and claimed that DNR forces took the area on November 7.[31] Russian milbloggers additionally claimed that Russian troops conducted assaults on Ukrainian positions in Krasnohorivka and Marinka and broke through Ukrainian defenses in Vodyane (on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk City).[32] Russian forces conducted routine shelling in the Avdiivka-Donetsk City area.[33]

Russian forces continued offensive operations in western Donetsk Oblast on November 8. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults in the areas of Pavlivka and Vodyane (both about 50km southwest of Donetsk City).[34] The Russian MoD claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked twice toward Novomykhailivka and Pavlivka, and Russian sources amplified reports of fighting in these areas, with further claims that Ukrainian forces are deploying additional units to the area to hold the line.[35] A Russian source claimed that Russian losses in the Pavlivka area are much more severe than figures reported by the Russian MoD and stated that soon there will be no more Russian tanks left. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued routine shelling along the line of contact in Donetsk Oblast and eastern Zaporizhia Oblast.[36]

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

Russian forces continued routine air, missile, and artillery strikes in Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia, and Mykolaiv oblasts on November 8.[37] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued to strike Nikopol, Hulyaipole, and other settlements along the contact line in Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Zaporizhia oblasts over the past day.[38] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command notably reported that a Russian Su-35 fired a Kh-31 missile (a high-end and scarce precision munition) at a Ukrainian air defense system the Bashtansky Raion of Mykolaiv Oblast on November 8 but missed.[39] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command also reported that Ukrainian forces safely destroyed the remnants of a Russian anchor mine that exploded on the coast of Odesa due to a storm.[40] The presence of a Russian anchor mine off the coast of Odesa indicates that Russian forces are continuing efforts to limit Ukrainian movement along the Southern Axis and in the Black Sea. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces destroyed a Ukrainian rocket and artillery ammunition depot near Kushhove, Zaporizhzhia Oblast (northwest of Orikhiv).[41] A Russian source also claimed that Russian air defense systems in Sevastopol shot down a Ukrainian drone over the Black Sea on November 8.[42]

Ukrainian authorities attempted to counteract Russian authorities’ continued efforts to consolidate control of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) on November 7.[43] Ukrainian nuclear power company Energoatom reported on November 7 that it will increase the salary bonus from 20% to 50% for Ukrainian ZNPP employees who remain loyal to Ukraine.[44] A Russian milblogger called Energoatom’s move to increase salaries “bribery” and an “act of sabotage against the restoration of peaceful life.”[45] Meanwhile, the Zaporizhzhia Oblast Military Administration reported on November 8 that Russian occupation authorities continued to collect personal data, check private smartphones, enter private residences, and illegally detain Ukrainians in Enerhodar, likely to continue expanding social control over the economically vital ZNPP and its surroundings.[46]

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

The disproportionate financial burden of Russian force generation efforts continues to fall primarily on Russian regional governments’ budgets rather than the federal budget, prompting public backlash. Russian-language outlet Important Stories reported on November 7 that Russian federal subjects have spent 12.8 billion rubles (roughly 210 million USD) to pay mobilized personnel, but that most federal subjects did not allocate enough money to distribute promised one-time enlistment bonus payments.[47] The lack of payments has sparked protests in the Chuvash Republic and Chelyabinsk Oblast, as ISW has previously reported.[48] Public backlash and local protests prompted Russian officials from Perm Krai, the Chuvashia Republic, Omsk Oblast, and Russian-occupied Sevastopol to announce that they will distribute payments. Regional heads blamed incomplete records of mobilized personnel and implied that they always intended to provide the payments, which will likely strain local budgets.[49]

Financial and bureaucratic issues are continuing to hinder Russian efforts to replenish formerly elite units defending critical areas of the front line, potentially threatening the integrity of Russian defenses in occupied parts of Ukraine. A Russian source claimed that a St. Petersburg volunteer for the 76th Guards Airborne Assault Division, a formerly elite unit, was registered as a mobilized soldier rather than a volunteer, thereby only entitling him to a 50,000-ruble payment rather than the 100,000-ruble payment for volunteers.[50] The source also claimed that nine other volunteers of the division were similarly mislabeled.[51] The 76th Airborne Division is currently defending the front line in Kherson Oblast, where Russian forces desperately need more bodies who are willing to fight or provide cover during a controlled withdrawal.[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 authorities in Kherson Oblast may be trying to force residents out of the oblast by cutting communications on the west bank of the Dnipro River following the end of mass public evacuations to the east bank. A Russian military correspondent in Kherson City claimed on November 8 that there is no internet in Kherson City and that phone lines work only intermittently.[53] Russian occupation authorities may intend a prolonged communications blackout to further coerce residents to leave Kherson City and to prevent residents from informing Ukrainian forces of the military situation if they choose to stay. An advisor to the Ukrainian Kherson Oblast Military Administration head, Serhiy Khlan, stated that occupation authorities in Kherson City, Kakhovka, and Nova Kakhovka collect the personal information of residents who did not evacuate, including their addresses and reasons for not evacuating.[54] Occupation authorities will likely use this data to further coerce cooperation with the occupation administration as long as Russian forces continue to hold those areas. The Russian deputy head of the Kherson Oblast occupation administration, Kirill Stremousov, claimed that residents can still evacuate “privately” and that evacuation is not mandatory, contradicting the head of the Kherson occupation administration, Vladimir Saldo, who stated on November 1 that evacuation of residents within 15km of the Dnipro River was mandatory.[55]

Russian authorities are continuing to import Russian citizens to serve in occupation administrations, replacing possibly ineffective Ukrainian collaborators and personnel from the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR) in occupied parts of Ukraine. DNR Head Denis Pushilin announced on November 5 that First Deputy Chairperson of Yakutia and former Mayor of Irkutsk, Dmitry Berdnikov, became the deputy occupation head of Mariupol.[56] Pushilin stated that Mariupol “needs more intensive actions” to provide the city with necessary provisions, which suggests that Russian authorities may believe existing Ukrainian collaborators are not trustworthy or effective enough to accomplish the Kremlin’s objectives in occupied parts of Ukraine.[57] Ukrainian Mariupol Mayoral Advisor Petro Andryushchenko claimed that Berdnikov will effectively replace the occupation head of Mariupol, Kostyantyn Ivashchenko—a Ukrainian collaborator appointed directly by the DNR—as part of ongoing tensions between Pushilin and the Russian government.[58] The Kremlin is likely asserting increasingly direct control of occupied Ukrainian territory, removing local collaborators or DNR- and LNR-appointed officials.

The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office reported on November 8 that Russian documents left behind in Izyum, Kharkiv Oblast, show that Russian authorities in occupied Ukraine plan to send high-performing Ukrainian students to an educational camp in Crimea and higher institutions in Belgorod Oblast under the guise of “care and recreation.”[59] ISW has previously assessed that the deportation of Ukrainian children likely amounts to a deliberate ethnic cleansing campaign, in addition to an apparent violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.[60] Russian occupation authorities may also be attempting to “brain drain” Ukraine by deporting promising Ukrainian students to Russian-run institutions further from the frontlines.

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.

[27] https://armyinform.com(dot)ua/2022/11/08/u-rajonah-bahmuta-avdiyivky-vugledara-okupanty-zaznayut-velycheznyh-vtrat-sergij-cherevatyj/ ; https://armyinform.com(dot)ua/2022/11/08/u-rajonah-bahmuta-avdiyivky-vugledara-okupanty-zaznayut-velycheznyh-vtrat-sergij-cherevatyj/

[47] https://istories dot media/stories/2022/11/07/skolko-rossiiskie-regioni-zaplatili-za-voinu/

[48] https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass... media/news/2022/11/02/bolee-100-mobilizovannikh-v-chuvashii-podnyali-bunt-oni-nedovolni-usloviyami-soderzhaniya-i-otsutstviem-viplat/; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[55] https://t.me/Stremousov_Kirill/694; https://meduza dot io/en/news/2022/11/01/occupying-authorities-in-kherson-announce-mandatory-evacuation-near-kakhovka-hydropower-station

[56] https://tass dot ru/obschestvo/16250653

[57] https://tass dot ru/obschestvo/16250653

[58] https://t.me/andriyshTime/4165; https://sprotyv.mod dot gov.ua/2022/11/08/u-mariupoli-okupanty-usunuly-vid-vlady-misczevyh-zradnykiv/

understandingwar.org

2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (08.11.22) CDS comments on key events

CDS Daily brief (08.11.22) CDS comments on key events

Humanitarian aspect:

Over the past day, November 7, as a result of Russian armed aggression against Ukraine, seven civilians were killed, and ten more were injured, according to data from Oblasts' military administrations, published by the deputy head of the Office of the President, Kyrylo Tymoshenko.

As of 9 a.m. this morning, Oblast Military Administrations reported that the Russian army struck eight Oblasts of Ukraine over one day.

•      The Russian military shelled the Kupyanskyi and Chuguyivskyi districts of Kharkiv Oblast. Houses are damaged in two communities. A 32-year-old lieutenant of the civil protection service was injured during demining in the Kharkiv area. In the Balaklia community, a 61- year-old man was blown up by an explosive device; his condition is severe.

•      On November 7, enemy shelling killed 2 civilians in Bakhmut and 1 in Krasnohorivka of Donetsk Oblast. 7 more people are injured.

•      Over the past day, the Russian occupiers shelled the Zaporizhzhia, Vasylivka and Polohy districts of Zaporizhzhia Oblast. 32 reports were received about the destruction of houses (apartments) and infrastructure facilities.

•      In Mykolaiv Oblast, Mykolaiv (1 wounded) and Bashtan districts of the region were under fire. The shelling damaged an industrial infrastructure object, a gas pipeline, three residential buildings, a cultural center, an educational institution and a local market.

•      At night, the Russin military shelled Marganets and Nikopol communities with "Grad" and heavy artillery in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. In Nikopol, a dozen high-rise and private buildings, two industrial enterprises, a hospital, a school, a vocational school, cars and a gas pipeline were damaged.

On November 7, the Russians shelled the recently liberated territories of the Kherson Oblast, reported National Police. Private houses, solar power plants, and agricultural machinery were destroyed by "grads" and artillery. There were injured and killed civilians. In some villages, there is not a single surviving store, pharmacy or cafe, and the houses are unfit for habitation.

Ukraine returned the bodies of another 38 fallen defenders, the Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine reported. The operation was carried out with the cooperation of the Commissioner for Missing Persons, Oleg Kotenko, and a number of law enforcement agencies of Ukraine.

In the liberated territories of the Kherson Oblast, law enforcement officers discovered three more bodies of civilians killed by the Russian military, reported the Prosecutor General's Office.

During the last three months, almost 300,000 people were evacuated from the territories where active hostilities are taking place, said the deputy head of the Office of the President Kyrylo Tymoshenko at a briefing. According to him, more than 1 million places for temporary residence of internally displaced persons have been arranged on the territory of 15 oblasts.

Power outages and critical infrastructure:

The biggest problems with electricity supply are currently in Kyiv, Kyiv and Kharkiv Oblast. This is due to the targeted strikes of the enemy on the energy infrastructure in these regions, said the Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal during the government meeting, reports Ukrinform. He stressed that, however, the situation in Kyiv is far from announcing an evacuation, which can only be used as an emergency measure.

Occupied territories:

In Mariupol, the occupiers destroyed the "Milana" mural dedicated to 6-year-old Milana. Her mother died when the Russians shelled the houses of Mariupol residents in 2015. Then the girl lost her leg, survived several operations and learned to walk again.

At night, the Russian occupiers removed the equipment from the Tavria cognac plant located in temporarily occupied Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson Oblast, the mayor of Nova Kakhovka, Volodymyr Kovalenko, told in a comment to Ukrinform. He assumes that the Russian invaders could have stolen the enterprise automatic bottling lines and the most valuable - spirits for a unique collector's cognac.

In temporarily occupied regions of Zaporizhzhia Oblast, the Russian occupation authorities want to introduce a "visa regime" with Ukraine,

the Berdyansk City Council reported in Telegram. Allegedly they will introduce a new access regime from January 1, 2023. This is what the Russian military themselves tell at the checkpoint in Vasylivka. People who leave the occupation are threatened that they will no longer be able to return because the visa regime will soon be introduced.

In the city of Energodar, the Russians continue to strengthen administrative and counterintelligence measures. They collect the personal data of local residents, check phones, go around private residences, and illegally detain Ukrainian citizens.

Operational situation

(please note that this section of the Brief is mainly on the previous day's (November 7) developments).

It is the 258th 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 defend Donbas"). The enemy tries to maintain control over the temporarily captured territories, concentrates its efforts on restraining the actions of the Defense Forces, and conducts offensive operations in the Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Novopavlivka directions.

Over the past 24 hours, units of the Defense Forces repelled the enemy attacks in the areas of Krasnohorivka, Bakhmut, Ivangrad, Opytne, Klishchiivka, Maryinka, Pavlivka, Vodyane and Mayorsk in the Donetsk Oblast and Bilohorivka in the Luhansk Oblast.

The enemy shelled the units of the Defense Forces along the contact line, carried out fortification of frontiers, conducted aerial reconnaissance, and continued to strike critical infrastructure, violating the norms of International Humanitarian Law, laws and customs of war. Over the past 24 hours, the enemy launched 9 missile and 37 air strikes and carried out more than 100 rounds of anti-aircraft fire. The enemy shelled areas of more than 25 Ukrainian towns and villages of Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhya, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson, and Mykolaiv Oblasts. Near the state border, the Russian military shelled Uda, Starytsia, Chugunivka, Figolivka, and Dvorichanske with tanks, mortars, and rocket and barrel artillery.

The Republic of Belarus continues to support the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, providing the Russian Federation with infrastructure, territory and airspace. The formation of a Russian-Belarusian grouping of troops on the territory of the Republic of Belarus continues. There is still a threat of the enemy launching airstrikes using attack UAVs from the territory and airspace of Belarus.

Aviation of the Ukrainian Defense Forces during the past day struck the enemy 24 times. 17 areas of concentration of enemy personnel, weapons and military equipment, 7 positions of the enemy's air defense equipment were affected. The defense forces shot down an enemy Su-25 aircraft, a Lancet-3 UAV and four Orlan-10 drones.

Over the past day, Ukrainian missile troops and artillery hit 5 enemy command and control points, 2 areas of concentration of enemy manpower, weapons and military equipment, 2 ammunition depots, 2 anti-aircraft missile complexes and the area of firing positions of the Russian artillery.

According to Russian sources, as of November 7, up to 80,000 mobilized personnel entered the combat zone, of which 50,000 are active in combat units.

Russian troops have high losses among those mobilized on the front lines. A mobilized man who survived the fighting in the Kreminna-Svatove region reported that more than 500 mobilized personnel from the Voronezh region died as a result of Ukrainian shelling of their positions in Makiivka, Luhansk Oblast. He noted that Russian commanders concentrated a large number of personnel in one area and made them dig trenches, as a result of which only 41 people survived after being shelled by Ukrainian artillery.

Russian volunteer battalions also continue to suffer losses. The volunteer detachment of the Republic of Sakha "Bootur" returned to Russia with only 13 people out of 105 who went to fight against Ukraine.

The Russian Armed Forces have significantly depleted their reserves of high-precision weapons and suffered significant losses in aviation, leading to a decrease in the intensity of strikes on Ukrainian critical infrastructure facilities. Russian forces have used more than 80% of their modern missiles, about 120 missiles remain for the Iskanders.

Russian officials reached an agreement with Iranian officials on the purchase of Fateh-110 and Zolfaghar ballistic missile systems.

The morale and psychological state of the personnel of the invasion forces remain low.

On November 7, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation issued a rare statement in response to the outrage of Russian media bloggers on November 6 regarding reports of significant losses and poor command in the 155th Pacific Fleet. The Russian blogosphere published and distributed a letter in which the Russian marines complained about the ill- prepared offensive in the Pavlivka district of the Donetsk Oblast, where the brigade suffered more than 300 killed, wounded, missing, and lost half of its equipment in four days of fighting. In the letter, the commander of the Eastern Military District, Lieutenant General Rustam Muradov, and the commander of the 155th Infantry Regiment, Colonel Zurab Akhmedov, and the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Valery Gerasimov, were directly accused. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation stated that the brigade's losses amounted to less than 1% killed and 7% wounded during the last ten days.

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 enemy shelled the Defence Forces' positions near Kyslivka, Berestove, Stelmakhivka, Myasozharivka, Grekivka, Makiivka, Nevske, Yampolivka, and Lyman.

Russian troops are setting positions and conducting forward presence actions along the state border to block the transfer of the Defense Forces units to more tense areas of the front.

Ukrainian troops repulsed the enemy attack on Zybyne, continued the counteroffensive in the Svatove direction, attacked Nizhnya Duvanka, tried to advance in the direction of Novoselivske, continued the counteroffensive to the northwest of Kreminna, and unsuccessfully tried to advance to Ploshanka and Chervonopopivka.

The fighting in the area northwest of Svatove became positional, characterized by episodic and unsuccessful attempts by both Ukrainian and Russian troops to break through the front line.

Assault squads of the "Wagner" PMC and the 6th motorized rifle regiment of the 2nd Army Corps entered Bilohorivka after months of heavy fighting along the administrative border of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblast. Still, fighting continued in the residential areas of Bilohorivka.

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 enemy shelled from tanks and artillery the areas of Rozdolivka, Yakovlivka, Soledar, Bakhmutske, Bakhmut, Opytne, Klishchiivka, Andriivka, Kurdyumivka, Ozaryanivka, Mayorsk, Avdiivka, Opytne, Vodyane, Pervomaiske, Nevelske, Krasnohorivka, Maryinka, and Novomykhailivka.

On November 6 and 7, Russian troops continued their offensive in the area of Bakhmut, with units of the "Wagner" PMC operating from three directions: near Klishchiivka to the south of Bakhmut, near Ivangrad to the southeast of Bakhmut, and on the eastern border of the city of Bakhmut. Russian troops took full control of Ivangrad, tried to take control of Opytne, attacked Avdiyivka, stormed Kamianka, advanced to the southwest of Avdiyvka in the Opytne area, continued the offensive in the Pervomaiske area, launched an assault on Novomykhailivka and Kostiantynivka to increase pressure on the Ukrainian garrison in Mariinka. The "Sparta" battalion of the 1st Army Corps and other Russian military units captured the former Ukrainian positions in the Donetsk airport area and pushed back the Ukrainian forces beyond the E-50 road.

The Ukrainian Joint Forces repelled Russian attacks in the areas of Bakhmutske, Berestove, Yakovlivka, Andriivka, Mayorsk, Ozaryanivka, Opytne, Makiivka, Maryinka, Krasnohorivka, Pavlivka, and Novomykhailivka on November 6 and 7.

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 enemy shelled the Defence Forces' positions near Vuhledar, Pavlivka, Prechystivka, Vremivka, Novosilka, Neskuchne, Novopil, Temyrivka, Olhivske, Uspenivka, Hulyaipole, Zaliznychne, Charivne, Novodanilivka, and Stepove.

Ukrainian Defense Forces repelled enemy attacks near Shcherbaky.

The enemy continued to carry out air, missile and artillery strikes to the west of Hulyaipole, on Nikopol and other towns and villages along the contact line. They fired S-300 anti-aircraft missiles at Hulyaipole.

Ukrainian Defense forces struck Russian concentration areas near Basan, Polohy and Marfopol, destroying up to 30 units of Russian military equipment and injuring about 120 Russian servicemen.

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.

The enemy shelled areas of towns and villages bordering the contact line. Vyshchetarasivka, Illinka and Marganets of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast were directly affected by the fire from the anti-aircraft missile system.

The Russian troops are trying to hold the captured lines in Kakhovka, Hola Prystan and Ivanivka.

Ukrainian Defense forces attacked Russian positions along the current front line in the north and west of the Kherson Oblast near the administrative border of the Kherson and Mykolaiv Oblast. The Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group blew up three power lines along the Beryslav

-  Kakhovka road and stopped the power supply in the Beryslav area.

Ukrainian troops continued to block enemy concentration areas. On November 6, they struck the "Golden Pheasant" hotel in Radensk, where Russian troops were stationed. They also struck the enemy concentration areas in the Beryslav area, Hola Prystan, Nova Kakhovka, and Oleshki. Fire damage to the military equipment concentration area was confirmed; 20 units of military equipment were damaged near Hola Prystan.

In the Novosofiivka area, the grouping of enemy troops was reinforced by a unit from the territory of the Chechen Republic, which joined in the robbery of local residents and their homes.

Azov-Black Sea Maritime Operational Area:

The forces of the Russian Black Sea Fleet continue to project force on the coast and the continental part of Ukraine and control the northwestern part of the Black Sea. The ultimate goal is to deprive Ukraine of access to the Black Sea and to maintain control over the captured territories.

Due to worsening weather conditions, the enemy keeps 7 ships at sea. They are located along the southwestern coast of Crimea. There are no Kalibr cruise missile carriers, but a rapid build- up of surface and underwater Kalibr missile carriers to the sea launch areas is possible (about 3- 4 hours).

Yesterday, November 7, the short-term departure of one Kalibr missile carrier ship was marked. 2 enemy patrol ships and boats are in the waters of the Sea of Azov on the approaches to the Mariupol and Berdyansk seaports to block the Azov coast.

Enemy aviation continues to fly from Crimean airfields Belbek and Gvardiyske over the northwestern part of the Black Sea. Over the past day, 14 warplanes from Belbek and Saka airfields were deployed.

