Quotes of the Day:

"Above all, avoid lies, all lies, especially the lie to yourself. And avoid fear, though fear is simply the consequence of every lie."

~Fyodor Dostoyevsky 

“No one saves us but ourselves / No one can and no one may.”

- Buddha

'Loyalty is a noble quality, so long as it is not blind and does not exclude the higher loyalty to truth and decency'

- Basil Liddell Hart

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 5 (Putin's War)

2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (05.09.22) CDS comments on key events

3. The US military needs a lot more artillery shells, rockets, and missiles for the next war

4. Invest in the Future of Ukraine

5. Russia Is Buying North Korean Artillery, According to U.S. Intelligence

6. Geography Lessons From the 9/11 Terrorist Network

7. Past Pentagon leaders warn of strains on civilian-military relations

8. To Support and Defend: Principles of Civilian Control and Best Practices of Civil-Military Relations

9. The Tank Is Not Obsolete, and Other Observations About the Future of Combat

10. I Was Wrong. Now What? by Francis J. Gavin

11. This Marine Officer Is Mad as Hell

12. Space, Cyber, and Special Operations: An Influence Triad for Global Campaigning

13. Why the US is becoming more brazen with its Ukraine support

14. Is nuclear war inevitable?

15. Waiting for Thermidor: America’s Foreign Policy Towards Iran

16. Hamas Tells Media to Lie: What Should the Media Tell its Readers?

17. Seven Myths about the Iran Nuclear Deal

18. Gorbachev Didn’t End the Cold War, Western Strength Did

19. Hackers, Spies and Contract Killers: How Putin's Agents Are Infiltrating Germany

​20. ​The Emergence of War in Plato’s Republic

21.  Russia switches off Europe’s main gas pipeline until sanctions are lifted

22. China accuses U.S. of cyberattacks on university that allegedly does military research

23. Opinion | Why I’ve stopped fearing America is headed for civil war

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 5 (Putin's War)

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-5

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 5

Sep 5, 2022 - Press ISW

understandingwar.org

The Ukrainian counteroffensive is tangibly degrading Russian logistics and administrative capabilities in occupied southern Ukraine. As ISW has previously reported, Ukrainian officials explicitly confirmed that Ukrainian troops seek to attrit Russian logistical capabilities in the south through precision strikes on manpower and equipment concentrations, command centers, and logistics nodes.[1] These counteroffensive actions also have intentional radiating effects on Russian occupation authorities. The head of the Kherson Oblast occupation regime, Kirill Stremousov, told Russian media outlet TASS that his administration has paused annexation referendum plans in Kherson Oblast due to “security” concerns.[2] The Ukrainian Resistance Center similarly reported that Russian occupation authorities are abandoning plans for referenda due to the ongoing counteroffensive.[3] Shortly after TASS published his comment, Stremousov posted on Telegram denying he called for a pause because his administration had never set an official date for the referendum.[4] Both of Stremousov’s statements indicate a high level of disorganization within occupation regimes that is likely being exacerbated by the effects of the counteroffensive. Ukrainian forces intend to slowly chip away at both Russian tactical and operational level capabilities in Kherson Oblast, and in doing so will likely have significant impacts on the administrative and bureaucratic capabilities of occupation officials.

Putin publicly praised DNR and LNR forces (and denigrated the Russian military) on September 5, likely to motivate proxy recruitment and reframe Russian coverage of the war. Russian President Vladimir Putin stated on September 5 that personnel in the 1st and 2nd Army Corps (the armed forces of the DNR and LNR) are fighting better in Donbas than professional Russian soldiers and insinuated that he is unhappy with the performance of the Russian Ministry of Defense.[5] Putin’s comments are likely intended to promote recruitment and force generation in the DNR and LNR and refocus coverage of the war in the Russian media space away from the fighting in southern Ukraine. Russian forces have increasingly relied on DNR and LNR personnel as core fighting forces, and the Kremlin likely seeks to rhetorically elevate their role in the war to enhance recruitment and increase morale. Putin additionally likely seeks to elevate the Kremlin’s preferred (and false) narrative of its invasion of Ukraine as an effort to “protect” the DNR and LNR by praising their forces.

Key Takeaways

• The Ukrainian counteroffensive is tangibly degrading Russian logistics and administrative capabilities in occupied southern Ukraine.
• Putin publicly praised DNR and LNR forces (and denigrated the Russian military) on September 5, likely to motivate proxy recruitment and reframe Russian coverage of the war.
• Ukrainian military officials maintained their operational silence regarding the progress of the Ukrainian counteroffensive but reported on the further destruction of Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) in Central Kherson Oblast.
• Russian forces conducted ground attacks east of Siversk, northeast and south of Bakhmut, and along the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk City.
• Ukrainian special forces conducted a limited operation against a Russian FSB base in the Enerhodar area.
• Power unit No. 6 of the ZNPP became disconnected from the Ukrainian power grid.
• Russian authorities continue to seek unconventional sources of combat power and are increasingly turning to ill and infirm individuals.
• Occupation authorities set a 1.25 ruble/1 hryvnia exchange rate in Zaporizhia Oblast in order to facilitate the economic integration of occupied Zaporizhia into the Russian Federation.

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

Ukrainian military officials maintained their operational silence and did not release any information pertaining to Ukrainian advances in Kherson Oblast on September 5. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Ukrainian forces shot down two Russian reconnaissance drones in Vysokopillya after previously not confirming that Ukrainian forces entered the town.[6] ISW independently assessed that Ukrainian forces captured the town on September 4 due to several social media videos.[7] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces launched airstrikes on Bezimenne and Sukhyi Stavok, approximately six and ten kilometers southeast of the Ukrainian bridgehead over the Inhulets River.[8] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces recaptured Kostromka (the village in between Bezimenne and Sukhyi Stavok), but geolocated footage depicted Ukrainian tanks attacking Russian positions around the settlement.[9] Combined with the geolocated footage, the Ukrainian General Staff report may indicate that Ukrainian forces advanced in the Kostromka and Bezimenne areas. The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Russian forces shelled the area of Novovoskresenske (about 18km southeast of Vysokopillya) but it is unclear if Ukrainian forces have advanced in the vicinity of the settlement.[10]

Ukrainian forces continued to target Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) and ammunition depots in Central Kherson Oblast. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command noted that Ukrainian forces destroyed a Russian pontoon crossing in Lvove (west of Nova Kakhovka), struck the command post of the 35th Combined Arms Army in the Kakhovka Raion, and two observation posts belonging to battalion tactical groups (BTGs) of the 247th Guards Air Assault Regiment in Mykolaiv Raion and the 126th Separate Coastal Defense Brigade in Beryslav Raion.[11] Ukraine‘s Southern Operational Command added that Ukrainian forces struck a pontoon crossing in the area of the Kakhovka Bridge on September 5.[12] Ukrainian strikes also reportedly destroyed a Russian ammunition depot in Tomyna Balka (about 19km west of Kherson City), indicating Ukrainian forces are not operating in the settlement.[13] CNN previously reported that Ukrainian forces liberated the settlement on August 29.[14] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command added that Ukrainian missile units destroyed two ammunition depots in Khersonskyi Raion.[15] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian strikes eliminated 30 Russian servicemen and three tanks in the area of the Antonivsky Bridge, and an anti-aircraft missile system with six trucks near an unspecified crossing.[16] Geolocated footage showed Russian military convoys waiting to cross the Dnipro River from the left bank, and the Russian convoys remain vulnerable to Ukrainian strikes.[17] The Ukrainian General Staff added that Russian forces are prohibiting and threatening locals from crossing the Dnipro River.[18]

Social media footage from September 4 and September 5 also supports Ukrainian military reports that Ukrainian forces are continuing their missile campaign throughout central Kherson Oblast. Ukrainian Telegram channels reported smoke around the Darivka Bridge over the Inhulets River, which is likely the result of another round of Ukrainian strikes on the GLOC east of Kherson City.[19] Ukrainian social media users also reported witnessing explosions in the industrial area of Tavriisk (east of Nova Kakhovka) and in Kherson City.[20] Kherson City residents also noted that unspecified actors fired signal flares in the city on September 4.[21]

Russian forces are continuing to undertake measures to establish river crossings and maintain their GLOCs to northern Kherson Oblast. Head of the Kherson Oblast occupation regime, Kirill Stremousov published a video rant depicting a pontoon crossing constructed out of barges in the background along the Antonivsky Road Bridge.[22] The footage showed that the pontoon bridge is halfway finished from the Kherson City direction. Satellite imagery from September 4 also showed three Russian pontoons and ferries operating west of Nova Kakhovka.[23]

Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian and Ukrainian forces fought in four different areas around Kherson Oblast: in the vicinity of Vysokopillya, southwest of the bridgehead over the Inhulets River, approximately 60km east of Mykolaiv City in Snihurivka area, and northwest of Kherson City.

A Russian milblogger stated that the new Russian frontline south of Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border runs through southern parts of Arkhanhelske and Olhyne, southern outskirts of Vysokopillya and Potomkyne, and via the southwestern outskirts of Novovoznesenske.[24] Milbloggers largely claimed that Russian forces are creating artillery “kill zones” by allowing Ukrainian forces to advance near the bridgehead.[25] A milblogger noted that Ukrainian forces will continue to try to extend the Ukrainian bridgehead and push for the T2207 highway.[26] Milbloggers also stated that artillery combat continued in Snihurivka, with Russian forces reportedly destroying a Ukrainian observation post in Kyselivka (about 28km west of Snihurivka).[27] Social media footage reportedly showed a large smoke cloud in Snihurivka, and some social media users noted that Ukrainian forces have struck a Russian base in the area.[28] Russian milbloggers claimed that fighting resumed in Ternovi Pody-Zelenyi Hai-Kyselivka line (within 30km northwest of Kherson City area), but Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks in the area.[29] A Russian milblogger noted that elements of the 7th Guards Air Assaults Division and 20th Guards Motor Rifle Division of the 8th Guards Combined Arms Army are firing artillery at Ukrainian forces attempting to advance northwest of Kherson City.[30] The milblogger added that elements of the 33rd Motorized Rifle Regiment of the 20th Division raided Ukrainian positions from the direction of Ternovi Pody.[31] Social media footage also showed Russian forces transporting two S-300V systems (a variant of the S-300 intended to target ballistic missiles) in unspecified areas of Kherson Oblast.[32]

The Russian Defense Ministry maintained that Ukrainian forces are unsuccessfully attempting to gain a foothold in certain areas in the Mykolaiv City-Kryvyi Rih direction, while Russian forces are striking Ukrainian reserves and units with artillery and precision missiles.[33] The Russian Defense Ministry likely is claiming Russian precision strikes on Ukrainian forces in Kherson and Mykolaiv Oblasts in an effort to emulate Ukrainian strikes on Russian reinforcements and GLOCs. Some milbloggers continued to express criticism towards Russian defenses around Inhulets River, with one milblogger claiming that Russian SPETSNAZ requested artillery support for hours before Ukrainian forces were able to break through Russian defenses.[34] Former Russian politician Viktor Alksnis noted that the Russian Defense Ministry again limited its discussion of conducting offensive operations, which likely indicated that Russian forces are largely undertaking defensive measures.[35] Alksnis noted that Russians do not have awareness of the lack of progress during the Russian ”special military operation” in Ukraine. Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation also noted that the Kremlin is exploiting Ukrainian operational silence to invent false claims about the Ukrainian counteroffensive.[36]

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

• Ukrainian Counteroffensives
• Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and two supporting efforts);
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort- Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort 1- Kharkiv City
• Russian Supporting Effort 2- Southern Axis
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Activities in Russian-occupied Areas

Russian Main Effort- Eastern Ukraine

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

Note: We have revised our organization of Russian lines of effort to include Russian operations in eastern Zaporizhia Oblast as part of the Donetsk Oblast effort due to recently observed force allocations indicating the Russian grouping east of Hulyaipole, previously grouped with the Southern Axis, will support efforts southwest of Donetsk City.

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks along the Izyum-Slovyansk line on September 5 and continued routine shelling along the Kharkiv-Donetsk Oblast border.[37] An RT war correspondent noted that the most intense fighting along this axis in the last six months has occurred in the wooded area dubbed “Sherwood Forest” that lies alongside the E40 Izyum-Slovyansk highway.[38] Ukrainian and Russian troops in this area reportedly exchange small arms fire at a range of 10m or less, and the dense vegetation in the area is likely obfuscating precise troop movements along much of the Izyum-Slovyansk axis.[39]

Ukrainian military officials further confirmed on September 5 that Ukrainian troops made marginal gains northeast of Slovyansk along the left bank of the Severskiy Donetsk River on September 4. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces retook positions previously occupied by Russian forces in the “Kramatorsk direction,” typically describing the Lyman-Slovyansk-Kramatorsk area.[40] The language of the General Staff statement is consistent with reports that Ukrainian troops retook Ozerne (20km northeast of Slovyansk) on September 4.[41]

Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks east of Siversk on September 5. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian troops repelled Russian advances in Hryhorivka, about 10km northeast of Siversk, and in Bilohorivka.[42] It is unclear if the Bilohorivka that the General Staff referred to is the one 12km northeast of Siversk or 17km southeast of Siversk.[43] Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) troops also reportedly fired on Ukrainian positions in Verkhnokamyanske, about 5km due east of Siversk, suggesting Russian troops lost their previous positions in Verkhnokamyanske on an unspecified date.[44] Russian forces continued routine artillery strikes on Siversk and surrounding settlements.[45]

Russian forces continued ground attacks northeast and south of Bakhmut on September 5. The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Russian troops fought in Pokrovske (10km east of Bakhmut) and the Bakhmutske-Soledar area (10km northeast of Bakhmut).[46] Russian troops, including Wagner Group fighters, continued attempts to advance north on Bakhmut from Kodema (13km southeast of Bakhmut), Vesela Dolyna (5km southeast of Bakhmut), Zaitseve (8km southeast of Bakhmut), and Semihirya (16km southeast of Bakhmut).[47] Russian troops also continued routine air and artillery strikes on and around Bakhmut.[48]

Russian forces continued ground attacks along the western outskirts of Donetsk City on September 5. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops attempted assaults around Lozove, Spartak, Pervomaiske, Vodyane, and Nevelske, which all lie along the northwestern corner of Donetsk City.[49] Russian sources indicated that elements of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) 11th Regiment are continuously attempting to advance from Pisky to Pervomaiske, with certain sources claiming that DNR troops have entered the outskirts of Pervomaiske itself.[50] Proxy troops additionally continued attempts to advance within Marinka, on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City.[51] Russian and proxy troops conducted routine artillery strikes along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City frontline.[52]

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks southwest of Donetsk City or in eastern Zaporizhia Oblast on September 5 and continued routine air and artillery strikes in these areas.[53]

Supporting Effort #1- Kharkiv City (Russian objective: Defend ground lines of communication – GLOCs – to Izyum and prevent Ukrainian forces from reaching the Russian border)

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks in northeastern Kharkiv Oblast on September 5 and continued routine air, missile, and artillery strikes on Kharkiv City and its environs.[54]

Ukrainian forces continued to strike Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) and logistical hubs in Kupyansk and Semenivka southeast of Kharkiv City between September 4 and 5.[55] Russian forces expanded shelling near Bairak, Husarivka, and Chepil, between 8 and 18km from the site of confirmed Ukrainian strikes southeast of Kharkiv City on September 4.[56]

Supporting Effort #2- Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks in Western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 5 and continued routine shelling along the Zaporizhia Oblast frontline.[57] The Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) notably stated that a GUR Spetznaz detachment conducted a limited special operation into Russian-occupied Kamianka-Dniprovska, just west of Enerhodar and on the south bank of the Kakhkovska reservoir.[58] The GUR noted that the Spetznaz detachment destroyed and significantly damaged Russian bases in the area, including a building where Russian forces were preparing for sham referenda and the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) base that was reportedly protecting the referendum headquarters.[59] Geolocated satellite imagery corroborates the GUR report and shows a large fire burning in Kamianka-Dniprovska.[60]

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) continues to operate at the risk of violating radiation and fire safety hazards as a result of damage to the plant’s power lines. Both Ukrainian and Russian sources exchanged accusations that the other side shelled the plant on September 5. Ukrainian nuclear operating enterprise Energoatom stated that Russian shelling over the last three days caused a fire that disconnected the last power line that linked the ZNPP to the Ukrainian power system, which forced power unit No. 6 (the unit that powers the ZNPP internally) to unload and disconnect from the grid.[61] Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces shelled infrastructure at the ZNPP and in Enerhodar.[62] Notably, four of the six members of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) delegation departed the ZNPP on September 5, with two members staying at the plant to establish a permanent presence.[63]

Russian forces conducted missile and rocket strikes against Mykolaiv City and shelled along the line of contact in Mykolaiv Oblast on September 5.[64] Ukrainian sources reported heavy shelling of Nikopol and other settlements in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, including a rocket strike against Kryvyi Rih.[65] Russian air defense reportedly shot down a Ukrainian drone over Yevpatoriia, Crimea.[66]

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

The Kremlin directly acknowledged and took a further step toward creating a federal-level infrastructure for regional volunteer battalions to replace losses in Ukraine on September 5. Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to task the Russian Cabinet of Ministers with protecting the civilian job positions of Russians who volunteer for the war in Ukraine.[67] This represents a departure from previous Kremlin silence on regional mobilization efforts, which allowed the Kremlin to present recruitment drives as “voluntary local initiatives” and insulate ethnically Russian areas and key urban centers from the burden of generating volunteer battalions. The Kremlin likely must take more direct measures in providing for regional battalions due to confusion over unclear or unset provisions from the central government.

Russian authorities are likely escalating efforts to forcibly mobilize residents of occupied Ukraine, potentially to meet increasing pressure from the Kremlin to solidify territorial gains before Putin’s reported September 15 deadline to capture all of Donetsk Oblast. The Ukrainian Resistance center reported that Russian occupation authorities seek to mobilize 10,000 residents from Luhansk Oblast and are leveraging school enrollment data to forcibly mobilize fathers of schoolchildren attending Russian-run educational institutions.[68] Luhansk Oblast Head Serhiy Haidai also stated that authorities in the LNR are giving employees of LNR-owned enterprises recruitment quotas to incentivize the recruitment of contract soldiers in exchange for promises of extra pay and extended job security.[69]

Russian authorities are apparently attempting to recruit personnel typically unfit for military service due to physical and mental illnesses, further indicating that traditional sources of combat power are being increasingly exhausted. St. Petersburg Psychoneurological Dispensary No. 2 posted now-deleted military recruitment ads to its website on September 5.[70] The Ukrainian General Staff similarly noted that Russian authorities are forcibly mobilizing men of military age with various diseases and injuries from hospitals in occupied areas of Donetsk Oblast.[71] The increasing reliance on individuals with physical and mental illness, who are unlikely to receive proper training, medical, or psychological support before being deployed, will likely exacerbate already-poor morale and discipline within mobilized Russian units in Ukraine.

Russian federal subjects (regions) are continuing to deploy volunteer battalions to Ukraine. Russian sources reported that the 400-strong “Kuzma Minin” Nizhny Novgorod tank battalion deployed to Ukraine on September 5.[72]

Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied areas; set conditions for potential annexation into the Russian Federation or some other future political arrangement of Moscow’s choosing)

Russian occupation authorities are continuing efforts to facilitate the economic integration of occupied areas into the Russian Federation. The Russian-backed head of the Zaporizhia occupation administration, Yevheny Balitsky, stated that his administration has set the exchange rate in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast to 1.25 rubles/1 hryvnia, starting September 5.[73] Such efforts to codify the “rubleization” of occupied areas are intended to ease the integration of occupied territories into the Russian economy.

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

[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/kherson-referendum-plans-paused-due... ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/15648957

[3] https://sprotyv dot mod.gov.ua/2022/09/05/rosiyany-vidmovylys-vid-ideyi-provesty-11-veresnya-referendum-na-hersonshhyni/

[38] https://russian.rt dot com/ussr/article/1044564-specoperaciya-soyuznye-sily-prodvizhenie-shervudskii-les; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/17264

[39] https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/17264; https://russian.rt dot com/ussr/article/1044564-specoperaciya-soyuznye-sily-prodvizhenie-shervudskii-les; https://www dot 9111.ru/questions/7777777771989122/

[58] https://gur dot gov.ua/content/v-kam-iantsidniprovskii-znyshcheno-sklad-biuleteniv-psevdoreferendumu-ta-bazu-fsb.html

[59] https://gur dot gov.ua/content/v-kam-iantsidniprovskii-znyshcheno-sklad-biuleteniv-psevdoreferendumu-ta-bazu-fsb.html

https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1566339249875652608;

[67] https://www dot m24.ru/news/vlast/05092022/498113

[68] https://sprotyv dot mod.gov.ua/2022/09/05/okupanty-narostyly-tempy-prymusovoyi-pasportyzacziyi-na-luganshhyni/; https://t.me/luhanskaVTSA/5564; https://t.me/luhanskaVTSA/5530

[70] http://pnd2 dot spb dot ru/; https://twitter.com/skazal_on/status/1566743700302188545; https://twitt... dot media/news/2022/09/05/advertising

understandingwar.org

2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (05.09.22) CDS comments on key events

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

CDS Daily brief (05.09.22) CDS comments on key events

Humanitarian aspect:

As of the morning of September 5, 2022, more than 1,122 Ukrainian children are victims of full- scale armed aggression by the Russian Federation, Prosecutor General's Office reports. The official number of children who have died during the Russian aggression is 382, and more than 740 have been wounded. However, the data is not conclusive since data collection continues in the areas of active hostilities, temporarily occupied areas, and liberated territories.

235 Ukrainian children are considered missing, and 7,322 children have been [illigally] deported to Russia. 5,357 children have been found.

"Children of War" is a platform where you can report and find all information about children who suffered as a result of the Russian Federation's war against Ukraine (https://childrenofwar.gov.ua/en)

In Donetsk Oblast, on September 4, 3 people were killed by enemy shelling: 2 - in Kurakhovo and 1 - in Soledar. 3 more were wounded.

On the night of September 4 to 5, the Russians attacked Mykolaiv with S-300 missiles. They hit an industrial enterprise on the outskirts of the city. No victims were reported. This morning, public utilities began eliminating the consequences of the shelling. Traffic is blocked on one of the streets; some citizens do not have water - a rocket fell on the road and damaged the water supply.

On September 4-5, the Russian occupiers shelled Vasylivskyi, Pologivskyi, and Zaporizhzhya districts of the Zaporizhzhya Oblast. Twelve objects of civil infrastructure were damaged.

There are three victims of the September 4 enemy shelling of Kharkiv. The rocket hit the ground, but the blast wave damaged private homes and a 10-story apartment building.

During the past day, the Russian occupiers intensively shelled the Izyumskyi (4 wounded), Chuguyivskyi, Kharkivskyi (1 wounded) and Bogodukhivskyi (1 killed) regions of the Kharkiv Oblast. As a result, residential buildings, commercial buildings, and industrial facilities were damaged.

The Nikopol district of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast came under Russian shelling again and was fired upon twice by enemy heavy artillery. No victims were reported. Up to 10 private houses and a high-rise building were damaged in Nikopol. In addition, nine facilities were damaged, including a gymnasium, a children's and youth sports school, a shop and a cafe.

According to the head of the Oblast Military Administration, Valentyn Reznichenko, Russians fired from "Hurricanes" at the Dnepropetrovsk region. As a result, an elderly woman died, and three [civilians] were wounded.

The enemy forces hit an oil depot in the Kryvyi Rih district of the Dnipropetrovsk region on the evening of September 5; large fuel stocks were destroyed. All operative services are working on the spot, and the consequences are being established, the head of the military administration of Kryvyi Rih, Oleksandr Vilkul, reported.

According to Andriy Nebytov, head of the Kyiv region police, the police found the bodies of two more victims of the Russian invaders in Bucha, Kyiv Oblast. The burnt remains of civilians were found in one of the garages.

Occupied territories

Minister for Temporarily Occupied Territories and Deputy Prime minister of Ukraine reported that 753 people left the temporarily uncontrolled areas of Kharkiv Oblast during the day. Additionally, volunteers evacuated 30 pet dogs.

In Kamianets-Dniprovska of Zaporizhzhya Oblast, located 11 km from the occupied ZNPP, special forces fighters of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the MoD of Ukraine destroyed the warehouse of ballots for the pseudo-referendum and the FSB base, reported Ukraine's Main Intelligence Directorate.

Meanwhile, the Russia-installed governor of Kherson Oblast, Kirill Stremousov, said that the region was ready for a "referendum on joining the Russian Federation" but would take a pause due to the security situation.

Russian invaders in the Kherson Oblast have established a ban on the movement of local residents. Civilians are forbidden to cross the Dnipro River on bridges and boats. In case of violation, the invaders threaten to open fire to kill, Ukraine's General Staff reports. The ban was introduced after intensive shelling by the Ukrainian Defense Forces of enemy concentration areas in the Kherson Oblast.

The Head of the Luhansk Regional Military Administration, Serhiy Gaidai, published the video of enormous queues for bread in the occupied Lysychansk.

Operational situation

It is the 194th day of the strategic air-ground offensive operation of the Russian Armed Forces against Ukraine (in the official terminology of the Russian Federation – "operation to protect Donbas"). The enemy continues to concentrate on establishing full control over the territory of

Donetsk Oblast, maintaining the captured parts of Kherson, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhya, and Mykolaiv Oblasts.

Ukraine's Defense Forces continue to conduct a defensive operation, maintain the defined frontiers and prevent the enemy from advancing on the territory of Ukraine.

Ukrainian troops successfully repelled the enemy offensive in the areas of Bakhmutske, Vesela Dolyna, Zaitseve, Kodema and Soledar in the Bakhmut direction, as well as in the areas of Pervomaiske, Vodyane and Nevelske in the Avdiivka direction.

The Air Force Group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine continues to repulse enemy missile and air strikes and attacks and effectively covers critical objects of Ukraine.

During the past day, supporting the ground groups' actions, the aviation of the Ukrainian Defense Forces carried out more than 42 strikes aimed at hitting enemy personnel, combat and special equipment, and military facilities.

