Quotes of the Day:
"Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power."
- René Descartes
"Scientific thought and its creation is the common and shared heritage of mankind."
- Abdus Salam
"Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies."
- Robert F. Kennedy
1. Details of China info war revealed
2. Four-star: 98 percent of US Special Operations Command has received COVID vaccine
3. The Inevitable Rivalry – America, China, and the Tragedy of Great-Power Politics
4. New White House Cyber Director Wants to Fight Like Cobra Kai
5. Preserving the Warrior Ethos
6. China Tests an Orbital Hypersonic Nuclear-Capable Weapon
7. US Air Force looks to make jet fuel from atmospheric carbon dioxide
8. Northern Va. authorities on alert after learning of potential threat to shopping centers
9. Why H.R. McMaster thinks Biden’s foreign policy is putting the country in danger
10. Inspector general for Afghanistan war pressured by State, DOD to redact reports
11. Prof. David Silbey Analyzes How and Why the U.S. Lost its Longest War in Webinar
12. Afghan Crime Wave Adds to Taliban Dystopia
13. VIDEO: US 'Did Not Fail' In Afghanistan, Legendary French Writer Says - Zenger News
14. ‘I just want to work hard’: Afghan pilot who protected US airman starts over in America
15. Enemies, Foreign and Domestic
16. Taiwan defense chief offers fighting talk amid doubts about troop readiness
17. Do We Disdain Intellectual NCOs?
18. How SOCOM plans to use the MC-130J in a war with Russia or China
1. Details of China info war revealed
Details of China info war revealed
NEWS AND ANALYSIS:
China‘s People’s Liberation Army plans to conduct extensive non-kinetic warfare operations in any future conflict with the United States, according to an internal PLA report.
The 438-page report, “Lectures on Joint Campaign Information Operations,” was translated and published by the Air Force’s China Aerospace Studies Institute and reveals the strategy of seeking “information dominance” over enemies as a major weapon that will be a key factor in determining victory or defeat in battle.
“The manifested forms of joint campaign information operations (IO) mainly are: electronic warfare, network warfare, intelligence warfare, psychological warfare, physical destruct warfare,” the report from 2009 states.
“Amongst these, electronic warfare and network warfare are the main forms of IO.”
The PLA information warfare tactics are borrowed foreign information operations in recent wars, mainly U.S. operations in Europe, the Middle East and South Asia.
The objective of information war is to seize and control “information power” by damaging enemies’ information systems, the report says.
Like the U.S. military has demonstrated in the past, the PLA plans to launch electronic attacks, wage computer network warfare, conduct psychological warfare and employ military deception.
The attacks will seek to influence, damage, interrupt and deprive the enemy of its human and automated military decision-making.
At the same time, information warfare will require protecting PLA systems from foreign electronic and network attacks.
Targets in conflict will be radar and communications nodes on land, sea, air, cyberspace and in space.
“Electronic attack mainly includes electronic jamming, counter-radiation weapon attack, and special information warfare weapon attack and it emphasizes more on the weakening and damaging of information collection and transmission links and the targets are mainly all types of electronic information systems such as early warning detection systems, command and control systems, and communications systems,” the report said.
“Network attack mainly includes information stoppage, network infiltration, and virus attack and they mainly damage the enemy’s information management through searching of network’s ‘loophole’ and ‘backdoor’ and the target is mainly network type information systems.”
“Psychological attack mainly includes psychological propaganda, psychological deception, and psychological threat.”
Information attacks will require speed.
According to the report, the U.S. military’s “strike chain” of the time it takes from discovery of a target, to aim, then attack and lastly evaluation was 100 minutes in the 1993 Persian Gulf War. That was reduced to 10 minutes in the 2003 Iraq War.
PLA information warfare will involve a combination of “hard” precision missile and other attacks with “soft” electronic strikes and cyberattacks.
“On one hand, [we] must conscientiously study effective measures for bringing into play the might of the ‘assassin’s mace’ weapons, to fully bring into play the effectiveness of the limited high- and new-tech weapons and equipment,” the report said.
Assassin’s mace is China‘s terms for weapons that allow a weaker power to defeat a strong enemy.
Chinese warfighting also will combine and integrate both information war and traditional kinetic warfare.
The report reveals how the PLA is integrating peacetime and wartime information operations used in both the military and civilian sectors.
Information warfare “is boundless and borderless, intangible and formless, and present at all times; and the peacetime-wartime demarcation line tends to blur, so that peacetime and wartime information strengths are present all along,” the report states.
China ASAT device targets satellite jets
China has developed a unique explosive device that is designed to damage the exhaust systems of control jets used on maneuvering satellites.
A team of Chinese military researchers developed an orbiting anti-satellite robot capable of placing the small bomb inside a satellite exhaust nozzle, the Beijing-friendly South China Morning Post reported last week.
Rather than blowing the satellite into pieces, the metal-cast explosive can produce a time-controlled, steady explosion, according to Prof. Sun Yunzhong and other researchers at the Hunan Defense Industry Polytechnic in Xiangtan.
The ASAT explosives were disclosed in a technical paper published in China‘s Electronic Technology & Software Engineering journal last month.
The exhaust bomb can remain inside satellite jets for extended periods using a mechanism run by an electric motor. The bomb can be removed electronically, allowing the Chinese military to coerce or threaten the United States and other space-faring opponents with the device.
The device was developed and tested at a ground facility.
China has an array of anti-satellite weapons and this week deployed the Shijian-21 satellite for debris cleaning. U.S. officials say the satellite is part of China‘s co-orbital ASAT arsenal. Earlier Shijian satellites conducted experiments with a robotic arm that is capable of grabbing and crushing satellites.
The robotic arm on the Shijian satellites is likely to be the vehicle that will be used to place the novel ASAT exhaust explosive that would be placed inside the nozzle at the narrowest point.
Disclosure of the new ASAT explosive device appears to contradict frequent Chinese government calls for treaties and agreements limiting the against militarizing space.
The ASAT explosive is built inside a bullet-shaped charge weighing under 8 pounds.
“When the device is detonated, the explosion will be partially contained inside the nozzle and be mistaken for an engine mishap,” the newspaper quoted a space scientist as saying.
The precisely-calculated low-level blast can damage the sensitive inner workings of a satellite without creating a large debris field — as occurred in 2007 when China blew up a weather satellite during a test of a ground-based ASAT missile.
Former State official urges renewed China appeasement
Retired career State Department Asia hand Susan Thornton, whose nomination senor position was shot down three years ago, recently weighed in on Biden administration China policy and is urging more concessions to Beijing as a way of influencing China‘s threatening behavior.
“To gain the needed leverage, we need to give China the prospect of a beneficial outcome — which for Beijing could start with developing what they would consider a more respectful partnership,” Ms. Thornton stated in an op-ed in the New York Times last week.
Pressure on China using sanctions and tariffs did not generally produce improvements in Chinese behavior, she wrote.
Instead, the former career diplomat wants the administration to offer China‘s increasingly hardline leaders hope for a more stable and constructive ties — comments that largely echo those of Chinese government officials who have demanded more conciliatory policies from Washington.
Ms. Thornton criticized the Biden policy team for its “targeted” effort to limit Chinese infrastructure projects overseas and arresting Chinese scientists in the United States on spying and technology theft charge.
The targeting, first begun during the Trump administration to curb the massive theft of U.S. intellectual property is “as though everything China does or makes is a potential Trojan horse sneaked inside of fortress America,” Ms. Thornton said.
Ms. Thornton appears to favor a return to the unfettered engagement policies that were rejected by the Trump administration and partially adopted by the Biden administration.
The former diplomat, now with Yale University’s Paul Tsai China Center, indirectly challenged the White House’s senior China policy adviser, Kurt Campbell, who has said recently the era of engagement with China is over.
But she offered only vague prescriptions and no concrete new policies to replace current ones.
“Setting clear priorities and ensuring China knows progress will lead to a constructive relationship is a necessary starting point,” she wrote.
The article appears to be political maneuvering for a future return to a State Department Asia post, perhaps if President Biden were to step down and be replaced by the more liberal Vice President Kamala Harris.
Ms. Thornton’s nomination was thwarted in 2018 largely through pressure from Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Sen. Marco Rubio.
During testimony on her nomination, Ms. Thornton provided incomplete and misleading answers about her role in limiting an FBI investigation into illegal activities by Chinese officials in New York, and downgrading representations of Taiwan’s government on the State Department website.
Her replacement was retired Air Force Brig. Gen. David Stilwell, a former military attache in Beijing, who until he stepped down in January helped carry out new harder line Trump administration new policy toward China.
Those policies included identifying the Chinese Communist Party separate from the Chinese people; closing the Chinese consulate in Houston that Chinese spy agencies had used for aggressive intelligence-gathering operations, and designating contested Philippines islands in the South China Sea as covered under the U.S.-Philippines defense treaty.
• Contact Bill Gertz on Twitter @BillGertz.
2. Four-star: 98 percent of US Special Operations Command has received COVID vaccine
Force protection.
Four-star: 98 percent of US Special Operations Command has received COVID vaccine
SOCOM’s commander, Army Gen. Richard D. Clarke, shared the statistic during the annual Military Reporters and Editors Conference here and said that percentage includes special operators like SEALS and Green Berets, but also administrative and other troops that make up the joint force of roughly 70,000.
As the services have moved to mandate vaccines this fall, leaders have preached that getting the COVID jabs is a matter of readiness.
But given the high take rate in his ranks, Clarke told reporters he is not concerned about getting his troops vaccinated and their readiness at this point.
“I don’t see it as a SOCOM readiness issue,” he said.
Of the military personnel who have yet to be vaccinated, Clarke added: “People are changing their mind every day, and they still have more time to make up their mind.”
RELATED
Out of millions of service members, only a handful have current religious exemptions from vaccines.
As of Wednesday, 97 percent of the active-duty force has had at least one of the two-dose vaccine regimen, while 87 percent is fully vaccinated.
Including the Reserve and National Guard, 82 percent are at least partially vaccinated and 68 percent are fully vaccinated, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told Military Times.
Those who don’t have a medical reason to not get vaccinated and still refuse to roll up their sleeves could face administrative or other repercussions, unless they are approved for a rather rare waiver for religious reasons.
“We’re going to make sure that every individual who has reservations about taking the vaccine, for whatever reason, is properly counseled about the safety and the efficacy of the vaccines, and the health risks for not taking it,” Kirby told reporters in August. “As well as counseling the readiness impact of not taking it ― the impact that an individual would be having on his or her teammates.”
The Air Force’s active-duty deadline for vaccination is Nov. 2, while sailors and Marines have until Nov. 28 to get vaccinated, and active-duty soldiers face a deadline of Dec. 15.
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.
3. The Inevitable Rivalry – America, China, and the Tragedy of Great-Power Politics
A long read.
Excerpts:
A Rival of America’s making
Although their numbers have dwindled, advocates of engagement remain, and they still think the United States can find common ground with China. As late as July 2019, 100 China watchers signed an open letter to Trump and members of Congress rejecting the idea that Beijing was a threat. “Many Chinese officials and other elites know that a moderate, pragmatic and genuinely cooperative approach with the West serves China’s interests,” they wrote, before calling on Washington to “work with our allies and partners to create a more open and prosperous world in which China is offered the opportunity to participate.”
But great powers are simply unwilling to let other great powers grow stronger at their expense. The driving force behind this great-power rivalry is structural, which means that the problem cannot be eliminated with clever policymaking. The only thing that could change the underlying dynamic would be a major crisis that halted China’s rise—an eventuality that seems unlikely considering the country’s long record of stability, competence, and economic growth. And so a dangerous security competition is all but unavoidable.
At best, this rivalry can be managed in the hope of avoiding a war. That would require Washington to maintain formidable conventional forces in East Asia to persuade Beijing that a clash of arms would at best yield a Pyrrhic victory. Convincing adversaries that they cannot achieve quick and decisive wins deters wars. Furthermore, U.S. policymakers must constantly remind themselves—and Chinese leaders—about the ever-present possibility of nuclear escalation in wartime. Nuclear weapons, after all, are the ultimate deterrent. Washington can also work to establish clear rules of the road for waging this security competition—for example, agreements to avoid incidents at sea or other accidental military clashes. If each side understands what crossing the other side’s redlines would mean, war becomes less likely.
These measures can only do so much to minimize the dangers inherent in the growing U.S.-Chinese rivalry. But that is the price the United States must pay for ignoring realist logic and turning China into a powerful state that is determined to challenge it on every front.
The Inevitable Rivalry
America, China, and the Tragedy of Great-Power Politics
Foreign Affairs · by The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities · October 28, 2021
It was a momentous choice. Three decades ago, the Cold War ended, and the United States had won. It was now the sole great power on the planet. Scanning the horizon for threats, U.S. policymakers seemed to have little cause for concern—and especially not about China, a weak and impoverished country that had been aligned with the United States against the Soviet Union for over a decade. But there were some ominous signs: China had nearly five times as many people as the United States, and its leaders had embraced economic reform. Population size and wealth are the main building blocks of military power, so there was a serious possibility that China might become dramatically stronger in the decades to come. Since a mightier China would surely challenge the U.S. position in Asia and possibly beyond, the logical choice for the United States was clear: slow China’s rise.
Instead, it encouraged it. Beguiled by misguided theories about liberalism’s inevitable triumph and the obsolescence of great-power conflict, both Democratic and Republican administrations pursued a policy of engagement, which sought to help China grow richer. Washington promoted investment in China and welcomed the country into the global trading system, thinking it would become a peace-loving democracy and a responsible stakeholder in a U.S.-led international order.
Of course, this fantasy never materialized. Far from embracing liberal values at home and the status quo abroad, China grew more repressive and ambitious as it rose. Instead of fostering harmony between Beijing and Washington, engagement failed to forestall a rivalry and hastened the end of the so-called unipolar moment. Today, China and the United States are locked in what can only be called a new cold war—an intense security competition that touches on every dimension of their relationship. This rivalry will test U.S. policymakers more than the original Cold War did, as China is likely to be a more powerful competitor than the Soviet Union was in its prime. And this cold war is more likely to turn hot.
None of this should be surprising. China is acting exactly as realism would predict. Who can blame Chinese leaders for seeking to dominate Asia and become the most powerful state on the planet? Certainly not the United States, which pursued a similar agenda, rising to become a hegemon in its own region and eventually the most secure and influential country in the world. And today, the United States is also acting just as realist logic would predict. Long opposed to the emergence of other regional hegemons, it sees China’s ambitions as a direct threat and is determined to check the country’s continued rise. The inescapable outcome is competition and conflict. Such is the tragedy of great-power politics.
What was avoidable, however, was the speed and extent of China’s extraordinary rise. Had U.S. policymakers during the unipolar moment thought in terms of balance-of-power politics, they would have tried to slow Chinese growth and maximize the power gap between Beijing and Washington. But once China grew wealthy, a U.S.-Chinese cold war was inevitable. Engagement may have been the worst strategic blunder any country has made in recent history: there is no comparable example of a great power actively fostering the rise of a peer competitor. And it is now too late to do much about it.
REALISM 101
Soon after the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s, American leaders—wisely—worked to integrate China into the Western order and help it grow economically, reasoning that a more powerful China would be better able to help contain the Soviet Union. But then the Cold War ended, raising a question: How should U.S. policymakers deal with China now that it was no longer needed to check Moscow? The country had a per capita GDP that was one-75th the size of the United States’. But given China’s population advantage, if its economy grew rapidly in the decades ahead, it could eclipse the United States in sheer economic might. Simply put, the consequences of an increasingly wealthy China for the global balance of power were enormous.
From a realist perspective, the prospect of China as an economic colossus was a nightmare. Not only would it mean the end of unipolarity; a wealthy China would surely also build a formidable military, as populous and rich countries invariably convert their economic power into military power. And China would almost certainly use that military to pursue hegemony in Asia and project power into other regions of the world. Once it did, the United States would have no choice but to contain, if not try to roll back, Chinese power, spurring a dangerous security competition.
Why are great powers doomed to compete? For starters, there is no higher authority to adjudicate disputes among states or protect them when threatened. Furthermore, no state can ever be certain that a rival—especially one with abundant military power—will not attack it. Competitors’ intentions are hard to divine. Countries figure out that the best way to survive in an anarchic world is to be the most powerful actor of all, which in practice means being a hegemon in one’s own region and making sure no other great powers dominate their regions.