"Grain initiative". The Joint Coordination Center (JCC) reported that eight cargoes passed through the maritime humanitarian corridor as part of the Istanbul Grain Agreement on Monday. In addition, 77 ships are waiting for permission to enter Ukrainian ports, and 15 loaded ships are preparing for inspection in Turkish territorial waters.

As of November 7, the total tonnage of grain and other products exported from three Ukrainian ports is 10 million 67 thousand 175 tons. Of them, 3 million tons is wheat, and more than 4 million tons is corn. Sunflower oil and rapeseed are also exported. In total, more than 400 ships were involved.

The stable operation of the corridor allows for the export of 6-7 million tons of products per month. Such volumes would be enough for Ukrainian producers, as well as to ensure international food security. Meanwhile, after the return of the Russians to the work of the "grain initiative", the number of inspected vessels fell to 8-9 per day, when during their inspection by UN and Turkish inspectors, the number of inspected vessels reached 46. The inspection of 25-30 vessels daily is necessary for normal functioning. However, due to the Russian Federation's position, no more than 10 inspections are expected per day.

Russian operational losses from 24.02 to 08.11

Personnel - almost 77,170 people (+710);

Tanks - 2,786 (+15)

Armored combat vehicles – 5,654 (+24);

Artillery systems – 1,791 (+9);

Multiple rocket launchers (MLRS) - 391 (0); Anti-aircraft warfare systems - 203 (+1); Vehicles and fuel tanks – 4,216 (+17);

Aircraft - 278 (+1);

Helicopters – 260 (0);

UAV operational and tactical level – 1,476 (+4); Intercepted cruise missiles - 399 (0);

Boats / ships - 16 (0).

Ukraine, general news

The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, has registered in the Verkhovna Rada draft laws on the approval of his decrees on the continuation of martial law and general mobilization.

International diplomatic aspect

Russia's deputy foreign minister said the Kremlin doesn't have "preconditions, except for the main condition - that Ukraine shows goodwill." It was a reaction to the Washington Post's article claiming that the Biden Administration advises President Zelensky to calm down some European leaders by abandoning the no-talks-with-Putin stance. Russians are trying to grab an opportunity to shake Western unity, blaming Ukraine for "unwillingness" to negotiate "a solution." Last week Putin expressed his "regret" that Kyiv doesn't want to talk to him.

As it has been allegedly advised, President Zelensky urged the international community to "force Russia into real peace talks" and expressed his readiness to talk to Kremlin under the conditions that Russia returns all occupied territories, pay compensation for damage caused by the war and prosecutes war crimes. It might not be the exact formula that had been expected from Ukraine, but after numerous war crimes and destruction, the escalation of genocidal war, and on the foreground of Ukrainian military success, Ukrainian society would not accept any negotiations that envisage frozen conflict with more territories under the brutal occupation. Kyiv has no illusions that talks and a ceasefire would buy Putin enough time to regroup for yet another attempt to "solve a Ukrainian issue."

Biden's national security advisor visited Kyiv to convey that the Administration adheres to the basic principle of "nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine" and will support Kyiv for as long as it takes. Britain will remain committed to helping Ukraine under new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Foreign Secretary said. "Anyone who believes it is possible to trade Ukraine's freedom for our peace of mind is mistaken," newly elected Prime Minister of Italy Giorgia Meloni said. That statement caused a sigh of relief in Kyiv because Meloni's coalition partners are known to be supportive of Putin and, since the all-out invasion, were against sanctioning Russia and providing Ukraine with defense aid. "For my part, as before, I am convinced and assume that even now, at some point, we will have to return to the negotiating table…" however, it should be "done within the framework of the conditions and within the terms, which Ukraine will choose," the French president said. So, principal Ukraine backers (including smaller in size but not in the scope of support Poland and the Baltic states) show steadfast support for Ukraine and know too well that the time for diplomacy hasn't come yet.

Russia keeps uncertainty about whether it will extend the Ukraine grain deal. "We are very dissatisfied with how the Russian part is being implemented, where the UN has taken responsibility for solving problems," said Russia's deputy foreign minister. Yet he went on by saying that "We still have time. We are looking at how this deal is being implemented following the restoration of our participation." Moscow suspended its participation after Ukraine targeted Russian missile cruisers at the harbor of Sevastopol, calling it "terrorism." But the blackmail failed when Turkey and Ukraine, backed by the UN, decided to carry on grain transit without Russians. The Kremlin faced a dilemma of targeting grain bulkers, including ones under the UN flag or rejoining the process and slowing it down from the inside.

"Finland will support the grain shipments of the World Food Programme from Ukraine to Somalia. At the same time, Finland will increase its humanitarian assistance to the Horn of Africa, where more than 20 million people are in need of urgent food aid," the Finish Foreign Ministry's press release reads.

Aeroflot will establish a national technical support center for Airbus and Boeing aircraft operated in Russia. Being denied access to original components, parts, and services because of sanctions, Russia is trying to solve its air transportation problems by "technical cannibalism" (getting spare parts for one aircraft from another one) and "gray" (illegal) export. Now, Russians think of launching illegal production of parts and components by engaging former employees of the Russian offices of Western manufacturers. It might trigger major producers' lawsuits and the US and the EU actions within the WTO system. The air regulators might find it necessary to ban the operation of Russian passenger and cargo fleets because of inevitable safety risks. Foreign countries that haven't closed their skies for Russian plains yet (beyond the Western nations) might now think of it.

Centre for Defence Strategies (CDS) is a Ukrainian security think tank. We operate since 2020

We publish this brief daily. If you would like to subscribe, please send us an email at cds.dailybrief@gmail.com

Please note, that we subscribe only verified persons and can decline or cancel the subscription at our own discretion

We are an independent, non-government, non-partisan, and non-profit organisation. More at www.defence.org.ua

Our Twitter (in English) - https://twitter.com/defence_centre

Our Facebook (in Ukrainian) - https://www.facebook.com/cds.UA

Our brief is for information only and we verify our information to the best possible extent

3. Army Special Ops Is Changing Psyops Training to Reflect Ukraine War

Learning to lead with influence.

​Excerpts:

​At least one panelist—speaking under Chatham House rules that forbade reporters to attribute remarks—said he and others were disappointed that they could not stay in Ukraine to help troops they had spent entire deployments training.

“We'd spent eight years building rapport—which is not a four-count exercise—and building deep relationships. And all of a sudden, when it’s game on,” they were called back to the United States,” one panelist said. “That did not go over well.”

​...

“We're seeing a master class on [strategic communications] and psyops every day. But it started out with our SOF guys helping them out,” the panelist said. “Two of the first strikes on Feb. 24 into the Kyiv area were on the psyop-production facility…with long-range precision strike missiles. That’s how much value the Russians put into messaging.”

Still, as SOF watches the influence of their training play out, there are frustrations within the community and in Ukraine about SOF’s lack of physical presence in Ukraine.

“It’s an issue not being there physically to be able to do this with them,” the panelist said.

So while policy prevents America’s spec-ops forces from fighting side-by-side with Ukrainians, SOF instead is paying attention to how its past training and efforts in the region are panning out. The panelist identified the effectiveness of psyops and Ukraine’s strategic resilience efforts as two of the biggest takeaways from the conflict in Eastern Europe.​

Army Special Ops Is Changing Psyops Training to Reflect Ukraine War

Even as some operators chafe at rules that keep them out of the fight, they are keenly interested in how Ukrainians are applying their U.S. training.

defenseone.com · by Elizabeth Howe

FORT BRAGG, N.C.—U.S. Army special operators have taken note of how quickly information operations have moved in Ukraine’s 8-month-old battle to eject Russian invaders, the leader of Army Special Operations Command told the Modern Warfare Week conference here on Tuesday.

Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga, who praised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “Churchillian effect of mastering the information environment,” said ARSOF has already changed its training pipelines to teach those skills.

“Our Psychological Operations combination exercise now incorporates synthetic internet and real-time sentiment analysis to educate students on the speed of information,” Braga said. “I’d say perhaps the speed of information, the power of information ops, might be one of the greatest lessons learned from the events unfolding in Ukraine.”

The Civil Affairs qualification course has similarly “modernized,” to more heavily emphasize pre-conflict competition and creating environments where governance can be “rapidly reconstituted” following conflict against a “major power,” he said.

But Braga also noted that the Ukrainians spent the past eight years—since the annexation of Crimea in 2014—learning a lot from special operators and other U.S. trainers.

“SOF has been part of a much larger effort to help Ukrainian SOF transform from a Russian-influenced Spetsnaz-type organization into a NATO-compatible, professional, and lethal fighting force,” the general said. “Our irregular warfare contributions are proving effective on Ukraine's battlefield today.”

Modern Warfare Week, one of the biggest annual events for the special operations community, convened this week for the first time since a two-year pandemic hiatus. Key SOF thinkers, leaders, and industry-movers were meeting for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine.

At least one panelist—speaking under Chatham House rules that forbade reporters to attribute remarks—said he and others were disappointed that they could not stay in Ukraine to help troops they had spent entire deployments training.

“We'd spent eight years building rapport—which is not a four-count exercise—and building deep relationships. And all of a sudden, when it’s game on,” they were called back to the United States,” one panelist said. “That did not go over well.”

U.S. special operators put more than 200 Ukrainians through a special-forces pipeline between 2014 and 2022. A resistance-and-resiliency training effort led by NATO and influenced by U.S. special operations doctrines gave Ukraine a “two-year running start” on its resistance efforts. And the same Ukrainian information ops that Braga praised have their origins in U.S. special operations training, the panelist said.

“We're seeing a master class on [strategic communications] and psyops every day. But it started out with our SOF guys helping them out,” the panelist said. “Two of the first strikes on Feb. 24 into the Kyiv area were on the psyop-production facility…with long-range precision strike missiles. That’s how much value the Russians put into messaging.”

Still, as SOF watches the influence of their training play out, there are frustrations within the community and in Ukraine about SOF’s lack of physical presence in Ukraine.

“It’s an issue not being there physically to be able to do this with them,” the panelist said.

So while policy prevents America’s spec-ops forces from fighting side-by-side with Ukrainians, SOF instead is paying attention to how its past training and efforts in the region are panning out. The panelist identified the effectiveness of psyops and Ukraine’s strategic resilience efforts as two of the biggest takeaways from the conflict in Eastern Europe.

defenseone.com · by Elizabeth Howe

4. The Army’s Distributed Command Posts of the Future Will Need More than Videochats

​Allied/coalition communications are critical to operations. We really need to take a hard look at regulations and ensure we have the right balance between security and synchronization, coordination, and collaboration.

​Excerpts:

The Corps also plans to create an unclassified information sharing system for its mission partners.

“We have a lot of bilateral agreements in the Pacific. And so the challenge there is how do you create an environment where you can use common information collaboration services, amongst multiple mission partners to conduct planning for one mission,” Casely said.

Lt. Gen. Xavier Brunson, the commanding general of the Army’s I Corps, has pushed the distributed C2 concept to make the organization more flexible and survivable and that mission partner environment was key for training as the Corps moves to increase its presence in the Indo-Pacific region year round, up from eight months out of the year.

“Our partners demand that of us, but we've got to be able to communicate as we exercise,” he told reporters during the Army’s annual conference last month.

The Corps plans to test out that mission partner information environment during a Cobra Gold exercise scheduled in February. The goal is to demonstrate an initial capability over the next year.

The Army’s Distributed Command Posts of the Future Will Need More than Videochats

Structuring data is key to the service’s visions of Pacific-spanning operations and AI-enabled decision tools.

defenseone.com · by Lauren C. Williams

A recent Army exercise out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord sought largely to test ways to distribute command and control—to, say, replace big command posts with small cloud-connected teams scattered around the Pacific region. But what the I Corps’ IT team discovered was just how much of the service’s vision of future warfare will depend on turning a morass of data into well-structured bundles.

The experiment was set up to use unstructured data, the kind that accounts for much of the information the Army moves around: PDFs, PowerPoint slides, emails, calendar invites, etc. It takes a lot of human brainpower to assemble this information into forms that can help commanders make decisions.

That’s not good enough for the future battlefield, says Col. Elizabeth Casely, who runs I Corps’ communications, networks, and services.

“We're now beginning to understand how much we were using, I would say, human-in-the-loop cognitive processing to achieve a result that could be easily achievable if we had exposed data that was structured in some way, [if] we had access to a data environment, or a tool if you will, to put it in,” Casely told Defense One recently. “And then the big lift that has to occur inside the Corps is this data-engineering lift: this move from unstructured to structured. Because you can't begin to imagine what questions you might ask of the data until you begin to understand what sorts of things you have access to.”

Toward “distributed mission command”

Headquartered at JBLM in Washington state, I Corps supports operations in the vast U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, whose area of responsibility stretches over more than half the Earth’s surface. As has much of the U.S. military, the Corps has been re-thinking its methods as a potential fight with China looms larger. Key to these changes is a new concept called “distributed mission command,” which is intended to allow small teams in various locations to perform all the functions of today’s big command posts.

This requires better data networks, better cloud storage, and a lot more, said Casely, who is I Corps’ G6.

“We're responsible for making sure that we have the transport in place…make sure that transport is widely accessible, highly available, simple and intuitive to connect to and move data all over the place and in a way that the warfighter intends to use the network,” she said. “The idea is to be able to have a tactically-enabled cloud environment, connect, and then have a predetermined architecture in mind about where we would need to have on prem, or edge computing devices.”

Just moving the bits around is easier said than done in INDOPACOM’s area of responsibility, which encompasses some 100 million square miles, mostly water. The Army’s existing network gear was designed to send information more regionally, not over great distances.

“Bandwidth is a challenge. Latency is a challenge,” Casely said.

Then there’s the need to make sure the data can be understood as it passes between systems and organizations. That means developing standards for data, first within a given function, like intelligence or fires, and then across them. Not only does this help tie the systems together, it also turns the data into useful input for machine-learning or artificially intelligent tools.

A data-centric journey

I Corps’ recent exercise, mostly local at JBLM, Yakima, Wash., and Oregon, had the goal of duplicating a distributed architecture.

“We tried to organize some of our services, understand where the warfighting functions would require or rely on network or server architecture, and then try to understand how we would move forward with that, as we worked on mission command information systems modernization,” Casely said.

One of the lessons was that they need a capability that converts unstructured data into structured information.

Now, the Corps is putting the pieces together to do that, which means pooling data from across the Corps so that it’s accessible, pushing it into the right environment, and getting the right talent expertise to make the most of it.

“Data exists in varying forms all over the Corps. The question is, how do we start to pool all of that together, get it into an environment and then apply the appropriate talent to it. Then, ultimately, do what we're all trying to do—answer a question.”

Casely said all three of those steps are linked: “You can't do one without the other.”

Other challenges observed during the exercise include problems with authentication, latency, and the result of too much network chatter.

As part of modernizing the mission command information systems, the Corps wants to employ infrastructure as code.

“We have applications that are very tightly coupled to its associated data and its physical hardware. That tight coupling forces us to operationalize or conduct operations in a certain way.”

And that set up causes problems with authentication and latency when the Corps splits up into multiple nodes.

That latency creates network chatter as communications aren’t confirmed as delivered: “Did you see me? Yes, I'm here. Did you see me? Yes, I'm here. Did you send the message? I didn't get it, send it again, send it again, send it again.”

Casely said the Corps is working to figure out how much of that chatter is related to the architecture of its mission command information systems, and whether a cloud of Pentagon and commercial services could help.

It’s a challenge that’s come up in various regions the Corps has set up shop recently—Guam, Thailand, and Korea. Next month, they’re headed to Japan to continue testing distributed command and control with personnel nodes there and at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

Casely expects latency-related issues to “calm down” as the Corps deploys cloud-native mission command information systems. And modernizing those systems will require a lot of changes, including approaches to software development and adopting microservices.

To do this the Corps will have to significantly increase its software development investments. But as a first step, she said, “we would like to use cloud-native industry best practice to deploy and configure workloads as code,” also called infrastructure as code.

“This will allow us to rapidly, securely and consistently deploy mission command capabilities in these automated DevOps pipelines, which consists of a series of multiple stages and tasks. So you install it, you connect to a database, you provision the accounts, you conduct the security scanning,” Casely said. And if something breaks along the way, developers can go back and pinpoint the failure.

The Corps also plans to create an unclassified information sharing system for its mission partners.

“We have a lot of bilateral agreements in the Pacific. And so the challenge there is how do you create an environment where you can use common information collaboration services, amongst multiple mission partners to conduct planning for one mission,” Casely said.

Lt. Gen. Xavier Brunson, the commanding general of the Army’s I Corps, has pushed the distributed C2 concept to make the organization more flexible and survivable and that mission partner environment was key for training as the Corps moves to increase its presence in the Indo-Pacific region year round, up from eight months out of the year.

“Our partners demand that of us, but we've got to be able to communicate as we exercise,” he told reporters during the Army’s annual conference last month.

The Corps plans to test out that mission partner information environment during a Cobra Gold exercise scheduled in February. The goal is to demonstrate an initial capability over the next year.

defenseone.com · by Lauren C. Williams

5. Ukraine Calls for More Anti-Drone Gear as Air-Defense Missiles Arrive

Learn, adapt, and anticipate. 

Ukraine Calls for More Anti-Drone Gear as Air-Defense Missiles Arrive

NASAMS are now operational in Ukraine, but a new potential threat looms.

defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker

Bravo Battery, 2nd Bn, 44th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, boresights a Counter Rocket, Artillery and Mortar (C-RAM) weapon as part of their normally scheduled system check at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan Photo, Ben Santos, US Force Afghanistan public affairs

Get all our news and commentary in your inbox at 6 a.m. ET.

Policy

NASAMS are now operational in Ukraine, but a new potential threat looms.

|

November 8, 2022 04:50 PM ET

• Russia
• Ukraine
• Missiles
• Drones

By Patrick Tucker

Technology Editor, Defense One

November 8, 2022 04:50 PM ET

• Russia
• Ukraine
• Missiles
• Drones

Sophisticated new air-defense missiles became operational in Ukraine this week, a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday, even as reports surfaced that Iran is considering supplying Russian forces with ballistic missiles.

The first shipment of National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, or NASAMS, “are now in Ukraine and operational” under crews who have been trained in an unspecified European host country, Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder told reporters.

Ryder said the NASAMS will help protect Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, among other things, from “basically any type of advanced aerial threat that Russia may try to employ against Ukrainian targets or civilians.”

But just as new defenses are reaching Ukraine, so new air threats are gathering. Last week, CNN reported that Tehran may send ballistic missiles to Russian forces. Russia has already used Iranian Shahed-136 kamikaze drones to hit Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

On Monday, ABC News reported that Ukraine is seeking C-RAM guns—the acronym is short for Counter-Rocket, Artillery, Mortar—which are essentially automated Gatling guns for air defense of fixed points like power plants.

Asked about the ABC report, Ryder said, “We take into account a lot of different considerations and systems as we explore Ukraine security assistance needs.”

The general said he was familiar with the recent reports that Russia was trying to evacuate civilians from Kherson but said the scale of evacuations had been small.

“Russian forces are establishing defenses, again,” nearby, he said. “It could be that they are looking to defend that territory for the long term, or it could be part of a rearguard action as they look to retrograde out of that area. Regardless, you continue to see the Ukrainians apply pressure on them. And as I've mentioned, our focus is on ensuring they have what they need on the battlefield right now to be successful. So something that will continue to keep an eye on but that's about as much as I'm going to be able to provide right now.”

6. Pentagon: Xi and Putin ‘edging toward an alliance’

With China as the "senior partner?"

Excerpts:

“Despite it being a relationship without limits, I think China is nervous about that relationship, at least about that too many aspects of that relationship being public,” Kahl said.

Kahl said the National Defense Strategy and National Security Strategy, which view China as near-peer competitor and Russia as as an acute challenge, recognize the growing relationship as a new feature of the geopolitical landscape.

Also, the potential for a three-player contest between nuclear powers presents a strategic problem for the United States, but China’s limited arsenal prevents it from being a true peer. Kahl said the U.S. should for now continue to deter a nuclear attack by maintaining the ability to retaliate with its own nuclear attack ― and not entering into an “endless arms race” based on quantity.

“This isn’t contest where the kid who dies with the most toys wins,” he said. “We shouldn’t think about it that if Russia has 2,000 nuclear weapons and China as 1,000 nuclear weapons, the United States needs 3,001.”

Pentagon: Xi and Putin ‘edging toward an alliance’

Defense News · by Joe Gould · November 8, 2022

WASHINGTON ― The Pentagon says Russia and China appear to be “edging toward an alliance” at a time when Western nations are seeking to isolate Moscow over its war on Ukraine.

Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, told reporters on Tuesday that “we should expect the Russia-China relationship to deepen.” Nine months ago China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin signed off on their so-called “no limits” strategic partnership just days before Russia invaded Ukraine.

“They’ve really been much more willing to signal this thing is edging towards an alliance as opposed to a superficial partnership,” Kahl said, pointing to their joint military exercises ― which involved more than 50,000 troops for a week in early September.

China appears to view Russia as a counterweight to the U.S., while Russia, hemmed in by Western sanctions and export controls, “increasingly has nowhere else to go” and could depend more and more on China “economically, technologically and potentially militarily,” Kahl said.

In what’s been seen as Xi’s most direct criticism yet of the Kremlin and the war, the Chinese leader warned against using nuclear weapons over Ukraine during a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Beijing last week. Xi didn’t call out Russia by name, but a month earlier Putin threatened Ukraine with a nuclear attack.

On Tuesday, Kahl didn’t bring up that meeting but said he believes the partnership does have some limits. China is wary of baiting U.S. sanctions itself and, for now, “doing too much too openly in terms of openly supporting Russia militarily,” he said.