Ukrainian missile troops and artillery of ground troops continue to perform tasks of counter- battery combat, disruption of the enemy control system, logistical support, destruction of the enemy air defense means, fire means and enemy manpower. Over the past 24 hours, Ukrainian forces inflicted missile strikes and fire damage at the enemy control points of various levels, warehouses with strategic level ammunition, areas of concentration of military equipment and personnel, areas of concentration and firing positions of the enemy artillery units, and other important targets.

Over the past day, the enemy launched 39 missiles and more than 37 airstrikes on military and civilian objects on the territory of Ukraine. In particular, civil infrastructure was affected in the areas of Kharkiv, Dmytrivka, Kostyantynivka, Zelenopillia, Zaytseve, Kodema, Soledar, Mykolaiv, Voznesensk, Ochakiv, Sukhy Stavok, and Bezimenne.

Gasychivka, Yanzhulivka, Mykolaivka, Mykhalchyna Sloboda of Chernihiv Obast and Novovasylivka, Nova Huta, Seredyna-Buda, Bachivsk, Yastrubyne and Smolyne of Sumy Oblast were most affected by the enemy fire.

The enemy's aviation group is conducting combat operations to support the actions of ground groups, most intensively in the South Buh and Donetsk directions.

The enemy conducts UAV aerial reconnaissance with high intensity. It searches for weak points in Ukrainian units' defense and tries to improve its tactical position.

Forced mobilization continues in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. In Donetsk, the Russian invaders found a "new source" of replenishment of losses in manpower. Recently, representatives of the Russian occupation army began to arrive at local hospitals in the city and

forcefully "discharge" patients. Men of military age with various diseases or injuries, including those wounded during hostilities undergoing treatment, fall under such [mobilization] measures.

In correctional colony No. 124 of the city of Donetsk, representatives of the "Wagner" PMC are trying to recruit convicts into their unit.

The reasoning behind the Russian invaders' stubborn intention to start the school year in the temporarily seized territories is now revealed. For example, about 70 occupiers live on the first floor of the school building in the village of Orlyanske [temporarily occupied by Russians] in Zaporizhzhya Oblast, while children, including first-graders, study on the second floor, and enemy military equipment is located in the schoolyard. The educational process began on September 1, and the situation is similar in most regional schools and kindergartens. The enemy cynically uses Ukrainian children as human shields.

The morale and psychological state of the personnel of the invasion forces remain low. Once again, servicemen of the enemy 2nd Army Corps [of the so-called LPR] pointed out the discrimination of their status compared to the Russian military. The personnel of the mentioned army corps units do not receive declared allowances, unlike the Russian military in other military units. In addition, there is no quality medical care. All this significantly affects the deterioration of the moral and psychological state of the personnel.

Kharkiv direction

• Zolochiv-Balakleya section: approximate length of combat line - 147 km, number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 10-12, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 13.3 km;

• Deployed enemy BTGs: 26th, 153rd and 197th tank regiments, 245th motorized rifle regiment of the 47th tank division, 6th and 239th tank regiments, 228th motorized rifle regiment of the 90th tank division, 1st motorized rifle regiment, 1st tank regiment of the 2nd motorized rifle division, 25th and 138th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 6th Combined Arms Army, 27th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st Tank Army, 275th and 280th motorized rifle regiments, 11th tank regiment of the 18th motorized rifle division of the 11 Army Corps, 7th motorized rifle regiment of the 11th Army Corps, 80th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 14th Army Corps, 2nd and 45th separate SOF brigades of the Airborne Forces, 1st Army Corps of so-called DPR, PMCs

The enemy shelled Dementiivka, Nove, Odnorobivka, Borshcheva, Sosnivka, Udy, Ruski Tyshky, Pytomnyk, Ruska Lozova, Slobozhanske, Momotove, Petrivka, Bayrak, Husarivka, Chepil, Mospanove, Velyki Prohody, Staryy Saltiv, Nortsivka, and Pokrovske. The enemy inflicted airstrikes in the areas of Peremoha and Husarivka, used anti-aircraft missiles in the areas of Pytomnyk, Ruska Lozova, Slatyne, Ivanivka, Balakliya, Savyntsi and Ruski Tyshky.

The Russian occupiers suffered losses due to effective Ukrainian Forces' fire damage in areas of enemy concentration near Semenivka and Kupyansk. One of the field warehouses with ammunition, enemy manpower, and military equipment was destroyed.

Kramatorsk direction

● Balakleya - Siversk section: approximate length of the combat line - 184 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 17-20, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 9.6 km;

● 252nd and 752nd motorized rifle regiments of the 3rd motorized rifle division, 1st, 13th and 12th tank regiments, 423rd motorized rifle regiment of the 4th tank division, 201st military base, 15th, 21st, 30th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 2nd Combined Arms Army, 35th, 55th and 74th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 41st Combined Arms Army, 3rd and 14th separate SOF brigades, 2nd and 4th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 2nd Army Corps, 7th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st Army Corps, PMCs

The enemy sheled Krasnopillya, Dibrivne, Virnopillya, Bohorodychne, Piskunivka, Donetske, Kryva Luka, Siversk, Spirne, Dolyna, Krasnopillya, Nova Dmytrivka, Dmytrivka, Mazanivka, Suligivka, Karnaukhivka, Sloviansk, Raihorodok, Hryhorivka, Ivano-Dariivka, Zvanivka, Vesele, and Preizne. The enemy carried out airstrikes in Dmytrivka, Bohorodychne and Verkhnyokamianske.

Donetsk direction

● Siversk - Maryinka section: approximate length of the combat line - 235 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 13-15, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 17 km;

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

The enemy shelled the areas of Bilogorivka, Zaytseve, Kodema, Mayorsk, Bakhmutske, Soledar, Bakhmut, Mykolaivka, Krasnohorivka, Maryinka, Avdiivka, Vodyane, Yakovlivka, Viimka, Rozdolivka, Novokalynovka, Berdychi, Pervomaiske, Orlivka, and carried out airstrikes near Kostyantynivka, Zelenopillia, Zaitseve, Kodema, and Soledar.

Ukrainian units successfully repulse enemy attacks in Krasnopillya, Bakhmutske, Bakhmut, Mayorsk, Zaitseve, Kodema, Soledar and Pervomaiske areas.

Zaporizhzhya direction

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

● Deployed BTGs: 36th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 29th Combined Arms Army, 38th and 64th separate motorized rifle brigades, 69th separate cover brigade of the 35th Combined Arms Army, 5th separate tank brigade, 37 separate motorized rifle brigade of the 36th Combined Arms Army, 135th, 429th, 503rd and 693rd motorized rifle regiments of the 19th motorized rifle division of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 70th, 71st and 291st motorized rifle regiments of the 42nd motorized rifle division of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 136th separate motorized rifle

brigade of the 58 Combined Arms Army, 46th and 49th machine gun artillery regiments of the 18th machine gun artillery division of the 68th Army Corps, 39th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 68th Army Corps, 83th separate airborne assault brigade, 40th and 155th separate marines brigades, 22nd separate SOF brigade, 1st Army Corps of the so-called DPR, and 2nd Army Corps of the so-called LPR, PMCs

The enemy did not carry out active offensive actions, but at the same time shelled the areas of Novomykhailivka, Paraskoviivka, Kermenchyk, Vremivka, Novopil, Novosilka, Maryinka, Mykilske, Vuhledar, Solodke, Shevchenko, Velyka Novosilka, Bohoyavlenka, Pavlivka, Novodonetske, Novomayorske, Neskuchne, Zarichne, Shcherbaky, Novodanilivka, Biloghirya, Hulyaipilske, Hulyaipole, Dorozhnyanka, Chervone, Poltavka, Olhivske, Burlatske. The enemy carried out airstrikes in the areas of Novomykhailivka, Biloghirya, Poltavka and Vremivka.

Kherson direction

● Vasylivka–Nova Zburyivka and Stanislav section: approximate length of the battle line - 252 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 27, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 9.3 km;

● Deployed BTGs: 114th, 143rd and 394th motorized rifle regiments, 218th tank regiment of the 127th motorized rifle division of the 5th Combined Arms Army, 57th and 60th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 5th Combined Arms Army, 135th, 503rd and 693rd motorized rifle regiments of the 19th motorized rifle division, 70th, 71st and 291st motorized rifle regiments of the 42nd motorized rifle division, 51st and 137th parachute airborne regiments of the 106th parachute airborne division, 7th military base of the 49th Combined Arms Army, 16th and 346th separate SOF brigades

The operational situation is unchanged. In the Kherson region, servicemen of the enemy 127th regiment of the 1st Army Corps rioted and wrote a letter refusing to participate in hostilities. It is known that one of the reasons is unsatisfactory material support: in the advanced positions, the personnel of this regiment was left even without water. Some of the servicemen were taken away by enemy counterintelligence representatives; their further fate is unknown.

After intensive shelling by the Ukrainian Defense Forces of areas of enemy concentration in the Kherson region, the Russian invaders imposed a ban on the movement of local residents. In particular, people are prohibited from crossing the Dnipro River by bridges and watercraft. In case of violation of the ban, the occupiers threaten to open fire.

Kherson-Berislav bridgehead

● Velyka Lepetikha – Oleksandrivka section: approximate length of the battle line – 250 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces – 22, the average width of the combat area of one BTG – 11.8 km;

● Deployed BTGs: 108th Air assault regiment, 171st separate airborne assault brigade of the 7th Air assault division, 4th military base of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 429th motorized rifle regiment of the 19th motorized rifle division, 33rd and 255th motorized rifle regiments of the 20th motorized rifle division, 34th and 205th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 49th

Combined Arms Army, 224th, 237th and 239th Air assault regiments of the 76th Air assault division, 217th and 331 Air assault regiments of the 98th Air assault division, 126th separate coastal defense brigade, 127th separate ranger brigade, 11th separate airborne assault brigade, 10th separate SOF brigade, PMC

The enemy is conducting defensive operations, shelling the areas of Myrne, Stepova Dolyna, Oleksandrivka, Tavriyske, Partyzanske, Olhyne, Kiselivka, Kobzartsi, Bila Krynytsia, Andriivka, Novovoskresenske, Myronivka, Lyubymivka, Petrivka. The areas of Bereznehuvate, Bezymenne, Veliky Artakiv, Sukhyi Stavok, Lyubomirivka, Bezyminne, Kostromka, Biloghirka, and Bila Krynytsia were hit by enemy airstrikes. To adjust the fire, the Russian occupiers used UAVs.

Azov-Black Sea Maritime Operational Area:

The forces of the Russian Black Sea Fleet continue to project force on the coast and the continental part of Ukraine and control the northwestern part of the Black Sea. The ultimate goal is to deprive Ukraine of access to the sea and connect unrecognized Transnistria with the Russian Federation by land through the coast of the Black and Azov seas.

The number of enemy ships stationed in the Black Sea is 12 warships and boats. Two Kalibr cruise missile carriers, namely a frigate of project 1135.6 and one "Buyan-M" type corvette, are in the southern part of Crimea, ready for a missile attack. Up to 16 Kalibr missiles may be ready for a salvo.

Most large amphibious ships are in the ports of Novorossiysk and Sevastopol for replenishment and scheduled maintenance. There are no signs of preparation for an amphibious assault on the southern coast of Ukraine.

One submarine of project 636.3 is located in Sevastopol, and three are in Novorossiysk. A Russian corvette, minesweeper and boats are on patrol in the Sea of Azov.

Russian aviation continues to fly from the Crimean airfields of Belbek and Hvardiyske over the northwestern part of the Black Sea. Over the past day, 10 Su-27, Su-30 and Su-24 aircraft from Belbek and Saki airfields were involved.

During September 4-5, the enemy launched another missile attack on military/civilian objects on the territory of Ukraine. In particular, the city of Dnipro was hit from the Black Sea by the Admiral Makarov frigate, which launched a group launch of five Kalibr cruise missiles (all missiles were shot down). Kh-59 guided air missiles from Su-35 aircraft were launched at the Mykolaiv and Kherson Oblasts. Additionally, the strike on Mykolaiv Oblast was carried out using the S-300 anti- aircraft missile system.

After replacing the Russian Black Sea Fleet commander, the chief of staff - the first deputy - was also replaced. Rear Admiral Ihor Smolyak, who was deprived of this position after the Royal Navy destroyer "Defender" passed through the territorial waters of Ukraine in the northern part of the

temporarily occupied Crimea in May 2021, was returned to this position. Rear Admiral Smolyak (born in 1968) was born in Ukrainian Poltava Region, Myrhorod District, Velyki Sorochyntsi village.

It became known from the sources in Sevastopol that the rifle regiment to be sent to the combat zone in Ukraine might be formed from senior year cadets of the Sevastopol Black Sea Military Academy named after Nakhimov. This is an indicator of a severe problem with Russian Armed Forces manning.

On September 5, three dry cargoes with Ukrainian food left the ports of Odesa. Bulk carrier BARON left Odesa, MY MERAY from Chornomorsk, and GOLDEN YARA from Pivdenny port. All three ships go to Turkish ports. Since August 1, more than 2 million tons of food have been shipped through the grain corridor.

Operational losses of the enemy from 24.02 to 05.09, approximately:

Personnel - almost 49,800 people (+300);

Tanks – 2,068 (+19);

Armored combat vehicles – 4,459 (+29);

Artillery systems – 1,157 (+10);

Multiple rocket launchers (MLRS) - 294 (0); Anti-aircraft warfare systems - 156 (0); Vehicles and fuel tanks – 3,286 (+10); Aircraft - 236 (0);

Helicopters – 206 (0);

UAV operational and tactical level - 867 (+3); Intercepted cruise missiles - 205 (+2);

Boats / ships - 15 (0).

Ukraine, general news

The IAEA mission left the Zaporizhzhya NPP. However, two observers who will continue monitoring the situation remained at the station.

At the Zaporizhzhya NPP, the last power line connecting the station with the energy system of Ukraine was disconnected. As Ukrainian Enegoatom reported, as a result of [the enemy] shelling and fires, the last line that connected the station with the energy system of Ukraine was disconnected. Currently, power unit No. 6 feeds only the own needs of the nuclear power plant.

Ukraine still has not received the nuclear engineering report on the results of the IAEA mission's visit to the Zaporizhzhya NPP, said Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the head of the OPU. According to media reports, the IAEA specialists will publish the conclusions based on the results of their visit to the Zaporizhzhya NPP tomorrow, September 6.

According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the enemy continues to commit illegal actions in the Kherson region: "The Russian invaders turned off the Kakhovsk HPP, which caused the blackout of part of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhya Oblasts."

Over the four months of the United24 platform, almost $200 million has been raised to help Ukraine. According to Volodymyr Zelensky, residents of more than 110 countries worldwide have donated.

Ukraine was allowed to increase electricity exports to the EU. Operators of transmission systems of continental Europe ENTSO-E have agreed to increase the available transmission capacity between Ukraine and the EU during daytime hours, according to the announcement of "Ukrenergo". The first day of delivery with increased volumes is September 5.

Ukraine has received access to the financing of digital projects within the framework of the EU program "Digital Europe" for €6 billion - Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov said.

International diplomatic aspect

Liz Truss has been elected the new Conservative Party leader and will replace Boris Johnson as the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Boris Johnson "for his personal bravery, principles and a major contribution to countering Russian aggression." In his turn, the outgoing Prime Minister assured that "the UK will continue to back Ukraine every step of the way because we know that your security is our security, and your freedom is our freedom". It is a bold statement more typical of leaders of Poland and the Baltic states, who have good memories of the Kremlin’s atrocities and, thus, no illusions about the existential threats Russia poses to Europe.

Liz Truss will continue the hard line against Russia like her predecessor, Boris Johnson. No wonder she turned to the Conservative Party after visiting Eastern Europe and acknowledging the crimes of Moscow's communist regime that the Kremlin decided to commit in the XXI century. In her own words, "it is a moral and strategic imperative for us all to support Ukraine unwaveringly. We cannot allow Putin's vanity to prolong this senseless war".

"Under my leadership, President (Volodymyr) Zelensky will have no greater ally at this dark hour than the UK," she wrote for the Telegraph. However, having a consensus on supporting Ukraine in its fight for survival, she won't have such a luxury on domestic issues or related to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and political crusade against the Free world.

"Problems in pumping arose due to sanctions imposed against our country and against a number of companies by Western countries, including Germany and the United Kingdom. There are no other reasons that would lead to problems with pumping," stated the Kremlin's spokesperson. With this, the Kremlin has thrown away pretended "issues" of technical problems that were presented as a cause of the substantial decrease in gas supplies to Europe. And it was the first

overt gas war in European history. The news caused the sinking of the global stock markets while oil prices rose more than $2 per barrel. In the meantime, unhappy with crude prices going down in fear of recession, OPEC and Russia trimmed their supplies to the global markets. Though it's a rollback of a symbolic increase of 100,000 barrels per day adopted in September, the move will have a cumulative effect on prices. No doubt, the announcement of an indefinite hold on gas exports and oil export's trim was carefully planned in Moscow and synchronized with partners to mount maximum pressure on the West in the hope of getting rid of the sanctions.

France's foreign minister rejected the notion that the European restrictions hurt democratic countries more than Russia. This narrative was also dismissed by a recent Yale University study that showed that Putin's economy is paralyzed, contrary to cherry-picked cheerful statistics Moscow makes public. So, after the US warned Turkey not to help Russia to circumvent the Western sanctions, Catherine Colonna is heading to Ankara with the same message from France. Otherwise, Turkey might make the EU introduce measures against those engaged in circumventing the sanctions regime.

Serbia's prime minister visited a Serb-dominated part of Kosovo with peaceful messaging. It looks like a relief after recent tensions over Serbia's and Kosovo's refusal to recognize each other's identity documents and vehicle license plates. However, it doesn't mean that Serbia is on its path to reconciling. Instead, it seems that Serbia decided to play a long game. Belgrade launched a regional integration initiative Open Balkans, that copycatted the EU idea of four freedoms: free movement of people, goods, services and capital. Albania and North Macedonia are interested in boosting economic activities. At the same time, Kosovo, Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina have refused to join, arguing it's unnecessary because regional economic cooperation is part of the EU integration process.

Given the size of economies, Serbia would benefit the most and would be able to convert its economic power into a political one. In the meantime, a highly nationalistic government is kin to carry out the agenda of great Serbia or the Serbian world, an imitation of the neo-imperial ideology of restoring Russia's dominance in the post-Soviet space.

Russia, relevant news

As of September 1, the number of valid visas for Russian citizens is 963,189, the European Commission said. Thus, the commission rejected the information that Russian citizens have 12 million valid visas, which appeared in the media.

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3. The US military needs a lot more artillery shells, rockets, and missiles for the next war

"Restock the arsenal of democracy." We can spend billions of dollars on a lot of equipment and advanced weapons systems but if we do not resource the basics - e.g., ammunition, spare parts, and replacement weapons and equipment, we cannot be victorious. And just in time logistics does not work in large scale combat operations. As I saw on a social media post- "There are no advanced tactics. There are only advanced applications of the basics." We need to make sure we have our blocking and tackling down. Our industrial base and our logistical capabilities are like our offensive and defensive lines - the ones working in the trenches with little to no recognition but they are the ones responsible for winning the ball games.

The US military needs a lot more artillery shells, rockets, and missiles for the next war

It’s time for the military to stock up on things that go boom.

BY JEFF SCHOGOL | PUBLISHED SEP 5, 2022 9:00 AM

taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol · September 5, 2022

The U.S. military needs to start buying munitions by the proverbial crapload if they want to be prepared for a war with Russia or China.

Back in February 2018, the Army asked Congress for money to buy about 150,000 shells for 155mm howitzers. That represented an 825% increase in the number of shells that the Army wanted to buy.

Events since then have shown that 150,000 shells will not get you far on a modern battlefield. Since February, the United States has provided Ukraine with up to 806,000 shells for 155mm howitzers and another 108,000 shells for 105mm guns, according to the Defense Department. That’s close to 1 million shells in roughly six months, and that figure does not include the precision-guided rockets for the 16 M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, that the U.S. military has also given to Ukraine.

As of June, Ukrainian forces were firing up to 6,000 shells a day, prompting the Defense Department to provide the Ukrainians with the HIMARS as well as more precise 155mm rounds in an attempt to slow the rate at which the Ukraine was burning through its ammunition.

Ukrainian soldiers praise the new top-modern AHS Krab self-propelled howitzer that they have received.

Poland donated 18 of them and Ukraine quickly decided to buy another 54.

A soldier says:

“the howitzer we used to work with was like a Lada, this one is a Porsche”.

 pic.twitter.com/OXVWeE3bkV

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) August 31, 2022

But as the saying goes: Quantity has a quality of its own. And the use of artillery in warfare has always involved huge expenditures of ammunition, said retired Marine Col. Mark Cancian, with the Center for International Studies think tank in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. Army fired about 580,000 artillery rounds in support of the two-month incursion into Cambodia in 1970, and the British fired roughly 1.7 million artillery rounds in the three weeks leading up to their ill-fated Battle of the Somme in 1916, Cancian told Task & Purpose.

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“Artillery expenditures increase substantially when front lines stabilize as has happened in Ukraine,” Cancian told Task & Purpose. “When there’s a lot of battlefield movement, artillery expenditures ease off because batteries on the move can’t fire and transportation of ammunition becomes harder. The stabilized front lines and consequent large increases in artillery firing often lead to a ‘shell shortage.’”

Cancian’s son Matthew, a contractor with the Naval War College, also noted that history has shown that no matter how many artillery shells an army has, it will always need more. Army Gen. James Van Fleet increased the daily allowance for U.S. howitzers tenfold when he led the Eighth Army during the Korean War.

A cannoneer prepares to load a 155 mm artillery shell into an M777 howitzer in response to receiving a fire mission during a tree day training exercise at Schofield Barracks, June 11, 2013. (Lance Cpl. Matthew Bragg/U.S. Marine Corps)

As a result, American forces were firing up to 14,000 rounds per day, while the Chinese would fire an average of 3,400 artillery rounds on a given day, said Matthew Cancian, a former Marine Corps captain.

“Yes, Van Fleet’s decision to outfire the Chinese 3-1 led to an ammunition shortage, but it also crushed the fifth phase offensive by the ChiComs [Chinese communists],” Matthew Cancian told Task & Purpose. “The example of Van Fleet is that you will want to fire way more munitions than you had planned for; if you can, this large volume will generate operational benefits; but even then you’ll wish you had more to fire. You will never have enough ammunition.”

One problem facing the United States now is that much of its industrial capacity to produce artillery shells went away after the end of the Cold War more than 30 years ago, and 155mm shells have a life expectancy of 20 years, he said.

A U.S. Army M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) launches ordnance during RED FLAG-Alaska 21-1 at Fort Greely, Alaska, Oct. 22, 2020. (Senior Airman Beaux Hebert/U.S. Air Force)

The Wall Street Journal has also revealed that defense officials are concerned that the U.S. military’s stockpile of 155mm shells has become “uncomfortably low” as a result of all the artillery rounds that the United States has given to Ukraine.

Pentagon spokeswoman Jessica Maxwell declined to say how many shells and rockets the U.S. military currently has in its inventory. In light of the ongoing military assistance to Ukraine, Congress has appropriated $600 million to accelerate the production of munitions, she said.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, told reporters on Aug. 31 that he was “not aware of any specific shortages” of U.S. military weapons or equipment caused by the military aid that has been sent to Ukraine.

So far, the Marine Corps’ training status and operational readiness have not been affected by the current inventory of munitions, a Marine Corps spokesperson told Task & Purpose.

197 Field Artillery Regiment of New Hampshire fires rockets at Fort Drum in preparation for an upcoming deployment. (Sgt. 1st Class Richard Frost/U.S. Army)

The Army, meanwhile, is working with Congress to replenish its ammunition stockpile, said Army spokeswoman Lt. Col. Lindsey Elder.

​​“Even before the Ukraine conflict started, the Army included hundreds of millions of dollars in the FY23-FY27 budget plan presented to Congress to upgrade Army ammunition plants to increase production capacity and safety,” Elder told Task & Purpose. “Since the war began, the Army has actively worked with Congress to secure more than a billion dollars in Ukraine supplemental funding to restock our ammunition supplies over time, and where possible, replace with more capable and advanced munitions. We are also making investments in ammunition production industrial capacity, including tripling our production rate for critical munitions. The Army has already put those efforts in motion.”

For hundreds of years, the Russian military has revered artillery as “The God of War.” During World War II, artillery units grew from regiments to corps-sized units, including thousands of guns, said retired Army Col. David Glantz, a military historian and an expert on the Red Army during World War II.

Russian self-propelled artillery vehicles roll during the Victory Day military parade in Moscow, Russia, Monday, May 9, 2022, marking the 77th anniversary of the end of World War II. (Alexander Zemlianichenko)

From the Battle of Kursk in July 1943 through the end of the war, Soviet artillery played a major role smashing through German defenses, Glantz told Task & Purpose. Every major operation would begin with an artillery barrage, which was essentially an offensive within an offensive, Glatnz said.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has become a contest between both sides’ tube and rocket artillery. The U.S. military believes the Russians have burned through a significant chunk of their precision-guided weapons, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl told reporters on Aug. 8. That may explain why Russia may now be firing its S-300 surface-to-air missiles at land targets in Ukraine.

The Ukrainians have also shown that they can beat the Russians at their own game when it comes to using artillery to strike high value targets and stop movement on the battlefield. But given how many artillery shells and rockets the United States has provided Ukraine, the question arises as to whether the U.S. military has enough munitions to send Taiwan if a conflict with China breaks out in the near future, said Dean Cheng, a China expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, D.C.

In around 80 seconds this Ukrainian artillery crew is out of the position of fire. No chance for Russian counter fire. #ukraine #kherson #russia pic.twitter.com/3MFqbWj9p3

— Dr. Rob Christian (@DrRobChristian) August 31, 2022

Conceivably, Taiwan’s military could use HIMARS and 155mm howitzers to attack Chinese invasion ships, landing craft, and troops as they tried to come ashore, Cheng told Task & Purpose.