Turning China into a great power was a recipe for trouble.
This realist logic has informed U.S. foreign policy since the very beginning. Early presidents and their successors worked assiduously to make the United States the most powerful country in the Western Hemisphere. After achieving regional hegemony around the start of the twentieth century, the country played a key role in preventing four great powers from dominating either Asia or Europe: it helped defeat imperial Germany in World War I and both imperial Japan and Nazi Germany in World War II and contained the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The United States feared these potential hegemons not only because they might grow powerful enough to roam into the Western Hemisphere but also because that would make it harder for Washington to project power globally.
China is acting according to this same realist logic, in effect imitating the United States. It wants to be the most powerful state in its backyard and, eventually, in the world. It wants to build a blue-water navy to protect its access to Persian Gulf oil. It wants to become the leading producer of advanced technologies. It wants to create an international order that is more favorable to its interests. A powerful China would be foolish to pass up the opportunity to pursue these goals.
Most Americans do not recognize that Beijing and Washington are following the same playbook, because they believe the United States is a noble democracy that acts differently from authoritarian and ruthless countries such as China. But that is not how international politics works. All great powers, be they democracies or not, have little choice but to compete for power in what is at root a zero-sum game. This imperative motivated both superpowers during the Cold War. It motivates China today and would motivate its leaders even if it were a democracy. And it motivates American leaders, too, making them determined to contain China.
Even if one rejects this realist account, which emphasizes the structural forces driving great-power competition, U.S. leaders still should have recognized that turning China, of all countries, into a great power was a recipe for trouble. After all, it had long sought to settle its border dispute with India on terms favorable to itself and harbored extensive revisionist goals in East Asia. Chinese policymakers have consistently stated their desire to reintegrate Taiwan, take back the Diaoyu Islands (known in Japan as the Senkaku Islands) from Japan, and control most of the South China Sea—all aims destined to be fiercely resisted by China’s neighbors, not to mention the United States. China has always had revisionist goals; the mistake was allowing it to become powerful enough to act on them.
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
Had U.S. policymakers accepted the logic of realism, there was a straightforward set of policies they could have pursued to slow economic growth in China and maintain the wealth gap between it and the United States. In the early 1990s, the Chinese economy was woefully underdeveloped, and its future growth depended heavily on access to American markets, technology, and capital. An economic and political Goliath at the time, the United States was in an ideal position to hinder China’s rise.
Beginning in 1980, U.S. presidents had granted China “most favored nation” status, a designation that gave the country the best possible trade terms with the United States. That favoritism should have ended with the Cold War, and in its place, U.S. leaders should have negotiated a new bilateral trade agreement that imposed harsher terms on China. They should have done so even if the agreement was also less favorable to the United States; given the small size of the Chinese economy, it would have taken a far bigger hit than the U.S. economy. Instead, U.S. presidents unwisely kept granting China most-favored-nation status annually. In 2000, the error was compounded by making that status permanent, markedly reducing Washington’s leverage over Beijing. The next year, the United States blundered again by allowing China to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). With global markets now open, Chinese businesses expanded, their products became more competitive, and China grew more powerful.
Beyond limiting China’s access to the international trading system, the United States should have strictly controlled the export of sophisticated U.S. technologies. Export controls would have been especially effective in the 1990s and the early years of the next decade, when Chinese companies were mainly copying Western technology, not innovating on their own; denying China access to advanced technologies in areas such as aerospace and electronics would almost certainly have slowed its economic development. But Washington let technology flow with few limits, allowing China to challenge U.S. dominance in the critical realm of innovation. U.S. policymakers also made the mistake of lowering barriers to direct U.S. investment in China, which was tiny in 1990 but mushroomed over the next three decades.
At a military celebration in Beijing, October 2021
Carlos Garcia Rawlins / Reuters
If the United States had played hardball on trade and investment, China would surely have turned to other countries for help. But there were limits to what it was able to do in the 1990s. Not only did the United States produce the bulk of the world’s most sophisticated technologies, but it also had several levers—including sanctions and security guarantees—that it could have used to persuade other countries to take a harder line on China. As part of an effort to constrain China’s role in global trade, Washington could have enlisted such allies as Japan and Taiwan, reminding them that a powerful China would pose an existential threat to them.
Given its market reforms and latent power potential, China would still have risen despite these policies. But it would have become a great power at a much later date. And when it did, it would still have been significantly weaker than the United States and therefore not in a position to seek regional hegemony.
Because relative, rather than absolute, power is what ultimately matters in international politics, realist logic suggests that U.S. policymakers should have coupled efforts to slow China’s economic growth with a campaign to maintain—if not increase—their country’s lead over China. The U.S. government could have invested heavily in research and development, funding the type of relentless innovation required to preserve American mastery over cutting-edge technologies. It could have actively discouraged manufacturers from moving overseas, in order to bolster the United States’ manufacturing base and protect its economy from vulnerable global supply chains. But none of these prudent measures were adopted.
DELUSIONAL THINKING
Given the liberal triumphalism that pervaded the Washington establishment in the 1990s, there was little chance that realist thinking would inform U.S. foreign policy. Instead, U.S. policymakers assumed that global peace and prosperity would be maximized by spreading democracy, promoting an open international economy, and strengthening international institutions. Applied to China, this logic prescribed a policy of engagement, whereby the United States would integrate the country into the global economy in the hopes that it would become more prosperous. Eventually, it was thought, China would even mature into a rights-respecting democracy and a responsible global actor. Unlike realism, which feared Chinese growth, engagement welcomed it.
For such a risky policy, the breadth and depth of support for engagement was remarkable, spanning four administrations. U.S. President George H. W. Bush was committed to engaging with China even before the Cold War ended. At a press conference after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Bush justified remaining economically engaged with China by arguing that U.S.-Chinese “commercial contacts [had] led, in essence, to this quest for more freedom” and that economic incentives made democratization “inexorable.” Two years later, when he was criticized for renewing China’s most-favored-nation status, he defended engagement by claiming that it would “help create a climate for democratic change.”
Bill Clinton criticized Bush for “coddling” China during the 1992 presidential campaign and tried playing tough with Beijing after moving into the White House. But he soon reversed course, declaring in 1994 that the United States should “intensify and broaden its engagement” with China, which would help it “evolve as a responsible power, ever growing not only economically, but growing in political maturity so that human rights can be observed.” Clinton led the way in convincing Congress to grant China permanent most-favored-nation status, which laid the groundwork for its entry into the WTO. “If you believe in a future of greater openness and freedom for the people of China,” he maintained in 2000, “you ought to be for this agreement.”
George W. Bush also embraced efforts to bring China into the global economic fold, promising as a presidential candidate that “trade with China will promote freedom.” In his first year in office, he signed the proclamation granting China permanent most-favored-nation status and took the final steps to guide the country into the WTO.
Convincing adversaries that they cannot achieve quick and decisive wins deters wars.
The Obama administration was more of the same. “Since I’ve been president, my goal has been to consistently engage with China in a way that is constructive, to manage our differences and to maximize opportunities for cooperation,” Barack Obama said in 2015. “And I’ve repeatedly said that I believe it is in the interests of the United States to see China grow.” One might think that the “pivot to Asia,” unveiled by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2011, represented a shift away from engagement and toward containment, but that would be wrong. Clinton was a committed engager, and her Foreign Policy article making the case for the pivot was filled with liberal rhetoric about the virtues of open markets. “A thriving China is good for America,” she wrote. Moreover, save for placing 2,500 U.S. marines in Australia, no meaningful steps were taken to implement a serious containment strategy.
Support for engagement was also deep and wide within the U.S. business community, which viewed China as a manufacturing base as well as a giant market, with more than one billion potential customers. Trade groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, and the National Association of Manufacturers undertook what Thomas Donohue, the Chamber of Commerce’s president at the time, called a “nonstop lobbying blitz” to help China get into the WTO. Leading lights in the media also embraced engagement, including the editorial boards of The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. The columnist Thomas Friedman spoke for many when he wrote, “Over time, China’s leaders simply can’t control and monitor their bursting free markets, or prevent little people from getting cheated and then rioting against the government, without the other institutions that must go with free markets—from an effective [securities and exchange commission] to a free and responsible press backed by the rule of law.” Engagement was equally popular in academia. Few China experts or international relations scholars questioned the wisdom of helping Beijing grow more powerful. And perhaps the best indicator of the foreign policy establishment’s overwhelming commitment to engagement is that both Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger—respectively, the most prominent Democratic and Republican Cold War hawks—supported the strategy.
Defenders of engagement argue that their policy allowed for the possibility of failure. Clinton admitted in 2000, “We don’t know where it’s going,” and George W. Bush said the same year, “There are no guarantees.” Doubts like these were rare, however. More important, none of the engagers foresaw the implications of failure. If China refused to democratize, they believed, it would simply be a less capable country. The prospect that it would become more powerful and no less authoritarian did not appear to enter their calculations. Besides, they believed that realpolitik was old thinking.
Some engagers now maintain that the United States hedged its bets, pursuing containment side by side with engagement in case a friendship with China did not flourish. “Just to be safe, . . . we created an insurance policy in case this bet failed,” Joseph Nye, who served in the Pentagon during the Clinton administration, wrote in these pages in 2018. This claim is at odds with the frequent refrain from U.S. policymakers that they were not containing China. In 1997, for example, Clinton described his policy as “not containment and conflict” but “cooperation.” But even if U.S. policymakers were quietly containing China, engagement undermined their efforts, because that policy ultimately shifted the global balance of power in China’s favor. Creating a peer competitor is hardly consistent with containment.
A FAILED EXPERIMENT
Nobody can say that engagement wasn’t given ample opportunity to work, nor can anyone argue that China emerged as a threat because the United States was not accommodating enough. As the years went on, it became clear that engagement was a failure. China’s economy experienced unprecedented economic growth, but the country did not turn into a liberal democracy or a responsible stakeholder. To the contrary, Chinese leaders view liberal values as a threat to their country’s stability, and as rulers of rising powers normally do, they are pursuing an increasingly aggressive foreign policy. There is no way around it: engagement was a colossal strategic mistake. As Kurt Campbell and Ely Ratner—two former Obama administration officials who recognized that engagement had failed and now serve in the Biden administration—wrote in these pages in 2018, “Washington now faces its most dynamic and formidable competitor in modern history.”
Obama vowed a tougher line against Beijing during his presidency, contesting its maritime claims and filing suits against it within the WTO, but these halfhearted efforts amounted to little. Only in 2017 did the policy truly change. After Donald Trump became U.S. president, he quickly abandoned the engagement strategy that the previous four administrations had embraced, pursuing containment instead. As a White House strategy document released that year explained, great-power competition had returned, and China now sought to “challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity.” Determined to stop China from succeeding, Trump initiated a trade war in 2018 and tried to undermine the technology giant Huawei and other Chinese corporations that threatened the United States’ technological dominance. His administration also developed closer relations with Taiwan and challenged Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea. Cold War II was underway.
One might have expected President Joe Biden to abandon containment and return to engagement, given that he staunchly supported that policy as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and in the Obama administration. In fact, as president, he has embraced containment and has been as hard-nosed toward China as his predecessor was, pledging “extreme competition” with China shortly after taking office. Congress, too, has come around. In June, the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act sailed through the Senate with bipartisan support. The bill labels China “the greatest geopolitical and geo-economic challenge for United States foreign policy” and controversially calls for treating Taiwan as a sovereign state of “vital” strategic importance. The American public appears to share this view: a 2020 Pew Research Center poll found that nine in ten Americans considered China’s power a threat. The new U.S.-Chinese rivalry is not ending anytime soon. In fact, it is likely to intensify, no matter who is in the White House.
THE DANGER OF A HOT WAR
Engagement’s remaining defenders now portray the downward spiral in U.S.-Chinese relations as the work of individuals who are bent on creating a U.S.-Soviet-style confrontation—“New Cold Warriors,” in the words of the former George W. Bush administration official Robert Zoellick. In the engagers’ view, the incentives for further economic cooperation outweigh the need to compete for power. Mutual interests trump conflicting interests. Regrettably, the proponents of engagement are whistling in the wind. Cold War II is already here, and when one compares the two cold wars, it becomes apparent that the U.S.-Chinese rivalry is more likely to lead to a shooting war than the U.S.-Soviet rivalry was.
The first point of contrast between the two conflicts concerns capabilities. China is already closer to the United States in terms of latent power than the Soviet Union ever was. At the height of its power, in the mid-1970s, the Soviet Union had a small advantage in population (less than 1.2 to 1) and, using GNP as a rough indicator of wealth, was almost 60 percent as wealthy as the United States. In contrast, China now has four times as many people as the United States and is about 70 percent as wealthy. If China’s economy continues growing at an impressive rate of around five percent annually, it will eventually have more latent power than the United States. It has been projected that by 2050, China will have a population advantage of approximately 3.7 to 1. If China has half of the United States’ per capita GDP in 2050—roughly where South Korea is today—it will be 1.8 times as wealthy as the United States. And if it does better and reaches three-fifths of U.S. per capita GDP by then—roughly where Japan is today—it will be 2.3 times as wealthy as the United States. With all that latent power, Beijing could build a military that is much more powerful than the United States’, which would be contesting China’s from 6,000 miles away.
Not only was the Soviet Union poorer than the United States; during the height of the Cold War, it was also still recovering from the horrific devastation wreaked by Nazi Germany. In World War II, the country lost 24 million citizens, not to mention more than 70,000 towns and villages, 32,000 industrial enterprises, and 40,000 miles of railroad track. It was in no position to fight the United States. China, in contrast, last fought a war in 1979 (against Vietnam) and in the ensuing decades became an economic juggernaut.
In Shanghai, April 2021
Aly Song / Reuters
There was another drag on Soviet capabilities that is largely absent in China’s case: troublesome allies. Throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Union maintained a huge military presence in Eastern Europe and was deeply involved in the politics of almost every country in that region. It had to contend with insurrections in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Albania, Romania, and Yugoslavia routinely challenged Moscow’s economic and security policies. The Soviets also had their hands full with China, which switched sides midway through the Cold War. These allies were an albatross around Moscow’s neck that distracted Soviet leaders from their principal adversary: the United States. Contemporary China has few allies and, except when it comes to North Korea, is far less tied to its friends than the Soviets were to theirs. In short, Beijing has greater flexibility to cause trouble abroad.
What about ideological motivations? Like the Soviet Union was, China is led by a nominally communist government. But just as Americans during the Cold War were wrong to view Moscow as primarily a communist threat, determined to spread its malign ideology around the globe, it would be a mistake to portray China as an ideological menace today. Soviet foreign policy was influenced only on the margins by communist thinking; Joseph Stalin was a hardcore realist, as were his successors. Communism matters even less in contemporary China, which is best understood as an authoritarian state that embraces capitalism. Americans should wish that China were communist; then it would have a lethargic economy.
But there is an “ism” that China has in spades, one that is likely to exacerbate its rivalry with the United States: nationalism. Normally the world’s most powerful political ideology, nationalism had limited influence in the Soviet Union because it was at odds with communism. Chinese nationalism, however, has been gathering steam since the early 1990s. What makes it especially dangerous is its emphasis on China’s “century of national humiliation,” a period beginning with the First Opium War, during which China was victimized by great powers, especially Japan but also, in the Chinese narrative, the United States. The effects of this potent nationalist story were on display in 2012–13, when China and Japan skirmished over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, igniting anti-Japanese protests across China. In the coming years, the intensifying security competition in East Asia will surely ramp up Chinese hostility toward Japan and the United States, increasing the likelihood of a hot war.
Also raising the odds of war are China’s regional ambitions. Soviet leaders, busy recovering from World War II and managing their empire in Eastern Europe, were largely content with the status quo on the continent. China, by contrast, is deeply committed to an expansionist agenda in East Asia. Although the main targets of China’s appetite certainly have strategic value for China, they are also considered sacred territory, which means their fate is bound up with Chinese nationalism. This is especially true of Taiwan: the Chinese feel an emotional attachment to the island that the Soviets never felt for Berlin, for example, making Washington’s commitment to defend it all the riskier.
The new cold war is more war-prone than the old one.