“Despite it being a relationship without limits, I think China is nervous about that relationship, at least about that too many aspects of that relationship being public,” Kahl said.

Kahl said the National Defense Strategy and National Security Strategy, which view China as near-peer competitor and Russia as as an acute challenge, recognize the growing relationship as a new feature of the geopolitical landscape.

Also, the potential for a three-player contest between nuclear powers presents a strategic problem for the United States, but China’s limited arsenal prevents it from being a true peer. Kahl said the U.S. should for now continue to deter a nuclear attack by maintaining the ability to retaliate with its own nuclear attack ― and not entering into an “endless arms race” based on quantity.

“This isn’t contest where the kid who dies with the most toys wins,” he said. “We shouldn’t think about it that if Russia has 2,000 nuclear weapons and China as 1,000 nuclear weapons, the United States needs 3,001.”

About Joe Gould

Joe Gould is the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry. He served previously as Congress reporter.

7. Ongoing Pentagon push to arm Ukraine will have three-star general leading from Germany

"SAGU." I wonder how "Joe" will pronounce that acronym and how he will turn it into something irreverent.

Ongoing Pentagon push to arm Ukraine will have three-star general leading from Germany

Stars and Stripes · by John Vandiver · November 8, 2022

Army Lt. Gen. Antonio Aguto Jr., head of the First U.S. Army headquarters at Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois, visits the 77th Sustainment Brigade, during an exercise at Fort McCoy, Wis., on Aug. 10, 2022. Aguto is regarded as a top candidate to lead a new Army headquarters in Germany that will coordinate security assistance for Ukraine. (Alex J. Elliot/U.S. Army)

STUTTGART, Germany — A three-star general will lead a new Army headquarters in Germany that will include about 300 U.S. service members responsible for coordinating security assistance for Ukraine, a senior U.S. military official said this week.

Formation of the Security Assistance Group Ukraine, or SAGU, which will be based out of U.S. Army Europe and Africa headquarters in Wiesbaden, was announced Friday.

Now, a lieutenant general will need to be nominated and confirmed as the new headquarters takes shape, the official said Monday. The aim is to have the unit running by early 2023.

On Sunday, The New York Times reported that Lt. Gen. Antonio Aguto Jr., head of the First U.S. Army headquarters at Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois, was regarded as a leading candidate for the new job.

The assistance group is intended to continue the work of the Army’s 18th Airborne Corps, which recently redeployed to North Carolina after arriving in Germany and Poland at the time of Russia’s late-February invasion of Ukraine.

A U.S. soldier watches Ukrainian artillerymen fire the M109 self-propelled howitzer at Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany, on May 12, 2022. The exercise was part of security assistance packages provided to the Ukrainians by the U.S. and Norwegian militaries. (Spencer Rhodes/U.S. Army)

In the meantime, 18th Airborne Corps boss Lt. Gen. Christopher Donahue will remain in Wiesbaden to continue organizing the training and equipping of Ukrainian forces as the SAGU takes shape.

By establishing a dedicated headquarters focused on Ukraine support, the Pentagon is putting in place an organization to carry out what is expected to be a long-term mission.

The Wiesbaden headquarters is slated to be manned with personnel from across the military branches, making it a joint service operation. Tours are initially planned to last between six months and a year, but longer accompanied tours are also possible.

“It depends on service and individual,” the U.S. military official said. “It’s going to be on a case-by-case basis and not one size fits all.”

U.S. Army Europe and Africa personnel are carrying out the Ukraine support mission in the interim.

Training Ukraine’s military is nothing new for the U.S., which had rotated conventional and special operations troops into Ukraine for years as part of an effort to modernize the country’s military.

But U.S. forces were withdrawn from Ukraine ahead of the full-scale Russian invasion. Since then, American and other allied troops have trained Ukrainian personnel in Germany and elsewhere.

Wiesbaden has emerged as key to the ongoing efforts to get billions of dollars in weaponry into Ukraine, including the mobile rocket system known as HIMARS.

In August, a weapons logistics cell was relocated to Wiesbaden from U.S. European Command headquarters in Stuttgart.

That organization, consisting of dozens of nations, arranges the logistics of getting everything from Stinger missiles and howitzers to drones and long-range artillery to secret locations in Ukraine.

Stars and Stripes · by John Vandiver · November 8, 2022

8. Fresh wave of Ukrainian refugees expected as Russia targets power ahead of winter

Is the international community conducting sufficient preparation to anticipate the likely refugee flow?

Excerpts:

The U.N. General Assembly is due to vote next week on a draft resolution recognising that Russia must be responsible for reparation in Ukraine for the injury, including any damage, caused by "internationally wrongful acts". The text has been put forward by Ukraine, Canada, Guatemala and the Netherlands.

Three-quarters of the 193-member General Assembly denounced Russia's invasion in a vote in March, and in October condemned its self-proclaimed annexation of parts of Ukraine.

Fresh wave of Ukrainian refugees expected as Russia targets power ahead of winter

Reuters · by Tom Balmforth

• Summary
• Eastern Europe prepares for more refugees ahead of winter
• Russia targets power, heating plants
• Zelensiky says 4 million people without power
• Heaviest conflict in eastern industrial Donetsk region
• Ukraine accuses Russia of looting and damage in Kherson

KYIV, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Eastern European countries are preparing for a possible wave of Ukrainian refugees as Russia targets power and heating plants ahead of winter, with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy saying about 4 million people are already without power.

Zelenskiy said 14 regions plus the capital Kyiv were without power and Ukraine's electrical grid operator Ukrenergo said scheduled hourly power outages would affect the whole of the country on Wednesday.

Russian forces have targeted Ukraine's energy infrastructure with missiles and drone strikes in the run up to winter, when mean temperatures typically drop to several degrees below zero Celsius (32 Fahrenheit), with lows of minus 20C.

Some 6.9 million people are believed displaced internally within Ukraine and east European countries such as Slovakia and Hungary are preparing for an influx in coming months. read more

"An increase in numbers is being felt, and is expected. It is currently up 15%," said Roman Dohovic, an aid coordinator for the eastern Slovak city of Kosice.

Ukrainian forces have been on the offensive in recent months while Russia is regrouping to defend areas of Ukraine it still occupies, having called up hundreds of thousands of reservists over the past month.

Zelenskiy said his forces would not yield "a single centimetre" in battles for the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk while Russian-installed officials said Ukrainian forces were moving into a southern town with tanks. The focal points of the conflict in the industrial region of Donetsk are around the towns of Bakhmut, Soledar and Avdiivka, which have seen the heaviest fighting since Russian forces invaded Ukraine in late February.

"The activity of the occupiers remains at an extremely high level - dozens of attacks every day," Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address late on Tuesday.

"They are suffering extraordinarily high losses. But the order remains the same - to advance on the administrative boundary of Donetsk region. We will not yield a single centimetre of our land," he said.

The region is one of four Russia said it annexed in September. Fighting had been going on there between Ukrainian military and Russian proxy forces since 2014, the same year Russia annexed Crimea in the south.

Kyiv-based military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said on Tuesday that 21 Russian conscripts had surrendered to Ukrainian forces around Svatove in Luhansk region.

"These poor mobilised men - really poor, they had had nothing to eat or drink in three days - of course they decided to surrender," Zhdanov said on his YouTube channel.

FIERCE FIGHTING IN SOUTHERN TOWN

A Russian-installed mayor in the town of Snihurivka, east of the southern city of Mykolaiv, was cited by Russia's RIA news agency as saying residents had seen tanks and that fierce fighting was going on.

[1/15] Ukrainian servicemen fire a Polish self-propelled howitzer Krab toward Russian positions, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, on a frontline in Donetsk region, Ukraine November 8, 2022. REUTERS/Oleksandr Ratushniak

"They got into contact during the day and said there were tanks moving around and, according to their information, heavy fighting on the edge of the town," the mayor, Yuri Barabashov, said, referring to the residents.

"People saw this equipment moving through the streets in the town centre," he said.

Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Russian-installed administration in the Kherson region, said on the Telegram messaging service that Ukrainian forces had tried to advance on three fronts, including Snihurivka.

Vitaly Kim, the Ukrainian governor of Mykolaiv region, apparently quoting an intercepted conversation between Russian servicemen, suggested that Ukrainian forces had already pushed the Russians out of the area.

"Russian troops are complaining that they have already been thrown out of there," Kim said in a statement on his Telegram channel.

Reuters was unable to verify the battlefield reports.

There was no official word on the situation in the town from military officials in either Ukraine or Russia.

Giving an update on the situation in the neighbouring southern region of Kherson, the Ukrainian military on Tuesday evening accused Russian troops of more looting and destruction of infrastructure. A showdown has been looming for weeks in Kherson city, the only regional capital Russia has captured intact since its invasion.

"A convoy of trucks passed over the dam of the Kakhova hydroelectric station loaded with home appliances and building materials," the military said.

Russian forces were dismantling mobile phone towers and taking equipment, it said, adding that near the city of Beryslav, Russian forces "blew up a power line and took equipment from a solar power station".

In Kherson city, it said Russian troops removed exhibits, furniture and equipment from a museum devoted to the painter Oleksiy Shovkunenko.

Kherson is one of four partially occupied Ukrainian provinces that Russia says it annexed. It controls both the only land route to the Crimea peninsula and the mouth of the Dnipro, the river that bisects Ukraine.

The U.N. General Assembly is due to vote next week on a draft resolution recognising that Russia must be responsible for reparation in Ukraine for the injury, including any damage, caused by "internationally wrongful acts". The text has been put forward by Ukraine, Canada, Guatemala and the Netherlands.

Three-quarters of the 193-member General Assembly denounced Russia's invasion in a vote in March, and in October condemned its self-proclaimed annexation of parts of Ukraine.

Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Grant McCool; Editing by Bill Berkrot, Michael Perry and Simon Cameron-Moore

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by Tom Balmforth

9. The Gap Has Been Bridged! (foreign policy theory versus practice)

Professors versus policymakers.

Excerpts:

In truth, these differences between the worlds that professors and policymakers inhabit are probably impossible to fully bridge. But that isn’t necessarily bad. We don’t want these worlds ever to get too cozy with each other, and a certain level of conflict, both within and between these vocations, serves a useful purpose. As that great political philosopher, Robert Evans, reminds us:

Fighting is healthy. If everyone has too much reverence for each other, or for the material, results are invariably underwhelming. It’s irreverence that makes things sizzle. It’s irreverence that gives you that shot at touching magic.

The Kid, in spite of it all, had a point. Not a bad motto for what we are trying to do at the Texas National Security Review.

The Gap Has Been Bridged! - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Francis J. Gavin · November 9, 2022

Editor’s Note: This is the introductory essay for Volume 5, Issue 4 of the Texas National Security Review, our sister publication. Be sure to read the entire issue.

Alexander George would be very happy.

Three decades ago, George lamented the divide between international relations scholars and foreign policy practitioners in his classic Bridging the Gap: Theory and Practice in Foreign Policy. George bemoaned how these two worlds had less interaction and exchange than was ideal, with consequences for both communities. Policymakers needed theoretical frames to make sense of a complex world but were loath to admit it. Scholars rarely made the necessary efforts to provide the kind of knowledge decision-makers needed. At heart, the issue was the “differences between the two cultures of academia and the policy-making world.” George laid out thoughtful, if modest, strategies to overcome these differences.

I am here to tell you that the gap has, at long last, been bridged. Indeed, if the composition of the current Biden administration is used as evidence, it may have been eliminated altogether.

Become a Member

Examples abound. Protégés of the great international relations scholar, Robert Jervis, shape America’s grand strategy in the White House, the State Department, and the Department of Defense. One of them, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl, populated the Pentagon with scholars at key posts to tackle the most critical foreign policy challenges, including space policy, climate policy, and emerging technologies. He brought in a leading international relations theorist to red team the national defense strategy. In the State Department, two whip-smart academics, Mareena Robinson Snowden and Jane Vaynman, are crafting an arms control policy for the 21st century. China policy is debated in the White House by two brilliant young scholars with different viewpoints, from different disciplinary traditions, who have published competing scholarly works. The architect of the successful American response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a Princeton-trained historian of early modern Dutch empire.

There is, of course, no shortage of Yale-educated lawyers, think-tank lifers, beltway bandits, and former senators and flag officers filling important posts. Still, one cannot help but be impressed by the number of former, current, and future professors making U.S. foreign, intelligence, and military policy, a distinct shift from when George wrote his book in 1993. Nor is this simply a Democratic Party phenomenon: Outstanding scholars such as Will Inboden (the editor in chief of the Texas National Security Review), Philip Zelikow, Tom Christensen, and Kori Schake, among many others, served with distinction in Republican administrations. Gap-bridging is also an international phenomenon, from Brasilia to Berlin. In London, a distinguished young historian of Lord Castlereagh and Clement Attlee, John Bew, recently helped to transform British grand strategy.

The Challenges of Bridging the Gap

Is this change, this influx of scholars into policy and the greater intellectual exchange between decision-makers and the ivory tower, a good thing? I may be the wrong person to ask. Many of these people are good friends, former students, and/or colleagues. I have also been fortunate to be involved with a number of “bridging the gap” programs, including the Ax:son Johnson Institute for Statecraft and Strategy, the Nuclear Studies Research Initiative, and the International Policy Scholars Consortium and Network, all of which seek to pursue George’s vision of putting scholars and policymakers in conversation with each other (the unsung heroes of this vision are Stephen Del Rosso of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Jim Goldgeier, both gap-bridgers who have done more than anyone over the last decade to support efforts to bring these worlds together). It seems hard to argue that populating the government with well-trained, smart people, while encouraging professors to make their scholarship accessible to policymakers, is a bad idea. And of course, the Texas National Security Review is dedicated to the mission of bridging the gap. We have published many of the aforementioned gap-bridgers and hope to publish many more in the future. Just look at this excellent issue, which contains deeply researched, sharp scholarly analysis on a number of key issues of great concern to the policy world: the future of globalization, hypersonic weapons, disinformation, and civil-military relations.

To be fair, not everyone shares my enthusiasm for this kind of gap-bridging. In the fall of 2017, I gave a presentation at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, laying out how I hoped that the new Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins-SAIS might contribute to efforts to bringing scholars and policymakers together. Most of the seminar participants, especially the younger ones, were enthusiastic. JFK School of Government Professor Stephen Walt, however, was, to put it mildly, skeptical, arguing that our proximity to political power was a disadvantage, since the culture and allure of Washington, D.C.,’s foreign policy community was sure to compromise and even corrupt our best efforts. I disagree with Walt’s assessment of the so-called blob. But after five years of living and working in our nation’s capital, I can say that his concerns about the cultural challenges and misaligned incentives of scholars and policymakers are not to be dismissed out of hand.

President John F. Kennedy’s quip that Washington, D.C., possesses the charm of a northern city with the efficiency of a southern one is unfair — it is a lovely area filled with warm people. There are, however, aspects of the city’s culture that should give one pause. There does appear to be a lot of curious Middle Eastern money floating about, and you would be right to check the source of funding before assessing the pronouncements of many “experts” you read or see on television. I have attended a party or three in our capital city where my interlocutor has, unsubtly, looked around to see if there is someone more important they should be talking to (an admittedly low bar), in between name-dropping — “…as Jake mentioned to me recently….” — or re-introducing themselves for the 25th time: “I am the Senior Principal Deputy Assistant for Important Things, not to be confused with the mere Principal Deputy Director, though — and please keep this between us — I am in line to be the Uber Principal Senior Deputy. You can just call me the Tsar!”). I have met many impressive people who work at think tanks, though I confess I am not always entirely sure what they do: They don’t teach students, much of what they write is not meant for a long shelf-life, and the key players seem to spend a lot of time on Twitter arguing with each other, even when they are together during in-person meetings. There are even D.C. think tanks whose purpose appears to be to bemoan the influence of think tanks!

Perhaps no exercise is more performative and D.C.-like than when the high-ranking government official gathers a group of scholars and analysts for feedback on an important policy or document. Jeremy Shapiro captured the occasional hilarity of this phenomena in a 2014 essay: “To the senior government official, an outside idea — even a good one — is like a diamond ring on a desert island: abstractly valuable but practically useless.” The release of anodyne, cliché-ridden official national security documents are treated in Washington with the awe, speculation, and fevered anticipation that my 14-year-old daughter and her friends afforded to Taylor Swift’s recent album.

That said, the ivory tower has little right to throw stones. Panels during the annual meetings of the International Studies Association or the Society of American Foreign Relations can make even the most mundane government briefing look like Aristotle’s Lyceum. Visitors from outer space perusing flagship journals like the American Political Science Review or the Journal of American History would be right to wonder if an obscurantist cult had seized the disciplines of political science and history with a plot to destroy them from within (note to aliens: read TNSR!). Neither world is without in peculiarities, even pathologies.

In truth, professors can be compromised by their proximity to power. Before he entered the Kennedy administration, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. was an accomplished Harvard-based historian. After he left the policy world, he produced untrustworthy panegyrics to his fallen heroes, the Kennedys. The venerated academic field of security studies was created in the aftermath of World War II to “bridge the gap” between the ivory tower and policymakers, to better understand the civilizational challenge that nuclear weapons presented to American decision-makers. Historian Bruce Kuklick offers a devastating account of their contribution: “The defense intellectuals did not know very much. They frequently delivered obtuse judgments when required to be matter of fact, or merely offered up self-justifying talk for politicians.” These lionized, often university-based thinkers and scholars — the so-called “wizards of Armageddon” — at times performed a role similar to the one Shapiro has called out in more recent times: to justify policy decisions that have already been made. “The thinkers are the validators.”

One should be careful, however, not to take these critiques too far. Looked at closely, perhaps too closely, and the organizational culture of any activity, discipline, or craft — and the stars within it — can look dysfunctional or even perverse, even while, comparatively speaking, they are wildly successful. I was reminded of this when reading Robert Evans’ fascinating autobiography and account of Hollywood in the 1970s, The Kid Stays in the Picture. Evans married seven times, became a coke addict and was criminal-adjacent, and describes thriving, then failing, in a movie-making culture that it would be generous to call toxic. Reading his memoir, neither he nor his colleagues appear remotely likeable or admirable. Yet, Evans was essential to producing two of the greatest films ever made, The Godfather and Chinatown, while leading a studio that helped to create the New Hollywood that revolutionized the movie business.

To be clear, this is not to argue about the causal arrow: People should never behave like Evans (or, in a different context, Steve Jobs). One of the great myths of the modern world is that you have to be an a%$hole to succeed. Evans’ memoir was, however, a reminder that the sins of the ivory tower and the so-called blob are relatively minor compared to those of Hollywood, Silicon Valley, or Wall Street. More to the point, like those other American-based sources of global innovation and influence, Washington’s think tanks, scholars, and, yes, even its foreign policy making processes remain admired and widely emulated abroad. This becomes clear when you travel to foreign capitals and speak with top officials, who, surprisingly, often say they wish their process and people (if not their results) were more like those in Washington, D.C. They want more and better think tanks and larger numbers of university professors engaged in their policy process, and they often try to imitate America’s much-derided ritual of producing national security documents. In other words, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, the way the United States generates and debates its foreign policy is the worst, except for everyone else’s (Lord knows Beijing and Moscow would benefit from even a crappy blob or low-key gap-bridging effort!). Travel overseas and people also note how much they wish they had their own Texas National Security Review, a point of great pride at the journal.

The Source of the Divide

In truth, George’s cultural gap wasn’t difficult to bridge because it wasn’t that wide to begin with. The population of people who become professors or enter foreign policy — or both — are not so different. In my experience, the median aspirant is a good person, filled with idealism, seeking to understand and hopefully improve a complex, often threatening world. They are ambitious, if occasionally insecure, kind, if somewhat socially awkward, and whip smart, if not always deeply reflective. Why, then, the disconnect between the ivory tower and the halls of U.S. decision-makers? While they begin with similar interests and values, it is important to remember a simple fact: Professors and policymakers do much different things, operating under distinct time horizons and facing dissimilar constraints and risk profiles. While there are lots of ways in which the vocations diverge, two differences lie at the heart of much of the divide between the ivory tower and decision-makers.

First, professors rarely appreciate that policymakers operate in an environment in which they are often forced to pursue what economists call the “theory of the second best.” In a dynamic and interdependent world, the professor’s preferred, parsimonious ideal outcome may not be possible, given the complexity and “imperfect market” forces of the foreign policy making process and world politics. Indeed, to optimize on the professor’s preferred variable may actually make things worse, and the “second best” outcome — which in truth is the policymaker’s best choice — may look very little like the professor’s ideal “first best.”

Academic theories predicated upon “first best” assumptions can look to a policymaker like science fiction, unlikely to produce better outcomes than a theory that begins with real world — “second best” — constraints and realities.

Second, professors, when studying international affairs and foreign policy, have the luxury of knowing how the story turns out. In other words, they often offer their analysis and critique ex post, or, as Monday morning quarterbacks (and, as I discussed in the last issue, have little inclination or incentive to admit when they have been wrong). When decision-makers make foreign policy choices, they do so ex ante, having little idea of what a complex, unknowable future holds. That does not mean that there are not better or worse ways to make those consequential choices, and academic research and scholarship (and criticism) can be enormously helpful in navigating radical uncertainty. It is important for both communities to remember, however, that they come to similar problems from different perspectives, trying to accomplish different goals.

In truth, these differences between the worlds that professors and policymakers inhabit are probably impossible to fully bridge. But that isn’t necessarily bad. We don’t want these worlds ever to get too cozy with each other, and a certain level of conflict, both within and between these vocations, serves a useful purpose. As that great political philosopher, Robert Evans, reminds us:

Fighting is healthy. If everyone has too much reverence for each other, or for the material, results are invariably underwhelming. It’s irreverence that makes things sizzle. It’s irreverence that gives you that shot at touching magic.