“I would assume that the HIMARS, for example, might have submunitions onboard, which would really screw up landing craft,” Cheng told Task & Purpose. “One-five-five is a 6-inch shell. Modern warships aren’t armored, so you’d have some pretty good range there if you were to fire a barrage at a ship. If the Taiwanese are trained for it, they might also have laser-guided artillery projectiles for the 155s. Anything that is anti-tank could be used against landing craft.”

However, if China attempted to invade Taiwan, the U.S. military’s main goal would be to destroy as many Chinese invasion ships far from shore, and that would require a lot of long-range weapons, such as Harpoons and Naval Strike Missiles, said Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Studies think tank in Washington, D.C.

“Because the Chinese Navy has a growing fleet of cruisers and destroyers with advanced air defenses that would defend the amphibious forces, the number of weapons likely required is quite large,” Pettyjohn told Task & Purpose. “Air defenses, clutter (commercial shipping or ships that are not the main target), plus just usual failures and misses mean that the U.S. needs a lot of anti-ship weapons to penetrate the air defenses and hit the main target.”

The Air Force is currently planning to buy 190 Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles by 2027 and the Navy also plans to purchase 450 of the missiles, which it would likely have to share with the Navy, Pettyjohn said. But CNAS has found that those numbers of weapons would be “grossly inadequate” in a war against China, she said.

“Our analysis found that the Pentagon as a whole is over invested in long-range ground attack weapons with unitary warheads and does not have enough anti-ship or area-effects weapons for a maritime fight or to use against mobile ground forces, respectively,” Pettyjohn said.

As the Pentagon continues to invest in high-tech aircraft, ships, and other weapons systems, a future war against Russia or China might be decided by which side has the most ammunition. As Gen. James Van Fleet has demonstrated, you can never have enough ammo.

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

taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol · September 5, 2022

4. Invest in the Future of Ukraine

Invest in the Future of Ukraine

It’s a land of surprising opportunity, which aspires to become a major hub for information technology.

By Volodymyr Zelensky

Sept. 5, 2022 5:51 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/invest-in-the-future-of-ukraine-volodymyr-zelensky-stem-graduates-business-technology-sector-billions-partnerships-11662404585?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

I told the World Economic Forum in May that I plan great leaps ahead for the postwar Ukrainian economy. I committed my administration to creating a favorable environment for investment that would make Ukraine the greatest growth opportunity in Europe since the end of World War II.

Today, with the introduction of Advantage Ukraine, I am delivering on that promise. I invite foreign investors and companies with ambition to see the advantage in investing in the future of Ukraine, and to recognize the tremendous growth potential our country presents. We have already identified options for more than $400 billion of potential investment, which reach from public-private partnerships to privatization and private ventures. With the support of the U.S. Agency for International Development, we have formed a project team of investment bankers and researchers, appointed by Ukraine’s Economy Ministry, that will work with businesses interested in investing.

While Ukraine is recognized for its agriculture, the breadbasket of Europe, the nation is less well known for its leadership in science and technology. Our country has a growing, well-educated, English-speaking workforce with in-demand STEM capabilities. Today, Ukraine has more graduates with degrees in technology than most European countries, while 240,000 citizens are employed in the information-technology sector (this is forecast by the Ukrainian government to grow to 450,000 by 2024). Additionally, I am proud that Ukraine leads among central and eastern European countries in research and development and IT outsourcing.

To create a safe, transparent environment for business engagement, Ukraine is pursuing investment guarantees from both the Group of Seven and the European Union, reforming the country’s tax system, and establishing a strong new legal framework. Our country has already adopted rules and laws to allow companies to build transparent corporate structures, attract foreign investment more easily, and use additional mechanisms to protect intangible assets. Favorable conditions will allow us to establish Ukraine as a powerful IT hub and implement innovative business ideas quickly and effectively.

Ukrainians are grateful for the support we have received from around the world, but today I am writing not to ask for favors. Advantage Ukraine, our new program, outlines investment opportunities that will unleash the economic potential of Ukraine while delivering growth for those who have the vision to invest.

I stand by what I said in May, and I say it now with even greater conviction: Ukraine is a land of surprising opportunity. I personally invite you to be surprised by our potential and to invest in the future of Ukraine.

Mr. Zelensky is president of Ukraine.

5. Russia Is Buying North Korean Artillery, According to U.S. Intelligence

So, north Korea is now the arsenal of the authoritarians. I guess it is time to pay Russia back for all the arms, ammunition, and equipment the USSR provided to the nKPA during the Korean War.

Input from a retired intelligence officer who knows about these things:

Suddenly Russia is unable to produce 107mm and 122mm shells? But North Korea is? And how are these "millions of shells and rockets" supposed to get there? Train? Man, I don't wanna be on that train.

Are we to believe the supply chain system has broken down so much in Russia that they have to turn to a supply chain system that is 50 times as long? I mean, from North Korea to the Ukrainian front is a long, long way.

Russia Is Buying North Korean Artillery, According to U.S. Intelligence

Moscow’s purchase of millions of shells and rockets from North Korea is a sign that global sanctions have hampered the Russian military’s supply lines.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/05/us/politics/russia-north-korea-artillery.html?

• Give this article

Russian rockets fired during exercises this month. A shortage of artillery could be a sign of restricted supply lines for the Russian military.Credit...Yuri Kochetkov/EPA, via Shutterstock

By Julian E. Barnes

Sept. 5, 2022, 9:44 p.m. ET

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

WASHINGTON — Russia is buying millions of artillery shells and rockets from North Korea, according to newly declassified American intelligence, a sign that global sanctions have severely restricted its supply chains and forced Moscow to turn to pariah states for military supplies.

The disclosure comes days after Russia received initial shipments of Iranian-made drones, some of which American officials said had mechanical problems. U.S. government officials said Russia’s decision to turn to Iran, and now North Korea, was a sign that sanctions and export controls imposed by the United States and Europe were hurting Moscow’s ability to obtain supplies for its army.

The United States provided few details from the declassified intelligence about the exact weaponry, timing or size of the shipment, and there is no way yet to independently verify the sale. A U.S. official said that, beyond short-range rockets and artillery shells, Russia was expected to try to purchase additional North Korean equipment going forward.

“The Kremlin should be alarmed that it has to buy anything at all from North Korea,” said Mason Clark, who leads the Russia team at the Institute for the Study of War.

Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the White House began declassifying intelligence reports about Moscow’s military plans — then disclosing that material, first to allies privately and then to the public. After something of a lull in the disclosures, the American government has once again begun declassifying information to highlight the struggles of Russia’s military, including the recent intelligence about the purchase of Iranian drones and the Russian army’s problems recruiting soldiers.

Broad economic sanctions, at least so far, have not crippled Russia. Energy prices, driven up by the invasion, have filled its treasury and enabled Moscow to blunt the fallout of its banks being cut off from international finance and curbs on exports and imports. Sanctions against individual Russians oligarchs also have failed to undercut the power of President Vladimir V. Putin.

But American officials said that, when it came to Russia’s ability to rebuild its military, the economic actions of Europe and the United States had been effective. American and European sanctions have blocked Russia’s ability to buy weaponry, or electronics to make that weaponry.

Moscow had hoped that China would be willing to buck those export controls and continue to supply the Russian military. But in recent days, American officials have said that while China was willing to buy Russian oil at a discount, Beijing, at least so far, has respected the export controls aimed at Moscow’s military and not tried to sell either military equipment or components.

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Gina Raimondo, the commerce secretary, has repeatedly warned China that if Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, China’s largest computer chip maker, or other companies violate sanctions against Russia, the United States will effectively shut down those businesses, cutting off their access to the American technology they need to make semiconductors.

With most countries treading carefully in the face of American pressure, Russia has focused its deal making on Iran and North Korea.

Read More on the Relations Between Asia and the U.S.

• Taiwan: Visits to Taiwan by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a delegation including Indiana’s governor have exacerbated tensions between the United States, which is seeking to deepen its ties with the self-governing island, and China, which claims Taiwan as its own.
• Reassuring Allies: Against a backdrop of rising tensions with China, the Biden administration has renewed its commitment to its Asian allies. But critics argue that Washington needs to deploy stronger military and economic strategies.
• Solomon Islands: The Pacific nation suspended visits by U.S. and other foreign military vessels, raising concerns in Washington that the country might be turning away from engagement with the United States in favor of closer ties with China.
• Microchips: Taiwan is the biggest producer of the world’s most advanced microchips. Worried about the Chinese threat to the island, the United States and others are trying to expand their piece of the island’s crucial semiconductor industry.

Both Iran and North Korea are largely cut off from international commerce thanks to American and international sanctions, meaning neither country has much to lose by cutting deals with Russia. Any deal to buy weaponry from North Korea would be a violation of United Nations resolutions aimed at curbing weapons proliferation from Pyongyang.

It is unclear how much the purchasing from North Korea has to do with the export controls, however. There is nothing high-tech in a 152-millimeter artillery shell or a Katyusha-style rocket that North Korea produces, said Frederick W. Kagan, a military expert at the American Enterprise Institute.

A U.S. official said the new deal with North Korea showed the desperation in Moscow. And Mr. Kagan said turning to North Korea was a sign that Russia was seemingly unable to produce the simplest matériel needed to wage war.

“The only reason the Kremlin should have to buy artillery shells or rockets from North Korea or anyone is because Putin has been unwilling or unable to mobilize the Russian economy for war at even the most basic level,” Mr. Kagan said.

Restricting Russia’s military supply chain is a central part of the American strategy to weaken Moscow, with the aim to hamper both its war effort in Ukraine and its future ability to threaten its neighbors.

It has been clear for months, both from Russian operations in Ukraine and disclosures by the U.S. government, that Moscow has struggled with its high-tech weaponry. Precision-guided weaponry, like cruise missiles, has experienced high rates of failure. In the early stages of the war, half or more of those weapons either failed to fire or failed to hit their targets.

Russian stocks of those precision weapons have also been depleted, forcing generals to rely less often on missiles and instead build their strategy around a brutal artillery assault that has laid waste to towns in Ukraine’s eastern region.

The disclosure that Russia is seeking more artillery ammunition is a sign that Moscow’s supply problems are likely deeper than just high-end components for cutting-edge tanks or precision missiles. If Russia is seeking more artillery shells from North Korea, it is facing a shortage or could see one in the future, and its industrial base is struggling to meet the military demands of the war.

“This is very likely an indication of a massive failure of the Russian military industrial complex that likely has deep roots and very serious implications for the Russian armed forces,” Mr. Kagan said.

In recent weeks, Ukraine has stepped up its assault on Russian ammunition depots. Ukraine’s forces have used the American High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, and U.S. intelligence reports, to strike behind the front lines and destroy ammunition caches.

While it is not clear what impact that offensive has had on overall stocks of ammunition, Russia was forced to pull back and move its ammunition storage points, reducing the effectiveness of its artillery forces.

There have also been signs that the effectiveness of some Russian artillery shells has been degraded because of storage problems or poor maintenance of its ammunition stocks. To be most effective at wounding opposing troops, artillery shells burst in the air, just before they hit the ground. But the crater pattern created by Russian artillery forces over the summer showed that many of their shells were exploding on the ground, reducing the damage to Ukrainian trenches.

While the condition of North Korean artillery shells is not clear, the country has extensive stocks of the ammunition.

The first shipment of Iranian military drones arrives in Russia.

Aug. 29, 2022

Ukraine says its forces hit a Russian ammunition depot in the Kherson region.

July 12, 2022

Julian E. Barnes is a national security reporter based in Washington, covering the intelligence agencies. Before joining The Times in 2018, he wrote about security matters for The Wall Street Journal. @julianbarnes • Facebook

6. Geography Lessons From the 9/11 Terrorist Network

Geography matters. It is more than land and water. Don't overlook it. It is why military geography must be one of the 5 core PME subjects at all levels (with "level appropriate" instruction for each level) along with military history, military theory, operational art, and strategy.

Maps and graphics at the link: https://www.lawfareblog.com/geography-lessons-911-terrorist-network

Geography Lessons From the 9/11 Terrorist Network

By Olivier Walther, Rafael Prieto Curiel, Joseph Padron, Jason Scheuer Monday, September 5, 2022, 10:01 AM

lawfareblog.com · by @rafaelprietoc · September 5, 2022

Mapping the travel geography of terrorist networks can help expose how they operate internationally. Olivier Walther, Joseph Padron, and Jason Scheuer of the University of Florida and Rafael Prieto Curiel of the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna take a close look at the 9/11 plot and find that terrorists who belonged to the same operational cell did not necessarily live in the same place at the same time. However, their itineraries closely matched their organizational structure. Distinct travel patterns and strong social ties not only made the 9/11 travel network resilient but also essentially allowed the 19 hijackers to hide in plain sight while being very mobile.

***

On June 3, 2000, Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, cleared Immigration and Customs at Newark Liberty International Airport after arriving from Prague, Czech Republic. Over the course of the next year and a half, Atta and 18 other terrorists embarked on a series of trips within the United States, from the suburbs of Phoenix to the ethnic neighborhoods of Paterson, New Jersey, and from the ritzy beaches of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, to Portland, Maine.

The 9/11 hijackers also traveled extensively internationally, visiting more than a dozen countries and crossing international borders at least 45 times. From the moment they entered the United States until the morning that they killed 2,977 people, Atta and his accomplices each traveled, on average, more than half of the circumference of Earth.

This flurry of travel can help inform an understanding of terrorist networks. Our analysis of the travel patterns of the 9/11 hijackers suggests that mapping the travel geography of members of violent extremist organizations can yield important insights into the group’s overall structure.

Which Terrorists Flock Together?

To find out whether geography really matters, we collected detailed information about the known location of each hijacker using publicly available sources from the 9/11 Commission, the FBI, and the U.S. Congress. In total, we documented 231 trips between 48 metropolitan areas across the world, totaling more than 445,000 miles.

Our study shows that terrorists who worked closely together as part of the same operational cell during preparation for the 9/11 attacks tended to cluster in a few regions of the United States, including the Boston-Washington, D.C., corridor, southern Florida, and the triangle between Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Phoenix (Figure 1). The entire set of hijackers of the two planes that crashed into the World Trade Center, for example, lived in or visited Fort Lauderdale at some point in time. There, they seemed to have lived relatively “normal” lives—opening bank accounts, visiting Lion Country Safari, and shopping at local supermarkets.

Figure 1. Domestic travel patterns of the 9/11 hijackers. The size of the cities is proportional to the number of trips between them. Source: Authors.

However, the 9/11 hijackers did not necessarily live in or visit the same places at the same time. Our analysis reveals that co-presence may provide crucial information about some aspects of the network but does not really identify the cell-based operational structure that enabled the coordinated, simultaneous attacks aboard different planes.

To demonstrate this, we calculated the number of days shared by each pair of hijackers in the same location. Individuals who spent many days together in the same city are represented with large squares in Figure 2. Our analysis shows that the largest number of shared days is not always found within each cell, colored according to their flight.

For example, several members of the cell that boarded American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, spent as much or more time with some of those who hijacked United Airlines Flight 175, which crashed into the South Tower, and United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania.

Figure 2. Number of days shared by each pair of al-Qaeda operatives in the same location. The size of squares indicates length of time spent together in the same city by each pair of hijackers. Colored boxes indicate co-membership within cells. Source: Authors.

Space Can Inform Social Structure

The hijackers’ pre-9/11 travel patterns reveal that the itineraries and destinations of the al-Qaeda operatives more closely matched their organizational structure than did co-presence. To demonstrate this, we represented each hijacker as a node in a network connecting different places in the United States and abroad. Hijackers who moved numerous times between the same cities are connected.

We then compared this spatial network with a reconstruction of the hijackers’ social network based on who they trained with, lived with, or had other known contact with before the attacks. As shown in Figure 3, the similarity between the two networks is striking: The spatial structure of the network based on similar trajectories mimics how hijackers were socially connected. In other words, the destinations of their travel are a rather good match for what we now know about the cell structure of the network.

Figure 3. Comparing the 9/11 spatial and social networks. The spatial network (left) connects individuals depending on the similarity of their trajectories between cities. Similar trajectories are weighted more in the network. The social network (right) connects individuals based on their prior contacts. Pilots are represented with large nodes, “muscle” hijackers with small nodes. Source: Authors.

The co-destination of cell members, or their traveling to the same places at different times, was both inevitable given the task and more revealing after the fact. This spatial aspect of the hijacker network was a function of the way in which they were socially organized as four discrete cells with identical tasks to be carried out simultaneously at separate locations. Because of this parallel structure, for example, pilots had to travel to certain flight schools to finish up their training, while “muscle” hijackers, who arrived in the United States less than five months prior to the attacks, needed to be moved to rented apartments to settle rapidly in the country.

This spatial organization also allowed the 19 hijackers to hide in plain sight while simultaneously being very mobile. Some of the early travel patterns of the network were successfully detected by intelligence agencies, such as those of Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi in Southeast Asia in 2000. However, the intensity and complexity of the domestic patterns followed by the four al-Qaeda cells became apparent only after the attacks, when intelligence about their prior contacts and locations was finally pieced together.

Spatializing Social Networks

Mapping how terrorists travel from place to place provides a much more comprehensive picture of their social organization than simply monitoring their location. The scale and sophistication of the 9/11 attacks did not require the routine co-presence of cell members, but within-cell travel patterns were detectably similar. In other words, hijackers tended to follow the same itineraries across the United States and the world, without necessarily always visiting the same destinations at the same time.

Thanks to recent developments in network and spatial science, the structure, geography, and temporal evolution of terrorist networks can now be modeled with a level of complexity that would have been unimaginable 21 years ago. Geolocalized data, for example, can be extracted from social media to monitor the spatial diffusion of violent events and identify the social structure of the most active accounts, as during the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.

In years to come, the growing availability of geospatial data and the use of artificial intelligence should make it increasingly easier to detect patterns in terrorist activities. “Knowledge discovery” techniques, for example, are already being developed for the intelligence and law enforcement community to predict the outcome of a specific event, identify hotspots where violence could be concentrated, understand connections between the actors involved, and more generally “make sense” of large-scale data in real time.

One thing hasn’t changed, though. While new technologies have facilitated the exchange of easily codified information, such as dates and names, space continues to exert a considerable constraint on connectivity. Then as now, the preparation of terrorist attacks still requires close linkages that can happen only in certain places at a certain time, if only briefly. Similarities in travel patterns, such as those observed in the 9/11 network, should remain difficult, if not impossible, for international terrorist organizations to hide.

lawfareblog.com · by @rafaelprietoc · September 5, 2022

7. Past Pentagon leaders warn of strains on civilian-military relations

I will forward the letter when it is published on War on the Rocks. It is still not posted yet as of this time.

Past Pentagon leaders warn of strains on civilian-military relations

The Washington Post · by Dan Lamothe · September 6, 2022

The Pentagon’s former defense secretaries and top generals warned Tuesday that political polarization and other societal strains are creating an “exceptionally challenging” environment for maintaining the traditional relationship between the military and civilian worlds.

The assessment is the basis of an extraordinary open letter signed by eight former defense secretaries and five former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Adhering to the military’s tradition of nonpartisanship, the leaders do not blame any political leader or party for the situation, but note that the last presidential election was the first in more than a century to have the peaceful transfer of power disrupted.

The former Pentagon leaders said the current environment is challenging for a variety of reasons, including deep political divisions and the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, and say they fear that the situation could worsen.

At the same time, the U.S. military has ended wars in Iraq and Afghanistan “without all the goals satisfactorily accomplished” and is preparing for “more daunting competition” with other nations, the leaders write.

“Looking ahead, all of these factors could well get worse before they get better,” the letter states. “In such an environment, it is helpful to review the core principles and best practices by which civilian and military professionals have conducted healthy American civil-military relations in the past — and can continue to do so, if vigilant and mindful.”

The signatories of the letter, to be published Tuesday morning by War on the Rocks, include former president Donald Trump’s two confirmed defense secretaries, Jim Mattis and Mark T. Esper, both of whom clashed with the president and were removed from their positions. Mattis, after leaving office, denounced Trump as a threat to the U.S. Constitution who tried to turn Americans against one another, while Esper resisted Trump’s desire to use active-duty troops against people protesting the police killing of George Floyd and later said Trump was unfit for office.

The signatories also include earlier defense secretaries from both Republican and Democratic administrations and each of the Pentagon’s retired top officers since October 2001: Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey and Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr.

The genesis of the letter, a copy of which was obtained in advance of publication by The Washington Post, was a discussion that began in the spring between Dempsey and Peter Feaver, a civil-military affairs scholar who is sometimes consulted by Pentagon leaders and who teaches with Dempsey at Duke University. They wanted to define best practices for civil-military affairs after Trump and some of his advisers alarmed Pentagon leaders with their rhetoric and ideas, Feaver said.

“We realized that there was a need for a restatement of what civilian control means, and how it applies,” Feaver said. “It was striking that as General Dempsey reached out to them to get them involved, to a person they said, ‘Oh, yeah. That’s important. We need to do that.’ ”

Feaver said there was some haggling among the signatories over wording and tone before they settled on the final version.

“There was a desire to make sure that this document was not partisan and did not sound like a partisan critique of any single individual,” Feaver said.

The signatories said they are concerned about “irresponsible” and “heated” political attacks on U.S. institutions as the midterm elections loom, said Chuck Hagel, a former Republican senator who served as a defense secretary in the Obama administration.

Continued false allegations that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent have prompted many Americans to question their government’s credibility, and Republican lawmakers are now warning that if they take back the House, they will target Justice Department leaders who have investigated potential wrongdoing by Trump, Hagel noted.

“When you add all of this, it gives you a sense for where we’re going, and a concern about our future,” Hagel said.

The letter states that democracy requires “civilian and military leaders — and the rank-and-file they lead — to embrace and implement effective civilian control” of the U.S. military. The letter also says that civilian control of the military can be exercised by the judicial branch when an administration’s decisions are challenged, and that a court ruling is decisive because military leaders are obligated by law and professional ethics to refuse to carry out illegal or unconstitutional orders.

Military officials are required to carry out legal orders, even if they doubt their wisdom, but civilian officials should “provide the military ample opportunity to express their doubts in appropriate venues,” the letter adds. Military officials can raise questions about second- and third-order effects and propose alternative ideas, the leaders note.

The letter also notes that there are “significant limits on the public role of military personnel in partisan politics,” and that military and civilian leaders both “must be diligent about keeping the military separate from partisan political activity.”

The letter comes as Trump continues to weigh another run for president. Officials advising Trump in 2020 openly floated the idea of having the military intervene in voting disputes, prompting senior Army officials to say there is “no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election.”

The Washington Post · by Dan Lamothe · September 6, 2022

8. To Support and Defend: Principles of Civilian Control and Best Practices of Civil-Military Relations

Here is the letter from our former civilian and military leaders. We all should reflect on this and discuss at all levels of PME.

Just as an aside (and probably of no importance), I wonder why nearly all of them used their middle names?

To Support and Defend: Principles of Civilian Control and Best Practices of Civil-Military Relations - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Open Letter · September 6, 2022

We are in an exceptionally challenging civil-military environment. Many of the factors that shape civil-military relations have undergone extreme strain in recent years. Geopolitically, the winding down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the ramping up of great power conflict mean the U.S. military must simultaneously come to terms with wars that ended without all the goals satisfactorily accomplished while preparing for more daunting competition with near-peer rivals. Socially, the pandemic and the economic dislocations have disrupted societal patterns and put enormous strain on individuals and families. Politically, military professionals confront an extremely adverse environment characterized by the divisiveness of affective polarization that culminated in the first election in over a century when the peaceful transfer of political power was disrupted and in doubt. Looking ahead, all of these factors could well get worse before they get better. In such an environment, it is helpful to review the core principles and best practices by which civilian and military professionals have conducted healthy American civil-military relations in the past — and can continue to do so, if vigilant and mindful.

1. Civilian control of the military is part of the bedrock foundation of American democracy. The democratic project is not threatened by the existence of a powerful standing military so long as civilian and military leaders — and the rank-and-file they lead — embrace and implement effective civilian control.

2. Civilian control operates within a constitutional framework under the rule of law. Military officers swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution, not an oath of fealty to an individual or to an office. All civilians, whether they swear an oath or not, are likewise obligated to support and defend the Constitution as their highest duty.

3. Under the U.S. Constitution, civilian control of the military is shared across all three branches of government. Ultimately, civilian control is wielded by the will of the American people as expressed through elections.

4. Civilian control is exercised within the executive branch for operational orders by the chain of command, which runs from the president to the civilian secretary of defense to the combatant commanders. Civilian control is also exercised within the executive branch for policy development and implementation by the interagency process, which empowers civilian political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president and career officials in the civil service to shape the development of plans and options, with the advice of the military, for decision by the president. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is not in the formal chain of command, but best practice has the chairman in the chain of communication for orders and policy development.

5. Civilian control is exercised within the legislative branch through the extensive powers enumerated in Article I of the Constitution, beginning with the power to declare war, to raise and support armies, and to provide and maintain a navy. Congress determines the authorization and appropriation of funds without which military activity is impossible. The Senate advises and consents on the promotion of officers to the pay grade of O-4 and above. The Senate is also charged with advising and consenting to certain senior-level civilian political appointees. Congress conducts oversight of military activity and can compel testimony from military or civilian officials, subject to narrow exceptions such as executive privilege. Members of Congress empower personal and committee staff to shape the development of policies for decision by the committees and Congress as a whole and thereby play an important role in civilian oversight of policy.

6. In certain cases or controversies, civilian control is exercised within the judicial branch through judicial review of policies, orders, and actions involving the military. In practice, the power to declare a policy/order/action illegal or unconstitutional is decisive because the military is obligated (by law and by professional ethics) to refuse to carry out an illegal or unconstitutional policy/order/action.

7. Civilian control is enhanced by effective civil-military relations. Civil-military relations are comprised of a dynamic and iterative process that adjusts to suit the styles of civilian leaders. Under best practices, civil-military relations follow the regular order of the development of policy and laws, which protects both the military and civilian control. Under regular order, proposed law, policies, and orders are reviewed extensively by multiple offices to ensure their legality, appropriateness, and likely effectiveness. However, regardless of the process, it is the responsibility of senior military and civilian leaders to ensure that any order they receive from the president is legal.