Finally, the geography of the new cold war is more war-prone than that of the old one. Although the U.S.-Soviet rivalry was global in scope, its center of gravity was the Iron Curtain in Europe, where both sides had massive armies and air forces equipped with thousands of nuclear weapons. There was little chance of a superpower war in Europe, because policymakers on both sides understood the fearsome risks of nuclear escalation. No leader was willing to start a conflict that would likely have destroyed his own country.
In Asia, there is no clear dividing line like the Iron Curtain to anchor stability. Instead, there are a handful of potential conflicts that would be limited and would involve conventional arms, which makes war thinkable. They include fights for control over Taiwan, the South China Sea, the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, and the maritime routes that run between China and the Persian Gulf. These conflicts would be fought mainly in open waters between rival air and naval forces, and in those instances in which control of an island was at play, small-scale ground forces would likely take part. Even a fight over Taiwan, which might draw in Chinese amphibious forces, would not involve huge nuclear-equipped armies crashing into each other.
None of this is to say that these limited-war scenarios are likely, but they are more plausible than a major war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact was. Still, one cannot assume that there would be no nuclear escalation should Beijing and Washington fight over Taiwan or the South China Sea. Indeed, if one side were losing badly, it would at least consider employing nuclear weapons to rescue the situation. Some decision-makers might conclude that nuclear weapons could be used without an unacceptable risk of escalation, provided the attacks took place at sea and spared the territory of China and the United States and its allies. Not only is a great-power war more likely in the new cold war, but so is nuclear use.
A Rival of America’s making
Although their numbers have dwindled, advocates of engagement remain, and they still think the United States can find common ground with China. As late as July 2019, 100 China watchers signed an open letter to Trump and members of Congress rejecting the idea that Beijing was a threat. “Many Chinese officials and other elites know that a moderate, pragmatic and genuinely cooperative approach with the West serves China’s interests,” they wrote, before calling on Washington to “work with our allies and partners to create a more open and prosperous world in which China is offered the opportunity to participate.”
But great powers are simply unwilling to let other great powers grow stronger at their expense. The driving force behind this great-power rivalry is structural, which means that the problem cannot be eliminated with clever policymaking. The only thing that could change the underlying dynamic would be a major crisis that halted China’s rise—an eventuality that seems unlikely considering the country’s long record of stability, competence, and economic growth. And so a dangerous security competition is all but unavoidable.
At best, this rivalry can be managed in the hope of avoiding a war. That would require Washington to maintain formidable conventional forces in East Asia to persuade Beijing that a clash of arms would at best yield a Pyrrhic victory. Convincing adversaries that they cannot achieve quick and decisive wins deters wars. Furthermore, U.S. policymakers must constantly remind themselves—and Chinese leaders—about the ever-present possibility of nuclear escalation in wartime. Nuclear weapons, after all, are the ultimate deterrent. Washington can also work to establish clear rules of the road for waging this security competition—for example, agreements to avoid incidents at sea or other accidental military clashes. If each side understands what crossing the other side’s redlines would mean, war becomes less likely.
These measures can only do so much to minimize the dangers inherent in the growing U.S.-Chinese rivalry. But that is the price the United States must pay for ignoring realist logic and turning China into a powerful state that is determined to challenge it on every front.
Foreign Affairs · by The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities · October 28, 2021
4. New White House Cyber Director Wants to Fight Like Cobra Kai
I guess I will have to watch Cobra Kai for more strategic education.
Excerpts:
Inglis, in the interview, outlined an approach that sounds similar to the idea of a more proactive defense, what Gen. Paul Nakasone, the head of NSA and Cyber Command calls “defending forward.”
It’s that concept of proactive defense that needs to be scaled up and better coordinated across the government as part of a strategy—not just reacting when big incidents cause bad headlines. Inglis says it’s his job, as the first cyber director, to lay out what that leg-sweeping strategy looks like and implement it across the government.
“We're going to accept that instruments of power to hold that at risk, to degrade [adversary capabilities] it to disrupt it; to bring it to heal. That's an inherently governmental proposition if you're operating off of the territory,” he said. “Those are all collaborative activities. They're connected activities. But again, back to the question of who's accountable for what? There'll be a slightly different org chart for each one of those and each of those are underway.”
Inglis didn’t say exactly how that degradation of adversarial ransomware and hacking capabilities was “underway” but did say that, like any strategy, this one will take time and persistent implementation before it yields victory.
New White House Cyber Director Wants to Fight Like Cobra Kai
Chris Inglis says the government needs to hit would-be attackers where it hurts.
The first U.S. National Cyber Director wants the government to take a tougher, more proactive approach to those who threaten America’s networks: degrade their capabilities and demonstrate how they would suffer should they attack.
John Inglis’ vision for his brand-new office somewhat resembles the match-day strategy employed by the Cobra Kai dojo in the original Karate Kid: aim to cause your opponent pain. In other words: sweep the leg.
Earlier this week, Inglis outlined how his office will coordinate the various agencies and entities tasked with warding off protecting or responding to cyber attacks. He and his staff will shape and coordinate budgets, ensure that federal cybersecurity operators are at least as good as their private counterparts, watch for emerging vulnerabilities in digital supply chains, and more.
In an interview at the TechNetCyber conference in Baltimore this week, Inglis provided a few more details on what he sees as his role. One part is playing “coach” to the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency, or CISA. Another is crafting a comprehensive strategy to not only respond to hacks and ransomware attacks but also to deter them. Inglis believes that current U.S. strategy puts too much stock in moves like Justice Department indictments, which do little good against adversaries who operate with impunity in safe haven spaces like Russia.
“Start with the psychology of the aggressor...not what we think would make a difference to us,” he said. “Public shaming might mean nothing in some of these countries, right? But what makes a difference to them? You need to start there and you need to bring to bear all the instruments of power. But they need to be properly mobilized and enabled by some degree of timeliness.”
Deterring adversaries, he said, “has to focus on what are the consequences that matter to them. Most of those consequences might not be found in cyberspace; they might be found outside of cyberspace, which means you have to have a systematic or systemic, holistic approach to that. It starts with the psychology of the actors, what makes a difference to them?”
Inglis, in the interview, outlined an approach that sounds similar to the idea of a more proactive defense, what Gen. Paul Nakasone, the head of NSA and Cyber Command calls “defending forward.”
It’s that concept of proactive defense that needs to be scaled up and better coordinated across the government as part of a strategy—not just reacting when big incidents cause bad headlines. Inglis says it’s his job, as the first cyber director, to lay out what that leg-sweeping strategy looks like and implement it across the government.
“We're going to accept that instruments of power to hold that at risk, to degrade [adversary capabilities] it to disrupt it; to bring it to heal. That's an inherently governmental proposition if you're operating off of the territory,” he said. “Those are all collaborative activities. They're connected activities. But again, back to the question of who's accountable for what? There'll be a slightly different org chart for each one of those and each of those are underway.”
Inglis didn’t say exactly how that degradation of adversarial ransomware and hacking capabilities was “underway” but did say that, like any strategy, this one will take time and persistent implementation before it yields victory.
5. Preserving the Warrior Ethos
Beware the victim mindset.
Excerpts:
The most damaging misconception of warriors and the warrior ethos may be the tendency to portray warriors as victims who enjoy no authorship over their future. Resilience in combat depends on soldiers’ confidence in their ability to exert agency over the enemy through a sustained effort. Reporting during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, however, focused mainly on U.S. and coalition casualty figures without an explanation of the purpose of military operations or their effects on the enemy. A lack of reporting about the enemy contributed to the idea that it was time to end an endless war; the American people had lost perspective on what was at stake. An imaginary Taliban was then presented as an organization willing to share power, to separate from al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, and to be sympathetic to Western priorities.
Fundamental misunderstanding of the warrior ethos is apparent even among those who command and have oversight of the military. A recent example is President Joe Biden’s April 2021 visit to Area 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, immediately after he affirmed the unconditional retreat from Afghanistan. As he stood where many of the fallen from the war in Afghanistan are laid to rest, he intended to honor their sacrifice, but he did not understand how many veterans and families of those who had fought and died in Afghanistan would see the gesture as an affront after the commander in chief had abandoned the cause for which those buried there gave their lives. The contrast between Biden’s words at a cemetery on grounds seized from Robert E. Lee’s family during the Civil War and Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg — the nation would remain “dedicated to the great task remaining” — reveals a postmodern tendency to assume that warriors want pity instead of leaders who will follow through politically and integrate the military with other instruments of national power to secure worthy outcomes.
Other leaders do not understand the values and ethical precepts that form the warrior ethos. As I testified before the Armed Services Committee in March 2021, Senator Tommy Tuberville asked me to affirm his understanding of the United States military as a “killing machine.” It is important to recognize, as Christopher Coker points out in his superb book The Warrior Ethos: Military Culture and the War on Terror, that “ultimately warriors are defined through their relationship with death, their own and that of the enemy.” But it is also important to understand that warriors are not machines. Combat is a profoundly human experience. American warriors are also humanitarians, accepting risk for themselves to protect noncombatants, consistent with jus en bello theory and the laws of land warfare.
Some see the warrior ethos as a relic. They pursue exclusively scientific and technology-based solutions to the problem of future war. Misinterpretation of the lopsided military victory in the 1991 Gulf War gave rise to what became the orthodoxy of the “revolution in military affairs” (RMA), according to which American technological advantages would shift war fundamentally from the realm of uncertainty to the realm of certainty. The United States would use “dominant battlespace knowledge” to achieve “full-spectrum dominance” over any opponent. The U.S. military would “shock and awe” opponents in its conduct of “rapid decisive operations.” This flawed thinking ignored war’s nature as a human and political activity that is fundamentally a contest of wills. It was a setup for many of the difficulties we would encounter in the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Preserving the Warrior Ethos
October 28, 2021 11:03 AM
(Deagostini/Getty Images)
It is corroded, and the necessary restorative work belongs to us all
In war, the moral is to the material as three to one.
— Napoleon
T
he warrior ethos that emerged in the modern Western world has its origins in the warrior myth as embodied by Achilles, the hero of the Trojan War in the Iliad. In America, the warrior ethos evolved into a covenant that binds warriors to one another and to the citizens in whose name they fight and serve. It is grounded in values such as courage, honor, and self-sacrifice. The ethos reminds warriors of what society expects of them and what they expect of themselves.
One might wonder why this esoteric topic deserves attention, especially when our nation has experienced multiple traumas and faces many practical challenges at home and abroad. Understanding war and warriors is necessary if societies and governments are to make sound judgments concerning military policy. American citizens’ expectations help the military establish standards that guide recruitment, training, personnel policies, and even how forces organize and modernize to deter war and defend the nation. In democracies, if citizens do not understand war or are unsympathetic to the warrior ethos, it will become difficult to maintain the requirements of military effectiveness and to recruit the best young people into military service. The warrior ethos is what makes combat units effective. And because it is foundational to norms involving professional ethics, discipline, and discrimination in the use of force, the warrior ethos is essential to making war less inhumane.
The warrior ethos is at risk. If lost, it might be regained only at an exorbitant price.
T
he warrior ethos is normative, and it appears in various forms across the armed services. For example, the U.S. Army lists its values as loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. Recognizing the demands that protracted conflicts against brutal and determined enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq were placing on soldiers, the Army formalized the warrior ethos as the heart of a creed that every soldier is meant to internalize in basic training.
I will always place the mission first.
I will never accept defeat.
I will never quit.
I will never leave a fallen comrade.
Apparent in those four pledges are willingness to sacrifice for the mission and for one another.
Good combat leaders put mission accomplishment and the survival and well-being of those they lead before their own well-being, to inspire warriors to act in ways contrary to the natural drive of self-preservation. But warriors fight mainly for one another and to preserve their own and their unit’s honor. Good combat units are like a family whose brothers- and sisters-in-arms feel deep affection for one another. As Paul Robinson points out in Military Honour and the Conduct of War, “honour spurs men to fight in two ways: positively, through the desire to display virtue and win honour; and negatively, through a desire to avoid dishonour or shame.” Warriors expect to take risks and make sacrifices to accomplish the mission, protect their fellow warriors, and safeguard innocents.
The warrior ethos is a constant through changes in tactics and weapons. As John Keegan observed in The Face of Battle, his classic 1976 study of combat in the same geographic area across five centuries, from Agincourt (1415) to Waterloo (1815) to the Somme (1916), what battles have in common is human: “the behaviour of men struggling to reconcile their instinct for self-preservation, their sense of honour and the achievement of some aim over which other men are ready to kill them.” He observed that the study of battle is “always a study of solidarity and usually also of disintegration — for it is toward the disintegration of human groups that battle is directed.” The warrior ethos is foundational to maintaining the cohesion of one’s “human group” and generating the courage and combat prowess necessary to disintegrate the enemy’s. Unit cohesion derives from soldiers’ trust and confidence in their leaders and in their team.
The need to develop confident, cohesive teams to withstand the test of battle is timeless. In her book Stoic Warriors, Nancy Sherman quotes the Stoic philosopher Seneca to describe training as a form of “bulletproofing” warriors against the debilitating effects of fear: “A large part of the evil consists in its novelty,” but “if evil has been pondered beforehand, the blow is gentle when it comes.” Confidence is a necessary ingredient for courage because it serves as a psychological and emotional bulwark against fear. Fear is debilitating in battle because it can lead to hesitation and allow the enemy to gain the initiative. Fear can also lead to poor decisions that place fellow soldiers or noncombatants at unnecessary risk. Fear can erode discipline and, over time, cause the psychological, moral, and ethical disintegration of the small units (e.g., squads, platoons, and companies) that are the foundation of combat effectiveness.
Warriors fight mainly for one another, but their willingness to sacrifice and ability to overcome fear are based also on their knowledge that they are fighting to realize a worthy, just intention. Understanding that their efforts are meaningful bolsters resilience under conditions of hardship and persistent danger. “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how,” as Nietzsche observed. That is why flawed policies and strategies originating in Washington can have a debilitating effect on combat units fighting halfway around the world. A true test to determine the soundness of wartime strategy is to ask platoon leaders whether they can explain to their soldiers how the risks they will take or the sacrifices some may make on an operation will contribute to a worthy outcome. Unsound strategy is not only counterproductive; it can have a corrosive effect on the warrior ethos, as fighting becomes disconnected from a “right intention” for making war.
George Washington issued general orders to his troops at the siege of Boston on July 4, 1775, directing that “all Distinctions of Colonies will be laid aside; so that one and the same Spirit may animate the whole, and the only Contest be, who shall render, on this great and trying occasion, the most essential service to the Great and common cause in which we are all engaged.” Nearly 90 years later, in the midst of America’s most destructive war, President Abraham Lincoln exhorted the living to ensure that those who fell in the Battle of Gettysburg “shall not have died in vain.”
After Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, General George C. Marshall, chief of staff of the U.S. Army, called the Academy Award–winning director Frank Capra to Washington. He said, “Now, Capra, I want to nail down with you a plan to make a series of documented, factual-information films — the first in our history — that will explain to our boys in the Army why we are fighting, and the principles for which we are fighting.” Capra produced a series of seven documentaries from 1942 to 1945. His approach was to allow America’s enemies to reveal what was at stake in the war. He used “the enemy’s own films to expose their enslaving ends,” to let “our boys hear the Nazis and the Japs shout their own claims of master-race crud,” so that “our fighting men will know why they are in uniform.”
Knowing that sacrifices made in war are in pursuit of a just and worthy end is important to preserving the warrior ethos, sustaining the will to fight, and helping combat veterans cope with the residual effects of physical and emotional trauma.
T
he lost war in Afghanistan evokes memories of the lost war in Vietnam. Sadly, the analogy goes beyond counterposed images of the evacuations of the Saigon embassy in 1975 and the Kabul airport in 2021. Today the warrior ethos is at risk as it was in the wake of the American experience in Vietnam. Flawed strategy during the Vietnam War, combined with destructive personnel and draft policies, eroded trust within the military while the war’s unpopularity eroded trust between the military, civilian leaders, and the American people. Military professionalism eroded, as did the quality of the force. Racial and social tensions, drug use, and loss of confidence in the officer corps led to breakdowns in discipline and unethical conduct. The bonds of sacred trust foundational to the warrior ethos reached a breaking point. In the 1970s multiple crises, including stagflation, oil shortages, the Watergate affair, the first resignation of an American president, and the 444-days-long hostage crisis that followed the Iranian Revolution added to the trauma of a lost war. Pessimism pervaded.