The Kid, in spite of it all, had a point. Not a bad motto for what we are trying to do at the Texas National Security Review.

Become a Member

Francis J. Gavin is the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and the director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the School of Advanced International Studies in Johns Hopkins University. He serves as chair of the editorial board of the Texas National Security Review.

Image: Karl Eisenhower (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Francis J. Gavin · November 9, 2022

10. The U.S. Military Is In Decline While China Grows More Powerful

Excerpts:

That means a budget which accounts for inflation and grows spending by at least 3-5 percent in real terms. And, it also means a budget better in balance by spreading investments more evenly across readiness, capability (R&D) and capacity (procurement). The military needs to invest more in buying capabilities that have a chance of being fielded this decade rather than the next.

Policymakers should heed military warnings and shake off America’s strategic atrophy. Allowing deterrence to fail is not an option. China is watching.

The U.S. Military Is In Decline While China Grows More Powerful

19fortyfive.com · by Mackenzie Eaglen · November 8, 2022

Among our military’s senior brass, the chorus of warnings over Chinese military capabilities continues to grow ever louder. Last week, the Commander of US Strategic Command, Admiral Charles Richard, stated that when it comes to America’s ability to deter China, “the ship is slowly sinking.” He added, “it is sinking, as fundamentally they are putting capability into the field faster than we are.”

In other words, America’s conventional deterrence is in increasingly rapid decline. This is for a variety of reasons but one of the most prominent is due to the military’s lack of margin. There is little slack in the force for deterrence in zero-sum budgeting for winning the warfight. The result is aging, shrinking, less ready troops lacking enough capacity and not modernizing fast enough.

The Air Force flies planes with an average age of 29 years old. The Navy is shrinking to 280 ships by 2037. And, the Army continues to grow smaller, missing out on last year’s recruiting goal by 25 percent. None of these problems at the root of our flagging conventional deterrence are new.

In fact, the brass have been sounding the alarm for a while now. Last September, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said the military was “still moving unbelievably slow” at modernization designed to directly compete with China. General John Hyten lamented how the Pentagon is “so bureaucratic and we’re so risk averse.”

Summing up America’s position vis-à-vis China, the former head for military intelligence in Indo-Pacific Command simply commented that the US is “too late.”

The United States is “too late” in comprehending the deadly purpose of a potential enemy. “Too late in realizing the mortal danger. Too late in preparedness. Too late in uniting all possible forces for resistance.”

When paired with remarks by the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Mile Gilday recently, the US’s ability to deter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan looks increasingly dire. In his words, “When we talk about the 2027 window [for an invasion of Taiwan], in my mind, that has to be a 2022 window or potentially a 2023 window; I can’t rule it out.”

Both China’s willingness to take Taiwan by force and its ability to do so appear to be increasing. It is past due for the Pentagon to break out of neutral and get ready for the “big one” in Asia.

That starts with heavy investment in conventional capabilities suited for stopping the Chinese from executing a fait accompli against Taiwan. We should be purchasing more destroyers, attack submarines, precision-guided munitions, and other capabilities that would make a difference in destroying the thrust of a Chinese invasion force.

With more capacity, the US can also effectively adjust and resource a posture change in the Indo-Pacific by moving more forces in theater to deter China. The Army should reorganize two of its brigade combat teams for large-island defense and send a Security Force Assistance Brigade to the region. Marine Littoral Regiments should be positioned in the First Island Chain and sustainment assets like munitions stores should be moved closer to Taiwan.

Our dwindling munitions production must be ramped up. Stocks of standoff munitions, like the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM), are woefully inadequate, with the Air Force and Navy due to have only 629 in their combined possession by 2027. America should be producing many more of these weapons, as well as the Stingers, Javelins, and other capabilities provided to Ukraine.

More munitions should also flow to the Taiwanese themselves as they are staring down a $14 billion backlog of arms sales. Simply put, Taiwan needs to be made into a “porcupine” and, learning lessons from Ukraine, we should be giving Taiwan all sorts of asymmetric capabilities needed to disrupt an invasion, like sea mines and coastal defense cruise missiles.

Congress, too, must increase the urgency with which they act by passing defense bills on time, enacting reform proposals before commission reports are complete, and providing the right contracting authorities to grow capacity and increase margin.

J-35 Stealth Fighter. Image Credit: Chinese Internet.

That means a budget which accounts for inflation and grows spending by at least 3-5 percent in real terms. And, it also means a budget better in balance by spreading investments more evenly across readiness, capability (R&D) and capacity (procurement). The military needs to invest more in buying capabilities that have a chance of being fielded this decade rather than the next.

Policymakers should heed military warnings and shake off America’s strategic atrophy. Allowing deterrence to fail is not an option. China is watching.

A 19FortyFive Contributing Editor, Mackenzie Eaglen is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she works on defense strategy, defense budgets, and military readiness. She is also a regular guest lecturer at universities, a member of the board of advisers of the Alexander Hamilton Society, and a member of the steering committee of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security.

Want more 19FortyFive military, defense, and national security, as well as politics and economics analysis from the best experts on Earth? Follow us on Google News, Flipboard, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin. Also, sign up for our newsletter here. You can also find our code of publishing ethics and standards here. Want to contact us? Email: [email protected]

19fortyfive.com · by Mackenzie Eaglen · November 8, 2022

11. Breaking China’s near monopoly on rare earths will be easier said than done

A key aspect of strategic competition.

Excerpts:

China holds between 85% and 90% of all the downstream processes. Global production of permanent magnets was 174,000 tonnes last year, of which Japan accounted for less than 9% and China nearly all the rest.

Lynas still sends oxide to China to be turned into metal, and Iluka and Arafura are expected to do so too. Even the processing that does take place outside China relies on Chinese suppliers for the chemical reagents.

The aspiration for Australia to capture more of the downstream processing must confront the dearth of metallurgy graduates from Australian universities, after employment in the sector was squeezed by the closure of smelters and metals manufacturing over the past 20 years. Australia’s metals processing industry is microscopic compared to China’s, and China also dominates in research in the sector.

China plainly sees geopolitical advantage in its lock on the rare-earth sector. However, it also intends to dominate the manufacture of downstream products, including electric vehicles, wind turbines and batteries.

Breaking China’s near monopoly on rare earths will be easier said than done | The Strategist

aspistrategist.org.au · by David Uren · November 8, 2022

The past decade of work proving up Australia’s deposits of rare-earth minerals is beginning to pay off, with a number of firms getting close to production. But the supply chains for rare earths still run through China, and that’s unlikely to change any time soon.

Last week’s Australian Rare Earth Conference hosted by the Australian National University and ASPI heard reports of progress and geological challenges from 16 companies in addition to presentations by Resources Minister Madeleine King, Chief Scientist Cathy Foley and academics.

There’s a sense that the sector is achieving critical mass, that the policy frameworks both in Australia and in the US are delivering support, and that the outlook is one of exponential increase in demand.

Yet, for all its promise, the sector is mainly populated by small and speculative stocks. The major resource companies like BHP and Rio Tinto are focused on simplifying their resource portfolios and have left the difficult rare-earth sector alone.

The ASX lists 35 rare-earth companies. Lynas—the leading non-Chinese producer—heads the list with a market value of $7.9 billion, followed by Iluka, valued at $3.8 billion. Iluka is spearheading the Australian government’s strategy to develop a domestic rare-earth processing capacity and in April was awarded a $1.2 billion non-recourse loan to build a rare-earth refinery at its operations in Eneabba, about 300 kilometres north of Perth. Lynas and Iluka are the only two rare-earth interests included in the S&P/ASX200.

Then come the next two promising candidates, Arafura, worth $530 million, and Hastings, worth $450 million. Both are well advanced in securing contracts for their output.

Behind them come a tribe of smaller hopefuls, including 20 firms valued at less than $50 million each. In addition to these are several dozen companies that have rare earths as one of their interests, typically alongside other critical minerals. There are also non-listed companies in the field.

It’s not unusual for Australian resource sectors to be crowded by small players. About half the 65 ASX lithium stocks are worth less than $50 million, although that is a much richer sector, with a dozen businesses worth more than $1 billion.

What has kept the rare-earth sector small is the difficulty of processing and the lack of transparency in the market. It is the antithesis of gold, whose processing is straightforward and pricing is universal. Neodymium, praseodymium and dysprosium may be the metals of the future, but the only window into their pricing comes from expensive proprietary surveys of transactions among Chinese mining and processing businesses. No superannuation fund is going to stump up equity on the basis of that.

The Japanese government delivered the breakthrough for Lynas, which has one of the world’s highest quality deposits at Mount Weld northwest of Kalgoorlie. China banned rare-earth sales to Japan amid a dispute over islands claimed by both nations in 2010.

The Japanese government arranged the funding for the development of the Mount Weld mine and the construction of a processing plant in Malaysia and lined up customers to sign off-take agreements. It took eight years to get the processing plant to produce material of the required specifications, but Japan was patient, rolling over the funding until the operation worked.

The idea that government support was needed to achieve lift-off inspired the Australian government’s decision to finance the development of a processing plant for Iluka. Iluka is a long-established mineral sands miner. It used to send rare-earth-rich sands to a processing plant in France, but that trade stopped in the early 1990s because of local opposition to radioactive waste. Iluka kept stockpiling the rare-earth sands, which were a by-product of its other operations. While the government has provided the $1.2 billion non-recourse loan, Iluka is contributing $200 million and its one-million-tonne stockpile.

Unusually, the deal was done without off-take agreements, but Iluka is confident there will be customers for its product. The plant will also process rare earths from other operations. Northern Minerals, which has been producing concentrate for the highly valued dysprosium (a heavy rare earth) from a pilot plant since 2018, last week announced an agreement to send product to Iluka. Iluka is confident its plant will be able to handle the two very different types of ore.

Arafura has gone a different route, seeking contracts from end users to underwrite its development. It has signed a non-binding off-take agreement with Hyundai and a memorandum of understanding with General Electric, giving it exposure to both electric-vehicle and wind-turbine end users. It is also getting $300 million in government debt funding and is planning a processing plant.

Major US firms have difficulty in dealing with small suppliers, but the recently legislated US Inflation Reduction Act provides an incentive in the form of tax credits for companies that obtain critical minerals from the US or its free-trade partners, rather than from China.

Hastings has also sought to underwrite its development with off-take contracts. It has an off-take contract with German firm Thyssenkrupp and a memorandum of understanding with the Belgian company Solvay, which took over the processing plant that Iluka once sent its sands to at La Rochelle, on the French Atlantic coast. It will sell them a mixed rare-earth ‘carbonate’ rather than building its own refinery.

Another Australia-based rare-earth company, VHM, last week adopted a different strategy, signing an export deal to sell output from its project near Swan Hill in Victoria directly to China’s huge Shenghe Resources. The rare-earth-rich mineral sands in western Victoria are huge and have been likened by some in the sector to Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves.

The involvement of the Australian, Japanese and US governments in fostering the development of rare-earth projects is driven by a desire to achieve supplies that are independent of China.

Western Australian critical minerals analyst Kingsley Jones argues that China is no longer pursuing a monopoly of rare-earth supply. Its strategy, he says, is one of ‘monopsony’, as the sole buyer of rare earths. China’s share of raw material supply has dropped from 85% to 60% as demand has outstripped the capacity of its own mines, some of which have been shut for environmental reasons.

Where China retains a monopoly is in processing and fabrication. Mined rare earths must first be turned into a carbonate, which is a relatively simple process, and then refined into an oxide, which is much more complex. Then the oxide is turned into a metal, which may be alloyed before it is fabricated into permanent magnets and the huge range of other products using some portion of rare earths.

China holds between 85% and 90% of all the downstream processes. Global production of permanent magnets was 174,000 tonnes last year, of which Japan accounted for less than 9% and China nearly all the rest.

Lynas still sends oxide to China to be turned into metal, and Iluka and Arafura are expected to do so too. Even the processing that does take place outside China relies on Chinese suppliers for the chemical reagents.

The aspiration for Australia to capture more of the downstream processing must confront the dearth of metallurgy graduates from Australian universities, after employment in the sector was squeezed by the closure of smelters and metals manufacturing over the past 20 years. Australia’s metals processing industry is microscopic compared to China’s, and China also dominates in research in the sector.

China plainly sees geopolitical advantage in its lock on the rare-earth sector. However, it also intends to dominate the manufacture of downstream products, including electric vehicles, wind turbines and batteries.

aspistrategist.org.au · by David Uren · November 8, 2022

12. Secret SEAL sub suffers secret mishap

Excerpt:

Naval Safety Command listed the SEAL sub allision as a “Class A” mishap, which connotes damages of more than $2.5 million.

Secret SEAL sub suffers secret mishap

navytimes.com · by Geoff Ziezulewicz · November 8, 2022

A secretive Navy SEAL “Delivery Vehicle,” or SDV, secretly suffered a secret mishap during secret training on Oct. 24, officials confirmed this week.

The SDV, basically a mini submarine launched from a bigger submarine that ferries SEALs on missions, allided with a fixed object that day, according to the Naval Safety Command.

No one was injured in the mishap, according to Naval Special Warfare Command spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Kara Handley, who declined to say where the mishap occurred.

“We cannot provide further details at this time due the ongoing investigation,” she said in an email.

Naval Safety Command listed the SEAL sub allision as a “Class A” mishap, which connotes damages of more than $2.5 million.

A SEAL Delivery Vehicle, or SDV, is shown mounted atop the guided-missile submarine Michigan in 2012. SEALs and divers can be seen swimming back to the boat at bottom left. (Navy)

It was the second Class A afloat mishap of fiscal 2023, which began Oct. 1.

Command officials said this spring they were getting ready to get their SEAL Delivery Vehicle MK 11 at initial operating capability this year.

The MK 11 is slated to replace a MK 8 variant that has been ferrying SEALs around under the sea since the early 1980s, Navy Times’ sister publication, Defense News, reported in May.

RELATED

Navy SEALs are itching for upgrades to their silent underwater rides

Navy SEALs have a lot of cool toys, but most of the wet ones either need replacing or need some serious upgrades to haul them into the 21st century.

Both vehicles are so-called “wet, open submersibles,” meaning that combat divers or SEALs board and ride them to their destination while wearing scuba gear.

Such submersibles are generally launched from submarines, although officials said this spring that they want to explore additional options for delivering the SEAL subs.

About Geoff Ziezulewicz

Geoff is a senior staff reporter for Military Times, focusing on the Navy. He covered Iraq and Afghanistan extensively and was most recently a reporter at the Chicago Tribune. He welcomes any and all kinds of tips at geoffz@militarytimes.com.

13.  Americans need to get over political hard feelings and confront hard enemies abroad

Excerpts:

Things probably would not have come to this if the George W. Bush administration had blocked Putin’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, despite having encouraged NATO to invite Georgia and Ukraine to apply for membership. Or, if the Barack Obama administration had rallied NATO to Ukraine’s defense in 2014 when Russia invaded Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, or if it had stopped Russia’s intervention in Syria on behalf of mass murderer Bashar al-Assad. Or, if the Trump and Biden administrations had, respectively, designed and implemented a sensible and responsible partial withdrawal from America’s “forever war” in Afghanistan.

Those mistakes of both parties, rather than serving as a basis for endless recrimination, should provide lessons going forward that enable U.S. foreign policy to confront and defeat the true enemies of freedom.   

After they have spoken through their elections, Americans need to put domestic political differences in perspective and come together against common enemies, as much as possible with no hard feelings.

Americans need to get over political hard feelings and confront hard enemies abroad

BY JOSEPH BOSCO, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 11/08/22 10:00 AM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3723534-americans-need-to-get-over-political-hard-feelings-and-confront-hard-enemies-abroad/?utm_source=pocket_saves

In 2016, America’s cultural and political animosities, which had been building for years, took on a particularly hard edge. The presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton made reciprocal charges of election fraud and voter suppression. 

Trump, expecting defeat, talked of a rigged election until he won. Clinton still questioned its legitimacy 10 months after her loss, but saw no legal mechanism to challenge it.

Political feelings have only hardened in the years since, and the 2020 election saw Trump refusing ever to concede Joe Biden’s victory, culminating in his vengeful instigation of the violent mob attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. 

As it happened, 2016 was also the year the Avett Brothers released a recording of their song “No Hard Feelings.” It might have served as an antidote to the poisonous rancor and a salve to the deep wounds inflicted on families and friendships during the 2016, 2018 and 2020 elections. Perhaps it could finally play that role in this midterm election season and in preparation for 2024.

Accompanied by an achingly sweet and sad melody, the lyrics offer the solemn perspective that after all of today’s travails, death awaits us all.

“When my body won’t hold me anymore / And it finally lets me free / Will I be ready?

“When my feet won’t walk another mile / And my lips give their last kiss goodbye /Will my hands be steady?

“When I lay down my fears, my hopes, and my doubts / The rings on my fingers, and the keys to my house / With no hard feelings.”

How many friends and family members have given their “last kiss goodbye” without realizing at the time that political and social divisions would drive loved ones apart, some forever?

“When the sun hangs low in the West / And the light in my chest won’t be kept held at bay any longer

“When the jealousy fades away / And it’s ash and dust for cash and lust

“And it’s just hallelujah / And love in thought, love in the words / Love in the songs they sing in the church

“And no hard feelings.”

Love in the songs they sing in the church. How many churches today, on the right and on the left, are conveying messages that engender not love but condemnation of their fellow citizens with opposing political views as unworthy of tolerance and respect, some even fostering darker impulses?  

There is one church membership that did practice what it preached. The congregation of Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., the victim of a horrendous act of mass murder based on racial hatred, found it in their hearts to forgive and even express love for the evildoer.  

Yet, for too many Americans, forgiveness is not an option toward those who have made the “wrong” political choices. Hard feelings remain to poison and inflame the next election cycle.

The song goes on, “Lord knows, they haven’t done much good for anyone.” But Americans’ hard feelings toward each other have greatly benefited the nation’s real existential threats, the regimes that cultivate and exploit U.S. internal divisions. The more we focus on fighting each other, the less we pay attention to what our adversaries are doing to us, and to our friends and allies, and the less prepared we are to confront it. 

The lyrics end with the words, “I have no enemies.” It would be healthier for America’s democracy if those with different partisan leanings were seen less as existential threats and more as political rivals or competitors — the anodyne terms recent U.S. administrations have grown accustomed to calling America’s actual adversaries abroad.  

The United States does have mortal enemies — hostile nation-states and terrorist groups determined to undermine and destroy the values that residents of America’s red states and blue states hold dear and share in common. The war criminal who rules Russia, the genocidal leaders of China and North Korea, and the fanatical religious haters of Iran ridicule and relish America’s free and open system that provides so many opportunities for them to turn Americans against each other. And too many of our citizens fall into the disinformation trap.

While Americans are internally distracted by dire apocalyptic accusations against friends and neighbors, the evildoers of the world eagerly collude to exterminate the proud young democracy in Ukraine and plan to do the same to the democratic population of Taiwan. They score a double victory when they can spread disinformation that not only divides Americans internally but weakens the ability of U.S. foreign policy to meet the menace from abroad.

That is at risk of happening now regarding U.S. support for Ukraine. A growing minority of Republican and Democratic members of Congress are expressing war-weariness and impatience with the financial costs to Americans, even though all the fighting and dying is being done by Ukrainians defending their democratic independence.   

The Biden administration, which for over a year failed to deter Russia’s aggression by convincing Vladimir Putin of the U.S. will to lead NATO in a vigorous defense of Ukraine, now appears to be succumbing to domestic and allied pressure for a premature political settlement of the conflict that would leave Russia occupying parts of Ukraine.  

The administration protests that it is meeting with Russian officials not to press Ukraine to make territorial concessions to Putin but to keep him from carrying out his threats of escalation, even to the point of using nuclear weapons. The danger in these discussions is that U.S. officials will become convinced the former is necessary to achieve the latter, thereby rewarding Putin’s aggression.

Things probably would not have come to this if the George W. Bush administration had blocked Putin’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, despite having encouraged NATO to invite Georgia and Ukraine to apply for membership. Or, if the Barack Obama administration had rallied NATO to Ukraine’s defense in 2014 when Russia invaded Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, or if it had stopped Russia’s intervention in Syria on behalf of mass murderer Bashar al-Assad. Or, if the Trump and Biden administrations had, respectively, designed and implemented a sensible and responsible partial withdrawal from America’s “forever war” in Afghanistan.

Those mistakes of both parties, rather than serving as a basis for endless recrimination, should provide lessons going forward that enable U.S. foreign policy to confront and defeat the true enemies of freedom.   

After they have spoken through their elections, Americans need to put domestic political differences in perspective and come together against common enemies, as much as possible with no hard feelings.

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He served in the Pentagon when Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia and was involved in Department of Defense discussions about the U.S. response. Follow him on Twitter @BoscoJosephA.

14. Russia seeking to poison American political discourse leading up to midterm elections

Can we learn to lead with influence?

Due to our risk verseness about infleunce (PSYOP, pshcological warfare, propaganda) , It remains easier to get permission to put a hellfire missile on the forehead of a terrorist that it is to get permission to put an idea between the ears of people in a foreign target audience.

Excerpts:

Given Russia’s recent mobilization, the United States should engage in information operations that specifically help Russian women and encourage them to protest the mobilization. Such social media campaigns should be accompanied with memes and videos that show how young Russians are being killed in Ukraine.