8. The military has an obligation to assist civilian leaders in both the executive and legislative branches in the development of wise and ethical directives but must implement them provided that the directives are legal. It is the responsibility of senior military and civilian leaders to provide the president with their views and advice that includes the implications of an order.

9. While the civil-military system (as described above) can respond quickly to defend the nation in times of crisis, it is designed to be deliberative to ensure that the destructive and coercive power wielded by the U.S. armed forces is not misused.

10. Elected (and appointed) civilians have the right to be wrong, meaning they have the right to insist on a policy or direction that proves, in hindsight, to have been a mistake. This right obtains even if other voices warn in advance that the proposed action is a mistake.

11. Military officials are required to carry out legal orders the wisdom of which they doubt. Civilian officials should provide the military ample opportunity to express their doubts in appropriate venues. Civilian and military officials should also take care to properly characterize military advice in public. Civilian leaders must take responsibility for the consequences of the actions they direct.

12. The military reinforces effective civilian control when it seeks clarification, raises questions about second- and third-order effects, and proposes alternatives that may not have been considered.

13. Mutual trust — trust upward that civilian leaders will rigorously explore alternatives that are best for the country regardless of the implications for partisan politics and trust downward that the military will faithfully implement directives that run counter to their professional military preference — helps overcome the friction built into this process. Civil-military teams build up that reservoir of trust in their day-to-day interactions and draw upon it during times of crisis.

14. The military — active-duty, reserve, and National Guard — have carefully delimited roles in law enforcement. Those roles must be taken only insofar as they are consistent with the Constitution and relevant statutes. The military has an obligation to advise on the wisdom of proposed action and civilians should create the opportunity for such deliberation. The military is required ultimately to carry out legal directives that result. In most cases, the military should play a supporting rather than a leading role to law enforcement.

15. There are significant limits on the public role of military personnel in partisan politics, as outlined in longstanding Defense Department policy and regulations. Members of the military accept limits on the public expression of their private views — limits that would be unconstitutional if imposed on other citizens. Military and civilian leaders must be diligent about keeping the military separate from partisan political activity.

16. During presidential elections, the military has a dual obligation. First, because the Constitution provides for only one commander-in chief at a time, the military must assist the current commander-in-chief in the exercise of his or her constitutional duty to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. Second, because the voters (not the military) decide who will be commander-in-chief, they must prepare for whomever the voters pick — whether a reelected incumbent or someone new. This dual obligation reinforces the importance of the principles and best practices described above.

Signatories:

Former Secretaries of Defense

Dr. Ashton Baldwin Carter

William Sebastian Cohen

Dr. Mark Thomas Esper

Dr. Robert Michael Gates

Charles Timothy Hagel

James Norman Mattis

Leon Edward Panetta

Dr. William James Perry

Former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Gen. (ret.) Martin Edward Dempsey

Gen. (ret.) Joseph Francis Dunford Jr.

Adm. (ret.) Michael Glenn Mullen

Gen. (ret.) Richard Bowman Myers

Gen. (ret.) Peter Pace

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Open Letter · September 6, 2022

9. The Tank Is Not Obsolete, and Other Observations About the Future of Combat

​Ever since I was a young Infantry Captain in Germany in 1985 when I was tasked to be the OIC ​for Tank Tables VIII and XII for the 3d Infantry Division, I have been a true believer in the M1 Tank. Watching those tanks in individual crew and platoon gunnery was just amazing. I still recall the fire commands.

The Tank Is Not Obsolete, and Other Observations About the Future of Combat - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Rob Lee · September 6, 2022

After six months of war in Ukraine, some observers have insisted that “we are seeing the very nature of combat change” and that tanks, along with fighter jets and warships, “are being pushed into obsolescence.”

But it is too soon to write off the tank, and we should resist jumping to other sweeping conclusions about the future of warfare based on a conflict whose lessons are not yet clear. There is still much about this war that is not known from open sources, and there is good reason to think that the conditions that marked its early phases will not necessarily be relevant to future conflicts. As a result, specific weapon systems may appear to be ineffective based on how and where they are employed, not necessarily due to their inherent shortcomings.

The available data from Ukraine, as well as the recent war in Nagorno-Karabakh, indicate that tanks are still critical in modern warfare and their vulnerabilities have been exaggerated. Russia’s heavy tank losses can be explained by employment mistakes, poor planning and preparation, insufficient infantry support, and Ukrainian artillery. The use of Javelins and other light anti-tank systems in Ukraine has not demonstrated that the tank is obsolete any more than the Sagger anti-tank guided missile did in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, as discussed by David Johnson in these pages.

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Russian Missteps and Tank Losses

Russia’s initial operation prioritized speed and secrecy above all other factors. Because they expected little resistance, Russian forces made minimal attempts at executing a coherent combined-arms operation, which would have required careful coordination and planning between air, ground, and naval forces. Russian ground units simply drove toward cities, unprepared for a fight. In addition, Russian forces were given insufficient time to prepare for such a complex operation. This decision was likely made at the political level, since the Russian military’s doctrine, exercises, and previous conflicts all prioritized combined arms. As a result, the opening phase of this war may not be a good indication of how effective tanks and other systems would prove to be in a better-organized military operation. Many of the supposed weaknesses of manned ground, aerial, and naval platforms were a result of these mistakes, not a reflection of their technical relevance in modern warfare.

Of the 994 Russian tank losses documented by the Oryx blog, a website that uses open source tools to count destroyed Russian equipment, at least 340 — or 34 percent — were abandoned. (The figure jumps to 38 percent if damaged tanks are included.) This percentage was highest during the first month of the war when Russia’s tank losses were the greatest. At the beginning of April, for example, 53 percent of Russia’s recorded tank losses were abandoned. In addition, many of the tanks listed as destroyed were first abandoned by their crews and destroyed by Ukrainian soldiers who either could not or chose not to capture them. This means that as many as 50 percent of Russia’s documented lost tanks may have been first abandoned by their crews. In other words, the tanks themselves were not the problem — they were simply employed poorly, which led to their high losses.

Three key issues explain Russia’s tank losses: lack of warning and preparation, poor strategy that exacerbated logistics issues, and insufficient infantry to protect them. Tanks are among the most logistics-intensive pieces of equipment. They require routine maintenance, spare parts, and substantial fuel to keep them operational. Because of these requirements, logistics planning is more important for tank battalions and regiments than nearly any other type of military unit, but Russia’s disorganized invasion exacerbated these logistical challenges. Russia’s operation was marked by extreme efforts at compartmentalization and secrecy, with most soldiers finding out that they were going to war only a few hours before the invasion. As a result, commanders and logisticians were given insufficient warning to plan and prepare. Tank units did not have enough time to schedule proper maintenance or to procure sufficient spare parts, fuel, and other items necessary for a conventional war that would involve long-distance movements.

Moreover, Russia’s plan involved too many axes of advance, many of which were not mutually supporting, and Russian Ground Forces units were tasked with advancing at an extremely rapid rate. As a result, Russian forces often moved beyond artillery, electronic warfare, and air defense coverage, further exacerbating logistics issues. The rapid advance also meant that Russia had longer and more exposed supply lines, and its logistics convoys were not prepared to handle ambushes from territorial defense forces. It is not surprising that tank units performed comparatively poorly at the beginning of the war, since they require greater preparation and planning than lighter units.

Logistics problems were also evident in the type of tanks Russia lost at the beginning of the war. Most of Russia’s tank force is composed of T-72 or T-90 variants, which use diesel engines. However, Russia still has a large number of T-80 variants in service as well, often based in extremely cold regions where their gas turbine engines are easier to operate than diesel engines. A higher percentage of T-80 tanks were abandoned than T-72 or T-90 variants. Of the 85 T-80U-series tanks that Russia lost, according to Oryx’s data, 50 (59 percent) were abandoned or captured. Of the 34 T-80BVM tanks that were lost, 19 (56 percent) were abandoned or captured. Compared to the more numerous T-72 and T-90 tanks in Russian service, T-80 tanks have higher fuel consumption and use a different type of fuel. The higher percentage of T-80 losses suggests that fuel was a critical factor in their abandonment or capture.

Certain Russian units faced far higher tank losses than others. In the first few weeks of the invasion, the 4th Tank Division’s two tank regiments lost more than 40 percent of their T-80U-series tanks. The Northern Fleet’s 200th Motorized Rifle Brigade lost a large number of T-80BVM tanks, while the 2nd Motorized Rifle Division’s 1st Tank Regiment reportedly lost 45 of its 93 T-72B3M tanks in the first three weeks of the war. The particularly heavy tank losses from the 1st Tank Army’s 4th Tank Division and 2nd Motorized Rifle Division suggest that this was a unit issue. It doesn’t appear that Russia’s Southern Military District or Eastern Military District sustained similar tank losses. This may be partially explained by the stiffer resistance that the Western Military District faced in Kharkiv and Sumy Oblasts at the beginning of the war, but it may also reflect poorer leadership and preparation. Indeed, Western Military District Commander Col. Gen. Alexander Zhuravlyov and Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Alexey Zavizion were both reportedly relieved, as was the commander of the 1st Tank Army, Lt. Gen. Sergey Kisel.

Not Just Javelins

Of the tanks that were damaged or destroyed, many of them were lost because Russia’s initial invasion was not conducted as a combined-arms operation, and it lacked sufficient infantry to support its tank units. This is another reason why Russia lost so many tanks during the first few weeks but far fewer after the first phase. More than half of the Russian tank losses recorded by Oryx occurred in the first 50 days of the war, which is also when the first articles were being published questioning the value of tanks. One of the well-known weaknesses of tanks is that they require infantry to protect them from opposing infantry forces with anti-tank weapons, particularly in urban terrain. Russia chose to reduce the strength of motorized rifle battalions on BMP Infantry Fighting Vehicles from 460 to 345 servicemen, and many of the battalions that invaded Ukraine were only at two-thirds to three-quarters strength. In practice, this meant that Russian motorized rifle units lacked sufficient dismounts for fighting in urban terrain. Russia also chose to reduce the motorized rifle battalion in each tank regiment to a single company, which was clearly insufficient to support the two battalion tactical groups that each tank regiment should be able to generate. Thus, it is no surprise that Ukraine had success in targeting Russian tanks with anti-tank teams. With sufficient infantry support and unmanned systems and ground reconnaissance to locate anti-tank teams, Russia’s tank fleet would have fared much better.

Despite their effectiveness, modern anti-tank guided missiles were not the primary killers of Russian tanks. According to an adviser to Ukraine’s most senior military officer: “[A]nti-tank missiles slowed the Russians down [during the advance towards Kyiv], but what killed them was our artillery. That was what broke their units.” Indeed, countless videos posted by the Ukrainian military have confirmed this, including those showing the ill-fated offensive by Russia’s 6th Tank Regiment in Brovary in mid-March. In addition to artillery, many Russian tanks were destroyed or disabled by Soviet-era systems, such as TM-62 anti-tank mines. Javelins, next generation light anti-tank weapons, and Ukrainian-made Stugna-P anti-tank systems have been effective, but they are just one component of Ukraine’s anti-tank efforts. Indeed, they likely destroyed a relatively smaller share of Russia’s tanks during its offensive in the Donbas, where Russia conducted a more coherent combined-arms operation. It is also important to note that public sources may not provide a representative view of how Russian tanks were damaged. Russian tanks struck by Stugna-P or Javelins are much more likely to be filmed and uploaded to social media than tanks damaged by mines, which may not be recorded as frequently. Of course, artillery battalions are not cheap, so the available evidence regarding tank losses in Ukraine does not particularly support the argument that we are seeing a “swing in favor of smaller and cheaper defensive weapons.” Ukraine has also suffered heavy tank losses, losing 244 tanks as documented by Oryx, of which 128 were destroyed. It does not appear most of these losses were from anti-tank guided missiles either.

For all these reasons, we should be cautious about drawing broader lessons from the performance of Russian tanks and other weapons during February and March. There is little risk that NATO militaries, or even China, would ever launch an offensive war without conducting a combined-arms operation. If anything, the early stages of the war simply confirm key components of U.S. military doctrine such as unity of command, mass, decentralized execution, combined arms, mission-type orders, and proper preparation.

Tanks in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War

Similarly, heavy Armenian tank losses during the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2021 have driven debate about their continued relevance. In that war, Armenia and its ally, the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, lost a substantial share of their tanks. But to attribute this to the tank’s obsolescence is a misinterpretation of the data.

According to Oryx’s data, Armenia lost 255 tanks, of which 146 (57 percent) were destroyed. Of these 146 tanks, 83 (57 percent) were destroyed by TB2s, the now famous Turkish-made drones. Others were damaged by TB2 strikes or destroyed by artillery and anti-tank guided missiles that were located by TB2 drone. Many of the other Armenian tanks were destroyed by loitering munitions. These tank losses occurred after Azerbaijan reportedly destroyed 60 percent of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic’s air defenses and 40 percent of its artillery in the first hour of the war. Once Azerbaijan achieved air superiority, its TB2s then focused on targeting tanks, artillery, and other armor. After a couple of weeks of heavy losses, Armenia used its tanks far less frequently because of the persistent threat posed by the TB2. This made it far more difficult for Armenia to reinforce its positions or to counterattack. The one exception was during the Battle for Shusha, when overcast weather prevented the TB2 from playing a significant role. For several days, Armenia used tanks and armored vehicles in counterattacks on the city, but it was too late to retake it.

Instead of demonstrating the obsolescence of the platform, Armenia’s losses showed how important tanks are in modern warfare. Once Armenia was unable to effectively employ its tanks, it was at a significant disadvantage. These heavy tank losses preceded Azerbaijan’s breakthrough. Indeed, tanks were critical to Azerbaijan’s success in penetrating Armenian defensive lines and exploiting that success. Baku only had limited success in assaulting Armenian defenses along most of the line of control, largely composed of mountainous or elevated terrain. It is no coincidence that Azerbaijan’s breakthrough came in the south where the terrain was flatter and where Baku could maximize its advantage in armor. Azerbaijan’s ability to protect its tanks and employ them effectively, and Armenia’s inability to do so, was one of the main factors that explained Azerbaijan’s success in the war. The war did not demonstrate that tanks were obsolete. Instead, it demonstrated that Armenia’s air defenses were insufficient to defend its tanks and artillery from Azerbaijan’s airpower.

The Enduring Importance of Tanks

The wars in Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh both show that mobile armored platforms with firepower are still important. They also demonstrate that tanks need to be employed with adequate combined-arms support. Otherwise, tanks, like any armament, will be vulnerable. Russian tank units lacked sufficient infantry, which left them vulnerable to anti-tank teams, and Armenia’s aging air defenses failed to protect its tanks from Azerbaijan’s TB2s, which led to their high losses. Indeed, the war in Ukraine has disproven the arguments that drones rendered tanks obsolete in Nagorno-Karabakh. TB2s have been effective in Ukraine, but they have not seriously threatened Russia’s tank fleet. Furthermore, tank units require significant logistical support to operate effectively. These are well-known lessons that were understood by tank commanders as far back as World War II.

While the threats facing tanks have grown, so have countermeasures. Although many articles have been written about Russian tank design flaws, there are plenty of examples from Ukraine of Russian tanks being struck by anti-tank weapons, including anti-tank guided missiles, in which the crew survives. Oryx’s list, which only includes observed losses, undoubtedly undercounts the number of Russian tanks that were damaged but eventually recovered by Russian forces. Strikes may disable the tank’s weapons or ability to move, but the survivability of tanks is far greater than that of other armored vehicles. Without tanks, a military involved in a large-scale ground war would have to rely on armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles to fill that same role, which would lead to a greater percentage of catastrophic losses and heavier casualties. Indeed, a Russian war correspondent argued that Russia needed more BMO-T heavy armored personnel carriers based on a T-72 tank chassis because its BMP infantry fighting vehicles didn’t have sufficient armor.

In fact, both Russia and Ukraine have seen the value in employing tanks in this war. Russia continues to ship tanks from storage depots to equip units in Ukraine and to raise new volunteer tank battalions. Likewise, Ukraine continues to ask for more tanks and armor from Western countries, and it has used tanks in counterattacks and to stop Russia’s advance in the Donbas. Although Russia has developed a variety of unmanned ground vehicles, they have only been used to clear mines far from the front lines in Ukraine, which demonstrates that they are not ready to replace tanks on the battlefield.

While the Russian military would have been better served in Ukraine by having more infantry and fewer tanks, tanks will continue to be important systems in ground warfare. They remain a key ground component of combined-arms warfare, without which other arms are more vulnerable. Infantry are vulnerable when attempting to seize defensive positions, meaning tanks still play a critical role during offensive operations. Anti-tank guided missiles certainly cannot replace the tank’s role in supporting maneuver.

Crucially, NATO tanks generally have better crew protection than Russia’s, and NATO militaries would be unlikely to eschew combined arms as the Russian military did in the early stages of its invasion. So not all lessons from this war directly apply to NATO. Drawing similar sweeping conclusions based on Russian tank losses from this period would also be a mistake. The evidence from Ukraine reveals that tanks are still very relevant in modern warfare.

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Rob Lee is a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia Program. He is a Ph.D. student researching Russian defense policy at King’s College London’s War Studies Department and a former Marine infantry officer.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Rob Lee · September 6, 2022

10. I Was Wrong. Now What? by Francis J. Gavin

Everyone in academia and the think tank community should reflect on this entire essay and certainly on the excerpt below.

Excerpt:

What should we make of these fierce “Who was right?” exchanges? My first thought was that it matters who is making the decision. Whether I or my academic colleagues or think-tank friends are right or wrong is of little consequence to anything but our own egos. When those who make policy are wrong, it can be a matter of grave consequence. We see clear evidence of this today. Putin’s horrific blunders in Ukraine have cost countless lives and produced misery and fear.

I Was Wrong. Now What? - Texas National Security Review

tnsr.org · by Francis J. Gavin · July 5, 2022

I Was Wrong. Now What?

Policy and Academia July 05, 2022

Francis J. Gavin

In his introductory essay for Volume 5, Issue 3, the chair of our editorial board, Frank Gavin, contemplates being wrong, the value of academic debate, and the importance of a society looking at itself in the mirror, warts and all.

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I have a confession to make: I have been wrong quite a lot lately. I believed Vladimir Putin was pursuing a coercive bluff and would not invade Ukraine. I did not think Xi Jinping’s China would be so foolish as to crack down on Hong Kong. Donald Trump serving out his full four-year term shocked me as much as his election did. Uber struck me as an impractical fad that would never work out, and, in 2010, when a friend excitedly showed me an iPad he had purchased, I thought he had wasted his money. I also believed the Philadelphia Eagles’ 2018 Super Bowl victory was the start of a decades-long football dynasty.

Maybe I am just especially bad at understanding how the world works, an interpretation my daughters might favor. I doubt, however, that this is the whole story. While I am humble enough to admit mistakes, I am immodest enough to think I am smart, thoughtful, and careful in my analyses. And there have been times when I have been right about important questions. I have long pushed back against two popular predictions that have surfaced regularly since I began my academic career: first, that the world is at a nuclear tipping point and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty regime is close to collapse, and second, that the dollar is about to lose its leading position as a reserve currency. The number of nuclear weapons states has stayed the same since I first heard this warning 30 years ago, and the dollar is strong and more central to the international economy than ever. While I am not sure what my batting average is, I confess I am more likely to highlight when I am right than linger on my misjudgments, be it in the classroom, casual conversation, or scholarly footnotes.

Why do I mention this? Events in recent years, such as China’s belligerence, America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russia’s brutal attack on Ukraine and ensuing military incompetence, and the vigorous and unified response of the United States and its allies, have inspired “spirited” exchanges — both online and in print — about who correctly predicted these events and who got them wrong. Other forecasts, yet untested, generate equally contentious debate. Will Russia use weapons of mass destruction? Will China invade Taiwan? Is the American-led order collapsing? Scholars and analysts of foreign policy and international relations often judge themselves, and are judged by the outside world, by the accuracy of their predictions. But as I read the excellent pieces in this issue, I began to wonder — is “prediction” the best way to assess and value expertise about world affairs?

As my international relations friends never tire of telling me, behind every policy decision lies a theory of how the world works.

Hedgehogs aren’t all bad. As my international relations friends never tire of telling me, behind every policy decision lies a theory of how the world works. As Andrew Ehrhardt reveals in his article, “Everyman His Own Philosopher of History,” even the discipline more populated by foxes — history — has hedgehogs lurking around the corner, be they Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx, or Arnold Toynbee. Raphael BenLevi demonstrates, in this issue, that these underlying frameworks shaped how the United States developed and implemented its nuclear nonproliferation policies toward Iran. Philosophies of history and schools of grand strategy are not dissimilar.

In an ideal world, we would all acknowledge that this business is hard and confess our sins as loudly as our triumphs, less for an accounting or truth squad and more because it is useful to assess the assumptions about the world that go into our predictions (and it is good for our students to understand that we are imperfect, not omniscient). Epistemological modesty is an underrated virtue. And as a community, this would also cause us to be more skeptical of anyone who offers a simple, all-encompassing explanation for how the world works and never admits when they are wrong, a psychological profile more appropriate for cult leaders and authoritarian dictators than famous international relations professors.

The social and political world are enormously complicated, context and circumstances are crucial yet ever-changing, and rarely does a new crisis or political event precisely resemble any that came before it.

What should we make of these fierce “Who was right?” exchanges? My first thought was that it matters who is making the decision. Whether I or my academic colleagues or think-tank friends are right or wrong is of little consequence to anything but our own egos. When those who make policy are wrong, it can be a matter of grave consequence. We see clear evidence of this today. Putin’s horrific blunders in Ukraine have cost countless lives and produced misery and fear.

I recently had an extraordinary opportunity to reflect upon the real-world consequences of decision-making while participating in a staff ride organized by the strategic studies students from the Bologna campus of my school, Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies. The ride was based on the 1943–44 Italian campaign during World War II. I joined the group in the small town of San Pietro before we travelled to the Rapido valley. I knew far less about the campaign than I should have, but what I learned shocked me. The decision to invade Italy in the first place was an ugly and arguably wrong-headed grand-strategic compromise between Winston Churchill’s desire to protect British imperial interests in the Mediterranean and the preference of America’s military leaders to prepare for a cross-channel invasion of Europe. After landing in Italy in September 1943 and predicting that they would reach Rome the next month, the Allied forces instead slogged through a slow, painful, and costly advance across the Liri valley, arriving in the Rapido valley early in 1944. Standing before the deep, fast-moving river, the Rapido, in a narrow, open plain surrounded by mountains, it was obvious even to a nonmilitary expert like me how brutally difficult getting north would be. To achieve success, the Allies would have had to capture the surrounding hills. On top of the highest hill, however, was a beautiful Benedictine monastery, founded in the early sixth century.

What happened next is well known. The Wehrmacht did not use the monastery for their strategic advantage, as the Allies had suspected it would. Instead, at great effort and expense, the German army carefully removed its artistic and historical treasures and returned them safely to the Vatican. The Allies, on the other hand, frustrated at their inability to advance, became convinced German troops were using the site to rain artillery fire on their positions and made the decision to bomb it. In the process, they destroyed one of the most venerated sites for Roman Catholics in the world. Furthermore, over 200 innocent men, women, and children who were sheltering in the abbey, believing they were safe, were killed. The rubble created an ideal spot for German soldiers to occupy and use to continue to stymie Allied efforts to take the valley, resulting in thousands more causalities.

The Allied campaign to take Monte Cassino and cross the Rapido succeeded only after four bloody tries — five months after the first failed effort. It was done at an extraordinary cost in terms of casualties and with little evidence that it did much to advance the overall Allied cause. This staff ride generated some uncomfortable insights into and even comparisons with the ongoing, horrific Russian invasion of Ukraine. It was hard to see the Italian campaign as anything but a tactical, strategic, grand-strategic, and moral fiasco.

A society that allows loud and even impolite academic and policy debates and engages its most talented artists to portray war, warts and all, is one worth defending.

This caused me to return to the Foreign Affairs debate over NATO. As silly as the poll seemed at first, it is important to recall that there is likely no similar poll in Moscow or Beijing asking, “Was the invasion of Ukraine a mistake?” or, “Will we regret the crackdown in Hong Kong?” Does this matter? A society that allows loud and even impolite academic and policy debates and engages its most talented artists to portray war, warts and all, is one worth defending. It is also one that, in the long run, is likely to be more effective. Few individuals, organizations, or nations get things 100 percent right at first. They must learn, and to do so they must be honest and open, identify their mistakes, and come up with better methods and processes, so that next time they do better. That is one of the core principles of scholarship, and it is where academics and analysts can help decision-makers. What may seem like repetitive and even obsessive debate and score-keeping is part of a process to help make sense of and improve decision-making in a complex and confusing world. It can be messy, feelings can get hurt, and sometimes the incentives cause us to listen to the wrong people for too long while ignoring quieter but wiser voices. These are the costs and burdens of an open society, which we all know too well. This system of unrelenting and sharp debate and disagreement is better than any alternative. And the costs to sustain it, while they often seem high, are well worth it.