The experiences of recent years seem to rhyme with those of the 1970s. The traumas of a pandemic, a recession, vitriolic partisan political divisions, social divisions laid bare by George Floyd’s murder and the violent aftermath, an assault on the Capitol, and false claims of widespread election fraud reduced confidence in our democratic institutions and processes. The erosion of trust and America’s shrinking confidence are diminishing the trust that binds warriors to one another and to society at a time when dangers to our security are increasing.
Most Americans understand little about war or warriors. Because less than 1 percent of the population serves, fewer and fewer Americans are connected to our professional military. Unfamiliarity with the warrior ethos, the promotion of philosophies inimical to the sacred trust foundational to it, and leaders’ lack of commitment to achieve outcomes worthy of the risks, costs, and sacrifices in war are eroding America’s ability to fight and win.
Popular culture waters down and coarsens the warrior ethos. Warriors are often portrayed as fragile or traumatized human beings. Hollywood tells us little about the warrior’s calling or commitment to his or her fellow warriors, or about what compels him or her to act courageously, endure hardships, take risks, or make sacrifices.
The most damaging misconception of warriors and the warrior ethos may be the tendency to portray warriors as victims who enjoy no authorship over their future. Resilience in combat depends on soldiers’ confidence in their ability to exert agency over the enemy through a sustained effort. Reporting during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, however, focused mainly on U.S. and coalition casualty figures without an explanation of the purpose of military operations or their effects on the enemy. A lack of reporting about the enemy contributed to the idea that it was time to end an endless war; the American people had lost perspective on what was at stake. An imaginary Taliban was then presented as an organization willing to share power, to separate from al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, and to be sympathetic to Western priorities.
Fundamental misunderstanding of the warrior ethos is apparent even among those who command and have oversight of the military. A recent example is President Joe Biden’s April 2021 visit to Area 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, immediately after he affirmed the unconditional retreat from Afghanistan. As he stood where many of the fallen from the war in Afghanistan are laid to rest, he intended to honor their sacrifice, but he did not understand how many veterans and families of those who had fought and died in Afghanistan would see the gesture as an affront after the commander in chief had abandoned the cause for which those buried there gave their lives. The contrast between Biden’s words at a cemetery on grounds seized from Robert E. Lee’s family during the Civil War and Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg — the nation would remain “dedicated to the great task remaining” — reveals a postmodern tendency to assume that warriors want pity instead of leaders who will follow through politically and integrate the military with other instruments of national power to secure worthy outcomes.
Other leaders do not understand the values and ethical precepts that form the warrior ethos. As I testified before the Armed Services Committee in March 2021, Senator Tommy Tuberville asked me to affirm his understanding of the United States military as a “killing machine.” It is important to recognize, as Christopher Coker points out in his superb book The Warrior Ethos: Military Culture and the War on Terror, that “ultimately warriors are defined through their relationship with death, their own and that of the enemy.” But it is also important to understand that warriors are not machines. Combat is a profoundly human experience. American warriors are also humanitarians, accepting risk for themselves to protect noncombatants, consistent with jus en bello theory and the laws of land warfare.
Some see the warrior ethos as a relic. They pursue exclusively scientific and technology-based solutions to the problem of future war. Misinterpretation of the lopsided military victory in the 1991 Gulf War gave rise to what became the orthodoxy of the “revolution in military affairs” (RMA), according to which American technological advantages would shift war fundamentally from the realm of uncertainty to the realm of certainty. The United States would use “dominant battlespace knowledge” to achieve “full-spectrum dominance” over any opponent. The U.S. military would “shock and awe” opponents in its conduct of “rapid decisive operations.” This flawed thinking ignored war’s nature as a human and political activity that is fundamentally a contest of wills. It was a setup for many of the difficulties we would encounter in the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The orthodoxy of the RMA is making a comeback, as many argue that new technologies, such as those associated with artificial intelligence, offensive cyber capabilities, and hypersonic weapons, will make future warfare fundamentally different from wars of the past. But, as the historian Conrad Crane has observed, there are two ways to fight: asymmetrically and stupidly. Potential enemies develop countermeasures to defeat what the United States might regard as the latest “decisive” capabilities. The RMA in the 1990s and today’s hopes for artificial-intelligence technologies are echoes of what the historian Mark Clodfelter has described in Beneficial Bombing as the “progressive doctrine” — it returns in a new guise every few decades — of rapid victory from a distance through airpower. But as Clausewitz observed in On War,
kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed: war is such a dangerous business that the mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst.
Others will argue that the warrior ethos is unnecessary since war itself will soon be made a relic by technology or America’s ability to opt out of armed conflict. Arguments that technology has fundamentally changed war and that war no longer has any utility are reminiscent of wishful thinking prior to World War I. In Europe, Jan Bloch, Norman Angell, and others believed in 1914 that war had become so irrational a means of settling disputes that sensible people would never again fight one. Vice President Joe Biden called President Barack Obama from Baghdad in December 2011 to thank the president for allowing him to “end this goddamn war.” Based on the conceit that wars end when one side disengages, the complete withdrawal from Iraq, however, set conditions for the rise of ISIS less than three years later. In an astonishing failure to learn from even proximate historical experience, the United States withdrew from Afghanistan under the assumption that surrender to the Taliban would be a step toward “ending endless wars.”
If ensuring the ability to fight and win is not the focus of the Defense Department, confused priorities threaten to dilute the warrior ethos and create uncertainty about what the military is for. As it was conducting the humiliating retreat from Kabul, the Pentagon was developing a climate strategy in response to the president’s guidance to “prioritize climate change considerations.”
As the historian Michael Howard has observed, while it is impossible to predict precisely the demands of future war, the key is not to be so far off the mark that it is impossible to respond to the actual demands of war once they are revealed. A failure to think clearly about future war and recognize the enduring need for the warrior ethos could also dissipate the military’s abilities to deter war and to recover from strategic surprise once the true contours of a war reveal themselves. But wishful thinking, fantastical theories of future war, and confused priorities are in fact not the greatest threat to the warrior ethos.
O
nce confined to academia, the categorization of people as hapless victims or privileged oppressors has infected the broader culture and has, under the Biden administration, made inroads into military institutions. For example, elements of critical race theory (CRT) blame power structures and intractable corrupting forces for a victim–oppressor dichotomy. But nothing could be more debilitating to combat effectiveness than adherence to CRT’s proposal that people be judged mainly by identity category rather than by character and ability to contribute to a team. Ibram X. Kendi’s belief that “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination” would, if accepted by the military, destroy unit cohesion and perhaps even provoke white-supremacist bigotry in reaction. In an institution in which the stakes are life and death, the consequences would be particularly severe.
Such theories are incompatible with the warrior ethos in other ways. They valorize victimhood and view people as fragile creatures who must be protected from all threats, including injurious and offensive words. They advance a culture of “safetyism” and risk aversion that robs warriors of their agency, cedes the initiative to the enemy, and stifles the bold action, creativity, and innovation that are essential to winning battles at the lowest possible cost.
Other theories also amount to expressions of societal self-loathing and have harmful effects. Postcolonial theory, which sees the ills of the world today in part as derivative of the political, economic, and social impact of European colonial rule across much of the world in the 18th through the 20th centuries, has reinforced the New Left interpretation of history, which gained influence across much of the academy during and after the Vietnam War. While the writing and teaching of history from different perspectives is valuable in recovering lost voices and providing a fuller understanding of human experience, postcolonial and New Left history is often warped by the desire to support social and political agendas in the present such as advocacy of social-justice activism and demands to “decolonize” everything from academic curricula to scientific research to hairstyles. In the arena of international relations, postcolonial and New Left historians are often joined by those in the so-called realist school, who see assertive U.S. foreign policy and military engagement as a form of imperialism that generates enemies and perpetuates conflicts.
The result is that many college and secondary-school students learn that the ills of the modern era prior to 1945 were due to colonialism and that the ills of the world after 1945 are due to “capitalist imperialism.” The New York Times’ 1619 Project and accompanying curriculum resources meant for use in middle school and high school are driving an interpretation of history in which the Framers, rather than being celebrated for inaugurating an unprecedented and enduring experiment in democracy, must be condemned for complicity in the evils of slavery and the dispossession of indigenous peoples. If children in our free society are taught that their nation is not worth defending, why should they volunteer to defend it? An observation that Chesterton made in the Illustrated London News in 1911 holds true today: “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
As postmodernist theories threaten to weaken the bonds of sacred trust among warriors, strategic incompetence and lack of commitment to winning in war erodes trust between warriors and their civilian and military leaders. If, as in Afghanistan, leaders send men and women into battle without dedicating themselves to the achievement of a worthy outcome, how can warriors be expected to volunteer for service, take risks, and make sacrifices? Winning in Afghanistan meant achieving the just intention of ensuring that Afghanistan never again became a haven for jihadist terrorists. For much of the war in Afghanistan, military efforts were not aligned with political and diplomatic efforts. For example, multiple administrations stopped actively targeting the Taliban, gave the enemy a timeline for U.S. withdrawal, and then pursued a negotiated settlement. Winning in war still means convincing the enemy that he is defeated, but America’s short-term approach to the long-term problem of Afghanistan and the persistent promises of imminent withdrawal lengthened the war, made it more costly, weakened our Afghan allies, and strengthened the Taliban, their jihadist terrorist allies, and their Pakistani sponsors.
In contrast to the mass mobilization of World War II and the mainly draft armies of the Korean and Vietnam Wars, today’s small volunteer armed forces leave many Americans without a direct stake in the fighting. As three consecutive presidents told the American people that the war in Afghanistan was not worth continued sacrifice, it was typical for many citizens to profess support for the troops but not the war. Although their sentiment was preferable to the scorn many people directed at those who did their duty in Vietnam, it will prove difficult for American warriors to maintain bonds of trust with citizens who do not believe that they are engaged in an endeavor that justifies killing others and risking their own lives.
The stain of a lost war that ended in ignominious surrender to a terrorist organization is an affront to the honor of those who fought in Afghanistan. The lack of a commitment to defeat enemies and achieve a favorable political outcome consistent with America’s security and vital interests is not limited to civilian leaders. Senior commanders visited us in Iraq when I was in command of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment. I showed them our mission statement, which contained the purposes of defeating the enemy (al-Qaeda in Iraq), developing capable and legitimate Iraqi forces, and setting conditions for sustainable security and stability. When our visitors questioned the use of the word “defeat,” I explained that we defined “defeat” as the enemy’s no longer having the capability to accomplish his objectives (i.e., establish an Islamist caliphate) through the use of violence. The senior officers, unconvinced, told me that I was exceeding what was expected under a strategy that emphasized a rapid transition to immature Iraqi forces.
A
ll Americans have a role in preserving the warrior ethos. Members of the professional all-volunteer force are distant from their fellow citizens and little understood. Preserving the warrior ethos will require efforts to better understand war and warriors, a rejection of the destructive elements of critical theories, and a concerted effort to improve not only our nation’s strategic competence but also our confidence in our democratic principles and institutions.
The study of military history and ethics can help Americans understand war and warriors. Unfortunately, during the divisive Vietnam War many universities confused the study of war with advocacy of it and tended to view military forces and weapons as propagators of violence rather than protectors of peace. Those who confuse the study of war and strategy with militarism might be reminded that thinking clearly about the problem of war is both an unfortunate necessity and the best way to prevent it. “To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace,” as George Washington observed.
Military and diplomatic history can also help improve strategic competence and strengthen trust between warriors and those responsible for consolidating hard-won military gains into political outcomes. One of the patterns of American military history is to be unprepared for war because of either wishful thinking or a failure to consider continuities in the nature of war — especially war’s political and human dimensions. Revival of military and diplomatic history is important because some social-science theories tend to oversimplify the complex causality of events and to obscure the cultural, psychological, social, and economic elements that distinguish cases from one another. Strategic studies might adopt Richard Betts’s definition of strategy as not only the “link between military means and political ends, the scheme for how to make one produce the other,” but also the “essential ingredient for making war either politically effective or morally tenable.”
Military and civilian leaders in the Department of Defense and those in Congress with oversight of the department must insulate the armed forces from all forms of bigotry and racism, including the principal elements of critical race theory. Leaders should view the history of black military service in the context of black participation in public life and of the long, ongoing struggle for equality of opportunity and equal treatment. Long before the Civil War removed the blight of slavery from our nation and even longer before the struggle for civil rights secured key victories in the 1960s, African Americans fought for their nation in every war. After the Civil War, the U.S. military reflected inequalities in American society while also playing a vital role in dispelling the myths and eroding the racism that underpinned those inequalities. The U.S. military must continue to evolve toward an institution in which all Americans, regardless of the color of their skin, can fully belong and enjoy equal treatment, because nothing is more destructive to teams than racism or any form of prejudice. But civilian and military leaders must not allow reified postmodernist theories to erode the sacred trust between warriors or diminish the meritocracy and objective realities that are essential to preserving the warrior ethos as the foundation of combat effectiveness. Warriors should be judged by their integrity, trustworthiness, physical toughness, mental resilience, courage, selflessness, and humaneness.
Leaders must also explain to the American people the nature of the wars and conflicts in which their sons and daughters fight. Citizens need to know what is at stake and what is the strategy to achieve an outcome worthy of costs, risks, and sacrifices. As General Marshall observed in an address to the American Historical Association in 1939, “in our democracy, where the government is truly an agent of the popular will,” foreign policy and military policy are “dependent on public opinion” and our policies and strategies “will be as good or bad as the public is well informed or poorly informed regarding the factors that bear on the subject.”
Restoring confidence in our common identity as Americans and in our democratic institutions is crucial to attracting young men and women to serve. George Floyd’s murder and the protests and violence it sparked, as well as the assault on our Capitol, exposed deep divisions in our society. Those divisions have sapped confidence in our common identity as Americans.
Study of history can play a role here as well. Divisions in our society and the civil unrest associated with them are not new. A broad historical perspective leads us to the conclusion that we are still coping with the legacy of slavery. As bias and vitriol contaminate the information environment today, the manipulation of history remains an important tool for those who want to sow division and conflict rather than foster unity and goodwill. Ignorance of history compounded by the abuse of history saps our national pride and undermines our ability to work together and improve our nation and our society. Pride in the nation should derive not from a contrived happy view of history but rather from a recognition that the American experiment in freedom and democracy always was and remains a work in progress. It is possible to celebrate the principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence — “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” — and also to recognize that much of our history has cut against those principles and that work remains to realize them fully.
Veterans Day is an opportunity to reflect on the ethos that binds American warriors to one another and compels them to act courageously, endure hardships, take risks, and make sacrifices. As they end their service, many veterans miss that military family and find it challenging to reintegrate into their civilian communities. Understanding better the warrior ethos, why it is important, and what we could all do to preserve and strengthen it might restore pride in the republic that they fought to preserve and help build a better future for generations to come.
— This essay was sponsored by National Review Institute.
This article appears as “The Corrosion of the Warrior Ethos” in the November 15, 2021, print edition of National Review.
6. China Tests an Orbital Hypersonic Nuclear-Capable Weapon
Excerpt:
This is certainly one of the most amazing statements any White House has made about nuclear weapons. We want “stiff competition” in nuclear weapons while we are doing nothing more than stockpile stewardship and China is developing and deploying new types of nuclear weapons? We want “stiff competition” in nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles when the U.S. is not developing any and China is? We want “stiff competition” in orbital nuclear weapons when the Space Treaty bans them, and the U.S. is not developing such a capability while China is? President Biden has said he is concerned about the Chinese hypersonic missile test. However, it is unclear if this is real or political. It is also unclear who is running the store in the Biden administration. Immediately after President Biden said that the U.S. would defend Taiwan if China attacked it, the White House walked it back. The White House did not walk back Ms. Psaski’s statement.
China Tests an Orbital Hypersonic Nuclear-Capable Weapon
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In October 2021, the Financial Times reported that "China tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in August [2021] that circled the globe before speeding towards its target, demonstrating an advanced space capability that caught U.S. intelligence by surprise.” The article continued, “Five people familiar with the test said the Chinese military launched a rocket that carried a hypersonic glide vehicle which flew through low-orbit space before cruising down towards its target.” As a result of this report, which many news organizations picked up, the following exchange took place between a reporter and the White House Press Secretary:
Reporter: And then, can you comment on reports that China tested at nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles over the summer to the surprise of U.S. officials? Are these accurate? And do these raise concerns about China's nuclear capabilities?