Why stop there? Putin fears that ethnic minorities could form secessionist movements that divide Russia’s multiethnic society. Washington should promote anti-Putin complaints among Russia’s ethnic minority groups and tell them the truth about discrimination they face and how Putin is exploiting them for the war.

America needs to build its own messaging capabilities that will force the Kremlin to spend time and resources on defensive measures instead of attacking us. President Joe Biden has repeatedly warned that Kremlin agents are preparing to interfere in the 2022 U.S. midterm elections. Absent a credible deterrent, who can blame them? With a track record of successful interference and a history of weak U.S. responses, why wouldn’t the Kremlin meddle again?

Russia seeking to poison American political discourse leading up to midterm elections

Ivana Stradner

Research Fellow

Jack Sullivan

Communications Manager and Research Associate

fdd.org · by Ivana Stradner Research Fellow · November 8, 2022

Right now, the eyes of the world are focused on Russian aggression in Ukraine and escalating threats from Vladimir Putin. But Russia’s playbook goes well beyond Ukraine, including retaliation against the United States for working to stymie Putin’s plans. How will the Kremlin retaliate? Through information warfare and a focused effort to undermine America’s faith in the free elections that are the foundation of American democracy.

Russia’s number one target is the November 2022 midterm elections. With a track record of successful interference — and a history of weak U.S. responses — Russia is once again meddling in American democratic process.

In the lead-up to the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a joint press release, warning U.S. citizens of election-related disinformation spread by foreign actors. With election day upon us, voters must be wary of nation-state directed efforts to destabilize the U.S. electoral system. This should not come as a surprise.

Moscow’s tactics follow a playbook developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War — they aim to drive people in other countries to extreme positions to create division and gridlock. Putin’s primary goal is to polarize the United States and to sow distrust and social chaos causing both Republicans and Democrats to question their confidence in democratic institutions. The U.S. government has already unearthed numerous Kremlin-directed plots during this election cycle.

This past summer, the U.S. Department of the Treasury designated two Russian nationals for election interference activities. Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov coordinated with Russia’s FSB and an entity known as Project Lakhta, which Treasury describes as a “government organized non-governmental organization” (GONGO) under the direction of the same Russian oligarch who finances the notorious Wagner Group mercenaries. Ionov established himself as the president and founder of the “Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia” and created a website called “STOP-Imperialism” to disseminate disinformation, hold conferences and protests within the United States, and develop relationships with U.S. citizen groups. During this process, Ionov relayed messages to contacts in Moscow about supporting a specific U.S. gubernatorial candidate and a separate U.S. citizen with political ambitions.

Natalya Valeryevna Burlinovna, the other Russian national designated by Treasury, is the founder and president of the Center for Support and Development of Public Initiative Creative Diplomacy (PICREADI). This organization claims to be “fully independent in its research and related activities,” but Treasury found that “it is reliant on state funding” and seeks “to hide its relationship with the Russian government and intelligence services.” For example, the group allowed Russian intelligence agencies to keep tabs on participants in the networking events it held in Moscow.

Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election demonstrates the extent of its intervention capabilities. According to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on election interference, Russia’s Internet Research Agency — a Saint Petersburg-based, Kremlin-linked group — published 80,000 posts on Facebook that reached up to 126 million people. Through collaboration with the Internet Research Agency, Moscow exploits pre-existing fault lines in the U.S., such as racial tension, immigration, and gun control. The Kremlin has been successful in influencing, for example, both white nationalist and Black Lives Matter groups. If anyone wonders why scrolling the internet leaves them depressed, they should consider that the Russian government is paying its citizens to post vitriolic comments on Americans’ favorite websites, in some cases for 11 hours a day.

A polarized, disunited America can help Putin end the era of U.S. world leadership, reestablish Russia as a global power, and restore a multipolar world.

Obviously, Russia pretends it plays no role in sowing division, distrust, and discontent. After the Department of Justice indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities for interference in the 2016 presidential election, the Russian government denied any involvement.

Ahead of the 2022 midterms, Russia targeted American audiences with messages related to the war in Ukraine. It is promoting isolationist rhetoric on the far right and the far left and questioning the cost of American military and financial support for Ukraine as the U.S. faces high inflation. Moscow is glad to see MAGA voters concerned about overspending on Ukraine’s defense while the far left questions American “imperialism.” In September, Putin declared that an “anti-colonial liberation movement against unipolar hegemony” was gaining momentum around the globe.

The U.S. should use both offensive and defensive measures to protect its elections. Social media companies should continue warning U.S. citizens about interference by sending push notifications to their users when major disinformation efforts come to light. A September report from Meta that documented Russian and Chinese election interference would benefit from a wider audience than those who read Meta press releases on their own initiative.

On the offensive side, Washington must start by giving Moscow a taste its own medicine. It should exploit Russia’s internal weak points and amplify the dissatisfaction so many Russians already feel about the Kremlin’s unjustified invasion of Ukraine.

This does not require peddling disinformation but rather spreading the truth about the weaknesses of Putin’s regime and the brutality of his war. U.S. efforts should focus on grassroots campaigning. For example, the U.S. should invest in a group of Russian-speaking social media influencers and help them spread messages inside Russia to counter the Kremlin’s pervasive disinformation related to the war in Ukraine.

Given Russia’s recent mobilization, the United States should engage in information operations that specifically help Russian women and encourage them to protest the mobilization. Such social media campaigns should be accompanied with memes and videos that show how young Russians are being killed in Ukraine.

Why stop there? Putin fears that ethnic minorities could form secessionist movements that divide Russia’s multiethnic society. Washington should promote anti-Putin complaints among Russia’s ethnic minority groups and tell them the truth about discrimination they face and how Putin is exploiting them for the war.

America needs to build its own messaging capabilities that will force the Kremlin to spend time and resources on defensive measures instead of attacking us. President Joe Biden has repeatedly warned that Kremlin agents are preparing to interfere in the 2022 U.S. midterm elections. Absent a credible deterrent, who can blame them? With a track record of successful interference and a history of weak U.S. responses, why wouldn’t the Kremlin meddle again?

Ivana Stradner is a research fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ (FDD) Barish Center for Media Integrity, where her research focuses on Russia’s information operations and cybersecurity. Jack Sullivan is a research associate at FDD. Follow Ivana on Twitter @ivanastradner. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

fdd.org · by Ivana Stradner Research Fellow · November 8, 2022

15. Russia hasn’t killed any US-supplied HIMARS in Ukraine, according to a senior defense official

I hope this report does not jinx this track record.

Russia hasn’t killed any US-supplied HIMARS in Ukraine, according to a senior defense official

Today, we spell 'undefeated' H-I-M-A-R-S.

BY MAX HAUPTMAN | PUBLISHED NOV 7, 2022 1:03 PM

taskandpurpose.com · by Max Hauptman · November 7, 2022

SHARE

It’s no secret at this point that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is best understood, to put it politely, as a clusterfuck. The Russian air force hasn’t been able to neutralize Ukraine’s jets, Ukrainian troops are knocking out Russian tanks with ease, and Russia’s mobilization of reserve forces has resulted in soldiers shooting each other while still in whatever limited training the Russian military has to offer.

To add insult to injury, as a senior Defense Department official recently told Politico, the Russian military has thus far failed to destroy a single one of the prized High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) that the United States has supplied to Ukraine.

A single HIMARS can fire up to six guided artillery rockets that use infrared sensors and the Global Positioning System to lock onto moving targets up to 43 miles away. In just a few minutes, a HIMARS can fire, relocate to a new position, reload, and be ready to take out another target.

Subscribe to Task & Purpose Today. Get the latest military news, entertainment, and gear in your inbox daily.

Since they first arrived in Ukraine in June, the HIMARS have been put to good use against Russian forces. The Ukrainian military has used them to strike command posts and ammunition depots, disrupt concentrations of Russian troops and take out senior officers. Indeed, the HIMARS may very well have been involved in an attack that targeted pro-Kremlin political officials meeting in the occupied Ukrainian city of Kherson in September.

“What you see is the Ukrainians … actually systematically selecting targets and then accurately hitting them, thus providing this precise method of degrading Russian capability,” a senior U.S. defense official told reporters in July.

In a conflict that has often been defined by massive artillery barrages, the HIMARS has even spawned a cottage industry of internet memes remarking on the success of the artillery system, like “HIMARS o’clock,” which refers to those celebrated times when successful HIMARS strikes occur.

Russia has, of course, claimed to have effectively countered the HIMARS threat, at one point claiming that more than 100 HIMARS rockets had been destroyed in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region (Ukraine currently has only 16 U.S.-supplied HIMARS in its arsenal).

To protect their HIMARS, Ukraine has been resorting to an old, simple tactic – fake mockups to deceive Russian drones. As advanced as the actual HIMARS is, a wooden replica looks very similar from 1,000 feet in the air. Apparently, it’s working out well, as Ukraine’s HIMARS remain undefeated on the battlefield. There are at least 18 more HIMARS coming, too, as the U.S. continues to send more weapons systems and ammunition to Ukraine.

As for Russia’s inability to successfully knock out a single HIMARS, who knows: perhaps this is why at least one Ukrainian system is smiling all the time.

The latest on Task & Purpose

• Air Force claims ‘no intent by the pilots’ to draw sky penis near Russian base in Syria
• Dramatic video shows why Russian helicopters are sitting ducks in Ukraine
• The Marine Corps’ fitness test from the 1950s wasn’t that hard
• Navy jet considered ‘beyond repair’ returns to flight 5 years after mid-air collision
• We salute the Marine who got promoted at a fried chicken restaurant on base

Want to write for Task & Purpose? Click here. Or check out the latest stories on our homepage.

Max Hauptman

Max Hauptman has been covering breaking news at Task & Purpose since December 2021. He previously worked at The Washington Post as a Military Veterans in Journalism Fellow, as well as covering local news in New England. Contact the author here.

Artillery

Region & Country

Ukraine

Vehicles

taskandpurpose.com · by Max Hauptman · November 7, 2022

16. Opinion | Taiwan is on the frontlines of China’s worldwide cyberwar

Opinion | Taiwan is on the frontlines of China’s worldwide cyberwar

The Washington Post · by Josh Rogin · November 8, 2022

Opinion Taiwan is on the frontlines of China’s worldwide cyberwar

By

Columnist |

November 8, 2022 at 2:29 p.m. EST

As China ramps up its cyberattacks on Taiwan’s democracy, the island’s leaders are building both the infrastructure for defense and the capabilities to fight back. One of the Taiwanese government’s major projects is preparing a backup system to keep the country online if China tries to cut it off from the internet altogether.

Beijing is deploying cyber campaigns in many countries but nowhere as intensively as in Taiwan. After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) visited Taiwan in August, the Chinese government took its tactics to a new level. Beijing coordinated conventional retaliatory measures, such as missile tests, mock bombing runs and military exercises that mimicked a blockade, with a cyberwarfare and disinformation campaign meant to disrupt Taiwan’s democracy and undermine its people’s grasp on reality.

Taiwan is responding by bolstering its cyber resilience. The Ukraine war has heightened Taipei’s sense of urgency by demonstrating that a country under attack can’t necessarily rely on foreign governments or foreign billionaires — such as Elon Musk — when the crisis hits. And the reality is that China and Taiwan are already locked in online conflict on many fronts.

“It’s not like we’re preparing ourselves for something in the future,” Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s first “digital minister,” told me in an interview in Taipei. “What we’re facing now will probably continue for a while, and we need to prepare ourselves for it, much like we prepare our infrastructure for earthquakes.”

Tang’s Ministry of Digital Affairs, which opened just this August, is central to Taiwan’s effort to build cyber resilience among the population and update government institutions.

Taiwan’s most ambitious project is building a network of non-geostationary satellites to keep the internet going if Beijing cuts the undersea internet cables. The project is still in its early stages. The goal is to have 700 satellite receivers deployed in low- or mid-earth orbit, connected to mobile 5G towers on the ground. Applications for vendors are set to open this month.

Follow Josh Rogin's opinionsFollow

One possible applicant could be Musk’s company SpaceX, which operates the satellite communications network Starlink, with more than 3,000 small satellites in low-earth orbit. Starlink has been crucial to Ukraine’s ability to keep its broadband capabilities intact so both the government and journalists can do their jobs and fight Moscow’s disinformation.

But Musk threatened to stop providing Starlink for Ukraine after Ukrainian officials criticized his public proposals for a Moscow-friendly negotiating platform. Taiwan’s government wants a system that can’t be cut off by any foreign firm or business executive. Taiwan’s leaders know that in the first days of a Chinese attack, Taiwan’s ability to communicate directly with the world will be crucial to its survival.

“A lot of international correspondents are in Taiwan now,” said Tang. “If we don’t provide them with a broadband link in the event of a disaster, natural or unnatural, then of course, the disinformation will win the war.”

Musk has also proposed that Taiwan rejoin China under the one-country, two-systems model, an idea that Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, told me was exactly the same as Beijing’s line.

“It’s a Chinese proposal,” Wu said. “The people of Taiwan … they are not interested in this.”

In the meantime, Taipei is already fighting a daily battle against Chinese hybrid cyberwarfare and disinformation campaigns. Beijing has used its information warfare machine to undermine Taiwanese people’s confidence in their government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Chinese influence campaigns promote pro-Beijing candidates in Taiwanese elections. Most recently, China is focused on convincing Taiwanese people that their democracy is a facade and that their leaders are controlled by the CIA.

Increasingly, Tang said, Beijing is integrating disinformation and cyberattacks to powerful effect. After the Pelosi visit in August, cyber attackers disabled the website of the Taiwanese president’s office and its Ministry of National Defense. While the websites were offline, propagandists spread disinformation about the Taiwanese government’s actions, knowing people could not refer to the official sources. Hackers took over an electronic billboard at a rail station and broadcast an anti-Pelosi, pro-Chinese Communist Party message.

“Pelosi’s visit, that’s like a drill, that’s like a taste of what’s to come,” Tang said.

Tang, 41, represents a generation of Taiwanese people who have never experienced being ruled by China and don’t want to be. Both of her grandfathers fought against the Chinese Communist Party for the Republic of China Armed Forces, also known at the time as the Nationalist army. Her father was a journalist in Tiananmen Square in the runup to the June 1989 massacre of students.

She rose to prominence during the 2014 Sunflower Movement, in which she used her hacker skills to help student protesters occupying the Legislative Yuan broadcast their message. That led to her helping the government implement media literacy programs in Taiwan’s schools. The island’s first transgender cabinet minister, she often wears a shirt with Ukraine’s coat of arms on it.

Tang’s personal mission is to use technology to decentralize government and increase civic engagement. For example, Taiwan created an online contest to allow people to vote for their favorite vaccine, as an attempt to turn vaccine skepticism into vaccine adoption. A “humor over rumor” campaign helped fight covid disinformation in an engaging way.

Not all of Taiwan’s solutions will apply to the United States, where disinformation often comes from within our political system. But China’s tactics are increasingly being used inside America. Chinese hackers are attacking U.S. government websites. Beijing’s influence operations are widespread on American social media platforms and in the American media.

The good news is that China’s favored narrative about the superiority of autocracies is being undermined by Xi Jinping’s faltering economy, “wolf warrior” diplomacy and unpopular domestic crackdowns. Democracies such as Taiwan, Ukraine and the United States are “natural allies” in fighting China’s cyberwarfare strategy, Tang said, but they must do more to prove that their model can work better in a digital world.

The Washington Post · by Josh Rogin · November 8, 2022

17. Strategic Ambiguity Out of Balance: Updating an Outdated Taiwan Policy

Excertps:

China’s threat to Taiwan is a threat to the post-1945 norms of state sovereignty, which calls for the U.S. to rally other stakeholders in defense of the principles of state sovereignty and legitimate governance. Strategic ambiguity vis-à-vis Taiwan has led the U.S. to cultivate fewer partners than it needs, should a test of its capacity to defend those principles arise in Taiwan. That a handful of small states have nonetheless resisted Chinese pressure regarding Taiwan along various dimensions, at some cost to themselves, suggests that a much more widespread, coordinated, and effective global response to Chinese threats could be possible if the U.S. chose strategic clarity.[13]

Because both countries have changed in relevant ways in the past five decades, strategic ambiguity is already unbalanced. U.S. is calibrating its strategy against circumstances that no longer hold, and the two sides of the Taiwan Strait should no longer be equivalently deterred. China is now far more likely to invade Taiwan than Taiwan is to declare independence, and it is a miscalculation to dissuade them in equal parts. For a liberal democracy like the U.S. that wants to stabilize a liberal global order, deterring an autocratic and expansionary China from invading Taiwan is both strategically and normatively essential, while deterring a liberal democratic Taiwan from declaring independence is not—and may even be detrimental. In the game of great power competition, it is common to overlook small states’ perspectives, but better accounting for not only China’s but also Taiwan’s domestic circumstances and world view would help correct strategic ambiguity’s outdated perspective and pave the way for a clearer Taiwan and Asia-Pacific strategy that is consistent with U.S.’ own long-term global interests.

Strategic Ambiguity Out of Balance: Updating an Outdated Taiwan Policy

Yvonne Chiu  November 9, 2022

thestrategybridge.org · November 9, 2022

The Asymmetry of “Dual Deterrence”

In September of 2022, for the fourth time in little over a year, U.S. President Biden said that Americans would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion only to be followed by White House aides walking back his statement, because it contradicted an American strategy developed in the late 1970s of deliberate ambiguity about whether or not it would come to Taiwan’s aid if it were attacked. The most recent occasion prompted yet another round of questions about whether strategic ambiguity is dead and warnings that abandoning strategic ambiguity is unwise.[1]

Many policymakers and analysts are concerned that Biden’s declarations of military support will dampen Taiwan’s incentives to reform its defenses or encourage Taiwan to declare formal independence and precipitate a Chinese invasion. There are certainly risks to abandoning a posture of strategic ambiguity but also many good reasons to do so, including that both Taiwan and China have taken unexpected paths that now moot the normative and geopolitical functions of strategic ambiguity.

In the 1970s, China’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP) deferred resolving the Taiwan question—invading Taiwan to defeat the Kuomintang (KMT) and claim that territory—because it prioritized achieving economic development that required access to and integration with international trade and capital markets. Meanwhile, the posture of strategic ambiguity taken by the U.S. sought to stabilize the Taiwan Strait with dual deterrence of both Chinese attack and Taiwanese declaration of independence. This policy rested on two premises—that China would remain committed to peaceful and non-coercive merger, if any, and that Taiwan’s independence was not essential to American foreign policy interests—neither of which holds today.

In the intervening years, China has decidedly not liberalized, democratized, or renounced the use of force to take Taiwan, and surveys of Taiwan’s population consistently show overwhelming preference for retaining the status quo—i.e., its de facto sovereignty—in the face of China’s domestic oppression (including its failed “One Country, Two Systems” attempt in Hong Kong), continued militarization, and increasing regional and cross-strait aggression.[2]

The circumstances that served as the premise for strategic ambiguity have fundamentally changed.

When strategic ambiguity vis-à-vis Taiwan was developed, both China and Taiwan were ruled by one-party dictatorships. China’s CCP was far more violently repressive than Taiwan’s KMT, but both were illegitimate governments so, at the time, the U.S. had no strong normative reasons to defend Taiwan’s independence, only strategic ones.[3]

The circumstances that served as the premise for strategic ambiguity have fundamentally changed. While the CCP has hewed to its political trajectory from the post-Mao 1970s, Taiwan has fundamentally transformed from a one-party state to a stable and vibrant liberal democracy with expansive civil and political liberties.

Over 85% of Taiwan’s population is from families predating the KMT’s 1949 invasion; they have long eschewed any claims to govern China’s territory, and their now democratically-elected leaders have since followed suit.[4] Taiwan’s constitution still contains vestigial references to “the free area of the Republic of China” and to a “Taiwan Province,” and the KMT has not formally renounced its claims to Taiwan’s territory, but these remain not because there is any desire to govern or become a part of China, but because China would consider their elimination to be a declaration of Taiwanese independence.[5]

However, there is now little real danger of Taiwan declaring independence. Unlike the early years of Taiwan’s democracy when its new leaders were more radical for having been forged under dictatorial oppression, Taiwan’s political leadership is now more moderate and careful with rhetoric and actions related to declarations of independence. For example, current governing Democratic Progressive Party (DDP) leaders commonly say, “Taiwan is already a sovereign and independent country, so there is no need to separately declare its independence.”[6]

To hold onto strategic ambiguity in order to deter Taiwanese declaration of independence posits a moral equivalence where there is none.

More importantly, Taiwan’s genuine rule of law, separation of powers, constitutionalism, independent judiciary, and essential rights protections make its system of governance far more legitimate than the CCP’s authoritarian-bordering-on-totalitarian governance over China’s territory. A liberal democracy operates with consent and participation of the governed, which gives it an objective degree of legitimacy that is widely expected by international norms and which the CCP’s so-called people’s republic lacks. To hold onto strategic ambiguity in order to deter Taiwanese declaration of independence posits a moral equivalence where there is none.

Proponents of American strategic ambiguity speak of both sides of dual deterrence in the same breath, but the two components are not morally or strategically equivalent.[7] Taiwan’s unequivocal resistance to becoming Chinese is precipitated by the CCP’s unequivocal pursuit of Taiwan annexation—preferably without fighting, but by force if necessary—and the latter already undercuts strategic ambiguity’s purpose of maintaining cross-strait stability.

China has reaped substantial diplomatic, economic, and geopolitical clout from its integration into and position in the international community and economy. In combination with its ongoing military expansion and reform, it need not defer a military answer to its Taiwan question much longer.