So yes, I’ve been wrong, and will continue to be wrong. And while I don’t plan on issuing many more mea culpas, I will keep trying to learn, especially from the great authors published in the Texas National Security Review. And come to think of it, maybe I haven’t been all that wrong. The Philadelphia Eagles have had a great offseason, and anything is possible…

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

Image: Dave Winer (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Endnotes

Francis J. Gavin

Francis J. Gavin

Chair, Editorial Board

Read more about author Francis J. Gavin Read More

1. 1 Philip E. Tetlock, Expert Political Judgement: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).
2. 2 Louis Menand, “Everybody’s an Expert: Putting Predictions to the Test,” New Yorker, Nov. 27, 2005, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/12/05/everybodys-an-expert.
3. 3 “Inside Garrison Keillor’s Fabled World of ‘A Prairie Home Companion,’” PBS News Weekend, July 26, 2014, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/40-years-counting-inside-garrison-keillors-fabled-world-prairie-home-companion#:~:text=GARRISON%20KEILLOR%3A,-So%2C%20you%20just&text=Where%20all%20the%20women%20are%20strong%20and%20all%20the%20men,'.
4. 4 Stephen M. Walt, “What Henry Told Harvard,” Foreign Policy, April 12, 2012, https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/04/12/what-henry-told-harvard/.
5. 5 “Was NATO Enlargement a Mistake? Foreign Affairs Asks the Experts,” Foreign Affairs, April 19, 2022, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ask-the-experts/2022-04-19/was-nato-enlargement-mistake.
6. 6 Mark Harris, Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War (New York: Penguin Press, 2014).
7. 1
8. 2
9. 3 The truth is that we are all heroes of our own stories. Each of us remembers, in sharp detail, everyone who has broken our heart. Rarely do we invest the same intellectual or emotional energy reflecting upon those whose hearts we’ve broken. Modesty, humility, and self-awareness are rarely rewarded in life, to say nothing of the scholarly and analytical community.
10. Ex ante, decision-makers face radical uncertainty about an unknowable future. Most foreign policy problems are what former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called “51/49” challenges, meaning that it was virtually a coin flip as to how they would turn out.4 Kissinger knows of what he speaks, as Marino Auffant demonstrates in his article, “Oil for Atoms.” The secretary of state’s efforts to keep the Western alliance unified during the 1970s energy crisis revealed a number of difficult, cross-cutting issues for actors with divergent interests. In a similar vein, Kathleen M. Vogel and Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley highlight the extraordinary complexity and uncertainty surrounding big data and the threat of China hacking biomedical data. Nadiya Kostyuk and Erik Gartzke explain why the widely predicted cyber attacks that many feared Russia would launch against Ukraine have not materialized. Sahr Muhammedally and Dan Mahanty describe the moral and strategic dilemmas behind the effort to avoid civilian casualties during war.
11. Foreign Affairs that asked whether NATO expansion was a mistake.5 They literally asked everyone remotely attached to the foreign-policy community or the so-called “blob” — I think my mailman took a pass when asked to participate. I have a particular interest in the question, not because I am an expert — far from it — but because I (randomly) seem to know, have worked for, worked with, hired, or been bitter rivals with the majority of the 17 people who, based on their policy experience, scholarship, or both, are actually qualified to provide an intelligent answer to the question (you all know who you are). In other words, I am the Kevin Bacon of the NATO expansion debate, and I have benefitted enormously over the years from these arguments. That said, I’ve always thought the debate a little, well, strange, in the way academic exchanges often are: NATO enlargement was obviously a difficult and consequential decision. It may have been right or wrong, and both sides made compelling arguments. But the narrow, obsessive focus on the issue, as opposed to all the other things going on in world politics, European statecraft, or Russian history over the past three decades, seemed a bit off and disconnected from how policy actually works.
12. 6

tnsr.org · by Francis J. Gavin · July 5, 2022

11. This Marine Officer Is Mad as Hell

Scheller will get more than his 15 minutes of fame.

I have received a lot of criticism for saying that his words and actions make me think his book will not be credible. My critics say he is not wrong and that his arguments are credible. They say both can be true, his actions can be interpreted as misguided but his critique of general officers can be accurate. They are right and I was wrong to base my criticism solely on the author's words and actions. Perhaps I will rethink my position and read his book anyway, even if I find his actions and words distasteful. Or maybe this evaluation of his book from a fellow Marine will be enough:

Conclusion:

Ultimately, “Crisis” does little to clarify the Afghanistan war or add closure, and Scheller’s attempt to correct the military and hold people accountable is for the most part lost in the hollowness of the book’s arguments. Mostly he comes across as “God’s lonely man,” a self-perceived martyr who, instead of successfully holding the military to task, appears to be searching for answers to questions that can’t even be properly articulated. I’ll accept that emotional arguments are important for making change, and political change doesn’t come without people being fed up. But in “Crisis of Command,” Scheller appears to be shouting into the void more than championing actual solutions to the fundamental problems inherent in our military and foreign policy.

This Marine Officer Is Mad as Hell

By Miles Lagoze

September 04, 2022

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/09/04/this_marine_officer_is_mad_as_hell_148144.html?mc_cid=53cb2445fe

Former Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller was the kind of infantry officer I probably would have loved as an enlisted Marine back in 2008. The officer who shuns bureaucracy and looks out for his Marines at all costs, even if it costs him his command and career. The officer who focuses on fighting wars instead of enforcing asinine rules and regulations. The kind of officer who embodies the mentality that a leader isn’t a leader until he earns that status from his men, that his identity isn’t real until it’s solidified in the hearts and minds of his Marines. It’s a powerful sentiment. And, based on his new memoir, “Crisis of Command” (Knox Press, 2022), it seems that Scheller succeeded in embodying this sentiment over the course of his 17 years in uniform.

Having been an enlisted Marine, I suspect Scheller is the kind of officer who wishes he had enlisted instead of being commissioned. It’s not uncommon. With those corporate, cushy desk jobs and promotion selection boards, officers place heavy emphasis on “professionalism” and the political skills required to maneuver a career through the appropriate checkpoints. These things never seemed to interest Scheller. After all, he abandoned his first career as a corporate accountant to join the Marine Corps in late 2004, shortly after the start of the Iraq War.

In this sense, Scheller was a perfect fit for the Scarlet and Gold. He had a yen for the tough life, and the culture of the Marine Corps glorifies its “saltiest” guys. Marines with the most combat experience typically get pushed out because they’re unable to overlook or accept the hypocrisies of the system, but they get the most respect from grunts and junior Marines. Meanwhile, those who play it safe and follow the rules make it to retirement with full pension. It’s the old trope from movies like “Heartbreak Ridge,” where Clint Eastwood’s renegade Gunnery Sergeant Highway clashes with a young officer who hadn’t seen the kind of shit Highway had, but acts like he knows how to command a unit in battle.

“With all due respect, Sir, you’re beginning to bore the hell out of me,” Highway growls to the officer after defying orders and seizing a hill during a combat operation. Highway’s a hard-drinking rogue, a throwback to World War II and Korea with a penchant for taking authority figures down a notch or two. He’s also authentic, the real deal – and the audience loves him for it.

This mentality – keep your head down, say the right things, put aside your values, do anything to get ahead – has seeped into many aspects of American culture, not just the military. Nothing makes it through the legislative process without the kinds of compromises and giveaways that leave both sides feeling like losers. COVID upended the world and changed the way we live. Social media continues to distance us from our sense of self. And, to top it off, we disgracefully lost a 20-year war, retreating like a dog with its tail between its legs. In a country where people fear its place in the world fading, its identity in flux, we seek our heroes from people in the military, because they’ve confronted and survived life-or-death situations and seem more tested, more trustworthy, more real.

In reality, as Lt. Col. Scheller demonstrates, some of those vets are just as lost as everyone else.

In late August 2021, Scheller posted a video on Facebook in which he railed against the failures of the generals and politicians in pulling American troops out of Afghanistan. “I have been fighting for 17 years,” Scheller said, looking into the camera. “I am willing to throw it all away to say to my senior leaders, ‘I demand accountability.’” The video went viral, and within about a month, Scheller was charged with several violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Military adjudicators threw him in the brig because he refused to stop posting videos, including one in which he called for a revolution and told followers to “tear the system down.” Scheller’s actions became the center of a right-wing media storm, with Fox News expressing outrage that a Marine with the moral courage to stand up and speak out about the military’s failures (but mostly President Biden’s failures) was silenced. By the end of 2021, Scheller was relieved of his command and released from the military with a “general discharge under honorable conditions” – something beneath an honorable discharge.

Now he’s out to set the record straight.

Scheller’s central thesis in “Crisis” is that the Marine Corps (or, the military writ large) is more focused on providing career paths for lifers than winning wars. The “system,” as he calls it, is too preoccupied with its own public image to focus on the real mission of killing bad guys and keeping America safe. We’ve been failing at war since Korea, he says. Scheller trains his fire on the generals and politicians responsible for what he sees as the rot in our military and the failure of our foreign policy.  

Scheller’s argument that “the generals should be held accountable” for the disastrous pullout of Afghanistan certainly found footing on social media, where he became an overnight celebrity. But questions remain. Should General McKenzie – the officer in charge of the withdrawal from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, and the focus of Scheller’s ire – really be the one held accountable for our failure in Afghanistan? Or, should it be the generals who started the Global War on Terror in the first place? Why not hold accountable the American people for turning a blind eye to the problem for two decades? How can we place all the blame on the one person tasked with cleaning up a mess that started two decades before and was perpetuated by countless other generals who insisted on more troop surges, more time, and more money? It’s easy to demand accountability; it’s hard to identify all those responsible through the years, and harder still to exact a punishment.

“We’ve won every fight at the tactical level, but we continue to lose wars politically,” Scheller says throughout the book. It’s a favorite theme, and consistent with his belief that the junior warfighters are not the ones to blame. Blame lies with the people pulling strings at the top of the system, Scheller tells us.

But did we really win every fight in Afghanistan at the tactical level? When I was in Helmand Province in 2011, there didn’t seem to be any strategy other than, “Let’s walk around aimlessly and wait to get shot at.” We bombed the wrong houses. We killed civilians. We blundered continuously. The Taliban were so clearly playing rope-a-dope with us – shooting from hundreds of meters away, then egressing once our air support came thundering in – that if you sought the opinions of most infantry guys with combat experience, they’d tell you the same thing: “The Taliban’s just going to come back after we leave.”

I don’t remember much “winning.” I doubt many soldiers and Marines do.

But like so many people today – angry, fed up, unable to express themselves to a wide enough audience – Scheller went to social media for validation. This is a forum that’s good for gaining attention but bad for achieving depth of thought, not to mention basic coherence. Scheller contradicts himself and unconsciously points out the flaws in his own logic. After championing a more aggressive approach in Afghanistan, and seeming to advocate for more or smarter military spending, he harkens back to President Eisenhower’s warning about the unstoppable gears of the “military industrial complex.”

So, which one is it? Do we need to spend more and strengthen our military; or should we be more skeptical of the military and its staggeringly large budget? Scheller argues for the latter in a recent op-ed, but his message in the book is less clear.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. Scheller’s self-righteousness and misplaced anger fit perfectly into the current culture, where what you’re fighting for matters less than the fact that you’re angry and willing to “fight like hell.” Though Scheller claims to be apolitical, he does parrot several right-wing talking points throughout the book: He’s fed up about Benghazi; he thinks it’s unlawful to hold people in custody who were not charged for their participation in the Jan. 6 riot; he bemoans PC culture in today’s military; and he champions retired Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who was accused of war crimes but later acquitted. Gallagher provided Scheller with legal assistance and more than $2 million in fundraising.

Since his exile from the Marine Corps, Scheller has made an appearance at a gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference and on the campaign trail in New Hampshire alongside retired Brigadier General Don Bolduc, who is running as a Republican for U.S. Senate. Scheller’s politics, like his arguments, are mixed up and often hard to decipher. Personally, I don’t think he got himself into this mess with politics in mind, but that seems to be the way the current is taking him.

Veterans are frequently used as pawns in today’s political chess match. We bring a presumption of patriotism to a country that isn’t sure what it should be patriotic about anymore. But here’s to hoping Scheller retrieves some agency and introspection after spending time away from the military bureaucracy he so vehemently opposes. He’s not a bad guy. What he did undoubtedly took balls, conviction, and more than a touch of madness. In one of the more difficult parts of the book, he goes into detail about the deterioration of his marriage following his decision to post videos on social media. It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion. Scheller was three years away from retirement and full pension before he spoke out, causing considerable hardship for his wife and three sons.

Since his discharge, it’s been interesting to watch his transition to civilian life. There’s a naivete to him that I recognize in a lot of the people I served with, and he reflects the feeling of hopelessness and anger that many Operation Enduring Freedom veterans experienced watching the Taliban return to Kabul. What was it all for?

Ultimately, “Crisis” does little to clarify the Afghanistan war or add closure, and Scheller’s attempt to correct the military and hold people accountable is for the most part lost in the hollowness of the book’s arguments. Mostly he comes across as “God’s lonely man,” a self-perceived martyr who, instead of successfully holding the military to task, appears to be searching for answers to questions that can’t even be properly articulated. I’ll accept that emotional arguments are important for making change, and political change doesn’t come without people being fed up. But in “Crisis of Command,” Scheller appears to be shouting into the void more than championing actual solutions to the fundamental problems inherent in our military and foreign policy.

Miles Lagoze is a Marine veteran, writer, and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. His critically acclaimed debut film,”Combat Obscura,” followed a Marine infantry battalion deployed to Afghanistan. His memoir, about filmmaking and his time in Afghanistan, will be published by One Signal/Simon & Schuster in 2023.

12. Space, Cyber, and Special Operations: An Influence Triad for Global Campaigning

​From the commander of the US Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School and the former commander of the Golden Knights and now commander of Ft Detrick.

As an aside, I am partial to triads and trinities: from life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; to our three branches of government; to passion, reason, and chance; to integrated deterrence: nuclear, conventional and unconventional; to the two "SOF trinities" of irregular, unconventional, and support to political warfare and influence, governance, and support to indigenous forces and populations, and I can go on and on.

Now we have the influence triad. I like it. But it begs the question I often ask: Can we learn to lead with influence?

Conclusion:

Like the nuclear triad, the influence triad maximizes US advantages and presents multiple dilemmas to adversaries, forcing them to recalculate costs and gains, particularly within the competition continuum. Further, the influence triad is complementary to the traditional nuclear triad—not a replacement. It will provide integrated deterrence and options for campaigning across the full joint competition continuum. Conceptually, the influence triad provides first-strike and retaliatory capabilities, along with less escalatory options for strategic leaders compared to conventional or nuclear capabilities. It also appeals to the global nature of component commands and aligns with emerging multi-domain and convergence doctrine. As an emerging concept, we suggest further organizational construct analysis, concept development, and capability acquisition to enable convergence. Once resourced, organized, and integrated by the joint force, the influence triad will provide a unique cross-domain national defense capability for a modern operational environment. The influence triad, like the Jedi Knights of popular science fiction, can provide a flexible and agile combination of capabilities that can achieve effects across the full joint competition continuum and particularly at the lower end of conflict.

​

Space, Cyber, and Special Operations: An Influence Triad for Global Campaigning - Modern War Institute

Will Beaurpere and Ned Marsh | 09.06.22

mwi.usma.edu · by Will Beaurpere · September 6, 2022

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Throughout George Lucas’s depiction of the conflicts that gripped a galaxy long ago and far, far away, both the heroes and the villains employ a myriad of unconventional capabilities and tactics. They utilize mind tricks to confuse their enemies, conduct raids to penetrate secret facilities, and make use of stolen codes at critical moments. To be sure, the characters do not eschew large conventional weapons or methods—there are space fleets and massed infantry formations, huge lasers and fighter wings. Yet the preeminent warriors, the Jedi, knew that there were always other ways to fight. Lucas’s Jedi complemented conventional space war capability with subterfuge, rebels, and niche skills to influence their operational environment. Lucas portrayed a form of war that was all encompassing and had to be fought simultaneously across the entire competition continuum.

In our real contemporary operational environment, the joint force needs speed and flexibility to effectively influence across the full competition continuum, both below and in armed conflict. These characteristics are the products of an agile and open mindset—a requirement for modern military campaigning. To resource that requirement, we recommend the combination and integration of space, cyber, and special operations capabilities as a joint concept for influence that directly complements existing conventional warfighting concepts.

In order to describe the influence triad as a warfighting concept that supports the 2022 National Defense Strategy’s three primary ways—integrated deterrence, campaigning, and actions that build enduring advantages—it is useful to first consider the nuclear triad. The nuclear triad as a warfighting concept also combined multiple component capabilities to deter and influence across the full competition continuum. It fundamentally altered the path of competition and conflict for the last seven decades. However, the complexity of changes that emerged from the nuclear triad’s influence now require us to recognize that there is room for a complementary triad that can influence through alternative means across the full competition continuum. The concepts of the nuclear triad and the influence triad are inextricably linked and when employed in a coordinated effort by the joint force, could meet the intent of the defense strategy.

The US nuclear triad has delivered effective deterrence against nuclear and conventional attack since its inception in the 1960s. Its combination of land-based ballistic missiles, sea-launched ballistic missiles, and air-delivered nuclear weapons maximizes America’s advantages and presents multiple dilemmas to its adversaries. This strategic advantage has driven adversaries to develop asymmetric strategies to undermine US deterrence. These adversaries, both state and nonstate, have largely chosen to compete below the threshold of war and avoid direct conventional engagement. As a result, there is a need for a joint concept to influence and deter across the full joint competition continuum.

To counter these asymmetric threats, we propose the conceptual integration and convergence of space, cyber, and special operations forces as a triad itself—an influence triad for modern competition. This influence triad can provide integrated deterrence and active campaigning options in competition, crisis, and conflict. It does so through synchronization of mutually supporting domain capabilities that can be combined to shape the operational environment or create effects in support of strategic objectives. In application, it can offer flexible options to counter mis- or disinformation, cyberattacks, and irregular threats. The influence triad provides a much-needed menu of options for scenarios in which national security interests are potentially threatened but when hard power options that risk escalation are less preferable. Space, cyber, and special operations capabilities—both individual services’ and joint capabilities—are already significant in and of themselves, but unique opportunities exist where they converge and can be leveraged together.

Effective deterrence requires capability and will. The influence triad delivers on both, with capability in both first-strike and retaliatory scenarios, anywhere and anytime with surprise. It ensures retaliatory options are available in response to the many ways adversaries can attack the United States. Moreover, the unique characteristics of these capabilities make it easier to signal a credible willingness to use them. The nature of space, cyber, and special operations makes them less escalatory, more politically palatable, and more appropriate to competition and low-intensity conflict than conventional or nuclear hard power options. These characteristics increase the likelihood that decision makers will be more willing to use the influence triad than a costly conventional or traditional warfare option. Above all, its elements are relatively low-risk, modest investments and they offer a proven advantage for the American military. Put simply, they work. However, organizational, cultural, and bureaucratic barriers have precluded these component capabilities from being previously combined into a coherent joint operating concept.

Domain Convergence

A key aspect of the influence triad is that it converges component capability for increased effect. Individually, each component provides exquisite capability. Space generally includes communications, intelligence, electronic warfare, and antisatellite capabilities. Cyber includes both offensive and defensive capabilities. While special operations includes direct action, unconventional warfare, civil affairs, psychological operations, preparation of the environment, and special reconnaissance. This is not an exhaustive list, and yet it shows the wide range of options within each individual component. However, when integrated, the influence triad enables effects no single component can deliver by itself. With twenty-one distinct doctrinal component capabilities, recombination could produce thousands of options. For example, special operations can provide access for cyber operations; cyber can set conditions with populations for special operations; and space platforms can deliver effects and enable both special and cyber operations. Innovation is not simply invention, but more commonly, the creative recombination of existing concepts and capabilities. The influence triad offers an abundant convergence of capabilities that, when applied through the elements of operational art, can deliver potent effects.

The influence triad’s creative characteristics support the three primary ways DoD intends to advance its goals, as specified in the 2022 National Defense Strategy: integrated deterrence, campaigning, and building advantages. By joining the capabilities of space, cyber, and special operations together, options available to strategic leaders increase exponentially. The result is a more agile and flexible joint force. Further, the influence triad does not have to be employed only in a deterrent capacity; the joint force may use it to actively campaign against adversaries to preemptively undermine, complicate, and disrupt their coercive and malign activities. Convergence of the three components within the influence triad will also accelerate innovation, experimentation, and reform of the joint force to meet demands of the contemporary competitive environment.

Global Reach

The influence triad leverages the global reach of space, cyber, and special operations to address primary threats outlined in the National Defense Strategy. Threats posed from China, Russia, and violent extremist organizations now transcend geographical and political boundaries. Our service and joint functional component commands are already global in their thinking, approach, and presentation of forces to combatant commanders.

Conducting Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) in the twenty-first century will demand that we expand our thinking. Lt. Gen. John Shaw, deputy commander of US Space Command, has argued that the word “global” no longer sufficiently describes the full range of considerations relevant to military matters. Instead, he recommends “supraglobal” as a term that more appropriately encapsulates the full range of global terrain and space. Building on this deliberate expansion in the way the operational environment is conceptualized, we propose a new way of thinking about MDO and effects, one in which space, cyber, and special operations capabilities converge to create effects, set conditions, and achieve objectives in competition. This idea is consistent with and complementary to the convergence of domains on which MDO is premised to achieve overmatch in large-scale combat.

Building on this concept, the Unified Command Plan outlines the global nature of geographic and functional combatant commands. US Special Operations Command has global authority for leading and synchronizing planning and operations against terrorist networks, while US Cyber Command has global cyber responsibilities. Functional commands also provide forces globally to the geographic combatant commands, ensuring cross-command synchronization. The influence triad, which operates globally and is capable of conducting simultaneous cooperation and competition both below and within armed conflict, is a distinct US advantage.

Concept Development

The influence triad will require further development as a supporting concept to MDO. Existing gaps in our force structure will need focused analysis in order to close them. In addition, the organizations of cyber, space, and special operations are not yet fully integrated; these capabilities are functionally aligned in different commands. Solving this challenge will require consolidation of organizations for purpose and synchronization, similar to the way US Strategic Command manages separate component nuclear capabilities.

Long-range precision fires, air defense capabilities, space, and space control capabilities are integrated in the proposed structure of the Army’s multi-domain task forces (MDTFs). However, we have not fully developed potential cyber or special operations representation, with a consequent lack of information advantage formations and concepts. This is a gap in multi-domain thinking, which has focused on large-scale conflict at the expense of more common and likely scenarios of competition, crisis, and low-intensity conflict. By conceptualizing and organizing to execute competition with the influence triad, the MDTFs will increase their operational capability and, in turn, drive demand. Increased demand and usage during lower-end competition will make the MDTFs, through increased sets and repetitions, better trained to execute operations in less likely, but more demanding, high-intensity scenarios.

For influence triad capabilities to have a deterrent effect, they must be effectively communicated or revealed to adversaries. However, there is a tension between communicating space, cyber, and special operations capabilities and the inherent and necessary protection of them. Willingness to use the influence triad in competition can demonstrate our ability to converge cross-domain effects without divulging sensitive capabilities. Demonstration may also reinforce diplomatic messaging that malign actions in competition or low-intensity conflict will be met by the convergence of effects.

Finally, from a defense management perspective, the long, slow, and cumbersome acquisition process could inhibit the influence triad’s agility. Significant upstream acquisition will be required to ensure the operational and tactical convergence of space, cyber, and special operations effects. The components must communicate, coordinate, and synchronize at the enterprise level early and often.

Like the nuclear triad, the influence triad maximizes US advantages and presents multiple dilemmas to adversaries, forcing them to recalculate costs and gains, particularly within the competition continuum. Further, the influence triad is complementary to the traditional nuclear triad—not a replacement. It will provide integrated deterrence and options for campaigning across the full joint competition continuum. Conceptually, the influence triad provides first-strike and retaliatory capabilities, along with less escalatory options for strategic leaders compared to conventional or nuclear capabilities. It also appeals to the global nature of component commands and aligns with emerging multi-domain and convergence doctrine. As an emerging concept, we suggest further organizational construct analysis, concept development, and capability acquisition to enable convergence. Once resourced, organized, and integrated by the joint force, the influence triad will provide a unique cross-domain national defense capability for a modern operational environment. The influence triad, like the Jedi Knights of popular science fiction, can provide a flexible and agile combination of capabilities that can achieve effects across the full joint competition continuum and particularly at the lower end of conflict.

Brigadier General Guillaume “Will” Beaurpere is the commanding general of the US Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School and recently served as the deputy commanding general for operations of US Army Space and Missile Defense Command.

Colonel Ned Marsh is a US Army Special Forces officer with Army and joint experience throughout Asia, Europe, and the Pacific.

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

Image credit: Senior Airman Dakota Raub, US Space Force; Tech. Sgt. R.J. Biermann, US Air Force; Sgt. Patrik Orcutt, US Army

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mwi.usma.edu · by Will Beaurpere · September 6, 2022

13. Why the US is becoming more brazen with its Ukraine support

Excerpts:

“We were a bit more careful at first … not knowing if Putin would find and attack supply lines and convoys, not being sure if he would escalate, and also not being sure if Ukraine could use what we have them or hold out for long against Russia,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a military analyst at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Brookings Institution.

In addition, the U.S. military sought to avoid stirring the pot with Russia by postponing a test of the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile in March and again in April to avoid “misinterpretation.”

Also in March, Defense officials kept a successful hypersonic missile test under wraps for two weeks.

Cut to August, when defense officials said the United States for the first time would send Ukraine ScanEagle surveillance drones, heavily armored MaxxPro mine-resistant vehicles and TOW guided anti-tank missile systems as well as various new munitions and ammo.

That’s after the administration also revealed it had sent AGM-88 High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles to Ukraine.

And since June, the U.S. has steadily been increasing High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems to the country, which American service members have trained Ukrainian troops to use in batches.

Why the US is becoming more brazen with its Ukraine support

BY ELLEN MITCHELL - 09/03/22 7:24 PM ET

The Hill · · September 3, 2022

The Biden administration is arming Ukraine with weapons that can do serious damage to Russian forces, and, unlike early in the war, U.S. officials don’t appear worried about Moscow’s reaction.

In the past several months, Washington has detailed tranches of new drones, harder-hitting missiles and deadly rocket systems as part of billions of dollars pledged to the former Soviet country. The clear support is a far cry from the early days of the war, when the U.S. government seemed hesitant to list exactly what was being sent into Ukraine so as not to tip off or draw the ire of Moscow.

But that’s changed thanks to a struggling Kremlin that has failed to follow through with its threats.

“Over time, the administration has recognized that they can provide larger, more capable, longer-distance, heavier weapons to the Ukrainians and the Russians have not reacted,” former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor told The Hill.

“The Russians have kind of bluffed and blustered, but they haven’t been provoked. And there was concern [over this] in the administration early on — there still is to some degree — but the fear of provoking the Russians has gone down,” added Taylor, who is now with the U.S. Institute of Peace.

When Russia first attacked Ukraine on Feb. 24, President Vladimir Putin made it clear that any Western country that provides certain weapons to Ukraine, including aircraft and missile defense systems, could be seen as stepping into the conflict.