Jen Psaki: Well, I know General — Secretary Austin, I should say, was asked this question this morning and addressed it, but I’m not going to comment on the specific report. I can say and would echo what he said, which is, generally speaking, we’ve made clear our concerns about the military capabilities that the PRC continues to pursue. And we have been consistent in our approach with China: We welcome stiff competition, but we do not want that competition to veer into conflict. And that is certainly what we convey privately as well. (Emphasis added)
This is certainly one of the most amazing statements any White House has made about nuclear weapons. We want “stiff competition” in nuclear weapons while we are doing nothing more than stockpile stewardship and China is developing and deploying new types of nuclear weapons? We want “stiff competition” in nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles when the U.S. is not developing any and China is? We want “stiff competition” in orbital nuclear weapons when the Space Treaty bans them, and the U.S. is not developing such a capability while China is? President Biden has said he is concerned about the Chinese hypersonic missile test. However, it is unclear if this is real or political. It is also unclear who is running the store in the Biden administration. Immediately after President Biden said that the U.S. would defend Taiwan if China attacked it, the White House walked it back. The White House did not walk back Ms. Psaski’s statement.
While the media has generally characterized the Chinese test as a “hypersonic missile,” it really is a space weapon that carries a hypersonic glider. The space weapons aspect of it is much more important; it is a secondary issue whether it carried a ballistic RV or a hypersonic glider. It has been described in the press as a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS). This terminology was developed in the 1960s when the Soviets tested such a system. This type of system raised a compliance issue with the Space Treaty. Article IV of this treaty states, “States Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner.” The Chinese rocket reportedly entered orbit before releasing the hypersonic missile. Another important aspect of such a weapon is its potential to launch a surprise nuclear EMP attack. Such an attack would be devastating. This is now a demonstrated capability that does not require the use of an ICBM, an SLBM, or any other type of ballistic missile. This has critical implications for attack warning.
From press reports, we do not know how long this vehicle can remain in orbit before releasing its nuclear payload. It may be more than a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System. Patty-Jane Geller of the Heritage Foundation, who characterized it as an "orbital hypersonic missile," pointed out one of the implications of this new capability: "…systems able to avoid early-warning satellites and radars raise the prospect of a disarming surprise attack that cripples the nation's ability to respond.” David Axe of Forbes magazine wrote, “…a FOBS has great potential for an atomic sneak-attack.’’ The surprise attack aspect is made worse by the report that the launch vehicle was not an ICBM but a Long March space launch vehicle. The U.K. Express reported that:
Dr. Nikolai Sokov, a former Russian diplomat who now works at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, warned the development of such a missile could change the face of global power. He said: 'The remarkable thing about that missile is the simple fact that it can approach the United States from almost any direction.' 'And the most important thing it can evade early warning systems and the missile defence systems in the United States all look north.' And in a shocking admission, he said that the USA could do 'almost nothing' to stop China’s forward march into Space and its capability to attack the USA with hypersonic missiles.
Space launches are common and generally not regarded as threatening. However, they now pose a serious Chinese threat to time-critical targets such as U.S. nuclear command authority, bomber and SLBM bases. The Financial Times reported that its sources were surprised at the Chinese capability. They should not have been. It has long been obvious what China was doing. In 2019, the Trump Administration, in its "Nuclear Employment Strategy," stated that, “Russia and China are developing, testing, and procuring nuclear weapons and delivery systems to support their efforts to upset the international order, including claiming disputed territories and forcefully occupying neighboring lands. Russia, for instance, is expected to grow the size and increase the capabilities of its nuclear arsenal significantly over the next decade.” In August 2021, the Commander of U.S. Strategic Command Admiral Charles Richard said, “We are witnessing a strategic breakout by China….The explosive growth in their nuclear and conventional forces can only be what I described as breathtaking." He added that "…frankly, that word 'breathtaking’ may not be enough.” Admiral Richard characterized China as a “peer” nuclear competitor and noted that we now face two nuclear “peer” competitors, Russia and China, compared to one during the Cold War. What Admiral Richard was talking about was the massive Chinese silo construction program for the large, multiple-warhead DF-41 ICBM. In September 2021, General John Hyten, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed that these missiles could carry 10 warheads.
The massive Chinese silo construction was initially reported by analysts at two NGOs using commercial satellite photography. Admiral Richard confirmed the reports of two new ICBM fields and that each had about 120 silos for the large Chinese DF-41 ICBM. On August 12, 2021, Bill Gertz wrote in The Washington Times that a third ICBM field had been discovered and that, “Together, the three new missile bases will house 350 to 400 new long-range nuclear missiles, U.S. officials said. If 10 warheads are deployed on the DF-41s, China‘s warhead level will increase to more than 4,000 warheads on its DF-41s alone.” Subsequently, Gertz revised the silo number to 350.
Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall has warned that “China is acquiring a first-strike capability.” As early as 2006, former U.S. military attaché’s to China, Col. (ret.) Larry Wortzel, Co-Chairman of the U.S.-China Commission, wrote that China’s nuclear “no first use” pledge is a cleverly worded but meaningless formulation. It is no longer just Chinese generals that have been threatening nuclear weapons first use. The Communist Party of China recently threatened Japan: “We will use nuclear bombs first…. We will use nuclear bombs continuously. We will do this until Japan declares unconditional surrender for the second time.”
Unfortunately, the Biden White House does not appear to be taking the Chinese nuclear threat seriously. The Biden Nuclear Posture Review may actually make cuts in the legacy Obama-Trump programs. In light of the Chinese threat to Taiwan and other Asian nations, this is irresponsible. The actual Chinese nuclear programs are far greater than just the ICBM silos and the FOB program. Like those of Russia, they dwarf current U.S. nuclear modernization programs, and the threat must be countered.
Dr. Mark B. Schneider is a Senior Analyst with the National Institute for Public Policy. Before his retirement from the Department of Defense Senior Executive Service, Dr. Schneider served in a number of senior positions within the Office of Secretary of Defense for Policy including Principal Director for Forces Policy, Principal Director for Strategic Defense, Space and Verification Policy, Director for Strategic Arms Control Policy and Representative of the Secretary of Defense to the Nuclear Arms Control Implementation Commissions. He also served in the senior Foreign Service as a Member of the State Department Policy Planning Staff.
Notes:
John R. Harvey, “Speaking Notes: Anticipating the Biden Nuclear Posture Review 2021 Nuclear Deterrence Summit Westin Alexandria Hotel Alexandria, VA,” August 5, 2021, mimeo, p. 2
7. US Air Force looks to make jet fuel from atmospheric carbon dioxide
I think we forget how much military R&D has contributed to the public good in areas other than defense. If this comes to fruition this could be one of the greatest contributions in history (should rival the development of Tang).
US Air Force looks to make jet fuel from atmospheric carbon dioxide
The US Air Force is studying the feasibility of a process developed by tech company Twelve that could allow the manufacture of a carbon-neutral aviation fuel called E-Jet anywhere on Earth using only carbon dioxide from the air, water, and renewable energy.
Any air force that has evolved beyond gliders is tethered to the supply lines that transport and store the fuel needed to keep its machines in the air. This is not only expensive and complicated when it comes to refueling distant bases, it's also dangerous because such supply lines are prime targets for enemy forces. According to the US Air Force, attacks on fuel and water convoys in Afghanistan accounted for 30 percent of coalition casualties.
As an alternative, the USAF is looking for ways to make its bases at least partly independent of outside fuel sources by means of a deployable, scalable synthesis process that doesn't need a large number of specialists to operate.
The process developed by Twelve is referred to by the company as "industrial photosynthesis" and uses polymer electrolyte membrane electrolysis, which is a sort of inverted fuel cell, with a metal catalyst installed on a cathode to break down carbon dioxide and water into their component ions and then convert them into oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide.
These are then put through the Fischer-Tropsch process, which is a series of reactions developed in Germany in the 1920s that, in steps, turns them into methane and then increasingly complex organic molecules like polyethylene, ethanol, ethylene, methane, polypropylene, and, as of August 2021, jet fuel.
The current pilot phase is expected to be completed by December and the results will then be assessed. If the technology is practical for military applications, it will mean that the USAF will potentially be able to produce synthetic fuel onsite without the need for coal, natural gas, or biofuel. According to Twelve, it might even be possible to harvest not only the carbon dioxide from the air, but the water as well.
For the next step, the USAF will look into scaling up the process to produce practical supplies of the fuel, which can be blended with conventional fuel in ratios of up to 50 percent. However, there are still basic problems that need to be resolved – not the least of which is to find a renewable way to power the process.
"My office is looking at a number of initiatives to not only optimize aviation fuel use for improved combat capability, but to reduce the logistics burden as well," says Roberto Guerrero, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for operational energy. "We’re excited about the potential of carbon transformation to support this effort and Twelve’s technology – as one of the tools in our toolbox – could help us get there."
8. Northern Va. authorities on alert after learning of potential threat to shopping centers
Seems like a fairly specific threat despite the report that they have word of unspecified possible threats. Malls and Shopping centers seem fairly specific.
Excerpts:
“Yesterday we received information,” Davis said, “concerning potential public safety impacts to malls and shopping centers across the region. As you all know we take any and all information seriously, and as we work to corroborate it, we have increased our police presence throughout the county to include major thoroughfares, transit hubs, shopping plazas and shopping malls.”
Northern Va. authorities on alert after learning of potential threat to shopping centers
Police in Northern Virginia increased their presence around shopping centers and other highly populated areas Friday after receiving word of an unspecified possible threat to those areas, several police departments said.
Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis disclosed the threat during a Friday news conference, but said he had no specifics of who or what was behind the threat, or any specific targets. Police officials in Prince William, Loudoun and Arlington counties and Alexandria City also said they had received nonspecific information about a threat, were increasing their vigilance and referred inquiries to the FBI.
The FBI declined to comment on any specifics but said it “takes all potential threats to public safety seriously and we take all appropriate steps to determine the credibility of any information we receive.”
“Yesterday we received information,” Davis said, “concerning potential public safety impacts to malls and shopping centers across the region. As you all know we take any and all information seriously, and as we work to corroborate it, we have increased our police presence throughout the county to include major thoroughfares, transit hubs, shopping plazas and shopping malls.”
Davis said he had little other information, but felt he had to act on what there was. He said “information is constantly flowing back and forth” between public safety agencies at the local and federal level in the D.C. region. “When we receive information like we did over the past 24 hours, that we think we need to act on, we act on it. And that’s all we’re doing in this case, out of an abundance of caution.”
Davis noted that Halloween is Sunday, Fairfax public schools are off Monday and Tuesday, and Election Day is Tuesday so police would likely have stepped up their readiness anyway, the chief said.
9. Why H.R. McMaster thinks Biden’s foreign policy is putting the country in danger
Excerpts:
Deseret: You had a rich career of service. What’s your biggest takeaway?
McMaster: It’s easy to see the challenges and difficulties associated with military service — separation from family, being in dangerous and arduous situations, and most difficult of all, seeing people who you love or care for get killed or wounded in battle. But what many Americans don’t see is how it feels to be part of something bigger than yourself and part of a team where the man or woman next to you is wanting to give everything including their own lives for you. What you see in Afghanistan is a cause for heartbreak and disappointment, but it also ought to be a source of pride, because now you can see what our effort there was preventing from happening for two decades. For those who have lost confidence in what America stands for, and serving in uniform, I think the opposite ought to be the case. We need the best of our young men and women to serve now more than ever.
Why H.R. McMaster thinks Biden’s foreign policy is putting the country in danger
The word “surrender” is rarely used to describe American foreign policy. Yet that is how H.R. McMaster characterizes the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Testifying to Congress after a chaotic end to America’s 20-year campaign in the country, the retired Army general and former national security adviser lambasted both the Trump and Biden administrations for their roles in unwinding what he calls “a lost war.”
It was not the first time he made important people uncomfortable. You might say he’s made a career of it.
McMaster was a young but accomplished officer and a Ph.D. student at the University of North Carolina when he wrote “Dereliction of Duty,” critically examining the failure of senior military leaders to oppose policies that ultimately led to America’s downfall in Vietnam. He later advised Gen. David Petraeus as he developed counterinsurgency strategies during the Iraq War, and served in the Training and Doctrine Command, crafting the Army’s long-term philosophies. But he was also passed over for promotions that some believe he deserved, even as young soldiers studied battles he won in Iraq.
Ironically, that maverick reputation may have appealed to former President Donald Trump, who made McMaster his national security adviser from 2017 to 2018. In that role, McMaster recently told Deseret Magazine, he presented options for sustaining a manageable level of engagement in Afghanistan, intended to preserve stability in the region and prevent terrorist attacks, and that’s what the president chose to do. McMaster is clearly dismayed that Trump later changed tack, a year after McMaster agreed to resign.
When you talk to McMaster, two realities quickly become clear. First, he says what he thinks, unconstrained by partisan loyalties or social niceties. Second, he believes in the military as both an institution and a collection of individuals who he venerates for their talents and their spirit of service. Our conversation is edited for length and clarity.
Deseret: Was leaving Afghanistan not the right decision?
H.R. McMaster: We left because of a mantra of ending endless wars, and I believe we talked ourselves into it. Our level of effort in Afghanistan had become quite small, especially relative to the peak of that war. By 2018, we had about 10,000 troops there, and the Afghans were bearing the brunt of the fight. It was sustainable as an insurance policy to prevent what’s happening now. That was the path that President Trump initially chose in 2017, but in 2019 he departed from that and initiated what I would describe as capitulation negotiations with the Taliban. In 2021, President Biden doubled down on that.
Deseret: What went wrong in our departure?
McMaster: What you see in Afghanistan are the consequences of a lost war. The cost of the evacuation in terms of Afghan and American lives has already far exceeded the cost of the war in recent years. And it’s striking that we prioritized withdrawal over our own interest. Across both the Trump and Biden administrations, we made concession after concession to the Taliban. We strengthened the Taliban and weakened the Afghan government and security forces on our way out.
Deseret: Nearly half of American adults (46%) say we ought to pay less attention overseas and concentrate more on the problems at home. Why should Americans care about foreign policy?
McMaster: When challenges to our security, our prosperity and our future develop abroad, they can only be dealt with at an exorbitant cost once they reach our shores. This is the fundamental lesson of 9/11. Remember, al-Qaida declared war on the U.S. in the 1990s, but nobody paid attention, even when they first bombed the World Trade Center in 1993. When they attacked our embassies in Africa in 1998, we fired a few cruise missiles and called it a day. Of course, we all know what happened on Sept. 11, 2001. It was devastating.
You can say the same about the COVID-19 pandemic, which China failed to contain. We need a sustainable approach to foreign affairs and national security that recognizes that the world is interconnected. Technology has ensured that the two great moats of the Atlantic and the Pacific no longer provide us with the security that they once did.
Deseret: In foreign policy, are you a realist or an idealist?
McMaster: Those labels aren’t that useful. That polarization is rooted in what I call strategic narcissism, defining the world only in relation to us, and assuming that what we do or choose not to do is decisive in determining the outcome. On what might be called the self-loathing far left, many believe that America is the problem and therefore disengagement is good. And on the far right you have neo-isolationism, driven by a mild form of bigotry. But what they both fail to recognize is that others also have agency and authorship over the future, including our adversaries, rivals and enemies. As G.K. Chesterton observed, the best way to settle differences is to ensure they’re not settled for you.
Deseret: But should the United States be trying to export democracy and engage in nation building?
McMaster: I don’t believe we were trying to turn Afghanistan into Denmark. It just needed to be Afghanistan. That country needed a government consistent with their traditions, with their culture, with their decentralized nature. At the same time, we needed to establish a political order that was hostile to jihadist terrorists. And that’s what we had developed, and that’s what we gave up. Their society had been transformed since 2001, but not into a Jeffersonian democracy. We wasted a lot of effort based on unrealistic assumptions about Afghanistan.
Deseret: A majority of Americans support withdrawal. Why would sticking around be worth all the treasure, toil and lives that it would require?