The importance of deterring across both sides of the strait is asymmetric. At this point, it is more likely that China would coerce an annexation of Taiwan than Taiwan would declare independence. Deterring Chinese seizure of Taiwan is also far more normatively and strategically important for maintaining a stable, liberal global order than deterring Taiwan independence. Recent events are reminding the world that the political evolution to liberal democracy is not inevitable and that the norms of sovereignty and territorial integrity remain easily challenged through invasion and warfare. Formal Taiwanese declaration of independence may be imprudent, but the U.S. and other stakeholders should understand that treating Taiwanese independence principally as an incitement of China is analogous to blaming Ukraine’s desire to join the EU and NATO for provoking Russia’s 2022 invasion.

Neither Taiwan nor China are the countries today that those in the 1970s expected them to be.

Prudence may call for not encouraging a Taiwan declaration of independence for risk of Chinese invasion, and the Taiwanese people’s overwhelming preference for status quo of some kind instead of independence demonstrates their prudence. At the same time, there are few robust geopolitical reasons to discourage it. Formal independence would only make de jure the sovereignty that Taiwan already exercises, but strengthening Taiwan’s tenuous position would also bolster a liberal global order by reinforcing principles of nation-state sovereignty and legitimate governance. Given its own global security and economic interests and its own liberal democratic values, the most important international policy goal for the U.S. should be to preserve this liberal global order. Far more so than Russia at this point, China is the country with probably the greatest capacity to revise the global order, and so deterring its ambitions on Taiwan is especially urgent.

Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. (Nhat Nguyen Hoang)

Neither Taiwan nor China are the countries today that those in the 1970s expected them to be. Taiwan’s legitimate claim to sovereignty and China’s continued threats of forcible takeover in violation of international norms and laws have stripped the U.S. strategic ambiguity doctrine of its normative and geopolitical utility.

Piece-Meal Takeover of Taiwan?

Prevailing public policy discussions of a Taiwan invasion scenario focus mostly on a sudden full-scale cross-strait invasion of Taiwan’s main island. Given the PLA’s developing range and depth of capabilities, bringing overwhelming force to bear is a viable option. Furthermore, this particular approach comports with China’s interest in winning such a campaign quickly—within a few days, if possible—and establishing a new cross-strait status quo that would be difficult to reverse.

China has long used at least two different types of grey zone activity: ambiguous forces who claim civilian status and incremental activity that does not justify military response but cumulatively alters the status quo.

U.S. policymakers should not neglect preparing for China’s range of available options, however, which include taking some of Taiwan’s outlying islands (e.g., Kinmen and Matsu, which lie along China’s coastline) by force first or blockading Taiwan to starve it into submission without firing a shot. The PLA may not mirror how other great military powers might themselves choose to invade. Perhaps China is considering more piece-meal possibilities, which would also be consistent with its preferences for grey zone strategies.

China has long used at least two different types of grey zone activity: ambiguous forces who claim civilian status (e.g., “little blue men” and maritime militia) and incremental activity that does not justify military response but cumulatively alters the status quo. The CCP mastered the art of the grey zone out of necessity, and now has extensive experience and success with it. At the outset, China under the CCP was considered formidable by virtue of its size and population, then later for the nuclear weapons it developed in the 1960s, but the country lacked diplomatic and cultural heft and the military might of a great power until more recently.

Even as China continues acquiring requisite great power characteristics, there is no reason to believe it will abandon the grey zone activities that have worked so well thus far, especially when doing so could avoid putting its newly reformed and modernized military to the test.

Taiwan’s geography will work both for and against it. Its position across a 130km strait from China makes it difficult to invade and its mountainous topography will favor insurgency and make its population hard to pacify. It will also be harder to defend Taiwan, supply it with materiel, evacuate refugees, or break a blockade around it.

This geography provides China ample grey zone opportunity. Taiwan’s composition is complex: it comprises 166 islands, including two archipelagoes (Kinmen and Matsu, comprising over 40 islands) just off China’s shore. This creates good opportunities to gamble on gradual encroachment (cf. Russia in Ukraine’s Crimea and Donestsk and Luhansk Oblasts), because the U.S. may not consider Taiwan’s outlying islands to be worth defending.

To more effectively deter both military and non-military means for seizing Taiwan, the U.S. must better develop its own piece-meal strategies and better integrate all its instruments of power into a cohesive deterrence strategy.

Calibrating robust deterrent responses to the CCP’s grey zone strategies without escalating too much is challenging, and the CCP may also wager that more incremental action such as a blockade—to starve rather than invade Taiwan into submission—would not draw an American military response, especially if the U.S. considers deterring the narrow issue of formal Taiwan independence on a strategic par with deterring a Chinese invasion.

To more effectively deter both military and non-military means for seizing Taiwan, the U.S. must better develop its own piece-meal strategies and better integrate all its instruments of power into a cohesive deterrence strategy.

Why Taiwan’s Diplomatic Isolation Matters

The CCP has amply demonstrated the utility of incremental activity that initially appears insignificant, for example in the South China Sea where it has gradually built new islands and seized effective control of contested territory. Somewhat downplayed is its use of the same strategy in the diplomatic realm. To date, China has peeled away nearly all of Taiwan’s formal diplomatic relationships—only 13 states plus the Vatican have full diplomatic relations with Taiwan—and continues to obsessively monitor how Taiwan is referenced or depicted, by exerting formal and informal pressure on states, international organizations (the UN, WHO, IOC, etc.), multinational companies, and foreign educational institutions alike. For example, China demands that all entities, no matter how large or small, refer to Taiwan as “Chinese Taipei” or a “province of China” and that they depict Taiwan as located within China’s boundaries on all maps.[8] This supports a sustained pressure campaign to deny Taiwan membership in and access to international institutions.[9]

Kaohsiung Music Center during the 2022 Taiwan Lantern Festival. (Tiouraren Y.-C. Tsai)

By and large, the strategic response from the U.S. has treated Taiwan’s formal and informal isolation and erasure as insignificant and the relationship with the United States as the only one that really matters for Taiwan.[10] This is a mistake, because it fails to understand the significance of not just full diplomatic recognition but also non-diplomatic representation and non-governmental identification to China, to Taiwan, and to other states in the international community.

China’s obsession with isolating Taiwan and policing all references to it is not mere pettiness or diplomatic fussiness. It is a deliberate strategy to ensure that no other country, institution, or entity will be connected enough to Taiwan to defend or support it when China goes to seize it. Diplomatic and public recognition as a sovereign state are neither necessary nor sufficient for assisting a country in need, but it will be far more difficult for a state to overcome its domestic hurdles to aiding Taiwan without those reinforcing geopolitical ties.

The U.S. government has occasionally drifted from strategic ambiguity as a posture designed to confuse adversaries into a policy that serves to confuse its own policymakers.

Given its formal and informal global leadership on Taiwan security issues, including its 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, the effect of American strategic ambiguity has been to signal to other countries that they should also be ambivalent about the value of Taiwan’s sovereignty for defending a rules-based global order, by discounting the strategic value of incremental non-military activities like diplomatic pressure.[11]

The U.S. government has occasionally drifted from strategic ambiguity as a posture designed to confuse adversaries into a policy that serves to confuse its own policymakers. Such confusion leads the U.S. to resist some valid policy options. For example, the U.S. withholds regular arms sales to Taiwan in order to placate China, instead agreeing only to infrequent, ad hoc sales that are less effective for deterring Chinese invasion; recently, the U.S. excluded Taiwan from its proposed Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which would have better embedded Taiwan in a formal international network, and is instead pursuing a separate trade dialogue with Taiwan.[12] It is true that other countries in this economic initiative wanted to exclude Taiwan for fear of China’s reaction, but that apprehension comes in part from the U.S.’ own public, long-standing ambiguity about supporting Taiwan. As the only credible counterweight to China in the Asia-Pacific region, the U.S.’ ambivalence generates uncertainty for everyone—opponents and partners alike—about Taiwan’s standing and future, and makes the prospect of more deeply engaging with Taiwan seem too risky for many.

U.S. foreign policy analysts have recently been reconsidering the CCP’s threats to global security through the lens of strategic competition, which was only reinforced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this year. U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s August 2022 visit to Taiwan, which was the highest-profile American congressional delegation to Taiwan in over two decades, led to a sharp Chinese response. The ensuing five days of live-fire military drills surrounding Taiwan’s main island, including ballistic missile launches over Taiwan and join anti-submarine and sea assault operations, brought the timely questions about American strategic ambiguity to widespread public attention.

China’s threat to Taiwan is a threat to the post-1945 norms of state sovereignty, which calls for the U.S. to rally other stakeholders in defense of the principles of state sovereignty and legitimate governance. Strategic ambiguity vis-à-vis Taiwan has led the U.S. to cultivate fewer partners than it needs, should a test of its capacity to defend those principles arise in Taiwan. That a handful of small states have nonetheless resisted Chinese pressure regarding Taiwan along various dimensions, at some cost to themselves, suggests that a much more widespread, coordinated, and effective global response to Chinese threats could be possible if the U.S. chose strategic clarity.[13]

China is now far more likely to invade Taiwan than Taiwan is to declare independence, and it is a miscalculation to dissuade them in equal parts.

Because both countries have changed in relevant ways in the past five decades, strategic ambiguity is already unbalanced. U.S. is calibrating its strategy against circumstances that no longer hold, and the two sides of the Taiwan Strait should no longer be equivalently deterred. China is now far more likely to invade Taiwan than Taiwan is to declare independence, and it is a miscalculation to dissuade them in equal parts. For a liberal democracy like the U.S. that wants to stabilize a liberal global order, deterring an autocratic and expansionary China from invading Taiwan is both strategically and normatively essential, while deterring a liberal democratic Taiwan from declaring independence is not—and may even be detrimental. In the game of great power competition, it is common to overlook small states’ perspectives, but better accounting for not only China’s but also Taiwan’s domestic circumstances and world view would help correct strategic ambiguity’s outdated perspective and pave the way for a clearer Taiwan and Asia-Pacific strategy that is consistent with U.S.’ own long-term global interests.

Yvonne Chiu is an Associate Professor at the U.S. Naval War College and the author of Conspiring with the Enemy: The Ethic of Cooperation in Warfare. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

The Strategy Bridge is read, respected, and referenced across the worldwide national security community—in conversation, education, and professional and academic discourse.

Thank you for being a part of The Strategy Bridge community. Together, we can #BuildTheBridge.

Header Image: Taipei City, Taiwan, 2016 (Thomas Tucker).

Notes:

[1] On a 60 Minutes interview (Sept 18, 2022).

[2] Asked their preferences for “unification,” “the status quo,” or “independence,” nearly 90 percent of Taiwan’s population supports maintaining the status quo with variation across timeline, e.g., “indefinitely” versus “decide at a later date”. (Yvonne Chiu, “Taiwan free to decide, under duress,” Taipei Times, Aug. 26, 2022.)

[3] Shortly after the KMT retreated to Taiwan in 1949, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s “perimeter speech” (Jan. 12, 1950) ceded Asian affairs outside of a “perimeter” that he drew around Japan and Philippines but which excluded Korea and Taiwan, signalling that the U.S. would no longer support the KMT. When North Korea invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950, however, President Harry S. Truman decided to defend South Korea (and Taiwan).

[4] The massive waves of Chinese immigration to Taiwan from 1945–1956 as a result of the Chinese Civil War is estimated to around 1 million, which constituted only 15% of Taiwan’s population at the time, and their surviving members and descendents number around 10% now. [Executive Yuan, Republic of China (Taiwan), The Republic of China Yearbook 2014, p. 48. Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang, The Great Exodus from China, Cambridge University Press 2021, pp. 63–65. Ko-hua Yap, “Reassessing Number of Mainland Chinese Immigrants with Declassified Archival Data,” Taiwan Historical Research 28(3) Sept 2021: 211–229. 徐富珍 、 陳信木（2004)。︁蕃薯＋芋頭＝臺灣土豆？：臺灣當前族群認同狀況 比較分析。︁在臺灣人口學會主辦、人口、家庭與國民健康政策回顧與展望 研討會、台北市。︁]

Since at least 2008, opinion polls about Taiwanese identity consistently show that the majority of people consider themselves to be solely “Taiwanese,” as opposed to “Chinese” or both, and that portion of the population has only grown over time to between 64 and 85 percent now, depending on the poll. (Since these surveys began in 1992, there has never been a majority or even a plurality that identified solely as “Chinese”; prior to 2008, the prevailing identification was “both.”) This is reflected in post-dictatorship policy changes; for example, Taiwanese language is officially permitted and recent educational reforms include Taiwan history in the curriculum and place less emphasis on Chinese history. (Election Study Center, National Chengchi University, “Changes in Taiwanese/Chinese Identity of Taiwanese as Tracked in Surveys 1992–2022 June,” July 12, 2022. Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation, “April 2022 Public Opinion Poll – English Excerpt,” April 26, 2022.)

[5] The foundation of Taiwan’s constitution of the Republic of China’s 1947 constitution, which the KMT adopted when it still governed China. The now vestigial-references above originally date from 1991 additional articles before Taiwan fully democratized.

[6] Lev Nachman and Brian Hioe, “No, Taiwan’s President Isn’t ‘Pro-Independence,’” The Diplomat (online), April 23, 2020. 畢翔 、《務實台獨工作者》賴清德：台灣名字叫中華民國　不必另宣布獨立”、 上報 Up Media (online), March 22, 2019。︁

[7] Thomas J. Christensen, M. Taylor Fravel, Bonnie S. Glaser, Andrew J. Nathan, Jessica Chen Weiss, “How to Avoid a War Over Taiwan,” Foreign Affairs (online), Oct. 13, 2022. Task Force on U.S.-China Policy, Policy Brief: Avoiding War Over Taiwan (online), Oct. 12, 2022 (Asia Society – Center on U.S.-China Relations and UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy – 21st Century China Center).

[8] Edward Wong and Amy Qin, “China’s Push to Isolate Taiwan Demands U.S. Action, Report Says,” The New York Times, Mar. 24, 2022. Stu Woo, “China Makes Sure Everyone Write Taiwan’s Name Just So—Even a Colorado High School,” The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 10, 2021. “Taiwan opens representative office in Lithuania,” Deutsche Welle, Nov. 18, 2021. Andrew Higgins, “In an Uneven Fight with China, a Tiny Country’s Brand Becomes Toxic,” The New York Times, Feb. 21, 2022.

[9] See, for example: Jessica Drun and Bonnie S. Glaser, “The Distortion of UN Resolution 2758 and Limits on Taiwan’s Access to the United Nations,” German Marshall Fund, Mar. 24, 2022; David Cyranoski, “Taiwan left isolated in fight against SARS. Nature 422, 652 (2003), https://doi.org/10.1038/422652a.

[10] Former government officials speaking on background have reinforced this interpretation of U.S. strategy.

[11] U.S. Public Law 96-8, Taiwan Relations Act, April 10, 1979. Currently, a proposed Taiwan Policy Act of 2022 (S. 4428 – 117th Congress) has been introduced to the U.S. Senate, to attempt to update U.S.-Taiwan relations.

[12] Peter Baker and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, “Biden to Begin New Asia-Pacific Economic Bloc With a Dozen Allies,” The New York Times, May 23, 2022 (updated May 31, 2022). Ana Swanson, “Biden Administration Begins Trade Dialogue With Taiwan,” The New York Times, June 1, 2022.

[13] E.g., all Taiwan’s diplomatic relations, plus Lithuania and the Czech Republic, recently.

thestrategybridge.org · November 9, 2022

18. Report to Congress on Great Power Competition

​A useful summary is in the bloe article. The 86 page Congressional Research Service report can​ be downloaded here:

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R43838/93

Report to Congress on Great Power Competition

November 8, 2022 1:26 PM

https://news.usni.org/2022/11/08/report-to-congress-on-great-power-competition-5

The following is the Nov. 8, 2022 report, Renewed Great Power Competition: Implications for Defense— Issues for Congress.

From the report

The emergence over the past decade of intensified U.S. competition with the People’s Republic of China (PRC or China) and the Russian Federation (Russia)—often referred to as great power competition (GPC)—has profoundly changed the conversation about U.S. defense issues from what it was during the post–Cold War era: Counterterrorist operations and U.S. military operations in the Middle East—which had been more at the center of discussions of U.S. defense issues following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001—are now a less-prominent element in the conversation, and the conversation now focuses more on the following elements, all of which relate largely to China and/or Russia:

• grand strategy and geopolitics as a starting point for discussing U.S. defense issues;
• the force-planning standard, meaning the number and types of simultaneous or overlapping conflicts or other contingencies that the U.S. military should be sized to be able to conduct—a planning factor that can strongly impact the size of the U.S. defense budget;
• organizational changes within the Department of Defense (DOD);
• nuclear weapons, nuclear deterrence, and nuclear arms control;
• global U.S. military posture;
• U.S. and allied military capabilities in the Indo-Pacific region;
• U.S. and NATO military capabilities in Europe;
• new U.S. military service operational concepts;
• capabilities for conducting so-called high-end conventional warfare;
• maintaining U.S. superiority in conventional weapon technologies;
• innovation and speed of U.S. weapon system development and deployment;
• mobilization capabilities for an extended-length large-scale conflict;
• supply chain security, meaning awareness and minimization of reliance in U.S. military systems on foreign components, subcomponents, materials, and software; and
• capabilities for countering so-called hybrid warfare and gray-zone tactics.

The issue for Congress is how U.S. defense planning and budgeting should respond to GPC and whether to approve, reject, or modify the Biden Administration’s defense strategy and proposed funding levels, plans, and programs for addressing GPC. Congress’s decisions on these issues could have significant implications for U.S. defense capabilities and funding requirements and the U.S. defense industrial base.

19. Ukraine’s Zelensky Sets Conditions for ‘Genuine’ Peace Talks With Russia

Ukraine’s Zelensky Sets Conditions for ‘Genuine’ Peace Talks With Russia

President says he is open to negotiations that guarantee his country’s territorial integrity

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraines-zelensky-sets-conditions-for-genuine-peace-talks-with-russia-11667907501

By Matthew Luxmoore

, Laurence Norman

 and Marcus Walker

Updated Nov. 8, 2022 6:03 pm ET

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was open to “genuine peace talks” with Russia, following pressure from Western backers to signal readiness for negotiations amid concerns about the rising costs of the eight-month war.

Mr. Zelensky said Ukrainian conditions for talks included returning Ukrainian control over its territories, compensating Kyiv for Moscow’s invasion and bringing to justice perpetrators of war crimes.

In an address late Monday, he said that efforts should focus on “stopping Russian aggression, restoring our territorial integrity and forcing Russia into genuine peace talks.”

NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP

The 10-Point.

A personal, guided tour to the best scoops and stories every day in The Wall Street Journal.

Preview

Subscribe

There are scant prospects of imminent peace talks, as both sides still believe they can win.

Ukraine has made significant gains on the battlefield in recent months and is pressing for more. Russia believes it can outlast the West and sap Western support for Kyiv, and Western capitals say the Kremlin is escalating the war, rather than seeking openings for talks.

U.S. and European officials have said it is up to Ukraine to define the terms of any acceptable settlement.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has demanded a full Russian withdrawal from his country.

PHOTO: SERGEY DOLZHENKO/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK

But Western officials have been keen in recent weeks to broaden their message away from repeated pledges of military and economic support to start talking about a peaceful outcome of the war, responding to pressures at home and to calls in large parts of the developing world for a way out of the conflict.

“The military assistance we give is so that when Ukraine does get to the negotiating table it is in the strongest possible position. That military support, our economic support, our humanitarian support, our political support will continue,” Karen Donfried, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, told reporters on Tuesday.

Many Western officials are skeptical that Russian President Vladimir Putin will be open soon to a settlement that involves Russian withdrawal from occupied regions of Ukraine—a key demand for Kyiv.

Since Mr. Putin said in late September that swaths of Ukraine’s east and south belonged to Russia, Kyiv has said it wouldn’t negotiate with Moscow until there is a different leader in the Kremlin. Mr. Putin’s insistence that Russia’s territorial demands are nonnegotiable, meanwhile, appears to leave little scope for talks at present.

“We’ve always made clear our readiness for such talks,” Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Andrei Rudenko, said Tuesday in comments carried by state news agency RIA. “From our side there are no preliminary conditions whatsoever, except the main condition—for Ukraine to show goodwill.”

Buoyed by recent battlefield successes, Ukraine has demanded that all occupied areas are returned to its control as a condition for any peace deal—including Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas area that Russia seized in 2014.

Ukrainian advances and attacks on Russian military facilities in Crimea have strengthened Kyiv’s hopes that it could take back the peninsula, but some Western capitals are more cautious given the importance Mr. Putin ascribes to Crimea.

Military realities will dictate how much of its internationally recognized borders Ukraine is able to restore, officials in Kyiv and Western capitals say.

Ukrainian soldiers fired toward Russian positions outside Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine, on Tuesday.

PHOTO: BULENT KILIC/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Russian artillery destroyed part of a road in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region.

PHOTO: DANIEL CENG SHOU-YI/ZUMA PRESS

Ever since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February, many Western governments have been skeptical about how much territory Ukraine can take back through fighting. Kyiv has sought to erase such doubts with offensives in eastern and southern Ukraine since late summer, which have made inroads, especially in the Kharkiv region.

Continued Western military and financial support is vital for Ukraine’s ability to advance, however. Many in Kyiv fear that a reduction in aid could scuttle Ukraine’s hopes of retaking occupied regions, forcing it into negotiations with a weak hand.

Ukraine also fears that any cease-fire would allow Russian forces to regroup and that Mr. Putin would use talks to consolidate Russian control of occupied areas.

Kyiv officials continue to warn the West of the dangers of premature talks.