Though the United States quickly sprang to Ukraine’s aid — pouring more than $10 billion worth of weapons into the country over the past six months — Washington appeared to tread carefully in the early days of the war, sometimes declining to detail specific systems and artillery being sent to bolster Kyiv.

“Operational security matters to the Ukrainians, right now,” then-Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters in March. “They’re fighting for their country, and the Pentagon is not going to be detailing publicly the tools with which they are doing that.”

Most notably, the administration resisted calls from Kyiv to supply the country with fighter jets — rejecting a plan in early March that would have involved transferring MiG-29 jets from Poland to Ukraine — out of concern it would escalate tensions with Russia.

The caution also extended to public rhetoric. President Biden reportedly told Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in April to tone it down after the Pentagon chief said that the U.S. wanted a weakened Russia that could not launch another attack — comments that Blinken then publicly aligned himself with.

“We were a bit more careful at first … not knowing if Putin would find and attack supply lines and convoys, not being sure if he would escalate, and also not being sure if Ukraine could use what we have them or hold out for long against Russia,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a military analyst at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Brookings Institution.

In addition, the U.S. military sought to avoid stirring the pot with Russia by postponing a test of the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile in March and again in April to avoid “misinterpretation.”

Also in March, Defense officials kept a successful hypersonic missile test under wraps for two weeks.

Cut to August, when defense officials said the United States for the first time would send Ukraine ScanEagle surveillance drones, heavily armored MaxxPro mine-resistant vehicles and TOW guided anti-tank missile systems as well as various new munitions and ammo.

That’s after the administration also revealed it had sent AGM-88 High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles to Ukraine.

And since June, the U.S. has steadily been increasing High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems to the country, which American service members have trained Ukrainian troops to use in batches.

Looking ahead, multiple reports have indicated that the U.S. plans to soon send Excalibur precision-guided artillery munitions — weapons that can travel up to 70 kilometers and would help the Ukrainians target dug-in Russian positions and command posts.

Part of the shift in messaging can be attributed to the fact Kyiv defied international expectations and did not quickly fall when Russia first attacked, according to Nathan Sales, a former State Department official who most recently served as the acting undersecretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights.

“I think the administration’s messaging about the support it’s providing is changing because the nature of the war is changing,” said Sales, now with the Soufan Group, an intelligence and security consultancy.

At the beginning of the invasion, the prediction in Washington was Kyiv would topple in a matter of days, followed by a prolonged guerrilla-based campaign and insurgency.

Such a conflict requires small, lightweight, portable weapons that can take out helicopters and tanks, armaments such as Stinger missiles and Javelins, which the U.S. government quickly provided.

Instead, the battle morphed into a conventional conflict, whereas a large mass of combined forces on one side is fighting large mass of forces on the other.

“To engage in that kind of campaign you need a much wider array of weaponry — you need artillery, you need drones, you need various other forms of heavy weaponry like anti-ship missiles. … What’s changing isn’t so much the administration’s willingness to talk about what it’s giving but the nature of the weapons it’s actually giving,” Sales said.

Another part of the equation: Recent intelligence that indicates Russia is feeling the sting of Western-imposed sanctions and a military service force that is dwindling in power as the war wears on.

Last month, Reuters reported that major Russian airlines such as Aeroflot have grounded their planes so they can be stripped for spare parts, taking components from some of their planes to keep others airworthy.

And facing losses on the battlefield, Putin last month sought to boost Russia’s combat personnel by more than 130,000 troops by eliminating the upper age limit for new recruits and encouraging prisoners to join.

U.S. officials think the effort is “unlikely to succeed.”

Russian forces not receiving combat bonuses in Ukraine: UK intelligence Zelensky hits Moscow over gas export delay: ‘Russia wants to destroy the normal life of every European’

Taken altogether, the intelligence paints a picture of a country struggling to maintain its own institutions, much less fire back at Western nations for aiding Ukraine.

“I think the instincts of the people in the departments and agencies, particularly State and Defense and the intelligence community, I think their instincts are to be more forward leaning and more aggressive,” one former senior government official said.

“We have a lot more space on our side, I think, to take actions that will assist Ukraine without being unjustifiably afraid of how Putin is going to respond,” they added.

The Hill ·· September 3, 2022

14. Is nuclear war inevitable?

I certainly hope not. I seem to remember Clausewitz saying some about war going to extremes, absolute war or total war (though he did not use those terms).

Excerpts:

The likelihood of nuclear war rests on both independent and interdependent probabilities. A purely accidental war might fit the model of the coin flip, but such wars are rare, and any accidents might turn out to be limited. Moreover, if an accidental conflict remains limited, it may trigger future actions that further limit the probability of a larger war. And the longer the period, the greater the chance that things may have changed. In 8,000 years, humans may have much more pressing concerns than nuclear war.

...

The war in Ukraine has reminded us that there is no way to avoid uncertainty and risk. The goal of reducing (not abolishing) the role of nuclear weapons over time remains as important as ever. Richard Garwin, the designer of the first hydrogen bomb, calculated that, ‘If the probability of nuclear war this year is 1%, and if each year we manage to reduce it to only 80% of what it was the previous year, then the cumulative probability of nuclear war for all time will be 5%.’ We can live moral lives with that probability.

Is nuclear war inevitable? | The Strategist

aspistrategist.org.au · by Joseph S. Nye · September 6, 2022

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and nuclear sabre rattling against the West have revived a debate about nuclear weapons. Last year, when a United Nations treaty to ban such weapons outright entered into force, none of the world’s nine nuclear-weapon states was among the 86 signatories. How can these states justify possessing weapons that put all of humanity at risk?

That is a pertinent question, but it must be considered alongside another one: if the United States were to sign the treaty and destroy its own arsenal, would it still be able to deter further Russian aggression in Europe? If the answer is no, one also must consider whether nuclear war is inevitable.

It’s not a new question. In 1960, the British scientist and novelist C.P. Snow concluded that nuclear war within a decade was ‘a mathematical certainty’. That may have been an exaggeration, but many believed Snow’s prediction would be justified if a war occurred within a century. In the 1980s, Nuclear Freeze campaigners like Helen Caldicott echoed Snow in warning that the build-up of nuclear weapons ‘will make nuclear war a mathematical certainty’’

Those advocating the abolition of nuclear weapons often note that if you flip a coin once, the chance of getting heads is 50%; but if you flip it 10 times, the chance of getting heads at least once rises to 99.9%. A 1% chance of nuclear war in the next 40 years becomes 99% after 8,000 years. Sooner or later, the odds will turn against us. Even if we cut the risks by half every year, we can never get to zero.

But the coin-flip metaphor is misleading where nuclear weapons are concerned because it assumes independent probabilities, whereas human interactions are more like loaded dice. What happens on one flip can change the odds on the next flip. There was a lower probability of nuclear war in 1963, just after the Cuban missile crisis, precisely because there had been a higher probability in 1962. The simple form of the law of averages doesn’t necessarily apply to complex human interactions. In principle, the right human choices can reduce probabilities.

The likelihood of nuclear war rests on both independent and interdependent probabilities. A purely accidental war might fit the model of the coin flip, but such wars are rare, and any accidents might turn out to be limited. Moreover, if an accidental conflict remains limited, it may trigger future actions that further limit the probability of a larger war. And the longer the period, the greater the chance that things may have changed. In 8,000 years, humans may have much more pressing concerns than nuclear war.

We simply don’t know what the interdependent probabilities are. But if we base our analysis on post–World War II history, we can assume that the annual probability isn’t in the higher range of the distribution.

During the Cuban missile crisis, US President John F. Kennedy reportedly estimated the probability of nuclear war to be between 33% and 50%. But this didn’t necessarily mean unlimited nuclear war. In interviews with participants in that episode on its 25th anniversary, we learned that, despite the massive superiority of the US nuclear arsenal, Kennedy was deterred by even the slightest prospect of nuclear war. And the outcome was hardly an unalloyed American victory; it involved a compromise that included the quiet removal of US missiles from Turkey.

Some people have used the mathematical-inevitability argument to push for unilateral nuclear disarmament. Inverting the Cold War slogan, future generations would be better off red than dead. But nuclear knowledge cannot be abolished, and coordinating abolition among nine or more ideologically diverse nuclear-weapon states would be extremely difficult, to say the least. Unreciprocated unilateral steps could embolden aggressors, increasing the odds of an unhappy endgame.

We have no idea what utility and risk acceptance will mean to distant future generations, or what people will value in 8,000 years. While our moral obligation to them compels us to treat survival very carefully, that task doesn’t require the complete absence of risk. We owe future generations roughly equal access to important values, and that includes equal chances of survival. That’s different from trying to aggregate the interests of centuries of unknown people into some unknowable sum in the present. Risk will always be an unavoidable component of human life.

Nuclear deterrence is based on a usability paradox. If the weapons are totally unusable, they don’t deter. But if they are too usable, nuclear war with all its devastation might occur. Given the usability paradox and the interdependent probabilities related to human interactions, we cannot seek an absolute answer to what constitutes ‘just deterrence’’ Nuclear deterrence is not all right or all wrong. Our acceptance of deterrence must be conditional.

The just war tradition that we have inherited over the centuries suggests three relevant conditions that must be met: a just and proportionate cause, limits on means, and prudent consideration of all consequences. I derive five nuclear maxims from these conditions. In terms of motives, we must understand that self-defence is a just but limited cause. As for means, we must never treat nuclear weapons as normal weapons, and we must minimise harm to innocent people. And regarding consequences, we should reduce the risks of nuclear war in the near term and try to reduce our reliance on nuclear weapons over time. A bomb in the basement involves some risk, but not as much risk as bombs on the front lines.

The war in Ukraine has reminded us that there is no way to avoid uncertainty and risk. The goal of reducing (not abolishing) the role of nuclear weapons over time remains as important as ever. Richard Garwin, the designer of the first hydrogen bomb, calculated that, ‘If the probability of nuclear war this year is 1%, and if each year we manage to reduce it to only 80% of what it was the previous year, then the cumulative probability of nuclear war for all time will be 5%.’ We can live moral lives with that probability.

aspistrategist.org.au · by Joseph S. Nye · September 6, 2022

​15. Waiting for Thermidor: America’s Foreign Policy Towards Iran

​Excerpts:

WITH THE Biden administration’s sporadic nuclear talks in Vienna, we don’t know yet whether the idealism-cum-left-wing realism of the Obama administration towards Tehran has played any part in a diplomacy of increasing American concessions. In 2009, Barack Obama thought that he just might be able to diminish, if not halt, the antagonism between America and Iran. A retrenching United States, led by a “post-Western” president who sometimes liked to emphasize his Muslim middle name, wouldn’t be a threat to the Islamic Republic; lots of trade after a nuclear deal would help reward Tehran’s “moderates,” inshallah bringing on Thermidor before the sunset clauses in Obama’s accord gave the theocracy an industrial-scale, weapons-grade, nuclear infrastructure.

Biden and his advisors, who once bought into Obama’s promise, may now be the first administration to not hold out hope that Iran might change. Khamenei and Raisi may have ended the four-decade search for “moderates” that started with Jimmy Carter. Befitting an administration whose senior officials recoil when their European counterparts liken them to their earlier versions in the Obama years, an agreement in Vienna will be much more mundane: a way—a bit more time—for the United States to accommodate itself to the nuclearization of the theocracy.

If Thermidor ever arrives, so much the better.

Waiting for Thermidor: America’s Foreign Policy Towards Iran

The Islamic Republic of Iran may be on an accelerated schedule for revolutionary decay, at least if compared to the USSR.

by Reuel Marc Gerecht Ray Takeyh

The National Interest · by Reuel Marc Gerecht · September 3, 2022

THE BIDEN administration is stumped by Iran. Upon inauguration, President Joe Biden and the best and the brightest of the Democratic Party assumed that reviving the Iran nuclear deal would be simple. In one of the ironic twists of history, they are bedeviled by their predecessor Donald Trump. It was the Trump administration that designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the muscle behind the theocracy, as a foreign terrorist organization.

The State Department has designated the Islamic Republic a state sponsor of terrorism since 1984; no one serious in Washington doubts that the 2019 designation is factually correct. It is, however, politically inconvenient. Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, apparently doesn’t care for the diplomatic legerdemain reportedly suggested by U.S. officials and European participants that would allow the White House and Khamenei to ignore this designation. The most embarrassing, if true, proposal would be for the United States to lift sanctions in exchange for a public promise by Tehran not to target Americans in the future. The Iranian foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, hardly a moderate, has suggested that the IRGC take one for the team since, in the end, it won’t really matter if the big sanctions on oil exports are lifted. So far, Khamenei has held firm, as has President Joe Biden.

Will either Biden or Khamenei blink over the Revolutionary Guards’ long embrace of subversive violence? Does it even really matter given the supreme leader’s fatigue with the West and larger aspirations? The difficulties and unseemliness of the Vienna talks ought to, again, oblige us to reflect on U.S.-Iranian relations, on why Republicans and Democrats have so often sought greater “normalcy” with the clerical regime—especially when it was dangerous and morally challenging to do so. Anyone who has examined the classified communications between Washington and Tehran can’t but be struck by the recurring pattern: the Americans are always trying to say “Hi!” (part of the unending search for “moderates”) while the Iranians answer “gom sho” (“get lost,” though often it’s much worse). The historically curious observer might also see a disconnect between Iran’s internal weaknesses and the determination of numerous administrations not to exploit them.

This actually is a truism in Iranian–American relations since 1979: ground is given to a theocracy that has killed, kidnapped, and wounded numerous Americans. This indulgence springs in part from the way Westerners see radicalism and revolution evolving. With the Islamic Republic, this has prompted many observers to ignore what the supreme leader and his men say and do in favor of a historical model that offers a smidgen of hope. Consider the French Revolution: first came revolution and overreach, as the Jacobins sought to transform society and expand frontiers; then came pragmatic temptations, as the burdens of governance led idealists to adjust expectations. The administrative state, in this rendering, eventually suffocates radicalism. The task of running a country, the thousands of interlocking processes that give a state identity and power—national and local budgets, urban planning, agriculture, industry, trade, building police forces and armies, the whole hierarchy of authority that obliges the young to bow before the middle-aged—militates against constant upheaval. Vladimir Lenin and his successors sought to tame the forces of history only to create a bloated bureaucratic state that lumbered toward its ultimate condition of labefaction. Mao Zedong was willing to sacrifice millions to perpetuate his version of communism, but his successors opted for a more workable economic model and cooled the internal tumult. Vietnamese “communists” are eager for Americans to invest in their country and reoccupy military bases. The imperatives of survival may not turn radicals into statesmen, but it does oblige them to be more careful with lethal creeds that can tear countries apart.

Most Iran-watchers in the West, especially in the academe, have been seeing the cusp of Thermidor since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died in 1989. Yet more than three decades later, Khomeini remains central to Iran’s politics. He is not just commemorated: his thoughts continue to guide the ruling elite. The Islamic Republic remains an unrepentant revolutionary state. The imposition of religious strictures on an unwilling society remains its core mission. Amr bimaruf, nahy az munkar—command good, forbid wrong—a central tenet of Islamic jurisprudence, remains radicalized and injected into every facet of Iranian society. Anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism define the theocracy’s internationalism, and Khomeini’s disciples have rebuffed reformers seeking to harmonize faith and freedom.

THE ISLAMIC Republic may be on an accelerated schedule for revolutionary decay, at least if compared to the USSR. Forty-three years in, the decay of militant Shiism is widespread and deep; within a similar span inside the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev was gearing up to belittle John F. Kennedy in Vienna. Soviet Russia—the communist spirit amongst the people—seemed then, and also in retrospect, much more solid than the Islamist esprit does today within the Persian core of the Iranian state (among ethnic minorities, which account for around 50 percent of the population, it’s degraded further).

There is an operative assumption among Western foreign policy circles that the atrophying of militant faith in the Islamic Republic must have had a numbing, if not moderating, effect upon the ruling mullahs and Revolutionary Guards. To gain greater popular support, the supreme leader surely has brought in those who know that change is both inevitable and desirable. Nearly the opposite impulse in the theocracy has been true, however, in large part because the Shiite story is about a charismatic vanguard surviving in a hostile environment. Shiism makes no historical sense without an elite—first the imams, later the clergy—resisting more powerful forces trying to oblige believers to forsake their faith.

The Soviets had Karl Marx, Lenin, and Russian pride; the theocracy has nearly 1,400 years of history to summon (selectively) to its side. For the revolution’s dedicated cadre, the purpose of the state is to realize God’s will on earth. Khamenei and his followers see themselves as a vanguard whose authority cannot be infringed upon by popular will and elections. They are often explicitly contemptuous of democratic accountability, which they see as an occidental idea that denies divine agency. The theocracy isn’t, Khamenei has warned, “prepared to allow flawed and non-divine perspectives and ideas that are aimed at enhancing the power of the individuals to dictate its social and political lives.” Assured of their ideological verities, these men are morally indifferent to the loss of popularity—they are Allah’s servants reifying the imams’ teachings.

This nexus between God and man is extremely difficult for contemporary Westerners, in whom secularism now runs far deeper than Christianity, to understand. The Enlightenment, the World Wars, and Ludwig Wittgenstein have effectively severed Western certitude that God and man have a common language. When confronted with such ardent religion in an elite, the Western inclination is to assume that such religious men are somehow lying, deceiving others (if not themselves) about their capacity to see the Almighty’s intentions.

Additionally, Islamists emphasize praxis: Khamenei and his allies have ensured their political hegemony by dominating non-elected institutions. The Guardian Council, which is responsible for vetting candidates for public office, purges all unreliable elements. The judiciary shutters newspapers and imprisons activists on trumped-up charges. The 125,000-man Revolutionary Guards and their more numerous minions, the well-paid street thugs in the Basij, quell demonstrations. And where torture and imprisonment aren’t enough, Iran’s security organs routinely assassinate domestic and expatriate dissidents.

Despots falter when they fail to appreciate the ebbs and flows of their own society, when they cannot see the breaking points. For the past four decades, the theocratic regime has steadily shed constituents. The first to abandon the regime were liberals and secularists, who were part of the coalition that displaced the monarchy. In the 1990s, the universities became the hotbed of anti-regime agitation. The middle class turned decisively against the government in 2009 with the birth of the pro-democracy Green Movement. The proximate cause was the fraudulent reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but the shrinking economy had helped this critical segment of society to turn its back on the theocracy.

The mullahs gleefully dismissed them all. The students, perhaps the most crucial force in the Islamic Revolution, became scions of wealth infatuated with Western culture. In fact, most university students today are from the downside of the middle class. The ruling elite thus now sees the middle class as hopelessly unsteady if not Janus-faced—they too have forgotten that God’s cause requires sacrifice. The regime put its remaining faith where it has always invested most of its rhetoric: the lower classes, the mostazafan, the oppressed, in whose name the revolution had been waged. Tied to the regime by patronage and piety, they became the indispensable pillar—until it, too, cracked in 2017.

That year was the beginning of the poor people’s protest movement. Corruption and American sanctions caused the government to trim the welfare state. At a time when the mullahs no longer hide their affluence and privileges, preaching austerity was galling to those subsisting in Iran’s shanty towns. “They make a man into a God and a nation into beggars,” cried out a protester in 2017. “Death to Khamenei!” was a common chant then in nationwide protests, and again in 2019, when an even larger wave of demonstrations—those in the ethnic minority provinces moving toward insurrection—struck the country. The theocracy unleashed its enforcers with exceptional severity in 2019. Thus far, the regime’s security forces have held.

THE CLERICAL oligarchs are not unaware of their problems—they simply have no way of ameliorating them. Today, inflation hovers around 40 percent, while 30 percent of Iranians are living below the poverty line. The government cannot create the necessary jobs or provide needed housing. A mismanaged pandemic response has further angered a hard-pressed populace. Ayatollah Muhammad Mousavi-Khoeiniha, one of the elders of the revolution, took the unprecedented step of issuing a public letter to Khamenei, warning, “The people believe the highest authority in the country’s management should have prevented the cultural, economic and social chaos the country is facing today … the current situation cannot continue.” A likely authentic, leaked Revolutionary Guards’ document in 2022 puts the regime’s dilemma in even starker terms: “Society is in a state of explosion … social discontent has risen by 300 percent in the past year.”

In the presidential election of 2021, the Islamic Republic laid bare its survival strategy. The regime abandoned the pretense of competitive elections. Former favorite sons of the revolution, like the very bright, reformist-loathing, conservative stalwart Ali Larijani, were disqualified from running. Khamenei selected Ebrahim Raisi, who has spent his entire career overseeing the regime’s dungeons, to become the next president. Raisi first made a name for himself in the 1980s as a member of the so-called “death commission,” which executed thousands of political prisoners. Since then, he’s grown ever closer to Khamenei, gaining contacts throughout the security institutions and among those who depend on the supreme leader’s largesse. His ascendance surely means that the regime intends to deal with dissent even more viciously than it has in the past.

Iran is thus at an impasse. The remaining revolutionaries in charge of the government are unwilling to concede their patrimony even though their sullen constituents are ready to move on. The system cannot reform even though it recognizes the urgency of reform. Leaked videos of Revolutionary Guard commanders and commentary among the ruling clergy clearly show men who know that the fundamentals of the Islamic Republic, especially the all-critical need to regenerate revolutionary loyalty, aren’t working. They see this internal collapse as evidence of baleful Western intrusion. Evil may have—may always have—the upper hand. This gloomy perspective isn’t uncommon in Islamic history, in both the Shiite and Sunni traditions. It isn’t that dissimilar to the Christian views of the enduring ethical frailty of man. This distrust of human aspirations is a significant factor in why the regime is so resistant to democracy—even on a provincial or city level—having any force within the society. And as the moral collapse spreads, this sense of righteousness intensifies.

Former president Hassan Rouhani, a favorite “moderate” of many Westerners, was probably the last gasp of the “technocratic” class who believed the revolution could be fortified through importing an Islamized Chinese model: greater trade with Europe would make the regime and the faith richer and more powerful. Khamenei has been willing to indulge this gamble, at least half-heartedly, but his tolerance for the bet may be declining as popular disgust with the theocracy becomes blatant. His fondness for a “resistance economy” springs directly from his trepidation that contact with the West, even through limited commercial relations that are obviously in Iran’s economic interests, carries considerable risk.

Self-awareness about the theocracy’s weaknesses has actually been one of the clerical regime’s strengths: Tehran’s internal assessments are often quite honest—once one gets beyond the anti-American and anti-Zionist conspiracies. The Islamic Republic is certainly cognizant of its own corruption. Official conversations about malversation, and other forms of graft, that leak out can be damning, if surreal (most of those who are dissecting corruption are likely thoroughly corrupt themselves).

The security services are also aware that ever-increasing slices of the population are willing to take to the streets to express their anger. And the persistence of these protests reflects that the public’s fear of the regime ebbs and flows; since 2009, when the massive Green Movement demonstrations broke out in Tehran, it’s been more ebb despite increasingly brutal tactics used on demonstrators.

The regime hasn’t by any means lost control of internal security—the savagery displayed in quelling the fuel-price protests of 2019 worked. However, neither the regime nor average Iranians would be surprised if some unforeseen catalyst led to new convulsions. The regime seems to understand that the situation may have become permanently unstable.

YET WESTERN official commentary and policies on Iran rarely dwell on the instability and the theocracy’s weaknesses. Democrats, and a lot of Republicans, are more or less frozen in amber: they get to the bomb and arms control and stop. They, understandably, approach with trepidation advocacy of democracy and human rights for fear that some form of American intervention might follow—scars left over from the past two decades feel fresh. Western liberals and leftists, anxious about being tough with anti-American third-world regimes, have an especially difficult time with Iran, where America’s sins have supposedly been so pivotal and egregious. It’s near gospel that the CIA-supported 1953 coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq created the conditions for the Islamic revolution twenty-six years later. Ben Affleck’s fine film, Argo, nicely captures this guilt in its animated introduction, which puts the blame for the revolution on America and Langley (before good CIA officers rescue the hostages). Helping black South Africans against white South Africans, Eastern Europeans against Soviet tyrants, and Ukrainians against Vladimir Putin are all much easier to contemplate and affect than imagining Washington aiding Iranians against a virulently anti-American Shiite theocracy. With Iran, in the eyes of most on the Left—and many on the Right, too—America can’t help but cock things up.

This fear of American escalation leads to consistent tolerance of bad Iranian behavior. The worst Iranian terrorist attacks against the United States have all gone unanswered. The defining blast—the Beirut barrack bombing in 1983—killed 241 Americans. Intercepts at the time and later writings by Iran’s ambassador in Syria, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi-pur, and the theocracy’s majordomo, Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, showed the clerical regime to be proudly culpable. Although Secretary of State George Shultz strongly advocated for a military response, Ronald Reagan declined. A few years later, Reagan was trading arms for hostages. Iranian “moderates” were, somehow, being reinforced by this exchange.

Likewise, nothing followed the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996, which killed nineteen Air Force servicemen and injured 495 people. In 1997, the reformist president Mohammad Khatami unexpectedly won the presidential election. Any serious interest in holding Iran accountable—and there was zero doubt about Iran’s culpability by the time George W. Bush came into office—petered out, replaced by a desire to engage the Islamic Republic. For many, Thermidor had arrived with Khatami—forceful American actions might have derailed him. Such was not to be: Khamenei, with Rafsanjani’s and Rouhani’s support, effectively gutted Khatami’s presidency in 1999.

Remembering 1953 and the shah, Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright started a foreign policy rhetorically built on American apologia. This hopefulness about Iranian possibilities probably became most surreal in early 2006, when Bush’s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and her primary Iran advisor, Nicholas Burns, now ambassador to China, were dreaming of reestablishing some sort of official presence inside the country—six months after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Islamic Republic’s first populist president, had won election. Ahmadinejad, who loved to torment wealthy clerics and express his fondness for a distinctly anti-clerical strain of mystical Shiism, signaled many things about the evolution of the Islamic revolution—growing affection for the normalization of relations with the United States, however, was not one of them.