McMaster: When terrorists have a haven and a support base they become more dangerous by orders of magnitude. That’s what occurred with al-Qaida prior to 9/11 and it’s what occurred in Iraq after our withdrawal in 2011. That December, when Biden was still vice president, he called President Obama and said, ‘Thank you for allowing me to end this war.’ The conceit behind that statement is that wars end when one party disengages. Instead, al-Qaida in Iraq morphed into ISIS, the most destructive terrorist organization in history, conducting well over 190 attacks internationally including the Brussels airport and Paris attacks, and inspired the San Bernardino attack in the United States. The reality is that when we disengage we’re not safer. There are already more than 20 U.S.-designated terrorist organizations along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Deseret: A year into President Biden’s administration, how do you grade his foreign policy? Is America better or worse off?
McMaster: Worse off, for sure. We’re only beginning to see the consequences of the disastrous surrender in Afghanistan, and both the humanitarian and political costs will mount. Remember when everybody was upset about Donald Trump’s mean tweets to allies? Well, we just abandoned the citizens of allied countries in Afghanistan. It’s going to affect American influence, and we’re going to pay a security cost as well. China immediately sent a message to Taiwan that said, ‘Hey, do you think America has your back?’ Look at what just happened over there. Pakistan, who supported the Taliban against us, is essentially a client state of China. And the Russians are emboldened in the region as well. And you’re seeing a whole range of hedging behavior on the part of allies and partners who don’t believe that the United States is reliable.
Deseret: What did the Trump administration do well with regard to foreign policy, and what should the administration have done differently?
McMaster: The shift from cooperation and engagement with China to transparent competition was long overdue. We were clinging to unrealistic assumptions that China, welcomed into the international order, would play by the rules and liberalize its economy and its form of governance. On the other hand, the biggest failures were prioritizing withdrawal from Afghanistan and the tendency to view the greater Middle East as a mess to be avoided under the assumption that problems that develop there stay there and just can’t get any worse. It can get worse.
Deseret: What was it like to work in the White House? Are you satisfied with the job you did?
McMaster: It was a privilege to serve as national security adviser. I was in my 34th year of military service, and President Trump was the fifth commander in chief I’d served. What I endeavored to do was to give him the best analysis and advice from across the departments and agencies of our government, informed by the perspectives of others in academia or the private sector and like-minded partners internationally. And to give him multiple options in each situation, recognizing that he’s the one who got elected. A national security adviser is the only person in the national security establishment who has the president as his or her only client. And I think I served the president well. But it is a competitive environment, and I’m sure this is true across Washington, D.C., in terms of individuals trying to advance narrow agendas.
Deseret: You had a rich career of service. What’s your biggest takeaway?
McMaster: It’s easy to see the challenges and difficulties associated with military service — separation from family, being in dangerous and arduous situations, and most difficult of all, seeing people who you love or care for get killed or wounded in battle. But what many Americans don’t see is how it feels to be part of something bigger than yourself and part of a team where the man or woman next to you is wanting to give everything including their own lives for you. What you see in Afghanistan is a cause for heartbreak and disappointment, but it also ought to be a source of pride, because now you can see what our effort there was preventing from happening for two decades. For those who have lost confidence in what America stands for, and serving in uniform, I think the opposite ought to be the case. We need the best of our young men and women to serve now more than ever.
10. Inspector general for Afghanistan war pressured by State, DOD to redact reports
A problematic allegation. We must do better.
Inspector general for Afghanistan war pressured by State, DOD to redact reports
The Hill · by Rebecca Beitsch · October 29, 2021
The inspector general charged with reviewing U.S. involvement in Afghanistan said Friday that he has faced recent pressure from the State Department to redact some of their reports while noting the Pentagon classified much of its work detailing the failings of the country’s own military forces.
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), John Sopko, referenced numerous attempts to “impede” his work, adding that “U.S. agencies have not made honest reporting easy for SIGAR.”
Sopko’s comments, published on SIGAR's website, came at the Military Reporters & Editors Association annual conference, where the inspector general details multiple efforts by State to get SIGAR to redact information from its reports, including removing all mentions of former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.
“Shortly after the fall of Kabul, the State Department wrote to me and other oversight agencies requesting to ‘temporarily suspend access’ to all ‘audit, inspection, and financial audit … reports’ on our website because the Department was afraid that information included in those reports could put Afghan allies at risk,” Sopko said.
“But despite repeated requests, State was never able to describe any specific threats to individuals that were supposedly contained in our reports, nor did State ever explain how removing our reports now could possibly protect anyone since many were years old and already extensively disseminated worldwide. Nevertheless, with great reservation, I acceded to State’s initial request because it was made at the height of the emergency evacuation from Afghanistan.”
After Sopko complied, State returned with another request, this time passing along a spreadsheet listing some 2,400 items it wanted redacted — something SIGAR reviewed and “found all but four to be without merit.”
“Given how hard the Department reportedly was working to evacuate Americans from Afghanistan and resettle Afghan refugees, I was surprised they found the time to go through every one of our reports and compile such an exhaustive list,” he said.
“Upon reviewing their request, it quickly became clear to us that State had little, if any, criteria for determining whether the information actually endangered anyone," he added.
Among the requests was a plea to remove the name of a USAID official who publicly testified before Congress in 2017 and whose testimony is still posted on the committee’s site. It also asked SIGAR to remove Ghani’s name from all of its reports.
“While I’m sure the former President may wish to be excised from the annals of history, I don’t believe he faces any threats simply from being referenced by SIGAR,” Sopko said.
Sopko’s speech also detailed past efforts from the Department of Defense (DOD) going back to 2015 to restrict information on the performance of the Afghan security forces, purportedly at the request of the Afghan government.
Sopko said that information would have been important to share with lawmakers and blunted widespread surprise over the rapid fall of the country’s security forces to the Taliban.
“In essence, [it was] nearly all the information you needed to know to determine whether the Afghan security forces were a real fighting force or a house of cards waiting to fall. In light of recent events, it is not surprising that the Afghan government, and likely some in DOD, wanted to keep that information under lock and key,” Sopko said.
“This information almost certainly would have benefited Congress and the public in assessing whether progress was being made in Afghanistan and, more importantly, whether we should have ended our efforts there earlier. Yet SIGAR was forced to relegate this information into classified appendices.”
Sopko ended with a call to DOD declassify this information now that the U.S. has withdrawn.
“DOD should immediately make available to SIGAR and the public the information restricted at the request of the Ghani government, for the simple reason that there no longer is a Ghani government and the Afghan security forces have already completely collapsed,” he said.
Neither the State Department nor DOD responded to request for comment.
The Hill · by Rebecca Beitsch · October 29, 2021
11. Prof. David Silbey Analyzes How and Why the U.S. Lost its Longest War in Webinar
Excerpts:
The historian outlined two main weaknesses that American military ventures in Afghanistan suffered, which mirrored those in Vietnam.
The first was an inability to handle small-scale, unconventional warfare. The last “irregular war” that the U.S. won was the Philippine-American War in 1902, which relied on local and tribal alliances and the recruitment of Filipinos.
...
The second weakness Silbey outlined was the American failure to view war as a series of actions followed by reactions rather than a static cultural archetype.
Silbey then discussed why it took so long for the U.S. to withdraw from Afghanistan and why that withdrawal went poorly.
Isn't the second point an indictment on operational art and campaigning in irregular warfare?
Prof. David Silbey Analyzes How and Why the U.S. Lost its Longest War in Webinar
On Tuesday, Prof. David Silbey, history, discussed how America lost the longest war it has ever fought in a virtual event.
Silbey unpacked the American approach to combat as informed by previous military conflicts, positing several cultural reasons why the War in Afghanistan dragged on as long as it did.
At the beginning of the talk, Silbey posed a question: “How did the world’s largest superpower, whose military dwarfs the rest of the world, get so humbled by a small, fairly nondescript country?”
The historian outlined two main weaknesses that American military ventures in Afghanistan suffered, which mirrored those in Vietnam.
The first was an inability to handle small-scale, unconventional warfare. The last “irregular war” that the U.S. won was the Philippine-American War in 1902, which relied on local and tribal alliances and the recruitment of Filipinos.
In the 20th century, new high technology weapons including poisonous gases, drones and submarines fundamentally changed the American understanding of war, Sibley said.
Leaderboard 2
“In some ways, we deliberately gave up the knowledge of how to fight Afghanistan at the end of the 19th century to fight a new and different kind of war,” he said, “and we never got it back.”
The second weakness Silbey outlined was the American failure to view war as a series of actions followed by reactions rather than a static cultural archetype.
Silbey then discussed why it took so long for the U.S. to withdraw from Afghanistan and why that withdrawal went poorly.
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In 2003, when the Taliban retreated from Afghanistan, Silbey said that U.S. forces could have left the country, but when the Bush administration invaded Iraq, Afghanistan was put on the backburner.
“We might have said, ‘We’ve done what we set out to do,’” said Silbey, “but this was really a period of what I would call aimlessness.”
Without achieving both aims of invasion — capturing Osama bin Laden and rebuilding the Afghan nation — any president who pulled troops out would have faced strong political opposition, Silbey said. American foreign policy establishment within the military and academia were strongly in favor of staying in the war at the time.
The Taliban built its strength back after retreating from Afghanistan in 2003. When former President Obama came to office, though he explicitly campaigned for president on a platform of leaving Afghanistan and Iraq, their attacks on U.S. establishments made it clear that the war couldn’t end.
Former President Trump signed the Doha agreement on February 29, 2020 — detailing American troops’ withdrawal — and agreed complete evacuation would take place by August 2021. By placing withdrawal after the 2020 elections, Silbey said, he avoided the political consequences of exiting Afghanistan.
President Biden honored the agreement last August and took the political hit; the public roundly criticized his choice to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.
“[The] sheer chaos of evacuation and the constant vision of that on our screens really made it seem like the administration was doing it the worst possible way,” Silbey said.
12. Afghan Crime Wave Adds to Taliban Dystopia
A sad and tragic state of affairs.
Excerpts:
The Taliban, with a government made up of former fighters and sanctioned terrorists with little to no experience of governing, has proved unable to cope with any of the economic challenges, let alone the deteriorating security situation. Partly that’s due to infighting, with different Taliban factions jostling for control of Kabul while also trying to prevent the defection of foot soldiers to the local branch of the Islamic State. But the group’s inability to tame the crime wave risks sparking civil unrest as the population reaches a breaking point.
“The Taliban leadership can’t deliver services, including security, as a government because they are more focused on internal power struggles,” said Waliullah Rahmani, a longtime Afghan analyst. “That is why people have grown frustrated and this situation needs just a small spark to change to unrest.”
Ironically, a tough line on crime was one of the few, if brutal, high spots of the Taliban’s last regime, which ruled the country from 1996 to 2001. The Taliban dealt with thieves by cutting off their hands and with murderers by public execution.
While there have been some gruesome displays of rough justice for alleged criminals—including the killing of two suspected kidnappers whose corpses were publicly displayed in Herat city—this time around, the Taliban themselves seem a big part of the problem.
Afghan Crime Wave Adds to Taliban Dystopia
A rash of robbings, kidnappings, and even killings is aggravating Afghanistan’s dire situation.
A Taliban fighter stands along a road in Herat, Afghanistan, on Sept. 19. HOSHANG HASHIMI/AFP via Getty Images
As economic collapse and humanitarian catastrophe stalk Afghanistan, a spike in serious crime and concerns about civil unrest are adding pressure on a population facing a Himalayan winter and already struggling with rising prices, vanishing cash, and unemployment.
Reports are emerging of families selling baby girls to raise money to buy food as poverty and hunger bite deeper and law and order breaks down further. Sources in the capital, Kabul, said kidnappings and extortion are daily occurrences, with Taliban foot soldiers killing on contract to earn cash as they are not being paid.
“It’s $2,000 to kidnap someone and $5,000 to kill someone,” said a former Afghan security official who is closely monitoring the crime wave.
As economic collapse and humanitarian catastrophe stalk Afghanistan, a spike in serious crime and concerns about civil unrest are adding pressure on a population facing a Himalayan winter and already struggling with rising prices, vanishing cash, and unemployment.
Reports are emerging of families selling baby girls to raise money to buy food as poverty and hunger bite deeper and law and order breaks down further. Sources in the capital, Kabul, said kidnappings and extortion are daily occurrences, with Taliban foot soldiers killing on contract to earn cash as they are not being paid.
“It’s $2,000 to kidnap someone and $5,000 to kill someone,” said a former Afghan security official who is closely monitoring the crime wave.
“Crime and poverty are excruciatingly high. The Taliban are not out to stop it, and it’s not that they can’t contain the crime—they are part of it,” he said, speaking on the condition that he not be named. “The rank and file are too poor and corrupt; they can’t get money any other way. It’s just like the warlords in the 1990s.”
Kabul residents said gangs roam the streets, stopping, searching, and robbing people at random. They say armed men routinely stop cars and rob the occupants.
“They seem to be very professional, also young, uneducated, and unemployed,” said another former Afghan government official, now in hiding. “Nothing here is in order. Life is not properly normal. Kabul is a lost and dead city.”
Officials of the former government, intelligence service, and military have been snatched from their homes after applying for passports and providing biometric and other identification information, he said.
The Taliban are also using lists of former officials and civil activists to pinpoint their children. “They took four such sons from a prominent school in Kabul. When the police station was asked, they said, ‘We don’t know who entered the school,’” the source said. “Life is broken.”
Another Kabul resident said the father of an associate was kidnapped and a ransom of $3 million demanded for his release. “But no one has that sort of money; they couldn’t pay, and he was killed,” he said. Cars are being stolen almost daily from homes in previously safe neighborhoods, he added.
Local media have reported more than 40 kidnappings of businessmen in the two months since the Taliban took control. Other sources have said the number is much higher, though the lack of a functioning bureaucracy means there are paltry official statistics. The bulk of the kidnappings occured in Kabul, Kandahar, Nangarhar, Kunduz, Herat, and Balk provinces, the deputy head of the Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Industries told Tolo News.
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The Taliban promised justice. They are hard-pressed to provide it.
Without urgent assistance, nearly the entire country could sink into poverty, the United Nations Development Program warns.
The crime wave adds to myriad other woes for the Afghan population. Unemployment has skyrocketed, and people are largely unable to get cash from banks. The World Bank has stopped funding development and aid projects. The United Nations and the European Union are struggling to distribute food and medicine. Borders are closed, curtailing imports even further.
Food and fuel prices have roughly doubled since the Taliban takeover, and both are expected to get pricier as winter sets in. The Afghan currency has lost value against the U.S. dollar—from a nominal rate of 80 afghanis to the dollar before the takeover to about 91 afghanis today. But it’s moot: There are no dollars to be had.
With few jobs and no money, even paying for housing is becoming a problem.
“Eviction is also going to be an issue as most people live in rented homes and can no longer afford to pay rent,” said a former official of Afghanistan’s Ministry of Interior Affairs, speaking on condition of anonymity. Many families already live in makeshift camps in and around big cities after fleeing violence.
The Taliban, with a government made up of former fighters and sanctioned terrorists with little to no experience of governing, has proved unable to cope with any of the economic challenges, let alone the deteriorating security situation. Partly that’s due to infighting, with different Taliban factions jostling for control of Kabul while also trying to prevent the defection of foot soldiers to the local branch of the Islamic State. But the group’s inability to tame the crime wave risks sparking civil unrest as the population reaches a breaking point.
“The Taliban leadership can’t deliver services, including security, as a government because they are more focused on internal power struggles,” said Waliullah Rahmani, a longtime Afghan analyst. “That is why people have grown frustrated and this situation needs just a small spark to change to unrest.”
Ironically, a tough line on crime was one of the few, if brutal, high spots of the Taliban’s last regime, which ruled the country from 1996 to 2001. The Taliban dealt with thieves by cutting off their hands and with murderers by public execution.
While there have been some gruesome displays of rough justice for alleged criminals—including the killing of two suspected kidnappers whose corpses were publicly displayed in Herat city—this time around, the Taliban themselves seem a big part of the problem.
Lynne O’Donnell is an Australian journalist and author. She was the Afghanistan bureau chief for Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press between 2009 and 2017.
13. VIDEO: US 'Did Not Fail' In Afghanistan, Legendary French Writer Says - Zenger News
This paragraph is quite a critique that basically says we fail to understand the entire scope of the human domain.