“What do you mean by the word ‘negotiations’? Russian ultimatums are well-known: ‘we came with tanks, admit defeat and territories loss.’ This is unacceptable. So what to talk about? Or you just hide the word ‘surrender’ behind the word ‘settlement’?” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Tuesday in a tweet.

Evidence of alleged Russian war crimes in places such as Bucha and Izyum, which Moscow has denied, has hardened Ukraine’s insistence on a full Russian withdrawal from its territory.

However, the global economic toll of the war and signs of fraying political consensus in Western nations are raising uncertainty about how long the U.S. and Europe will continue to back Kyiv’s position.

The Mechanics of Russia’s Nuclear Arsenal, Explained

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE

As Russia suffers losses in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin has made veiled threats to use nuclear weapons—a scenario that security experts still deem unlikely. WSJ looks at satellite images and documents to understand how the process of launching a strike would work. Photo composite: Eve Hartley

Ukraine has continued to call for further arms deliveries from the West to protect its cities against Russian missile-and-drone attacks and help it recapture occupied territories.

European and U.S. officials say their commitment for Ukraine hasn’t flagged and their military and economic support will continue as long as Kyiv believes it can make further gains on the battlefield. On Wednesday, the European Union will set out how it will supply Ukraine with budget assistance of 1.5 billion euros (around $1.5 billion) a month, to help it get through 2023.

Leaders from the Group of Seven leading nations last month laid out some basic building blocks of what a just settlement could look like, including respect for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and ensuring Ukraine is sufficiently armed to defend itself. But they were careful not to box Kyiv in on issues such as territorial concessions.

Some Western leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, have been explicit recently that a settlement will eventually require Mr. Zelensky’s government to sit down with Mr. Putin to hammer out terms. Mr. Macron said the timing of that decision must lie in Kyiv’s hands.

Mr. Zelensky, in his comments late Monday, hailed the provision this week of the U.S.-Norwegian National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System, or Nasams, and of Spanish-supplied Aspide air-defense systems, after weeks of Russian attacks that have caused substantial damage to Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and caused numerous blackouts in Ukrainian cities.

“The defense of Ukraine’s sky is obviously not complete, but gradually we are moving toward our goal,” Mr. Zelensky said. He added that Russia had hit 50 towns and cities across Ukraine with missile attacks on Monday, the latest barrage aimed at sapping Ukrainian morale as winter sets in.

Ukraine’s military offensive against Russian occupation forces in the south has slowed as both sides tire after weeks of fighting and as muddy ground in some areas makes advancing difficult for armored vehicles.

Damage from the war in Kherson, an occupied southern region of Ukraine.

PHOTO: STRINGER/REUTERS

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, visited a center for displaced Ukrainians near Kyiv on Tuesday.

PHOTO: POOL/REUTERS

In the southern Kherson region, Russian-installed officials said they have almost completed a mass-evacuation campaign aimed at clearing the regional capital of residents ahead of their planned defense against advancing Ukrainian forces. Some elite Russian forces have left the city, Ukrainian officials said, and in their place Moscow has brought in newly mobilized soldiers tasked with holding the line if Kyiv’s forces reach the city.

Western officials said Tuesday that Russia had begun constructing defensive structures near occupied Mariupol, a city deep behind the front lines in the country’s southeast that was captured by Russia in May after months of intense fighting that reduced much of it to rubble.

Russian occupation authorities in Mariupol are producing concrete antitank structures known as dragon’s teeth as part of efforts to reinforce the area, the U.K.’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday. Dragon’s teeth have also been sent to the regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, which Russia partly controls and now claims as part of its territory, the ministry said.

The reported construction of fortification lines far from areas of active fighting is evidence of a Russian campaign to shore up occupied areas as fortunes on the battlefield shift in Kyiv’s favor, Western officials say.

“This activity suggests Russia is making a significant effort to prepare defenses in depth behind their current front line, likely to forestall any rapid Ukrainian advances in the event of breakthroughs,” the U.K. Defense Ministry said.

Write to Matthew Luxmoore at Matthew.Luxmoore@wsj.com, Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com and Marcus Walker at marcus.walker@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

The European Union will set out how it will supply Ukraine with budget assistance of 1.5 billion euros (around $1.5 billion) a month, to help it get through 2023. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that the EU would give Ukraine 1.5 billion euros in 2023. (Corrected on Nov. 8)

Russia Presses Evacuation of Kherson as Ukrainian Offensive Looms

Appeared in the November 9, 2022, print edition as 'Kyiv Lays Out Terms For Talks to End War'.

20. The Return of Red China

Excertps:

The work report states that party members are now required to “grasp both the worldview and the methodology of Marxism-Leninism” and apply the “analytical tools of dialectical and historical materialism” to understand “the great challenges of the time.” In reinforcing once again this traditional Marxist ontological and epistemological framework for understanding and responding to the world, Xi has also called on the party to “develop a new form of human civilization.” This now extends to Chinese foreign policy, where Beijing is increasingly comfortable using pressure, leverage, and force. At the congress, Xi promised “an increased capacity for the army to win,” an “increased proportion of new combat forces,” and more “actual combat training.” In a new and particularly disturbing formulation, he declared in his work report that his administration had “acted with resolve to focus the entire military's attention on preparing for war.” He said that Beijing had “coordinated efforts to strengthen military struggle in all directions and domains.”

These ideological shifts, the accompanying political rhetoric, and the resulting new policy directions make it clear that China is now breaking from decades of political, economic, and foreign policy pragmatism and accommodationism. Xi’s China is assertive. He is less subtle than his predecessors, and his ideological blueprint for the future is now hiding in plain sight. The question for all is whether his plans will prevail or generate their own political antibodies, both at home and abroad, that begin to actively resist Xi’s vision for China and the world. But then again, as a practicing Marxist dialectician, Xi Jinping is probably already anticipating that response- and preparing whatever counter measures may then be warranted.

The Return of Red China

Xi Jinping Brings Back Marxism

By Kevin Rudd

November 9, 2022

Foreign Affairs · by Kevin Rudd · November 9, 2022

In 1978, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping announced that his country would make a break with the past. After decades of political purges, economic autarky, and suffocating social control under Mao Zedong, Deng began stabilizing Chinese politics, removing bans on private enterprise and foreign investment and giving individuals greater freedom in their daily lives, This switch, termed “reform and opening,” led to pragmatic policies that improved Beijing’s relations with the West and lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people from poverty. Although China remained authoritarian, Deng shared power with other senior party leaders—unlike Mao. And when Deng left office, his successors continued down much the same path.

Until now. During the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s 20th National Congress last month, Chinese leader Xi Jinping brought the Deng era of Chinese politics to a definitive close. In many respects, it was clear that “reform and opening” was on its way out at the 19th National Congress in 2017, when Xi proclaimed “a new era” in which the party would rectify the ideological, political, and policy “imbalances” left over from his predecessors. But it was the 20th party congress that gave Xi an unprecedented third term as leader and removed pro-market officials from the CCP’s leadership. It even removed Xi’s predecessor from the proceedings. After nearly 44 years, history will record that it was this congress that administered the last rites to Deng’s reformist era. The brave new statist world of Xi Jinping is now in full force.

That means foreigners must set aside the comfortable analytical frameworks many of them have used to analyze China for the last two generations. Most countries, including many in the West, are predisposed to think that when China’s leaders speak in ideological terms, it is not to be taken seriously (or that if it is, the ideology purely applies to the party’s domestic politics). But that is no longer the case. As I wrote in Foreign Affairs shortly before the party congress, “Under Xi, ideology drives policy more often than the other way around.” He is a true believer in Marxism-Leninism; his rise represents the return to the world stage of Ideological Man. This Marxist-Nationalist ideological framework drives Beijing’s return to party control over politics and society with contracting space for private dissent and personal freedoms. It also drives Beijing’s born-again statist approach to economic management, and its increasingly assertive foreign and security policies aimed at changing the international status quo.

Xi has used the 20th Congress “work report” (a speech the CCP’s top leader delivers at each congress outlining the ideological and policy rules of the road for the next five years) to demonstrate to the party and the world that China now has an integrated national and international vision of what he calls “Chinese-style modernization.” This vision calls for decoupling economic modernity from Western political and social norms and underlying cultural beliefs. It offers a new international order anchored in Chinese rather than U.S. geopolitical power. And it involves creating a set of institutions and norms that are compatible with China’s own interests and values rather than with those of the West. It is a Manichaean worldview, pitting China’s blend of Confucian and Marxist-Leninist values up against the liberal democracy and liberal internationalism of the West and some (but not all) of the rest of the world. As this congress made clear, Xi wants to demonstrate that the CCP under his leadership has both the audacity and the capacity to translate this bold new vision into reality.

THE PEN AND THE SWORD

In the Chinese Communist Party, words matter. The frequency with which various terms and phrases appear in major reports and speeches is a critical interpretive mechanism that both party members and outside observers use to discern the leadership’s changing directions. Mao’s famous attack on “capitalist roaders,” for example, went along with the party’s overwhelming nationalization campaigns and its opposition to small-scale private enterprises. Jiang Zemin’s ideological writings on the “three represents”—which included a need to harness the Chinese economy’s “productive forces”—was a clear signal to party leaders to bring private entrepreneurs into the party’s ranks (which they then did).

Xi’s phrases and word choices have similar real-world consequences. And the 20th Congress’s work report, delivered by Xi, is replete with a range of new and continuing ideological banner terms. In aggregate, they indicate that the CCP is now weighing the economy, national security, and the country's nationalist identity in different ways. In the report that came out of the 14th Congress in 1992, when Deng still ruled, the term “economy” was used 195 times. In this year’s report, the “economy” is cited on only 60 occasions. Deng’s mantra of “reform and opening” was mentioned 54 tines in 1992; at the 20th Congress, the phrase was invoked on only nine occasions. In 1992, the term “national security” appeared once, and it was used just four times in 2012. But at the 19th Congress in 2017, Xi’s first as leader, the term had 18 appearances. This year, it is mentioned 27 times. Meanwhile, the Chinese term for powerful state, qiangguo, appears 23 times this year, compared with 19 in 2017 and only two in 2002. Overall, these changes indicate that the party is now focused on Chinese nationalism and national security. This is a sharp break from previous regimes, which were almost exclusively preoccupied with economic development.

The term “Marxism” also makes multiple appearances in the 2022 report, and it is surrounded by other language suggesting that Xi is girding for conflict. The Marxist-Leninist concept of “struggle”—striving through violent or nonviolent means to resolve what Marxist-Leninists deem to be “contradictions” in domestic and international society, is mentioned 22 times. By ideological definition, the concept authorizes Xi to engage in various forms of confrontation to advance his revolutionary cause. And the leader’s report was followed by an intensive propaganda campaign, for both public and internal party consumption, on the need for China to prepare for the difficult times by toughening its “spirit of struggle.” This struggle is not limited to the party’s challenges on the home front (including potentially within the party itself). It is also directed to China’s challenges around the world, including with the United States.

The brave new statist world of Xi Jinping is now in full force.

The growing advocacy for “struggle” was underscored by Xi’s decision to take the newly elected Politburo standing committee—China’s highest political body—on a visit to Yan’an after the congress ended. Yan’an was where Mao was based for part of the first civil war against the Chinese Nationalists and most of the war against Japan. It is also where he convened the Party’s Seventh National Congress in 1945, which confirmed his absolute leadership of the CCP after his own political struggle against internal party opponents over the previous decade. That meeting was also the precursor to the party’s second civil war against China’s Nationalist government, which ended when the anti-Communist Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan with the remnants of his regime. The political resonances of Xi’s Yan’an visit, then, are relatively clear. Like Mao, Xi has emerged triumphant after his own decade of relentless power consolidation, often through violent internal conflict. And now he is preparing for China’s renewed long-term struggle against the old enemy: the separatists in Taiwan.

The CCP was previously hesitant to embrace any kind of public timetable or deadline for retaking Taiwan. Xi, by contrast, has stated that retaking Taiwan is critical to China’s “national rejuvenation” and that he aims to complete that rejuvenation by 2049. Xi’s predecessors during the period of reform and opening believed that if China wanted to develop economically, the country needed good relations with the rest of the world, so they never entertained the idea of fighting to take the island. Previous party congress reports contained a standard reference to “peace and development” as the major underlying trend of modern times, signaling that China did not face any threat of major war and could therefore make economic development its central priority. Beginning in 2002, reports also routinely declared that China was experiencing a “period of strategic opportunity,” or zhanlue jiyuqi: a phrase indicating that the United States’ military distractions in the Middle East provided China with even less international pressure and therefore more space to focus fully on rapid development.

Neither of these standard expressions appear in the 2022 report. Instead, the document describes a “severe and complex international situation” in which the party must be “prepared for dangers in peacetime.” It also says that China should be preparing for “the dangerous storm,” or jingtaohailang. It calls “national security” the “foundation of national rejuvenation.” And Xi used the report to ingrain his earlier statements about the need for a “total security” agenda to ensure that the country has ideological security, political security, economic security, and strategic security. Indeed, it calls for the “securitization” of virtually every aspect of society. He also directed the party to apply this concept of total security across all of the party’s internal processes. Xi, it seems, is signaling that the CCP and China’s People’s Liberation Army must now be ready to fight a major war. And domestically, that means keeping the Chinese people under even tighter surveillance and control.

SERIOUSLY AND LITERALLY

In addition to these broad ideological shifts, the 20th National Congress rubber-stamped a number of significant political and personnel changes. The party constitutionally entrenched Xi as “the core leader of the Central Committee” and declared “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” to be “the new Marxism of the 21st century.” It removed more reform-minded party officials who had sometimes disagreed with Xi, such as Premier Li Keqiang and Wang Yang, from the Politburo Standing Committee, and it removed the reformist Hu Chunhua from the wider Politburo—even though none of them had reached the retirement age of 68. Meanwhile, the congress allowed other political loyalists over the retirement age to stay. (One of them, Zhang Youxia, the vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, is already 72.) And while it is still unclear exactly why Hu Jintao, Xi’s immediate predecessor, was unceremoniously ejected from the proceedings—an incident captured on video that has been endlessly dissected in recent weeks—it is clear that Hu was unhappy with his reformist protégés being summarily dismissed from the country’s central leadership. Given the precise dynamics of that day, the act of Hu being marched off the stage was rich with symbolism. China under Xi is now very much a one-man show.

Political consolidation isn’t the only way in which Xi is reproducing parts of the Maoist playbook. He is also intent on pushing China’s economy away from market-based capitalism and back toward statism by rehabilitating state-owned enterprises and designating the state as the primary driver of technological innovation. He has followed through on that designation by pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into already vast state “guidance funds” for specific technologies such as semiconductors. (The United States has followed suit by enacting its own industrial policy through the CHIPS and Science Act.) Xi’s Marxist economic turn is underscored in his work report’s emphasis on the need for “common prosperity” and in its directive for China to find ways of “regulating the mechanisms of wealth accumulation.”

The work report states that party members are now required to “grasp both the worldview and the methodology of Marxism-Leninism” and apply the “analytical tools of dialectical and historical materialism” to understand “the great challenges of the time.” In reinforcing once again this traditional Marxist ontological and epistemological framework for understanding and responding to the world, Xi has also called on the party to “develop a new form of human civilization.” This now extends to Chinese foreign policy, where Beijing is increasingly comfortable using pressure, leverage, and force. At the congress, Xi promised “an increased capacity for the army to win,” an “increased proportion of new combat forces,” and more “actual combat training.” In a new and particularly disturbing formulation, he declared in his work report that his administration had “acted with resolve to focus the entire military's attention on preparing for war.” He said that Beijing had “coordinated efforts to strengthen military struggle in all directions and domains.”

These ideological shifts, the accompanying political rhetoric, and the resulting new policy directions make it clear that China is now breaking from decades of political, economic, and foreign policy pragmatism and accommodationism. Xi’s China is assertive. He is less subtle than his predecessors, and his ideological blueprint for the future is now hiding in plain sight. The question for all is whether his plans will prevail or generate their own political antibodies, both at home and abroad, that begin to actively resist Xi’s vision for China and the world. But then again, as a practicing Marxist dialectician, Xi Jinping is probably already anticipating that response- and preparing whatever counter measures may then be warranted.

• KEVIN RUDD is President of the Asia Society, based in New York, and served as Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Australia. He is the author of The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict Between the U.S. and Xi Jinping's China.

Foreign Affairs · by Kevin Rudd · November 9, 2022

21. Strategic Misjudgments Of The Chinese Authorities – Analysis

21 misjudgments. This could be very useful for the Global Engagement Center (GEC) and other influence professionals (PSYOP) to assist in crafting themes and messages.

Strategic Misjudgments Of The Chinese Authorities – Analysis

eurasiareview.com · by Anbound · November 8, 2022

By Kung Chan*

From the waves of anti-globalization, geopolitical conflicts, the rise of populism, trade wars, and the arrival of Industry 4.0, to the final realization of information globalization, all these are shaping and transforming the world as we know it. China too is witnessing an international environment vastly different from what it experienced since its reform and opening-up.

Facing such an unprecedented situation, there have been misjudgments and misunderstandings in the way how China sees the world. As an observer, ANBOUND’s founder Chan Kung has listed a series of such perceptions, from geopolitics to national policies, to discern what lies behind them.

1. “Western values are merely rhetoric”

Misjudgment: No country can really decide policies based on morality, justice, and values. All the decisions are made based on real interests.

Assessment: This type of misjudgment mainly affects China’s foreign policy, geopolitics, bilateral agreements, etc., especially the prediction of the direction of bilateral relations.

Such a perception misunderstands Western values are in fact social ideological foundation, and they determine diverse aspects from public opinion to official policy. While the social system in the West is complicated, its values dictate who the leaders would be. Such a misjudgment on China’s side mainly affects U.S.-China trade, the Belt and Road Initiative, and U.S.-China relations.

2. “China can use its entire national strength to accomplish great deeds”

Misjudgment: The “China Model” has its own unique features, especially compared to the Western society, which always spends more time on words than deeds. The “China Model” is more efficient, and can do what the West cannot.

Assessment: In China, there is the expression “ju guo zhi li” that can be translated as “using the entire national strength to achieve something”. This stems from the sense that the country as a unified whole can mobilize its resources and power for a particular endeavor.

This type of misjudgment is a typical logical fallacy that abuses special practice in a certain unique period, thinking that it can be used regardless of the situation. In reality, using the “entire nation’s strength” is to exchange the strength of the node with the weakness of the whole, with the hope that the strength of the node can feed back the whole. Some examples of such practice include China’s atomic bomb project, or its strategy of letting a smaller group of people to prosper so that the livelihood of more people could be improved. However, when the utilization of “entire national strength” becomes ubiquitous, the internal logic of such an idea would be overturned, and difficult to realize the intended results.

3. China can say ‘no'”

Misjudgment: China is a major power, or at least it is an increasingly powerful nation, so it can do what a major power should do.

Assessment: This kind of misjudgment is unable to distinguish the so-called “power” in the world. There are, in fact, two distinctive types of powers, namely land and sea.

Historically, the United Kingdom is a sea power in history, but not a land power. Conversely, Russia is a land power, but it cannot beat Japan in the sea power competition. China too is also a land power, and rarely in its long thousands of years of history that its power traversed through the great oceans.

The so-called “China can say no” is actually a product of this vague claim of power. This kind of false self-confidence might directly lead to untimely strategic expansion, similar to the mistakes that Japan has made twice (Showa and the Plaza Accord). The outcome as experienced by Japan is of course, very clear.

4. “Trial and errors” & “Seeking common ground while preserving minor differences”

Misjudgment: This is a Chinese-style experience that is often used during the country’s reform and opening-up. As this is the experience most familiar to the Chinese, China often requests foreign countries to accept this kind of thinking and arrangement, that the main deals with China in international relations will need to be conducted first and other issues emerged can be resolved later.

Assessment: This kind of Chinese experience is completely incompatible with how the West does things. Western countries emphasize that all major deals should be done in accordance with a fixed framework, while the minor ones should be done in accordance with agreements and contracts, without any ambiguity. Therefore, the West often regards any differences in the deals as the parts that should be given up, instead of holding on to them for later discussions, as China thinks. When such requests on China’s side occur repeatedly, this would cause it to lose credibility in the eyes of the West.

In the negotiation of bilateral agreements, China considers that once major deals are arranged, everything would turn out fine. Yet, more often than not, it cannot cope with the West’s pursuit of the details of interests. The failure of China’s “new major power relationship” was, to a certain extent, a direct result of this misjudgment.

5. Admitting mistakes equals failure

Misjudgment: China has historically been a nation that pays attention to “face”, and this cultural trait has also been carried over to its diplomacy. For the sake of “face”, it is a common practice to refuse to admit mistakes. It is also common to take a hard stance to the end because of it.

Assessment: For diplomatic practices to be accepted in the world, in addition to the exchange of interests, there is also the use of verbal humor to admit mistakes. If a country is not good at such humor, it will need to pay a higher practical price. More importantly, when a country insists that it “can never go wrong”, it actually loses the strategic maneuver space and the significance of diplomacy.

6. Blind faith in the authority

Misjudgment: It is a common practice in China to locate an authoritative person who can make the final decision. The same practice is often brought over to international relations, where the Chinese authorities believe that once they have settled with such a figure, everything will become favorable to China. If they are unable to settle with such a figure, they would attempt to do it to the next one perceived as the leading authoritative person.