Speculation about a new, more pragmatic Iran, the one that supposedly helped us in Afghanistan against the Taliban, was finally dashed in Iraq when Tehran went gunning for U.S. soldiers. The Bush administration had detailed information about where the Quds Force overlord, Qasem Soleimani, was training militant Shiite Iraqis to kill Americans. These preparations even included the construction of mock U.S. facilities. Hundreds of Americans died in Iraq as a result of nefarious Iranian actions. Yet Bush, the “axis of evil” president, never retaliated. It appears the White House and the Joint Chiefs feared escalation.

WITH THE Biden administration’s sporadic nuclear talks in Vienna, we don’t know yet whether the idealism-cum-left-wing realism of the Obama administration towards Tehran has played any part in a diplomacy of increasing American concessions. In 2009, Barack Obama thought that he just might be able to diminish, if not halt, the antagonism between America and Iran. A retrenching United States, led by a “post-Western” president who sometimes liked to emphasize his Muslim middle name, wouldn’t be a threat to the Islamic Republic; lots of trade after a nuclear deal would help reward Tehran’s “moderates,” inshallah bringing on Thermidor before the sunset clauses in Obama’s accord gave the theocracy an industrial-scale, weapons-grade, nuclear infrastructure.

Biden and his advisors, who once bought into Obama’s promise, may now be the first administration to not hold out hope that Iran might change. Khamenei and Raisi may have ended the four-decade search for “moderates” that started with Jimmy Carter. Befitting an administration whose senior officials recoil when their European counterparts liken them to their earlier versions in the Obama years, an agreement in Vienna will be much more mundane: a way—a bit more time—for the United States to accommodate itself to the nuclearization of the theocracy.

If Thermidor ever arrives, so much the better.

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former Iranian-targets officer in the CIA, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Ray Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations and the author of The Last Shah: America, Iran, and the Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty.

Image: Reuters.

​16. Hamas Tells Media to Lie: What Should the Media Tell its Readers?

Conclusion:

News organizations that care about their credibility, not just their clicks, should with clear eyes, examine their coverage that may have been colored by Hamas’ intimidation tactics. While too often the media has been hesitant to reform, we can hope for better, in service of greater transparency and accountability. Perhaps courageous news outlets will see the value in upholding their own high standards.

Hamas Tells Media to Lie: What Should the Media Tell its Readers?

Does the media have a responsibility to do an autopsy on its own coverage?

by Toby Dershowitz

The National Interest · by Toby Dershowitz · September 4, 2022

In a stunning expose’, a recent Associated Press article revealed a Hamas directive to journalists not to report on Gazans killed by Palestinian rockets that misfired and killed local families rather than their intended Israeli civilian targets. Reports indicate Palestinian Islamic Jihad killed more Palestinians in the early August Gaza-Israel conflict than did Israel.

Hamas also requires all visiting reporters to hire a local “sponsor,” a fixer or stringer, often a Palestinian journalist or translator. Hamas’ media directive says sponsors will be held responsible for what the journalists produce.

Let this sink in: If Hamas judges sponsors to have failed, they and perhaps their families will be punished. Punishment is not merely revoking licenses. Palestinian reporters have been subject to physical violence. Sponsors will make the consequences clear to reporters they assist. And the reporter will know: If bad things happen to my sponsor because of the stories I write, that will be on my conscience.

Rather than calling balls and strikes as they see things in Hamas-controlled Gaza, the sponsors were warned that they must “defend the Palestinian narrative and reject the foreigner’s bias to the Israeli narrative.” If you’ve had confidence in reporting from Gaza, this interference should shake that confidence.

With the fresh expose, does the media have a responsibility to do an autopsy on its own coverage?

In the recent conflict, Hamas, designated by the United States and the European Union as a terrorist organization, blamed Israel for the deaths of children in Jabaliya in a strike on Gaza on August 6. After Israel had assessed that the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad was poised to imminently attack Israel, it launched preemptive strikes in self-defense. Only when Israel provided aerial imagery showing the Jabaliya deaths on that day were caused by a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket did some media attempt to reverse course, but the original headlines around the world blaming Israel had already done the damage. All civilian deaths in conflict are heartbreaking but the media owes its readers the truth in each case.

Even when the results may not be in its favor, as may have been the case with the tragic death of Shireen Abu Akleh, a reporter inadvertently killed during a clash between militants in Jenin and Israeli Defense Forces, Israel investigated and presented its findings. That’s what’s expected of democracies to ensure credibility with its population, with its allies, and with the media.

Has the media been complying with Hamas’ rules of the road for decades but left reporting of its unspoken agreement with the Iran-funded organization on the cutting room floor? What do publications owe their readers about recent coverage of the conflict and about past coverage?

While some sponsors may be intimidated but well-meaning, others have outright bias. New York Times Gaza-based stringer Fady Hanona had tweeted that "the Jews are sons of dogs and I am with killing them, and burning them like Hitler did to them (smiley face).” Hanona’s record had hardly been hidden. The Times’ stringer had said, “I don’t accept a Jew, Israeli or Zionist, or anyone else who speaks Hebrew. I’m with killing them wherever they are: children, elderly people, and soldiers.”

While due recognition for its action, only after an NGO outed violations of the Times’ standards did the “paper of record” cease its relationship with Hanona. Others should follow suit.

Sunlight on Hamas’ media rules led to their withdrawal. But the Associated Press noted that “Hamas has still signaled its expectations, which could have a chilling effect on critical coverage.” Directives from Hamas are sure to continue.

During the May 2021 Gaza war, publications used Hamas-provided images of people outlets had reported were killed in the ten-day conflict, who in fact were not. Should media outlets now conduct thorough investigations of statements, images, and statistics from Hamas-run ministries that were used in their coverage?

When a publication suspects plagiarism or other concerns, while uncomfortable, investigations are conducted. Corrections are made. Action is taken.

AP’s standards state: “When we're wrong, we must say so as soon as possible. When we make a correction, we point it out both to subscriber editors … and in ways that news consumers can see it.” Other publications have similar guidelines, some requiring an editor’s note or explanation when the entire substance of an article raises a significant ethical matter.

If outlets used Hamas’ information, should editor’s notes be added that the article relied on Hamas-supplied information whose accuracy is being reviewed for accuracy?

What new transparency systems about how news is gathered should be implemented moving forward?

In one essay reflecting on his time on staff at the Associated Press’ Jerusalem bureau, Matti Friedman, who in 2014 blew the whistle on Hamas’ media rules and tacit compliance by the media, notes: “I was informed by the bureau’s senior editors that our Palestinian reporter in Gaza couldn’t possibly provide critical coverage of Hamas because doing so would put him in danger.”

He also shared this reflection: “Hamas learned that international coverage from the territory could be molded to its needs.” Noting that most of the press work in Gaza is done by locals who would not dare cross Hamas, Friedman said it was only rarely necessary for the group to threaten a Westerner. “The press could be trusted to play its role in the Hamas script, instead of reporting that there was such a script.”

And in his prophetic 2014 piece, Friedman wrote: “Hamas understood that journalists would not only accept as fact the Hamas-reported civilian death toll—relayed through the UN or through the Gaza Health Ministry, an office controlled by Hamas—but would make those numbers the center of coverage. Hamas understood that reporters … would not report the intimidation.” And then, “the NGO-UN-media alliance could be depended upon to unleash the organs of the international community on Israel, and to leave the jihadist group alone.”

News organizations that care about their credibility, not just their clicks, should with clear eyes, examine their coverage that may have been colored by Hamas’ intimidation tactics. While too often the media has been hesitant to reform, we can hope for better, in service of greater transparency and accountability. Perhaps courageous news outlets will see the value in upholding their own high standards.

Toby Dershowitz is senior vice president at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a non-partisan research institute focused on national security and foreign affairs. Follow her on Twitter @tobydersh.

Image: Reuters.

The National Interest · by Toby Dershowitz · September 4, 2022

17. Seven Myths about the Iran Nuclear Deal

Seven Myths about the Iran Nuclear Deal - by Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East

hudson.org · by Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East

View PDF

In 2015, President Barack Obama worked with three European powers, the European Union, Iran, China, and Russia to conclude the Iran nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). In 2018, President Donald Trump formally withdrew the United States from the deal. Instituting his policy of “maximum pressure,” Trump imposed crippling economic sanctions that punished Iran not just for its ongoing nuclear weapons program but also for, among other things, its regional aggression and support for terrorism worldwide.

Earlier in 2018, Israeli agents conducted a dramatic operation in Tehran, breaking into a secret warehouse and capturing a trove of Iranian nuclear files. These documents revealed a more advanced and comprehensive nuclear weapons program than had been previously known. The nuclear archive also showed Iranian officials’ plan for concealing nuclear weapons efforts under the guise of civilian research and development, and how Iranian officials systematically deceived the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

As a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran is required to cooperate with IAEA inspectors to verify the peaceful nature of its program. After the Israelis shared the nuclear archive with the IAEA, its inspectors found traces of uranium at several undeclared sites. Despite being obligated to do so, Tehran has refused to explain the presence of the uranium or reveal its current location. Iran’s requirements under the NPT are wholly separate from the JCPOA, but Tehran is using the Biden administration’s profound desire to return to the nuclear deal to bring political pressure on the IAEA to close the book on Iran’s violations.

A fair-minded observer of Iran’s relations with the IAEA cannot but conclude that Tehran has never wavered from its intention to build a nuclear weapons capability and that its publicly declared “civilian” nuclear activities are an effort to hide its nuclear bomb program in plain sight. From the very inception of the JCPOA, however, the deal’s supporters have spun myths that disguise these self-evident truths. After Trump left the deal, those same supporters continued to recite the old myths while adding some new ones about the purported comparative advantage of the JCPOA over maximum pressure.

As President Biden prepares to bring the United States back into the JCPOA, and as the public, the press, and Congress consider the deal’s terms, we identify the seven most pernicious myths and explain the reality that they seek to conceal.

Myth 1: “The JCPOA was working.”

Reality: The Iran deal allows Tehran to keep and expand a massive nuclear infrastructure it built solely for developing nuclear weapons.

The JCPOA:

• Permits Iran to maintain and expand nuclear facilities and capabilities that are unnecessary for producing peaceful nuclear energy.
• Gives Iran access to hundreds of billions of dollars that was previously subject to sanctions. As a result, Iran’s defense budget jumped by more than 30 percent in the years immediately after the deal’s conclusion. Iranian support for terrorist organizations, including Hamas and Hezbollah, also grew.
• Already lifted the UN arms embargo on Iran in 2020 and is scheduled to lift the missile embargo in 2023.
• Sparked a Middle Eastern nuclear arms race, as Iran’s neighbors began pursuing the same nuclear capabilities the deal promises Iran.

Myth 2: “Returning to the JCPOA will block Iran’s paths to a nuclear weapon.”

Reality: The JCPOA ensures that Iran will have critical capabilities that it needs to make nuclear weapons, in accordance with longstanding plans it has developed and continues to revise.

After the United States left the JCPOA in 2018, Iran violated its terms in multiple ways—such as by enriching uranium to 60 percent purity, stockpiling tons of enriched uranium, and experimenting with uranium metallurgy. These violations have two things in common: (1) they have no plausible purpose other than for the development of nuclear weapons; and (2) the nuclear infrastructure guaranteed by the JCPOA is what made them possible. Iran is now within weeks of having enough fissile material for five nuclear devices.

In sum, the speed and ease with which Iran could violate the deal’s terms at a time of its choosing prove that the deal never blocked its paths to a nuclear weapon.

Myth 3: “President Trump’s decision to leave the deal and pursue his maximum pressure policy prompted Iran to increase uranium enrichment levels.”

Reality: Iran did not resume 20 percent enrichment until after President Trump lost the 2020 presidential election.

Iran’s nuclear violations and other escalatory steps toward the United States are not retaliation against Trump; they are negotiating tactics against Biden.

Iran resumed enriching uranium to 20 percent in January 2021, by which time then President-elect Biden had clearly indicated that he would abandon the Trump administration’s maximum pressure policy and would seek a speedy return to the JCPOA framework. While the Biden administration consistently tried to conciliate Iran, Tehran increased enrichment further to 60 percent. During that time its proxies attacked American troops in Syria; its agents attempted to kidnap journalist Masih Alinejad on American soil with the intention, almost certainly, of killing her; and its Qods Force conducted plots to kill former American officials, including, among others, former National Security Advisor John Bolton and Hudson Distinguished Fellow and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Iran is an aggressive power that seeks to undermine the American-led order in the Middle East. A credible military deterrent backed by strong economic and diplomatic pressure is the only way to moderate its behavior. Conciliation from Washington breeds contempt in Tehran.

Myth 4: “Israel’s security establishment overwhelmingly supports US participation in the Iran Deal.”

Reality: The political leadership, security experts, and the general public in Israel all see the JCPOA as dangerous and strongly oppose it.

Successive Israeli governments, with very different political complexions, have unequivocally opposed the JCPOA and believe that returning to it is worse than having no deal. Prime Minister Yair Lapid recently reiterated, “In our eyes, [the deal] does not meet the standards set by President Biden himself: preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear state.” He went on to say, “Israel is not against any agreement. We are against this agreement, because it is a bad one.”

Israel is a democracy in which diverse opinions and assessments abound. Deal supporters routinely cherry-pick the views of some unelected Israeli security experts to bolster their case. These experts are the exceptions who prove the rule. On August 31, 2022, an organization representing 5,000 senior Israeli security officials sent a letter to President Biden rejecting the nuclear deal as “catastrophic” and stating that “a credible military threat in combination with crippling economic sanctions and the political resolve to act militarily, if necessary, is the most effective manner to address the Iranian threat.”

Myth 5: “The JCPOA does not expire.”

Reality: All meaningful restrictions that the JCPOA imposes on Iran expire quickly.

By January 2031, the JCPOA permits Iran to enrich uranium without limitation. The regime will do so using advanced centrifuges in underground facilities that it previously hid from the IAEA, in violation of its obligations under the NPT. Iran will then be able to enrich enough uranium for an arsenal of nuclear weapons in a matter of days. As President Obama put it in a moment of candor, by around 2028 Iran will “have advanced centrifuges that can enrich uranium fairly rapidly, and at that time the breakout times would have shrunk almost down to zero.”

In 2023, the terms of the JCPOA will lift the UN missile embargo on Iran. In 2025, the JCPOA’s snapback mechanism will expire. The snapback allows the United States or any of its negotiating partners to reimpose binding UN sanctions and restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program if Iran fails to meet its obligations. Its expiration will effectively remove the main source of international, non-military pressure on the regime.

While arguing that Iran’s nuclear program will remain limited after 2031 and will still be subject to international oversight, deal advocates have frequently pointed to the restrictions that the NPT imposes, conveniently ignoring the fact that Iran is a serial and brazen violator of the NPT.

Myth 6: “The IAEA repeatedly affirmed that it saw no violations of the deal by Iran prior to Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA.”

Reality: Iran blindfolded the IAEA by strictly limiting where it can inspect.

Iran’s violations of its obligations under both the JCPOA and the NPT are well documented. They include the assembly and concealment of the nuclear archive and the possession of undeclared, unexplained nuclear materials. Many of these violations have taken place in locations that Iran concealed from the IAEA, attempted to sanitize before inspection, or prevented the IAEA from inspecting altogether. The IAEA cannot document violations in places it cannot see or access.

Before, during, and after Iran’s “compliance” with the JCPOA, the IAEA reported that, because of Tehran’s refusal to cooperate regarding undeclared nuclear activities and materials, the agency cannot provide assurances that the Iranian nuclear program is peaceful.

Myth 7: “A majority of Americans—including Jewish Americans, Democratic voters, independents, and even most Republicans—support reviving the Iran Deal.”

Reality: Americans overwhelmingly reject the deal.

Deal advocates have always relied on deception and overstatement to sell the JCPOA. They continue to do so in survey wording as part of an effort to create an artificial impression of public support. Support appears when survey questions misrepresent the JCPOA. For example, a frequently cited recent survey asked respondents about “a renewed nuclear deal with Iran which would prevent the expansion of Iran’s nuclear program.” The JCPOA, however, explicitly allows the expansion of Iran’s nuclear program. The pollsters are asking if the public supports an imaginary deal that does the exact opposite of what the JCPOA’s terms allow or forbid. When a survey presents the terms of the JCPOA factually, the American people resoundingly reject them, as they did in 2015.

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hudson.org · by Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East

18. Gorbachev Didn’t End the Cold War, Western Strength Did

I am reminded of Seth Jones' book: A Covert Action: Reagan, the CIA, and the Cold War Struggle in Poland.  https://www.amazon.com/Covert-Action-Reagan-Struggle-Poland/dp/0393247007

We rarely get to read about successful covert actions. (though the great credit deserves to go to the Poles which I am sure every CIA officer involved in the covert action would tell us).

Excerpts:

Despite martial law declared in 1981, Reagan and Pope John II kept Poland’s Solidarity Party and its movement alive. By 1988, the Soviets had a choice. Send in the tanks or allow Solidarity to be elected to power.

Even the dictator head of the Polish People’s Republic and then Chairman of the Council of State Wojciech Jaruzelski would travel to Moscow and report that if the Soviet tanks came, they would not only have to run over the body of Pope John II but Jaruzelski himself.

The Soviets were thus stuck since having to reflect their Western media coverage as “peace-loving,” invading Poland was out of the question.

The Soviet tank armies never came.

Solidarity was elected to power, the first party devoted to liberty ever winning an election in all of the communist territories. The pope gave courage to additional millions behind the Iron Curtain, the “Iron lady” in Britain stuck with her friend across the pond, and of course, Reagan had famously dared Moscow to “tear down this wall.”

Gorbachev Didn’t End the Cold War, Western Strength Did - by Peter Huessy

hudson.org · by Peter Huessy

With the passing of the former general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, the Cold War is back in the news. Prior to his death, and certainly, in the wake of it, several commentaries have credited him for ending the Cold War.

This is a common narrative and was summed up by one former American president who said that Ronald Reagan “was smart enough to allow the Cold War to end,” reflecting the idea that the US had previously largely perpetuated the conflict with the former Soviet Union and not Moscow.

The end of the Soviet Empire didn’t “just happen” but was the direct result of an extraordinarily active and complex action plan put together and implemented largely by three world leaders: Ronald Reagan, president of the United States; Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of Great Britain, and Pope John Paul II, the leader of the Vatican and the Catholic Church worldwide.

The three were elected to their respective offices separated by a mere 24 months between October 1978 and November 1980. At the time, the future of freedom and democracy looked bleak. After all, from 1969, nearly 20 nations had fallen to totalitarianism or communism, mostly joining the Soviet orbit during the decade of détente and peaceful coexistence, including all of Indochina, Afghanistan, Iran, Nicaragua, Grenada, Angola, and Mozambique. Not only was the Soviet empire rapidly expanding, but so was its nuclear arsenal.

Miraculously, a little more than a decade hence, the USSR empire fell apart, and from Canada to Chile, every nation in the Western Hemisphere was free except Cuba and Haiti. Eastern Europe and the “captive nations,” as they were once called, were free, and the Western Pacific economic “tigers,” such as the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand, expanded their economic relations around the globe.

How was this accomplished? After all, although unknown to the West, by 1975, the director of the Soviet KGB, Andropov, was worried the Soviet empire was on the verge of collapse.

Yes, as he knew, on the surface, the “correlation of forces” as the Soviets saw things were moving in Moscow’s direction. The US government was minimizing the Soviet threat, going through a lengthy fight over the GDP that Moscow spent on military goods with the “hawks” saying 20 percent or more, but the accommodationists at the CIA only agreed to a modest update of their numbers to 6 percent.

Andropov knew the real number actually exceeded 25 percent, but even with America still engaging in wishful thinking, without major changes, the Soviets could still not keep up with the worldwide technological revolution in space and military affairs that would eventually be adopted by the Americans and their allies.

Furthermore, to attract needed Western investment and technology, especially for its military, the USSR needed a “smiley face” to the world, and the current crop of Soviet leaders was simply not going to cut it in the new age of public diplomacy.

Andropov’s solution? Eventually bring onto the stage Mikhail Gorbachev, now in charge of Soviet agriculture, and groom him for the top job. Young, energetic, with an attractive wife, Gorbachev could pretend to be for peace, schmooze the West and save the Soviet empire.

But Andropov’s plans didn’t pan out.

Surprisingly, the president, the prime minister, and the pope joined forces to defend the West.

Thatcher allied with Reagan to deploy the US Pershing and GLCMs in Europe and challenge Moscow to end all Soviet SS-20 deployments. The pope made three pilgrimages to Poland in 1979, 1983, and 1987, brought major assistance to Solidarity in Poland, thus saving the one key center for liberty that would eventually unravel the Warsaw Pact, while Reagan orchestrated a major covert campaign of taking away the financial underpinnings of the Soviet empire.

As Myron Norquist explains in his 2001 essay “How Reagan Won the Cold War,” the US made the Soviet Empire vastly too expensive militarily to maintain while simultaneously taking away Western bank concessionary loans to Eastern Europe. Moscow’s foreign exchange dried up.

In parallel, the US military was fully modernized, especially its nuclear forces, while the Soviet-backed nuclear freeze was deep-sixed. In Granada, the first communist territory since 1917, was liberated by the US Marines, the US economy boomed, while Reagan explicitly rejected the soothing rhetoric of détente and peaceful coexistence. In fact, so brash was the American president that he publicly declared the US Cold War strategy was “we win” and “they lose.”

And indeed, when Gorbachev came into power in 1985, the previous weak America of 1980 was gone.

At first, Gorbachev tried to outmuscle Reagan. He sent more troops to Afghanistan, expanded the rate of deployment of SS-20 missiles, sent more military assistance to the Sandinistas and Cuba, and expanded Soviet defense expenditures.

It didn’t work, and Reagan didn’t blink.

In the spring of 1985, Congress agreed to deploy the new Peacekeeper missile, the centerpiece of the disarmament community’s wrath, while also proceeding with robust missile defense spending, which Gorbachev would repeatedly try to keep “in the laboratory.”

Then came the deciding hinge of history in the Cold War.

Despite martial law declared in 1981, Reagan and Pope John II kept Poland’s Solidarity Party and its movement alive. By 1988, the Soviets had a choice. Send in the tanks or allow Solidarity to be elected to power.

Even the dictator head of the Polish People’s Republic and then Chairman of the Council of State Wojciech Jaruzelski would travel to Moscow and report that if the Soviet tanks came, they would not only have to run over the body of Pope John II but Jaruzelski himself.

The Soviets were thus stuck since having to reflect their Western media coverage as “peace-loving,” invading Poland was out of the question.

The Soviet tank armies never came.

Solidarity was elected to power, the first party devoted to liberty ever winning an election in all of the communist territories. The pope gave courage to additional millions behind the Iron Curtain, the “Iron lady” in Britain stuck with her friend across the pond, and of course, Reagan had famously dared Moscow to “tear down this wall.”

As they say, the rest is history.

Read in the Federalist.

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hudson.org · by Peter Huessy

19. Hackers, Spies and Contract Killers: How Putin's Agents Are Infiltrating Germany

Long read. 

Excerpts:

Officials believe that Russian opposition activists who have fled to Germany could potentially be at risk, with Putin’s agents perhaps targeting them. The same holds true for deserted Russian soldiers and defectors from the Russian military and security apparatus who may flee to Germany. Putin’s henchmen could even resort to assassinations as a way of dissuading others from deserting as well.

Just how fraught the situation is among German officials is illustrated by a recent incident in Berlin. One evening in August, police officers and firefighters were dispatched in the western part of the city, along with specialists for biological and chemical weapons. In their orange protective clothing, the men and women looked like they were straight out of a catastrophe film.

The response came out of concern that Putin’s stooges may have targeted a Russian opposition activist. In Russia, the woman was declared a "foreign agent" and she escaped to Berlin a few months ago.

At a time when she wasn’t home, a neighbor called the authorities to report that someone was in the woman’s apartment and that voices could be heard speaking Russian. Then, the neighbor reported, several people ran out of the apartment and climbed into a black car.

Officials took the report seriously and experts searched the apartment for explosives and toxic agents. Thus far, nothing has been found, though the search for bugs is ongoing. Still, it looks as though it may have been a false alarm. This time.

Hackers, Spies and Contract Killers: How Putin's Agents Are Infiltrating Germany

Russian secret service agencies have been targeting the West for years. They infiltrate computer systems, spy on politicians, conduct sabotage operations and even kill those who have fallen afoul of Moscow. Why did Germany wake up to the danger so late?

By Maik Baumgärtner, Floriana Bulfon, Jörg Diehl, Roman Dobrokhotov, Matthias Gebauer, Christo Grozev, Roman Höfner, Martin Knobbe, Roman Lehberger, Ann-Katrin Müller, Frederik Obermaier, Sven Röbel, Marcel Rosenbach, Fidelius Schmid und Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt

01.09.2022, 15.56 Uhr

Spiegel

Five months after her sudden disappearance, Maria Adela K. provided a sign of life. She had been trying to hide from herself, she wrote to her friends in an emotional post on Facebook. But now she had to "reveal the truth." She had cancer, she wrote.

Thirty-two of her Facebook friends promptly responded. They showed concern, said they were happy to hear from her and also offered words of encouragement. But shortly after that, K. disappeared again, leaving her friends in the dark.

DER SPIEGEL 35/2022

The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 35/2022 (August 26th, 2022) of DER SPIEGEL.

SPIEGEL International

There is much to suggest that the news about the cancer from 2018 was fabricated, like so much in the life of Maria Adela K. Everything, really. Concealment and deception are apparently key elements of her profession: The purported businesswoman, it would seem, is actually a spy serving the Russian Federation.

Joint reporting by DER SPIEGEL and the investigative platforms Bellingcat and The Insider, along with Italian daily La Repubblica, suggests that K. acted as an agent of the Russian military intelligence agency GRU and targeting employees of the NATO base in Naples and the U.S. Navy base there. It's possible that K. was also supposed to spy in Germany.

As is so often the case in espionage cases, there is a lack of definitive proof, but the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. K. used passports that appear to be from a series issued by the GRU. She pursued Peruvian citizenship using false information and sought proximity to employees of the two military bases – until she invented the cancer story to go underground.