Excerpts:
What keeps America’s State department and the West’s thinking and writing classes from seeing the realities in Central Asia, West Africa and elsewhere, BHL said, is that they refuse to see the power of tribes and religions to cause conflicts. They only seem to understand economic conflicts — who gets what — and can’t grasp that humans will kill and die for non-material things.
“If they recognize that, they have to act,” said BHL. “And they don’t want to act.”
While diplomats, intellectuals and pundits are weary of overseas adventures, BHL believes millions of American Christians and Jews still see the need to use Western power to save foreign lives.
“America is not just another country. France is not just — I don’t know — Costa Rica,” he said. “We are, you Americans plus little France, great countries with great values, with creeds. There are not so many countries who are based on a creed, you know.”
VIDEO: US 'Did Not Fail' In Afghanistan, Legendary French Writer Says - Zenger News
zenger.news · by Richard Miniter and Hamil R. Harris · October 28, 2021
After Afghanistan, America must not retreat from the world, says the famed French journalist Bernard-Henri Lévy, a man so famous in France that everyone from taxi drivers to diplomats refers to him simply as “BHL.”
BHL saw gaunt, haunted faces of Libyans still mourning their relatives, lying in mass graves, Uyghur Muslims who have been displaced and dispossessed by Han Chinese communists, and the sad, resigned faces of hopeless Arab refugees on the Greek isle of Lesbos.
Nigeria could be the next Rwanda, he said, and a key test for the administration of Joseph R. Biden Jr. Rwanda, the site of a 1990s genocide, was faulted as a major failing during the Clinton years and a “problem from hell” by former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power. Today, Biden has put her in charge of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The U.S. and France only woke up to Rwanda “when the genocide was over,” BHL said in Paris during an interview with Zenger. “In Nigeria — I’m very careful, but we have the seeds, the start of a possible genocide. But this time we can stop it.”
Bernard-Henri Lévy in Moria, Lesbos’ overcrowded and dismal refugee camp, where he met with many refugees suffering at the gates of Europe. (Marc Roussel)
It’s not Hutu vs. Tutsi, he said. It’s radicalized Muslims creating “daily bloodbaths of Christians in Nigeria, who are killed with the complicity of the army, just because they are Christians.”
The West can take a stand, said BHL, and make trade with Nigeria — the ten-figure sale of oil and fishes — conditional upon keeping Christians safe from 21st-century pogroms. But will they?
“Probably not, but we have to try,” he said. In his book, he makes a case for staring into the stark realities and making hard choices that may cost tens of billions in trade in exchange for saving tens of thousands of lives.
A similar choice awaits the U.S. in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, where the son of the legendary insurgent leader Ahmad Shah Massoud commands the remains of the anti-Taliban resistance.
Bernard-Henri Lévy in Nigeria. (Gilles Hertzog)
“The word ‘surrender’ is not part of our vocabulary,” the younger Massoud once told BHL, he said.
Two days before the September 11 attacks, al-Qaeda members posing as a European news crew killed the elder Massoud with a bomb hidden in their camera gear. Months earlier, Massoud had prophetically warned the European Parliament in Strasbourg that al-Qaeda would be a direct danger to the West.
The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan doesn’t mean that the war has ended, BHL said, but only that the victims will now be America’s former allies in “this deep night which has fallen upon Afghanistan, behind this iron curtain.”
Bernard-Henri Lévy in Iraqi Kurdistan, pictured here with General Sirwan Barzani and the Peshmerga. (Gilles Hertzog)
From its independence after World War I, to the Soviet-inspired civil war of the 1970s, Afghanistan was a largely peaceful monarchy that kept out of its neighbors’ wars and provided scholarships for women to attend college. Women didn’t cover their faces and mixed freely with men at bars and discos.
After decades of war and Taliban rule, American intervention restored Afghanistan’s tolerant civil society, for a time. “Ladies began to walk freely in the streets. Burqas began to disappear. A free press started up and was founded,” said BHL.
All traces of that liberal past are vanishing fast. Gone is “the right for women not to be death-stoned,” said BHL, for refusing to wear what he called “a jail of tissue” on their faces.
“We did not fail. You Americans … did not fail. We won this war,” said BHL. “There was a real democratic aspiration in Afghanistan, which we just encouraged, helped. We, just by our presence, we dissuaded the Taliban too, for years, ’til now. Until this dark day of August 15.”
Bernard-Henri Lévy in Leptis Magna, Libya. (Marc Roussel)
What keeps America’s State department and the West’s thinking and writing classes from seeing the realities in Central Asia, West Africa and elsewhere, BHL said, is that they refuse to see the power of tribes and religions to cause conflicts. They only seem to understand economic conflicts — who gets what — and can’t grasp that humans will kill and die for non-material things.
“If they recognize that, they have to act,” said BHL. “And they don’t want to act.”
While diplomats, intellectuals and pundits are weary of overseas adventures, BHL believes millions of American Christians and Jews still see the need to use Western power to save foreign lives.
“America is not just another country. France is not just — I don’t know — Costa Rica,” he said. “We are, you Americans plus little France, great countries with great values, with creeds. There are not so many countries who are based on a creed, you know.”
Edited by David Martosko and Kristen Butler
Visuals produced and edited by Claire Swift, John Diaz and Bennett Chess
zenger.news · by Richard Miniter and Hamil R. Harris · October 28, 2021
14. ‘I just want to work hard’: Afghan pilot who protected US airman starts over in America
Another Afghan refugee who will become a great American as so many refugees and immigrants do.
‘I just want to work hard’: Afghan pilot who protected US airman starts over in America
Mohammed Naiem Asadi, his wife Rahima and their daughter Zainab, 5, relax at their home in the suburbs of Atlantic City, N.J., on Oct. 26, 2021. Asadi, a former helicopter pilot, left Afghanistan in June, months before the Taliban's takeover of the country. (J.P. Lawrence/Stars and Stripes)
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — The man who once was Afghanistan’s ace helicopter pilot is now a dad in suburban New Jersey, building a new life while continuing to think about those left behind.
At the controls of his MD-530 attack helicopter, Mohammed Naiem Asadi was a fearsome foe of the insurgents.
He reputedly killed more Taliban than any other pilot in the Afghan air force, and was lauded by the U.S. military for protecting an American pilot whose airplane had crashed.
He received death threats from the Taliban, which U.S. authorities reviewed before agreeing to allow him and his family into America last year.
But at the last moment, the Pentagon reversed its endorsement, saying later that so many military personnel were under threat that letting them seek refuge would gut the Afghan security forces.
Mohammed Naiem Asadi helps himself to some chickpeas cooked by his wife, Rahima, at their home in the suburbs of Atlantic City, N.J., Oct. 26, 2021. (J.P. Lawrence/Stars and Stripes)
Asadi and his family went into hiding for months while reapplying for asylum. They were eventually accepted and arrived in New Jersey in June, a few months before the collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Kabul prompted mass evacuations from the country.
“I’m very grateful to be in America,” Asadi said Tuesday, a year after he had gone into hiding.
He shudders at what could have happened had they not left before Kabul fell.
"We might not have been able to get out of Afghanistan," he said.
But many of his fellow pilots remain at risk of retribution from the Taliban, he said. Many, like him, faced death threats before U.S.-backed government fell and are in hiding after participating in America’s $8.5 billion program to train the Afghan air force.
“The Taliban will kill these people if they are found out,” Asadi said.
Rahima Asadi hugs her daughter, Zainab, 5, after school in the suburbs of Atlantic City, N.J., Oct. 26, 2021. Rahima's husband, Mohammed was a M-530 Attack Helicopter pilot in Afghanistan before he evacuated his family as the Taliban took over the country. (J.P. Lawrence/Stars and Stripes)
Mohammed Naiem Asadi helps his daughter Zainab, 5, hang up her art at their home in the suburbs of Atlantic City, N.J., Oct. 26, 2021. (J.P. Lawrence/Stars and Stripes)
Zainab Asadi, 5, heads up a ramp to her house in the suburbs of Atlantic City, N.J. (J.P. Lawrence/Stars and Stripes)
Some 5,000 people – a number that includes Afghan airmen, members of the Special Mission Wing and their families – still need to be evacuated from the country, said David Hicks, a retired brigadier general and head of training for the Afghan air force from 2016 to 2017. An additional 4,000 more may be added to the group’s database after their identities are confirmed.
“It’s our duty to help them,” said Hicks, who is part of a group called Operation Sacred Promise, which includes dozens of former U.S. advisers to Afghan pilots among its members.
About 150 Afghan flyers and other military personnel are stuck in the neighboring nation of Tajikistan. The group flew on 16 planes across Afghanistan’s northern border and were interned by the Tajik government, Reuters news agency reported. Since then, they’ve waited for word on whether they can come to America.
Meanwhile, the Taliban have said they will not harm former military personnel who rejoin Afghanistan’s armed forces. Some may take the offer, Asadi said.
But he doubts the Taliban would so easily forgive the pilots who inflicted so many casualties upon them.
“No one can trust them,” he said.
Asadi said he tries to focus on his new life, but news from his homeland sometimes overwhelms him.
He recently watched as the Taliban government honored suicide bombers in a ceremony in Kabul. He couldn’t sleep that night and still felt sick the next morning.
Mohammed Naiem Asadi practices flying with an old edition of Microsoft Flight Simulator at his home in the suburbs of Atlantic City, N.J., Oct. 26, 2021. (J.P. Lawrence/Stars and Stripes)
Rahima Asadi checks whether her daughter Zainab, 5, has homework at their home in the suburbs of Atlantic City, N.J., Oct. 26, 2021. (J.P. Lawrence/Stars and Stripes)
Asadi spends much of his time trying to improve his English by reading airplane manuals, watching online videos about aviation, and flying through digital skies with an old version of Microsoft Flight Simulator.
“It’s hard for me to not work,” said Asadi, adding he hasn’t yet received a work permit.
His wife Rahima also wants to work someday, but first she needs to learn English, her husband said. She has been learning from her daughter, who each day brings a new word home to study, Rahima Asadi said.
Both parents are excited for how much Zainab, their daughter, seems to enjoy school.
In English, she listed the friends she has made. Zainab, 5, asked her father to hang up a piece of art she had crafted out of construction paper and glue. Like many children, she is a big fan of dinosaurs and Elsa, the queen from the Disney movie “Frozen.”
Zainab Asadi, 5, shows off some art she made while her father checks over what she did in school, at their home in the suburbs of Atlantic City, N.J., Oct. 26, 2021. (J.P. Lawrence/Stars and Stripes)
Once he receives his work authorization, Asadi said he hopes to move someplace where he can find a job.
His dream is to still be a pilot again, but he’ll drive a taxi or deliver food for a while, if that’s what it takes.
“I just want to work hard and make a good life for myself and for my family,” he said.
J.P. Lawrence
J.p. Lawrence reports on the U.S. military in Afghanistan and the Middle East. He served in the U.S. Army from 2008 to 2017. He graduated from Columbia Journalism School and Bard College and is a first-generation immigrant from the Philippines.
15. Enemies, Foreign and Domestic
Covert action, IO, disinformation and fake news.
Note references to "Unrestricted Warfare." These excerpts sure sound like the application of its theories.
Short of all-out war, how could China degrade America’s ability to respond to an external threat in the Pacific? How could it prevent or degrade America’s ability to project power into the region to counter their objectives? How could it make the United States less able to defend itself and less likely to be supported by its allies in time of need? It could start by covertly undermining the U.S. elements of national power from within.
By creating problems—real and imagined—in economic, cultural, academic, diplomatic, and military institutions. It could seek ways to degrade the nation’s domestic industrial capacity—by undermining domestic production of key durable and consumer goods. It would seek to influence Americans, who heretofore possessed a strong national identity, that this identity is corrupt, illegitimate, and unworthy of defending. It would look to delegitimize U.S. relevance to its allies abroad.
Why would a nation permit itself to be deconstructed so? Perhaps, if its own oligarchs and ruling elite had a vested interest that was in line with that of China, it could be done without tipping off the U.S. citizenry to the plot. And here again, we see Ramius’ plan, this time overlaid onto America. How would the enemies of America—namely China and a global oligarchy—get Americans to abandon a functioning republic? By breaking it, convincing them it doesn’t work, doesn’t deserve to work, and that something better, more diverse, equitable, and inclusive awaits them just on the other side of liberty.
Enemies, Foreign and Domestic › American Greatness
A covert operation is an operation planned and executed in a manner that conceals the identity of, or permits plausible denial by, its sponsor. Correspondingly, a covert influence operation is an information operation planned and executed in a manner that conceals the identity of the sponsor and provides an element of plausible deniability. Covert influence operations require plausible deniability because the sponsors could lose credibility if their sponsorship were known.
There has been a lot of talk lately about misinformation, disinformation, and fake news. So much so that calls to censor public information are gaining traction within the government and the private sector corporations that control much of the digital landscape. Some of these arguments for censorship are themselves information operations within the context of political warfare between rival political factions. It is almost impossible to know what to make of these competing claims of misinformation and calls for censorship without an understanding of how information operations work and how they are integrated into political and unrestricted warfare.
Information operations, or IO, are the integrated employment of electronic warfare, computer network operations, psychological operations, and deception in order to influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp human and automated decision-making. IO is not new. Before the proliferation of computers and the internet, IO was commonly called propaganda, psychological operations, or military deception operations. Since the advancement of the internet, the definition expanded to incorporate new delivery mechanisms like computer networks and electronic warfare systems.
Covert influence operations, a subset of IO, also are not new. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union ran covert influence operations to disrupt and degrade U.S. diplomatic and military activities by financially supporting the anti-war movement and the anti-nuclear peace movement. They sowed unrest and chaos within the United States by funding and supporting left-wing domestic terrorist groups like the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Weathermen, and the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA).
According to Stanislav Lunev, a Soviet GRU defector, the USSR contributed over $1 billion to U.S. anti-war protest movements during the Vietnam era. Lunev described the effort as “hugely successful and entirely worth the cost.” Sergei Tretyakov, a Soviet SVR officer who defected to the West in 2000, also described a similar $600 million covert influence campaign across Western Europe in the 1980s to pressure European governments to remove U.S. military bases from their countries.
Not to be outdone by the Russians, our own State Department under Hillary Clinton reportedly provided hundreds of millions of dollars to anti-Putin democracy movements ahead of Russia’s 2011 legislative elections and the 2012 presidential election. Covert influence operations are like nation-state hacking—everybody does it.
Covert Influence in the 21st Century
Last week, the House Foreign Affairs Committee heard testimony on the strategic importance of the Pacific islands. During that hearing, Chatham House associate fellow Cleo Paskal provided expert testimony on the strategic situation in the Pacific region. According to Paskal, China is using its military, economic, and political elements of national power in the Pacific to gain geographical advantage over the United States. It is focused on acquiring influence and control across the three main island chains of the Pacific.
China’s ultimate goal is to deny access to the region in order to manipulate trade and supply chains to the United States and other western nations. Paskal testified that China’s activities are not just limited to official government interactions and programs such as the Belt and Road Initiative, but they also include pseudo-commercial business activities that, in turn, establish organized criminal networks. These criminal networks include drug and human trafficking groups, which ultimately undermine the economic and governing institutions of the various island nations. China regards the combination of these elements of national power as part of its unrestricted warfare doctrine.
Consider this translated excerpt from a 1999 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) doctrinal paper written by two PLA Air Force colonels and widely regarded as the outline for China’s current unrestricted warfare doctrine:
When we decide just what is an act of war do we look at methods or effects? According to the conventional definition of war, there is no way to come to a satisfactory answer to this question. When we consider that any . . . non-war activities could be elements of the new kind of war in the future we have to give this new kind of war (a name) that transcends boundaries and limits: ‘Unrestricted Warfare.’
‘Unrestricted Warfare’ means that any methods can be prepared for use, information is everywhere, the battlefield is everywhere, and that any technology might be combined with any other technology, and that the boundaries between war and non-war and between military and non-military affairs has systematically been dissolved.
One of the key components of modern warfare is IO, and in the case of China’s unrestricted warfare doctrine, a key method of theirs is covert influence. By using covert influence, China can set conditions in targeted countries which create the decay of social structures and national power. In other words, covert influence operations provide a way to achieve operational “preparation of the battlefield” without employing an overt or official presence on or near the battlefield. This concept is much like the Soviets secretly funding anti-war groups in Europe in order to create what appeared to be native political pressure on European leaders to remove U.S. bases and nuclear weapons—bases and weapons that were specifically deployed for the defense of those European countries.