Assessment: Chinese authorities will need to be aware that the mechanisms in other countries are different from that of China. In many countries, a figure who makes the “final decision” more often than not does not exist at all. Rather, decisions are made collectively by a group, or multiple groups. Therefore, rather than locating such a figure, the Chinese authorities need to understand the general social trend. Meanwhile, as more countries increasingly understand such a misjudgment on China’s side, whenever there are major incidents, there would be a number of people ostentatiously claiming, or implying to be the final decision-makers. This was exactly what happened during the U.S.-China trade war, and China would bear the brunt in the end.

7. Chinese culture is the norm in the world

Misjudgment: Chinese cultural traits, particularly the ethical thoughts derived from Confucianism, are frequently found in China’s diplomacy. China often considers that these traits are what all countries in the world should understand and practice. A classical example is that after the Sino-Indian conflict in 1962, China retreated and returned the territory, as well as released prisoners of war and their equipment, claiming that it was being “courteous”, and hoped that India would understand China’s goodwill.

Assessment: Chinese culture has its own unique features, but it is not the mainstream culture in the world today. Outside of China, most people would not understand how China thinks. It is precisely of this that India still believes that China invaded, and continuously invades India’s borders, instead of accepting China’s “goodwill”. This is also what happened in Vietnam and the South Sea. This situation will not improve unless China has the ability to explain its own cultural traits (or force others to accept them). Looking at what happens now, the possibility of this gets even lower.

8. Integration of culture and publicity

Misjudgment: In China’s understanding, culture and publicity are integrated and inseparable. This thought has been solidified in China’s administrative system, which in turn, is reflected in its administrative responsibility.

Assessment: There are three major differences between culture and publicity. First of all, publicity definitely needs cultural elements, but culture itself is by no means publicity. Second, publicity has specific political goals, whereas the goal of culture is of cultural nature. Third, culture pays attention to creativity, taste, style, form, genre, and technique, while publicity emphasizes clarity, appeal, and simplicity. The people factor too, determines the differences between the two. In the West, respect is given to those in the cultural field, yet not to those who deal with publicity, or propaganda. Hence, there are few in the world’s cultural scene willing to speak for China.

9. Ignoring the West’s value influence

Misjudgment: China believes that Western values do not apply to itself, resulting in a conflict of values between the country and the rest of the world. In its attempt to resolve this, China either amplifies the shortcomings of Western values, or ignores these values completely. This of course, is hard to convince the rest of the world.

Assessment: China needs to realize that, unlike its values, Western values are the mainstream in today’s world, and that the situation where the world was split into two parts during the Cold War has long been over. This means that if China wishes to change the concept that is recognized by the vast majority of the world and make everyone else acknowledges its thoughts, this is next to impossible. In fact, there is absolutely no need to be afraid of Western values, or to artificially stand against the mainstream trend. “Localizing” Western values, internalizing, and integrating them may be a better approach.

10. Ideological Position

Misjudgment: China divides countries into two parts: those whose ideology is aligned with China are considered to be its “friends”, and those who are not are thought of as “foes”. This is even reflected in diplomacy, where the Central Liaison Department manages “friends”, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs deals with the rest. The outcome is that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has much heavier workloads.

Assessment: The most important principle of the united front is to “draw lines according to common interests” rather than according to ideology. As things stand, ideology can be ambiguous and difficult to explain. Now, many countries have discovered this characteristic of China and use it to gain advantages over China.

11. “Anything that can be resolved with money is a trivial matter”

Misjudgment: There are those in China who believe that money is the reason behind everything.

Assessment: There are many things in the world that the Chinese are unfamiliar with. Henry Kissinger for instance is a household name in China, yet many Chinese do not know that Kissinger is not a rich person. George Kennan, the American diplomat who helped the United States to win the Cold War, did not have much money in his life, and he belonged to the mid-lower class. Colonel T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, was of British nobility, yet he refused to accept the money given by the British government and would rather write articles to subsidize his family. Such idealists will be regarded as respectable people in the West. China, which had experienced economic shortages before, naturally believes that money is highly important. However, this is not the case in other parts of the world. There are indeed people in different countries who want to earn China’s money, but this is definitely not mainstream, nor is it highly regarded, just as Europeans still look down on Americans today. Therefore, the first step for China to improve its international image is to get rid of its “nouveau riche” mentality.

12. “All Western entrepreneurs are money-minded”

Misjudgment: There are Chinese who think that in the market economy, businesses will have the final say, and all entrepreneurs are money-minded. They see this as the truth that can be used against Western businesses.

Assessment: The social system of Western countries is generally a five-level linkage system of people-laws-politics-capitals-enterprises. The “people factor” is the most basic social foundation. The will of the people would form the laws, and this is followed by politics. The capitals and enterprises, in turn, are under the pressure of laws and politics. Therefore, even if the entrepreneurs are money-minded, they must follow the people’s will. In the United States and Europe, being labeled as “entrepreneurs who cooperate with the Chinese government” would be a stigma that few can bear.

13. “Western countries are all the same”.

Misjudgment: Most of the time many in China cannot differentiate many countries in the world, and they lump these together as “Western countries”, considering them to be homogenous.

Assessment: “Western countries” have never been monolithic. Europe is different from the United States, and Japan is not the same as the United States. There are many more different countries, all with contradictions and conflicts of interest with each other. Europeans look down on the United States culturally, the United States looks down on Japan in geopolitics, and Japan looks down on the United States even more though the Japanese see Europe in a favorable light. Yet, this is not how China understands the world, and when it realizes the reality is different from its perception, it would be too late. It is often only when China needs friends that it finds out these “friends” have turned into its “enemies”.

14. “Geopolitics is all in all, politics”.

Misjudgment: Because the word “geopolitics” contains the term “politics”, many Chinese consider them to be one and the same.

Assessment: Geopolitics is the relationship between major powers and their national interests. It is about strategies, methods, resources, and cultural prowess. Therefore, it would be inappropriate to mix domestic politics with the relations of major powers. Some in China would point out that certain foreign powers are aiming to subvert China. While this may be true, the reasons behind this should be understood. This has to do with the relationship between different countries, and it is the attempt to curb the existence and development of another country. As long as China can manage its relationship with other countries well, no one can subvert it. Otherwise, no matter how it engages its internal politics, China will still be unable to win in the relationship with other great powers.

15. “National security relies on national productions.”

Misjudgment: There are those in China who believe that industries of systemic importance must be domestically produced and cannot be controlled by another power.

Assessment: This is a paradox. What is systemically important for China will be the same for other countries as well. Therefore, the more systemically important an industry is, the higher chances that the products cannot be made domestically in China. This is even more improbable in the context of globalization. The real problem is not about being controlled, but having the ability to control others as well, i.e., establishing a balanced symbiotic or interdependence relationship. The idea of “national production” is simply impossible to achieve. It can only be used by those with ulterior motives and a lot of resources have been wasted because of this. Semiconductor chip fraud is one such example.

16. “The United States is a country hijacked by Wall Street.”

Misjudgment: Similar claims include the United States being hijacked by the military-industrial group, oil giants, etc. Such claims imply that the U.S. leadership cannot make its own decisions and there are other forces behind its government.

Assessment: These claims simply ignore that the U.S. is a country that upholds the separation of powers, and they overestimate and exaggerate the power of the lobbying system. The influence of capital on U.S. policy is mainly in two stages: interference in political elections, and influence on members of Congress. However, the relationship between capital power and the executive and the judiciary is anything but harmonious. Those who hold this view appear to not know that after the Occupy Wall Street movement, the image of Wall Street plummeted. It also shows that they do not have a sufficient understanding of American politics. Instead, they appear to possess an oversimplified understanding of the country’s policies. An example of such an understanding would be the attack on Iraq by the U.S. was to satisfy the interests of military enterprises and to control the oil in the Middle East.

17. “Anti-globalization will not appear”

Misjudgment: As one of the countries that have benefited the most from the wave of globalization, it is easy for China to generate a judgment based on optimistic expectations that the stage of “anti-globalization” will never come.

Assessment: This is not so much a judgment as it is wishful thinking. The basic logic is the same as that of many investors who are new to the stock market: because they made money in a bull market, they hope the bull market will last forever. In reality, anti-globalization and globalization are two sides of the same coin, and we are now in the stage of anti-globalization. The biggest impact of this misjudgment is a sense of blind optimism and a lost opportunity to prepare for a possible crisis. When anti-globalization really came, many scholars, business practitioners, and officials were caught off guard. Even when anti-globalization has clearly emerged, there are those in China who still refuse to believe it and instead only see partial signs of optimism. In the end, they will only be swallowed up by waves of market changes.

18. “Globalization is the transnational flow of ‘economic factors'”

Misjudgment: China has a simplistic understanding of globalization. The so-called “globalization” here is understood to be the “transnational flow of economic factors”.

Assessment: There are many published materials on globalization worldwide, yet many of these remain little noticed in China. The essence of globalization is actually an expansion of human living space. The large-scale flow of people, culture, aspects, and information. It cannot be limited to merely the economic level, let alone the economic factors. There are indeed business opportunities brought about by globalization, yet it should be remembered that there are also others losing such opportunities due to it. Judging from the investment patterns of China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the Belt and Road Initiative, most of these SOEs still simply attribute the resistance they encounter to geopolitical influences. While such influences do indeed exist, they are not the only reason for the resistance that Chinese enterprises face internationally. The root cause is still the inaccurate understanding of globalization.

19. “It is impossible for the formation of an anti-China alliance”

Misjudgment: “Countries in the world still need to do business, hence the formation of an ‘anti-China alliance’ is merely empty talk”

Assessment: This misjudgment actually shows a loophole in strategic decision-making thought, i.e., the unwillingness to consider all possible situations. China’s decision-making and analysis process is largely influenced by its expectations. For example, because of not wishing to see China being isolated internationally, some of its policymakers deny the possibility of such a situation in the analysis process. In reality, when it comes to important strategic predictions, the worst-case scenario is often more meaningful than the best case. Judging from the situation in 2022, China obviously lacks an understanding of the degree of deterioration of the situation. Hence, it still insists on implementing an expansionary international strategy. In fact, an anti-China alliance is in the process of being formed, and the desire to “do business with China” cannot prevent its formation. This is because such an alliance is based on multiple factors, chiefly industrial and economic competitions, as well as values, international credit, historical issues, and others.

20. “It is proper to trade technology for market”

Misjudgment: Such a misjudgment is formed by overextending the successful experience in the early days of China’s reform and opening-up. During that time, China formulated the market access rules of “trading technology for market”. This was a common practice in China at the time.

Assessment: This approach is reasonable in the early stage of China’s development. During that time, Western companies were willing to accept this arrangement, because China’s manufacturing capabilities did not pose a competitive threat, and there was sufficient labor supply. For Western companies, this advantage could be a hedge against the compromises they made on technology. However, things have changed significantly now. On the one hand, China’s manufacturing industry is now beginning to challenge all countries in the world market, but at the same time, it is difficult for Western countries to enter its consumer market. Therefore, it is impossible for Western companies to accept the condition of “trading technology for the market” anymore. This is the root cause of the West accusing China of unfair competition that led to trade disputes.

21. “Defining international relations with revolutionary friendship”

Misjudgment: This misjudgment is formed by the combination of the inertial influence left by the ideology in the past and the lack of professional ability. One example of this is the Chinese People’s Liberation Army singing the Soviet Russian patriotic song “Katyusha” on the Red Square at Moscow, a song that even most Russians today would not sing.

Assessment: It should be noted that even during the time of the Cold War, there was no so-called “revolutionary friendship” between China and the Soviet Union, Vietnam, and even North Korea. The saying of “there are no permanent friends in international politics, only permanent interests” is rather accurate. The Chinese leaders in the past were very aware of this, otherwise U.S.-China diplomacy in the 1970s would not have been possible. Many Chinese people today begin to choose to believe in the so-called “revolutionary friendship”, which is tantamount to accepting that some countries are destined to be China’s enemies. This is simply naivety in international relations.

Kung Chan is a researcher for ANBOUND

eurasiareview.com · by Anbound · November 8, 2022

22. Phantom Retreats and Stolen Bones: The War of Deceit in Ukraine

"All warfare is based on deception" is more than a cliche.

Phantom Retreats and Stolen Bones: The War of Deceit in Ukraine

Both Russia and Ukraine are using confusion as well as artillery on the battlefield.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/09/world/europe/ukraine-russia-war-weapons.html?referringSource=articleShare&smid=nytcore-ios-share&utm_source=pocket_saves

• Give this article

A commander of a reconnaissance unit of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces, speaking with his men the evening before they went on a frontine operation in the Kherson region, last month.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

By Andrew E. Kramer

Nov. 9, 2022

Updated 7:12 a.m. ET

Sign up for the Russia-Ukraine War Briefing.  Every evening, we'll send you a summary of the day's biggest news. Get it sent to your inbox.

KYIV, Ukraine — In a jerky cellphone video filmed through the window of a bus, the Russian checkpoint in Ukraine’s embattled Kherson region looks abandoned. “Empty,” somebody says in the background, as passengers begin to cheer.

Was this a sign that Russia is retreating from the area — or was it a ruse, meant to lure Ukrainian soldiers into a trap?

It is unclear who shot the video, which popped up widely on social media, or why. But its appearance adds to other suspicious goings-on around the strategic city of Kherson: Russia’s tricolor flags disappeared the same day from administrative buildings, and a Russian general, rather than rallying the troops, suggested obliquely on state TV that the military might need to abandon the city.

Russia’s war in Ukraine is being fought with the blunt force of artillery bombardments, airstrikes and infantry assaults. But it is also a battle of wits — waged between generals sending signals intended to confuse and mislead their enemies — and a contest of feints, parries and continual efforts to set traps.

This is exactly what Ukrainian officials say they are witnessing in and around Kherson, with the flurry of confusing messages that have muddied the picture of the fighting in the south, where one of the most consequential battles of the war seems to be looming. The prize: the southern city of Kherson, the only provincial capital Russia captured after its invasion in February.

And the Ukrainians themselves have engaged in their own bits of misleading messaging.

“Trickery is as old as warfare,” said Tor Bukkvoll, a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, a military think tank, and an authority on Russia’s special forces. All militaries practice it, he said, but the Russians have put a special emphasis on deception in their military doctrine.

Image

Russian rescuers helping to evacuate residents of a geriatric boarding house on the left bank of the Dnipro River, in Kherson, last week.Credit...EPA, via Shutterstock

Russia’s hold is faltering in and around Kherson, on the western side of the broad Dnipro River. The Ukrainian military, using precision rockets provided by the West, has mostly destroyed the bridges over the river, setting the stage for a possible rout of the soldiers who remain on the west bank. But Ukrainian commanders and military analysts alike say they are seeing signs of a Russian psychological warfare operation in the swirl of conflicting signals.

Russia’s military and civilian leadership has for a month been telegraphing an intention to retreat from Kherson. They have withdrawn military equipment, told civilians to leave the area and removed items perceived as culturally significant to Russians — like the bones of Prince Grigory Potemkin, a Russian noble and lover of Catherine the Great who had advocated joining this area to the empire.

If the Russians went through the trouble of evacuating Potemkin’s bones from a cathedral crypt in Kherson, the gesture seemed to suggest, the Russian army must truly believe the city would soon fall to the advancing Ukrainian army.

The State of the War

• Kherson Braces for Battle: Civilians and Kremlin-appointed occupation officials have fled the city in southern Ukraine, but Russian troops appear to be digging in for an intense fight. Here’s why control of Kherson matters so much to both sides.
• Infrastructure Attacks: As they struggle to maintain an electricity grid heavily damaged by Russian missiles, officials in Kyiv say they have begun planning for a once unthinkable possibility: a complete blackout that would force the evacuation of the Ukrainian capital.
• On the Diplomatic Front: The United States is taking steps to shore up prospects for peace talks, even if there are no obvious breakthroughs on the horizon in the war.
• Refugees: The war has sent the numbers of Ukrainians seeking shelter in Europe soaring, pushing asylum seekers from other conflicts to the end of the line.

Nothing of the sort, Ukraine’s southern military command and military intelligence agency responded in public comments to the Russian moves, which also included evacuating two statues of Russian notables and wide-scale looting of homes and stores by Russian soldiers.

Editors’ Picks

Steven Spielberg Gets Personal

Yes, There Are Great Thanksgiving Desserts That Aren’t Pie

His Roman Holiday Lasted a Lifetime

Image

A portrait of Prince Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin. The bones of the prince were removed from Ukraine by Russia last month. Credit...Fine Art Images — Heritage Images, via Getty Images

In fact, Ukrainian military officials say, Russia has deployed additional forces to the western bank of the river and is preparing for urban combat.

“They are very deliberately trying to convince us that they are withdrawing” to lure Ukraine into a premature offensive on the city, Natalia Humeniuk, the spokeswoman for the southern command, told a Ukrainian television news broadcast over the weekend.

“We see objective data they remain in place,” she said, in comments suggesting that an imminent Ukrainian attack was unlikely — yet another potential example of military misdirection, this time from the Ukrainian side. “Powerful defensive units are dug in, heavy weaponry remains and firing positions set up.”

It is also possible that the Ukrainians so distrust the Russians that they see treachery at every turn, in what could well be the day-to-day confusion of war or a chaotic, if actual, Russian retreat, rather than a master stroke of psychological warfare.

“The situation in Kherson is clear as mud,” Michael Kofman, a military analyst with CNA, a research institute in Arlington, Va., wrote on Twitter. “I think this is a fog of war issue right now, with contradictory” indications, he wrote, but signs pointing to an eventual Russian withdrawal.

The Russian military, and the Soviet military before it, have shown a longtime interest in operations oozing with deceit and disguise, developing a repertoire of tricks taught in military academies for decades and put to practice in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Syria and Ukraine.

Nearly every Russian and Soviet deployment over the past half century, with the notable exception of this year’s invasion of Ukraine, opened with soldiers appearing first in civilian clothing or unmarked uniforms. In 1983, the Soviet Union deployed troops disguised as tourists to Syria during the Lebanese civil war, in what became known as the “Comrade Tourist” ruse.

Image

Ukrainian military fired HIMARS rocket being launched in the northern Kherson region, on Monday. Credit...Hannibal Hanschke/EPA, via Shutterstock

But just as the Russian military’s bloody operation in Ukraine has floundered, its vaunted reputation for cunning has been dented in this war as the Ukrainians themselves have fought back with their own trickery.

In September, the Ukrainian military caught Russian forces off guard in a lightning offensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region after it had telegraphed for months an intention to attack in the south, in the Kherson region.

“What strikes me now is how thoroughly they have been tricked themselves” in the war in Ukraine, Mr. Bukkvoll said of the Russian army. “I think they feel tricked, and that would be a motive as well for trying a trick of their own.”

Interpreting Russian public commentary has become part of the art of war for Ukraine and its allies. An ulterior motive is always assumed.

Last month, the collaborationist governor of the Kherson region, Volodymyr Saldo, announced a plan to evacuate 70,000 civilians from the western bank of the Dnipro River, saying the Ukrainian military intended to blow up the nearby Kakhovka dam, and flood cities and towns. Russian television showed crowds of civilians packing onto ferries crossing the river.

Ukrainian officials quickly discounted Russian concern for residents’ safety, midway through a war of indiscriminate Russian bombardments that have killed civilians. And within days, the Russian military appeared to show its hand — and its own fears of subterfuge — saying they would consider residents who remained in the city possible collaborators.

The Ukrainians, meanwhile, saw just more subterfuge. They said Russian forces were ready themselves to blow up the dam to cover a retreat.

The Institute for the Study of War, an American analytical group, interpreted Mr. Saldo’s claim as laying the ground for a “false flag” operation, a trick in which Russian forces would destroy the dam yet make it appear that Ukrainian forces were to blame.

Image

Volunteers inspecting an abandoned Russian military fortification in the northern Kherson region, on Sunday.Credit...Hannibal Hanschke/EPA, via Shutterstock

Ukrainian commanders interviewed recently at frontline positions said they pay little heed to Russian public statements, ever mindful of possible trickery. Their battle plans, they said, were built instead around intelligence assessments of Russian force strength, gathered from drones and spies.

The Ukrainian military has publicly put forward what it says are its next steps: advancing troops to within howitzer range of the Russian pontoon bridges over the Dnipro and subjecting them to round-the-clock bombardment, to more thoroughly sever supply lines before risking a ground assault. That suggests a drawn-out battle, not an imminent assault.

Or does it?

It would be hard to find answers in the dueling public statements of commanders and officials on each side, none of which seem to fit for people trying to build morale to lead soldiers into battle.

On the Russian side, General Sergei Surovikin has been projecting an air of gloom and doom, saying last month, “the situation in Kherson is tense, we do not rule out difficult decisions.” And Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of the Russian occupation government in Kherson, said flatly of the Russian army, “most likely, our forces will leave to the eastern bank in Kherson region.”

On the Ukrainian side, the director of the country’s military intelligence agency, Kyrylo Budanov, highlighted his enemy’s strength. The Russians, “are creating the illusion that everything is lost,” he said. “Quite the opposite, they are deploying new military units and preparing the city’s streets for defense.”

Out on those streets, according to a resident named Ihor who was reached by phone, Russian armored personnel carriers wheel about, with groups of soldiers carrying rifles riding on the roofs. Asking that his full name not be used for security reasons, he added that soldiers were looting electronics stores and private apartments, carrying away appliances.

Whatever the Russians’ intentions, he said, order is unraveling. “It’s all very hard, all very tense,” he said. “It’s scary.”

Image

Unexploded ordinance being collected near Izium, in September, when the Ukrainian military caught Russian forces off guard in a lightning offensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region after it had telegraphed for months an intention to attack first in the south, in the Kherson region.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times

Andrew E. Kramer is a reporter covering the countries of the former Soviet Union. He was part of a team that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for a series on Russia’s covert projection of power. @AndrewKramerNYT

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

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