From the Inside Looking Out
In the movie “Hunt for Red October,” Sean Connery’s character, Soviet Captain Marko Ramius, is attempting to defect to the United States with the Russians’ newest and most sophisticated submarine. The Red October is a nuclear attack submarine equipped with stealthy first strike technology which could threaten the precarious Cold War balance of power.
Ramius and a small team of witting Soviet naval officers must devise a way to get the rest of the crew to abandon the Red October without alerting them that Ramius and his team intend to defect. To do this, Ramius “breaks” the submarine by creating a fake nuclear reactor leak. In this solution, we see Ramius and his team conduct a brilliant tactical covert influence operation. He has influenced his crew to take action by presenting a deception—a false piece of information—the origin and truth of which would defeat the purpose of the action and his ultimate intentions. There is a reactor leak, everyone will die, unless they abandon the vessel and allow themselves to be rescued by the Americans.
The problem for China is Taiwan and the United States. Taiwan and its Pratas Islands control the first island chain. Whoever controls the first island chain potentially bottles up China’s navy in its territorial waters. It provides the ability to block the PLA navy from operations further south in Micronesia and the southern Pacific. For China to succeed in its long-term objectives in the Pacific, it must be able to prevent its peer adversary, the United States, from projecting power and responding to Chinese actions against Taiwan and other island nations throughout Micronesia.
Short of all-out war, how could China degrade America’s ability to respond to an external threat in the Pacific? How could it prevent or degrade America’s ability to project power into the region to counter their objectives? How could it make the United States less able to defend itself and less likely to be supported by its allies in time of need? It could start by covertly undermining the U.S. elements of national power from within.
By creating problems—real and imagined—in economic, cultural, academic, diplomatic, and military institutions. It could seek ways to degrade the nation’s domestic industrial capacity—by undermining domestic production of key durable and consumer goods. It would seek to influence Americans, who heretofore possessed a strong national identity, that this identity is corrupt, illegitimate, and unworthy of defending. It would look to delegitimize U.S. relevance to its allies abroad.
Why would a nation permit itself to be deconstructed so? Perhaps, if its own oligarchs and ruling elite had a vested interest that was in line with that of China, it could be done without tipping off the U.S. citizenry to the plot. And here again, we see Ramius’ plan, this time overlaid onto America. How would the enemies of America—namely China and a global oligarchy—get Americans to abandon a functioning republic? By breaking it, convincing them it doesn’t work, doesn’t deserve to work, and that something better, more diverse, equitable, and inclusive awaits them just on the other side of liberty.
All they have to do is kneel.
16. Taiwan defense chief offers fighting talk amid doubts about troop readiness
Good. The Minister must challenge these accusations. But more than rhetoric he must ensure the allegations are not ture, or if they are that the ministry works to overcome them.
Taiwan defense chief offers fighting talk amid doubts about troop readiness
Newsweek · by John Feng · October 28, 2021
Taiwan's top defense official has pushed back against concerns that the island's military is ill-prepared for conflict with China, following a damning Wall Street Journal report that found waning confidence in several recruits.
Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng, a career soldier and Taipei's former head of intelligence, was visibly animated as several lawmakers grilled him on Monday's article during a five-hour hearing in Taiwan's legislature.
The Journal report, which has sent ripples through Taiwan's social and political circles, interviewed a number of conscripts who felt the island's reservists—numbering more than two million on paper—were not technically and mentally equipped to take up arms if war was to break out across the Taiwan Strait.
"Poor preparation and low morale" were reportedly concerns expressed by some of Taiwan's roughly 80,000-a-year conscripted recruits, who go through just four months of basic training as part of the country's transition to an all-volunteer defense force.
One interviewee said he swept leaves, moved tires and pulled weeds. Another described doing pointless tasks to kill time. "Public opinion polls and interviews suggest many Taiwanese expect the U.S. to take charge if serious danger arises," the Journal said.
Questioned in an official capacity for the first time on Thursday, Chiu said he disagreed with the report's conclusion, which he described as offering a "one-sided" view of Taiwan's readiness through the lens of its four-month conscription policy.
"I don't know what the report's evaluations were based on," Chiu said. "Our preparedness assessments aren't based on four months of military service. Our conscription was initially two years. We now have voluntary enlistment, which accounts for 90 percent of our personnel."
In April, a Defense Ministry report revealed Taiwan had filled 169,200 of 188,000 positions within its planned fighting force. Including civilian employees and other roles, the country has a personnel budget for a 215,000-man professional army.
"Volunteer service lasts more than four years. Compared to the past [conscription], this is an improvement," Chiu told lawmakers. "Our focus is on our volunteer troops, who hone their weapon and equipment specializations for over four years through training and drills."
Asked again about the newspaper's assessment by a ruling party lawmaker, Chiu struck an uncharacteristically firm tone, saying: "If they asked me, I would've told them that leadership is key. You asked whether [Taiwan's troops] have the determination to resist the enemy."
"If I'm determined, who won't be? Similarly, as long as every officer is determined, who dares not to be? This is my guarantee," he retorted. "As the Minister of Defense, my determination to resist the enemy is strong until the very end."
"I have confidence in my troops because our leaders are key. The rest can be educated and trained," he said. "They will all be subject to my standards."
A member of Taiwan’s 66th Marine Brigade, known as “Vanguard,” take part in a landing exercise on a beach in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, on July 15, 2021. Taiwan Military News Agency / Ministry of National Defense
Chinese warplane exercises in the international airspace southwest of Taiwan have made headlines this month. There has been a record number of flights into the island's air defense identification zone, a self-declared airspace that extends beyond territorial boundaries, used for the identification of approaching civilian and military aircraft.
The Chinese military sorties have occurred in an area between Taiwan proper and its outlying Pratas Island, also known as Dongsha, which is roughly 275 miles from the port city of Kaohsiung. Recent analysis has suggested China could launch an offensive to capture the South China Sea island, which is manned by about 500 coast guard personnel and a handful of Taiwanese marines.
Chiu told lawmakers that defense planning has taken into consideration a potential attack on Pratas since 2018, after Chinese warplane and warship activities increased in the area. While a move to capture Pratas was not impossible, Chiu said, Taiwan could expect certain indications, such as Chinese troop mobilizations or rhetorical escalations on the part of Beijing.
Asked whether China could seize the island without a fight, using only political warfare, Chiu said: "I won't let that happen. That will never happen."
Newsweek · by John Feng · October 28, 2021
17. Do We Disdain Intellectual NCOs?
In SOF we do not (or should not). We have programs at Fort Bragg (through NDU) and JSOU that educate SOF NCOs.
The author is likely a graduate of the JSOMA program.
Joint Special Operations Master of Arts (JSOMA)
Sponsored by U.S. Special Operations Command, this unique program draws upon the diverse experiences of officers, select non-commissioned officers, special operations forces, civil affairs, and warrant officers and educates these rising military leaders to understand and apply strategic-level analysis.
This ten-month, joint, Master of Arts Degree in Strategic Security Studies is located at the JFK Special Warfare Center and School in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Do We Disdain Intellectual NCOs? - From the Green Notebook
By Chris Melendez
Former officer and scholar James Joyner critiqued anti-intellectualism within the U.S. military. Opinions will diverge on Joyner’s assessment on whether such bias exists or whether an ideal balance can be struck between the classroom and “muddy boots.” The problem is not that we debate such things, but that we practically exclude enlisted service members from the discussion. [Cue the eye rolling; I’ll wait.]
One paragraph into this piece and you are already thinking, “Come on! Everyone knows that officers are responsible for the ‘what and why.’ Of course they need education. Noncommissioned officers (NCOs) simply translate those orders into ‘the how’ of action.” If only execution was that simple. Yet, therein lies the misconception. Many of us refuse to acknowledge that conditions have changed not only the operating environment, but also in officer/NCO relations and the complexity of their roles in profound ways.
To belabor an obvious but easily overlooked point, technological capabilities create a near-insatiable demand for information and instantaneous feedback. They also require a level of expertise to leverage them. Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte never dreamed of such information advantages; however, globalization was not a significant factor and the speed of ideas was considerably slower.
Technological advance and the ensuing information overload require an NCO corps that is capable of carrying the proverbial intellectual water. No amount of commissioned PhDs or School of Advanced Military Studies graduates can replace the critical theory/practice gap filled by NCOs. Still, enlisted leaders must have the requisite preparation to understand the orders, communicate them effectively to others, and then oversee their translation into physical action. Such preparation demands both training and education. The force at-large can train repetitive tasks (i.e., react to contact) but critical thinking, grammar and syntax, and subject knowledge are different matters.
At this point, you may think that I am ignoring the long-running discussion about college education (eArmyU, anyone?) as well as recent advances in enlisted professional military education. Those discussions and advancements are tangible and important at an individual level, and my goal is not to address the relative value of vocational training and/or professional certifications. My more specific aim is to ask and enjoin others to consider, “Why does an educated NCO corps matter at an institutional level?” When you say it aloud, the answer seems obvious, but I would argue that there is a prevalent subtext of anti-intellectual bias within enlisted culture. This bias, in turn, prevents us from asking difficult questions of ourselves. Subsequently, we overemphasize react-to-contact training and undervalue — or even denigrate — academic pursuits.
Both education and training are essential, but their relative importance shifts in scope and magnitude throughout a career. It is always wise to be in the right place on time and in the correct uniform, but squad level competencies differ significantly from those of a four-star headquarters. Enlisted members of all grades serve at both organizational extremes and the entire spectrum in between, so it is fair to identify and assess points of both commonality and divergence. One size training does not fit all the functions we expect our enlisted members to execute. As an enlisted member progresses into roles of broader decision-making and management, the training must also bias towards preparation that cultivates those skills. In many cases, academia provides useful pathways to such preparation.
There will always be an important place for battlefield leadership and raw physicality. Still, NCOs’ requirements far surpass “keeping the line and holding fire until you see the whites of their eyes.” Presently, we are asking more of our NCOs and enlisted service members than at any time in our history. In senior grades and higher headquarters, NCOs are fulfilling the yeomen’s work of an “Iron Major.” Perhaps it is time to rethink how institutional culture potentially inhibits preparation for present and future enlisted roles.
Sergeant Major Chris Melendez is a Civil Affairs NCO and planner at a Theater Army. He has deployment experience to Afghanistan, Colombia, Guyana, and Iraq. He holds a Doctor of Education in leadership and professional practice from Trevecca Nazarene University and a Master of Arts in strategic security studies from the National Defense University.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or any other U.S. government entity.
18. How SOCOM plans to use the MC-130J in a war with Russia or China
How SOCOM plans to use the MC-130J in a war with Russia or China
sandboxx.us · by Stavros Atlamazoglou · October 28, 2021
The MC-130J Commando II is a special missions aircraft based on the legendary C-130 Hercules, but heavily modified for the rigors of clandestine special operations missions. The Commando II, which first entered service in 2012, has proven its mettle throughout eight subsequent years of covert combat operations, flying in support of missions like Operation Kayla Mueller, which resulted in the death of ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
But with America’s recent re-emphasis on Great Power Competition, the U.S. military is looking to readjust its platforms and doctrine for a potential war with nation-level opponents out of Beijing or Moscow. The past twenty years of war in the Middle East produced many valuable lessons, but now they need to be adjusted to new realities and a completely different operational environment.
By taking a closer look at some recent MC-130J training operations, a picture of how this heavy-payload (but quite secretive) powerhouse plans to stay relevant begins to emerge.
MC-130: The Special Operations plane of choice
A formation of MC-130J Commando IIs flying off the coast of Okinawa (U.S. Air Force photo)
With a price tag of about $114 million per aircraft, the approximately 60 MC-130s of the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) offer a wide range of capabilities to the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), as well as combatant commanders.
The MC-130J Commando II specializes in air-to-air refueling of special operations helicopters, like those employed by the Army’s elite 160th SOAR. It’s also a master of infiltration and exfiltration, or ferrying special operations troops into and out of the fight under cover of darkness. While troops are in combat, it can resupply special operations units in semi- or non-permissive areas, or provide support for psychological operations by dropping leaflets or broadcasting messages.
“The MC-130 is really such a versatile aircraft that can do a lot of things in the right hands. For instance, we can drop supplies on a team of [Navy] SEALs in the Philippines or land behind enemy lines and evacuate critically wounded troops. It’s a great platform and an essential cog in SOCOM’s arsenal,” A former MC-130 pilot told Sandboxx News.
Currently, SOCOM is experimenting with a hydroplane upgrade for the MC-130, effectively making it a seaplane, so it can operate in maritime environments, such as the South China Sea, wider Indo-Pacific, or the Baltic Sea. But the MC-130’s utility doesn’t end there. With the ability to fly nap-of-the-earth missions and to land on almost any surface, including deserts, beaches, and even highways, the MC-130 is an ideal platform to support expeditionary operations, even in contested airspaces.
Packing it with Rockets
A recent exercise in a strategic Swedish island revealed one of the ways the Pentagon plans to use its MC-130J in a near-peer conflict against China or Russia. During the exercise, an MC-130J Commando II aircraft landed on a highway on the Swedish island of Gotland while transporting an M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS).
Further testing the interoperability of the two militaries, a Swedish C-130 aircraft then loaded the HIMARS and took off, transporting it to another part of the country. Following the end of the exercise, the MC-130J reloaded the HIMARS and transported it to Latvia for another similar training operation.
Combat Controllers directing the MC-130J Commando II in its final approach during the second stage of the mission in Latvia (EUCOM).
“We have taken further steps in the cooperation with the U.S., where we, with American military transport aircraft, have moved a long-range artillery system to Gotland, reloaded to a Swedish military aircraft for further transport within Sweden,” Brigadier General Anders Löfberg, from the Swedish Special Forces Command, said in a press release.
“The opportunity to act with this and other types of ground or airborne weapon systems together with our partners, I believe removes any doubts about our common ability to be a guarantor of security in the Baltic Sea area.”
Developed in the 1990s for the U.S. Army, the HIMARS is a rocket artillery system that can carry six smaller rockets or one MGM-140 ATACMS missile mounted on a truck frame. The MGM-140 ATACMS is a surface-to-surface missile with a maximum range of 190 miles that can carry a wide variety of warheads, including anti-personnel submunitions.
The HIMARS rocket system. Rapid deployment and dispersion of such weapon systems by MC-130Js has the potential to increase their survivability and lethality (EUCOM).
The MC-130J that transported the HIMARS is assigned to the 67th Special Operations Squadron, 352nd Special Operations Group out of RAF Mildenhall in the United Kingdom, while the HIMARS came from the Wisconsin Army National Guard.
“As we saw with the exercise in Sweden, the aircraft can be a game-changer with its ability to transport deadly weapon systems across a battlefield in relatively short periods of time but under almost any weather conditions,” A former MC-130 pilot told Sandboxx News.
— US Spec Ops Europe (@US_SOCEUR) October 27, 2021
Although Sweden isn’t a member state of NATO, it is very close to the Alliance with frequent joint exercises between the two parties. During the Cold War, it became informally expected that, in the event of a conflict, the U.S. military would aid Sweden. Now, the recent resurgence of Russian aggression in the Baltics is forcing a debate within the Scandinavian country about whether it’s time for Sweden to shed its coat of neutrality and finally join NATO.
Establishing Forward Arming and Refueling Points
The MC-130J is a versatile aircraft that can land pretty much anywhere in the world (AFSOC).
In a potential conflict with Russia, an MC-130 could land on a highway somewhere in Poland or in the Baltic States and set up a quick Forward Arming and Refueling Point (FARP) to rearm and refuel U.S. and allied fighter jets and helicopters. Such an impromptu set-up would increase the survival rate and lethality of the NATO aircraft because it would make it harder for the Russians to target them, since they would be operating from an unknown “airfield.”
An MC-130J Commando II refuels an MH-47G Chinook helicopter. The elite Night Stalkers work closely with their Air Force counterparts (AFSOC).
The U.S. Air Force and AFSOC have already experimented with the concept when MC-130s established a FARP in support of F-22 Raptors during an exercise in Alaska in 2020 during a historic exercise.
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sandboxx.us · by Stavros Atlamazoglou · October 28, 2021
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