According to our reporting, her real name is Olga Vasilyevna K., born in June 1982 in rural southern Russia. Just before her stirring Facebook message, a brand new Audi A3 was registered in her name in Moscow.

"Illegals" are what Russian spies like K. are called. They're men and women who live inconspicuously in the West for years with elaborately constructed life stories, and they integrate firmly into the societies they spy on.

Dozens of them were deployed in the Soviet era; the series "The Americans" even created a cinematic monument to them.

Demoralize, Divide, Unsettle

"Illegals" like Adela K. belong to the network of agents who work for Moscow around the world, snooping, sabotaging, even murdering. They are the clandestine combatants in a broad offensive against the West. Putin's intelligence services influence political parties, manipulate elections, control Telegram channels and foment protests in the West with misinformation. They infiltrate the computer networks of Western governments and hack into highly sensitive facilities. Their goal: to demoralize, divide and unsettle Russia's adversaries. Few other world leaders have empowered their secret service agents to the degree that Russian President Vladimir Putin has, himself a former KGB officer.

Tens of thousands of people working for the FSB, the SWR foreign intelligence service and the military's GRU are waging a shadow war against the West. It is a struggle for power and influence, for raw materials and money – and it has been underway for far longer than the visible conflict in Ukraine.

Germany, Europe's most economically powerful democracy, is one of Moscow's primary targets. For years, counterespionage efforts were subdued at best, but the country's political leaders are slowly waking up from a decades-long slumber.

"What is happening here is an attack on our liberal democracies, on our entire Western society," says a member of cabinet from a major European country.

"From election interference campaigns to assassination operations, Russia treated Europe like its playground," says Marc Polymeropoulos, who led the CIA's operations in Europe and Eurasia from 2017 to 2019. He says his warnings about Moscow's clandestine operations repeatedly fell on "deaf ears."

"With the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, the threat of Russian espionage, disinformation campaigns and cyberattacks has taken on another dimension," says German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD).

The Invisible War

Just how close the visible and invisible war are to one another could be observed on Feb. 24, the day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Suddenly, a huge number of customers of the American telecommunications provider Viasat lost their satellite internet connections. At the same time, 5,800 wind turbines in Germany were suddenly no longer able to communicate with their network hub.

The real target of the attack, though, was a different Viasat customer: the Ukrainian military and its command and control network. The perpetrators used a vulnerability to penetrate the service provider's network administration. From there, they instructed customers' satellite modems to overwrite their flash memory, rendering them useless. Viasat had to send its customers nearly 30,000 new devices.

The digital battle began before Russia even launched its first missiles. The European Union and the United States have since blamed Russia for the cyberattack, saying the aim had been to disrupt Ukrainian command structures during the invasion.

What else might be in store for Germany? It's a question on which the German government is currently focusing its attentions. In July, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock of the Green Party said she is concerned about attacks on German power grids. And recently, Interior Minister Faeser presented a revamped cybersecurity agenda. Her ministry also warned that, given Germany's federal system, powers at the federal level are inadequate for addressing the current threat situation.

But Germany's reaction to Moscow's spies was long reminiscent of its approach to Russian natural gas imports. Whereas Eastern European states, the U.S. and the UK have warned for years about the operations conducted by Russian intelligence services, governments in Berlin, Paris and Rome preferred to turn a blind eye to the gathering storm.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the desire for friendship with Russia has been significant in Germany. Following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2011, Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the BND, even shut down its counterespionage operations, the theory being that Germany now had to focus its attentions on a new type of enemy. In 2001, Vladimir Putin gave a speech in the federal parliament, the Bundestag, for which he received a standing ovation – and this despite the fact that Russian soldiers had reduced the Chechen capital Grozny to rubble only a short time before. Western governments sought proximity to Putin, and not just economically.

Counterespionage Neglected

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, there was a widespread belief that the West and Russia had a common goal in security policy, the fight against Islamist terrorism. Counterintelligence got short shrift, with many considering it a relic of the Cold War. But while the Soviet Union may have perished, its intelligence apparatus was alive and well, a fact that was overlooked by many. This complacency would come at a cost.

The first target was a country once occupied by the Russians and forced into the Soviet Union. In 2007, Russian hackers crippled Estonia's digital infrastructure for several weeks. In 2008, Herman Simm, a longtime high-ranking official in the Estonian Defense Ministry, was exposed as a spy. For years, he had been providing Russia's SWR intelligence service with highly sensitive information. Simm was "the most damaging (spy) in alliance history," according to a classified NATO report in 2010.

In 2010, the U.S. exposed Anna Chapman and nine other Russian spies active in the country. The young top agent had obtained her name and citizenship by marrying a British man. The tabloids dubbed her "Agent 90-60-90" for her figure measurements when, after her cover was blown, she posed in lingerie for a number of glossies.

The glamour spy Anna Chapman (left), who was discovered in the U.S.; the suspected agent Olga K. (center); and a Facebook photo under the alias "Maria Adela K."

[M] Ole Schleef / DER SPIEGEL; A. Gorshkov / Sputnik Kremlin / AP, E. Blondet / action press, S. Esposito / picture alliance / Pacific Press, V. Izzo / ddp

The purported married couple Andreas and Heidrun Anschlag, who worked for the foreign intelligence service SWR from a single-family home in Michelbach in the German state of Hesse, behaved less conspicuously. At events, the two would speak to members of the military and businessmen, politicians and scientists. The husband had taken a job at an automotive supply company as his cover.

The duo landed their greatest coup when they recruited an official from the Dutch Foreign Ministry in The Hague. The man was burdened with financial worries and his wife's serious illness, and he supplied the pair with hundreds of documents from the inner workings of the European Union and NATO over a period of several years. In 2013, a court sentenced the pair to several years in prison, but they were soon deported to Moscow.

Russia continues to use the classic agent model to try to infiltrate its adversaries. Indeed, only recently, the Kremlin tried to place a spy into one of the world's highest courts. A few months ago, a young man purporting to be from Brazil applied to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

Undercover in The Hague

Victor Muller Ferreira, allegedly born in Rio de Janeiro in 1989, brought with him an extraordinarily positive letter of recommendation from his professor at the prestigious Johns Hopkins University, in addition to a moving family story. He was accepted for an internship at the ICC and Muller Ferreira planned to travel to the Netherlands in early April.

In fact, the ostensibly up-and-coming expert on international relations is named Sergey Cherkasov and is a Russian spy, as the Dutch foreign intelligence service, AIVD, discovered. Just as the first reports of massacres, rapes and torture from Ukrainian sites like the Kyiv suburb of Bucha began hitting the headlines, Russia was apparently trying to place an informant in the central organization charged with prosecuting these war crimes.

Had the coup succeeded, Cherkasov might have been in a position to manipulate evidence in The Hague and inform his handlers in Moscow about the investigation. But it never came to that. Officials were waiting for Cherkasov as he tried to enter the Netherlands and he was immediately deported to Brazil.

Adele K., on the other hand, has not been nabbed to this day – even though she made a serious mistake in setting up her cover identity.

In August 2005, she applied under the name Maria Adela K. to be entered into Peru's National Registry of Identification and Civil Status. She presented a birth certificate dated Sept. 1, 1978, which indicated she had a German parent in the coastal province of Callao, just outside the Peruvian capital of Lima. It's possible that she later wanted to be able to apply for German citizenship in order to be able to spy inconspicuously in the country.

But the Peruvian authorities were suspicious and asked for additional information. So Adela K. submitted an extra document: a certificate stating that she had been baptized on Sept. 14, 1978, in the Cristo Liberador parish in Callao.

False Papers

When the authorities contacted the parish, however, they received an astonishing answer: The church had first been established in 1987, so no one could have been baptized there in 1978. The officials refused to approve citizenship and referred the case to the national prosecutor because of false statements. But who in Europe cares about the forgery of documents in South America?

Starting in 2006, Maria Adela K. began appearing in various places in Europe as a "leading specialist," with no additional specifications provided. She showed up at the State University in Moscow, as a fashion student in Rome, as a beach girl in a "tiny" bikini, according to one witness in Malta, and as an purported student in Paris living in the 13th arrondissement. The French Embassy in Moscow had apparently issued her with the first visa for the Schengen area, and from then on, K. continued to develop her cover story.

In 2012, she married a young man who held three passports: one Russian, one Ecuadorian and one Italian. In October of the same year, she founded a company based in Paris that sold jewelry, leather goods and wine.

Her husband died in 2013 while in Russia, allegedly from an autoimmune disease, thus depriving her of Italian citizenship. But she did manage to secure a permanent work permit for the country.

K. first came into contact with people from NATO and the U.S. armed forces in 2014. The president of the biggest Lions Club in Naples recommended her for another Lions Club in the city, the Lions Club Napoli Monte Nuovo, which is supported by members of the local U.S. Naval Base and NATO's Allied Joint Forces Command.

Adela K. became secretary of the club – and suddenly found herself surrounded by potential informants. Officially, she worked at her newly established store, but even though the jewelry and accessories business wasn't doing particularly well, K. never seemed to lack for money. The addresses she registered as her residences at the time were in one of the city's best neighborhoods, and photos on her Instagram and Facebook profiles show views over the Gulf of Naples.

She participated in Lions Club charity auctions and attended the annual NATO ball. She celebrated her birthday with military officers from NATO and the U.S. Navy. And she began a love affair with an American soldier, who is still convinced to this day that she was less interested in his profession and his country than in him as a man.

Did no one suspect anything?

A Luxury Life in Moscow?

Lieutenant Colonel Thorsten S. of Germany's armed forces, who held a leading position at the club at the time, recalls one puzzling incident. When the club was on the verge of closure due to financial woes, Adela paid everyone's annual fees out of her own pocket. "That was pretty weird," says S.

Adela's longtime friend Marcelle d'Argy Smith, the former editor-in-chief of the British edition of Cosmopolitan, recalls that "she is very smart and attractive. No woman would let her husband near her." D'Argy Smith says Adele asked her repeatedly to introduce her to influential people in politics and society.

But then, in summer 2018, Adela K. suddenly disappeared from Naples, apparently reemerging as Olga K. in Moscow. Had life as an agent become too dangerous for her?

In 2020, a French lieutenant colonel was arrested at the NATO base in Naples as a suspected Russian spy. It is unclear whether Adela K. had been in contact with him, nor is it known what information she may have passed on to her handlers in Russia.

K. led a quite luxurious lifestyle in Moscow. According to a leak from the service provider Yandex, she ordered meals from two high-end Moscow restaurants, sushi several times and also Indian food. DER SPIEGEL and its partners compared photos of Olga K. and Adela K. using different facial recognition software and found that it is highly likely that they are the same person. K. did not respond to questions from DER SPIEGEL.

Adela K. appears to be one of the agents for whom the Russian state is making considerable efforts. Moscow constructs complete cover identities for top people and sends them to different countries around the world. These men and women are paid handsomely for dedicating their lives to the intelligence services. According to information obtained by DER SPIEGEL, the GRU and SWR secret services maintain a total of up to 70 "illegals," not a huge number.

But other agents, who are significantly more numerous than the "illegals," likewise play an important role in Russia's espionage battle, working for the embassies and consulates of the Russian Federation abroad. Their work may not be as glorified as that of colleagues, but there are many of them. Insiders believe that SWR maintains around 3,000 of these spies, and the GRU up to 1,000. Most are disguised as diplomats. At the beginning of the year, Western intelligence services estimated that more than 150 Russian spies with diplomatic accreditation were still working in Germany alone.

Their informants usually don't know that they are dealing with Russian intelligence agents. Who, after all, would suspect that Pavel Rubtsov, the former deputy head of the trade and economic office at the Russian Embassy in Berlin, is in fact likely a representative of the foreign intelligence service SWR? He has since been expelled from the country.

Initiated at a Festival

And who is going to be suspicious when running into a fellow compatriot at the fishing festival in Schlehdorf, Bavaria, following a rafting trip with friends?

That's what happened to materials researcher Ilnur N., a Russian doctoral candidate at the University of Augsburg. In the summer of 2019, a man spoke to him in Russian while he was waiting in line at a fish stand. It was Leonid Strukov, officially the Russian deputy consul general in Munich. But officials with the German judiciary are convinced he is an SWR officer.

Strukov told Ilnur N. that he was frequently in Augsburg and asked whether it would be possible for them to meet for a beer. Ilnur N. agreed, and a first meeting took place not long later.

According to N., Strukov told him at the meeting that he was helping a former colleague at a Russian bank that was looking for investment opportunities in aerospace companies. He asked N. if he could help out by providing some expertise on new fields of research in aerospace technology.

N. agreed. He compiled files from public sources, but also used his university data archive access to obtain some fee-based information. He didn't provide any sensitive information, but he was still paid by the deputy consul general – sometimes 100 euros, sometimes 200 and later as much as 600.

The Russian spy was especially interested in the European Ariane 6 launch vehicle – and here, too, N. was able to deliver. At some point, the young scientist began telling Strukov about his own research into the development of a cryostat, a container in which extremely low temperatures are generated to test materials for space travel. Strukov didn't initially seem interested, but he asked specific questions about the complex issue at a later meeting. He also asked if N. could provide him with some of the documents from his research. If need be, he could just take photos of the screen with his mobile phone.

The Augsburg-based mole Ilnur N. (left); indicted reserve officer Ralph G. (right); suspected GRU officer Mikhail Starov (center).

[M] Ole Schleef / DER SPIEGEL; C. Stache / picture alliance / dpa, G. Thielmann / imageBROKER / mauritius images, Science Photo Library, Meike Wirsel / BILD

Police were waiting for the two men at a subsequent meeting a short time later in Augsburg. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, had been shadowing Strukov, and N. also fell into their net. Strukov showed his consulate ID card, invoked his diplomatic immunity and left. N. was placed in pretrial custody, ultimately ending up with a suspended sentence of one year, a bill for the legal costs and, likely, a ruined career.

N. was essentially a useful idiot for the Russians, as so many of their informants are. Others help the agents out of vanity or greed for money; very few act out of political conviction.

David S., however, may be one of the few who did. Investigators later found Russian books and a Russian flag in his apartment. He had turned his back on his native Britain years ago and moved to Germany, where he lived in Potsdam and worked as a security guard at the British Embassy in Berlin. Investigators are convinced that he shared what he witnessed there with the Russians. They arrested and extradited him to Britain. According to media reports, he has denied the allegations.

Ralph G. may also have acted out of political conviction. The lieutenant colonel of the German armed forces reserves has been on trial at the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court since August. According to the indictment, he allegedly provided information to Putin's GRU military intelligence agency from no later than October 2014 up until March 2020. The Federal Prosecutor's Office considers him to be a man who acted out of sympathy for Russia.

G. met his presumed GRU handler at the Air Force Ball in Bonn. Around 1,800 guests from the military, politics and business attended the magnificent dance event at the city's Beethovenhalle. The women wore ball gowns, the men wore tuxedos or uniforms. Also among them was Mikhail Starov, a man accredited as an air force attaché at the Russian Embassy in Berlin, but apparently only as a cover.

A few months after the rousing evening, Starov visited the German reservist at his home in Erkrath in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. After that, G. allegedly provided the Russian with inside information about the German reservist system for the first time.

Investigations by the Federal Prosecutor's Office have revealed that the lieutenant colonel met with his suspected GRU handler more than a dozen times, for example in Berlin at the Dressler restaurant, in Kröv an der Mosel – and several times at the Russian Embassy in Berlin.

Internal Bundeswehr Material Revealed

Ralph G. is thought to have provided Russia with excerpts from an unpublished Bundeswehr white book from 2016 outlining the German government’s security policy guidelines, a document that has received extensive revisions following Moscow’s annexation of the Crimea. He also allegedly provided tips to the GRU regarding senior Bundeswehr officials who he thought might be sympathetic to Russia – so that Russia could approach them. After Starov left Germany, others took over the contact.

In 2018, the German military’s counterintelligence service, known as MAD, got wind of the situation. And G. made it rather easy for the investigators, having communicated openly with his contacts using email addresses registered with web.de and Gmail. In a telephone conversation intercepted by German officials, he said that his contacts in the Russian Embassy belonged to GRU. During a later interrogation, he nevertheless denied knowing of the men’s intelligence backgrounds.

G. allegedly received no money for his services, but he did travel to Moscow on several occasions for a security conference. According to the indictment, the Russians took care of his airfare and hotel costs. His lawyer did not respond to queries from DER SPIEGEL. The Russian Embassy contends that this and other cases of suspected espionage is mere "speculation that has been grabbed out of thin air." The "climate of Russian espionage-mania stoked in Germany” is "deeply regrettable," said an embassy spokesman.

In truth, however, the willingness of some Germans to assist Putin’s Russia have gone far beyond the provision of information. Two men from Saxony and Bavaria enabled Moscow to circumvent European export sanctions. They belonged – allegedly without their knowledge – to a clandestine procurement network run by Russian intelligence services that German officials have been able to expose.

Ever since the EU embargo imposed after the annexation of Crimea, it has become more difficult for Russia to purchase technology that could also be used for military purposes. In response, Putin’s henchmen went on a secret shopping spree. According to German federal prosecutors, a Russian named Sergei K. was at the heart of those efforts, seeking to establish contacts to German companies at trade fairs and on business trips.

Machines for the Defense Industry

Sergei K. posed as the general director of the anodyne-sounding "Center for Scientific and Technical Development" (URIC), based in Yekaterinburg. In fact, it is thought that the intelligence agency FSB had its hands firmly on the controls – and the coveted technology ended up with state-owned defense companies.

German courts have now focused on the network in two trials. Alexander Sch., a businessman from Augsburg, was convicted for having delivered special milling machines worth 7.9 million euros. The documentation listed recipients in the oil and gas industry, but the high-tech machines were in fact delivered to the defense manufacturer OKB Novator, which produces nuclear-capable Iskander cruise missiles, among other items.

The second court case involved a man named Alexander S. from the town of Markkleeberg, located near Leipzig. He was convicted of selling laboratory equipment to Yekaterinburg that is necessary for the production of chemical or biological weapons. In this deal, too, the true recipient was concealed in order to mislead German officials. DER SPIEGEL has learned that a German arrest warrant has been issued for Putin’s suspected procurement officer Sergei K.

The alleged cancer patient Adela K. was also closely linked to the Kremlin, as passport data shows. Her identity papers are from a number series which, according to reporting by DER SPIEGEL and its partners, has also been used by members of a strictly confidential elite unit of the military intelligence agency GRU. But the detachment, known as Unit 29155 and founded in 2009, is not chiefly focused on the collection of information, which was Adela K.’s primary aim. Rather, the 20 former soldiers under the leadership of a highly decorated major general are Putin’s kill team. They are responsible for committing attacks with explosives and assassinations – and thus for triggering unrest and fear in the West. To liquidate their victims, they rely on firearms or the nerve agent Novichok.

Among the commando’s suspected victims is the Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev, who provides weapons to Russia’s enemies, such as Ukraine. Following a dinner in 2015, he began feeling unwell, fell into a coma and only barely survived the poisoning. Investigations into the case are still ongoing.

Three years later, the elite agents poisoned former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the British town of Salisbury. Investigations have revealed that members of the intelligence agency GRU were in the area of both crime scenes – and all were members of Unit 29155.

Doing the Dirty Work

The agents who belong to this unit do the dirty work. They are trained for sensitive foreign operations like sabotage, coup d’états and assassinations. They are all between their late-30s and mid-40s and graduates of respected state institutions, and most of them have battlefield experience, such as in the wars in Chechnya or Ukraine. Many of them have served in special forces units. The connection data of calls made during their missions indicate that they have at times received direct instructions from officials close to the Russian president.

It is difficult to reconstruct where and how often members of the secret unit have struck in Europe. GRU agents travel under assumed names to many EU countries, and lackadaisical controls mean it is quite simple for them to obtain tourist visas.

In 2014, the year of the Crimea annexation, a munitions dump in the Czech Republic exploded, a site where material for Ukraine was likely also stored. Indications point to Putin’s elite force. Unit 29155 is also thought to have been involved in the attempted putsch in Montenegro in 2016. Meanwhile, the Spanish judiciary is looking into suspected GRU involvement in the conflict over Catalonian independence, with the apparent aim of destabilizing the country.

The domestic intelligence agency FSB also maintains its own killing unit, its most prominent victim being the opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who collapsed in August 2020 on a flight out of the Siberian city of Tomsk. Reporting conducted by DER SPIEGEL, Bellingcat and The Insider revealed that agents poisoned him with the nerve agent Novichok. Navalny has been held in a Russian prison camp for the last year and a half.

The agency doesn't limit its operations to Russian territory either. And the organization also includes military special forces, such as the Vympel Unit, which goes by the name of Department V in the FSB. Reporting by DER SPIEGEL and Bellingcat seems to show that the FSB commissions contract killings through former members of the unit.

Vadim Krasikov, for example, who shot and killed a former Chechen fighter on August 23, 2019, in a Berlin park, had contact to Vympel and spent time at FSB properties on several occasions. In December 2021, he was found guilty by Berlin’s highest court, the Berlin Kammergericht, of having shot his victim at the behest of Russian state actors. As the verdict clearly states: "It was a case of state-sponsored terrorism." The Russian Embassy in Berlin has said the verdict was "politically motivated."

Was that murder an isolated case?

Berlin park victim Zelimkhan Khangoshvili (left); convicted murderer Vadim Krasikov (bottom); Skripal attackers "Ruslan Boshirov" and "Alexander Petrov"; Novichok victim Alexei Navalny.

[M] Ole Schleef / DER SPIEGEL; Mika Schmidt / ddp, Olaf Selchow / BILD, Will Oliver / EPA-EFE, REUTERS (2), PLF / picture alliance / Captital Pictures, Polizei Berlin, Christoph Soeder / picture alliance / dpa

It is considered a certainty that FSB agents also murdered a former Chechen fighter in Istanbul in 2015. In January 2020, German domestic intelligence agents were watching in Hamburg as high-ranking FSB agent Igor Egorov met with a suspected contract killer. An arrest planned for March failed after Ukrainian intelligence learned of the case and published their suspicions on the internet, whereupon Egorov elected not to make any more trips to Germany.

Moscow’s agents and spies, though, don’t just threaten critics and enemies. They also endanger critical infrastructure in the hated Western world by way of hacking and sabotage.

"We must be aware of the fact that Russia is in our networks," Wolfgang Wien, vice president of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, said at a recent security conference in Potsdam. His agency, he said, has solid insight into the cyberworld, and what they see there is unnerving. "We have to assume that they are also preparing something for us," Wien said. "Clandestinely, in the networks."

What the BND deputy head addressed in his public comments is the nightmare of every German agency: Hackers burrow into sensitive areas of public infrastructure and install malware, which can then be activated at will to manipulate or destroy the systems they have infected – whether it is hospital electronics, the IT systems of German agencies or even power plants.

The fact that such considerations are not just dystopian chimeras is demonstrated by a group that Western security experts and agencies call Berserk Bear. The group is less prominent than other Russian hacker groups, because their operations appear to be less spectacular. But they are extremely comprehensive and have been discovered in 135 different countries in recent years. The hackers are dangerous because the access they have prepared could one day be used by Russia in a global operation. The attacks on the Viasat satellites and Ukrainian defense systems were but a small taste.

Recently, faces and a postal address have even been attached to the group, with the U.S. Justice Department having pressed charges against three suspected members of Berserk Bear in March. They are thought to be members of the FSB’s Unit 71330, which is known as Center 16.

The U.S. investigators have charged the trio with having spent years targeting the control systems of critical infrastructure in the West. The goal was to obtain permanent access to their computer systems through a kind of backdoor. The Justice Department believes they were successful in installing their malware in more than 17,000 instances. "Access to such systems would have provided the Russian government the ability to, among other things, disrupt and damage such computer systems at a future time of its choosing," reads the indictment. The hackers had already managed to find their way into the bookkeeping system of a nuclear power plant in Kansas.

German companies have also been targeted by the Russian hacker group. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, warned in 2018 of an impending campaign by the group. Telecommunications provider Netcom BW did, in fact, discover telltale indications in its own network that investigators believe came from Berserk Bear. German public prosecutors have since issued an arrest warrant for a man who has been indicted in the U.S. as a hacker for the Russian intelligence agency FSB.

Fear of digital sleeper cells in the most important infrastructure and power plant networks is not new. But it has never been quite as great as it is currently.

Cyber defense experts with the BfV have developed a quartets card game with the most dangerous state-sponsored hacker groups in the world. There are five cards for Russian hacker groups in the deck.

Russian intelligence hackers; espionage targets including the nuclear plant in Kansas (left), the German Bundestag and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

[M] Ole Schleef / DER SPIEGEL; Schoening / ddp, M. Reinstein / Shutterstock, C. Spicker / IMAGO, S. Gollnow / picture alliance /dpa

In the game, Berserk Bear has a "pain factor" of 8.5 out of 10. Another Russian group, known as Fancy Bear, which is linked to the Russian military intelligence agency GRU, has a "danger index" rating of 9.5 out of 10. In 2015, the group attacked German parliament, the Bundestag, and siphoned off data from several parliamentarians, including from the parliamentary office of Angela Merkel, who was chancellor at the time.

An additional card in the quartets game is reserved for Venomous Bear, which is more widely known under the alias Snake, due to the craftiness of its members, who are thought to be under FSB control. In 2018, they found their way into the highly secured network of Germany’s Foreign Ministry. In the BfV card game, the group has been assigned 9 out of 10 points in the "capabilities" category.

Moscow’s cyberwarriors rely on a variety of different techniques. There are the more sophisticated methods, such as stealing data, quietly analyzing it and perhaps never making it public. There is the more savage approach of publishing the stolen data on the internet for all to see, such as in the case of the emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s Democrats in 2016. And then there is sheer destruction and sabotage, such as in 2015, when the Ukrainian power grid collapsed.

Other hackers focus their attentions on launching smear campaigns, disseminating fake news and spreading disinformation. The most important of these groups is called Ghostwriter, and German officials believe the GRU is behind it.

Ghostwriter has targeted German politicians. They rely on phishing emails to infiltrate and take control of email and social media accounts. DER SPIEGEL has learned that around a dozen lawmakers in federal and state parliaments in Germany, or members of their staffs, have fallen for the group’s rather unsophisticated tactics.

An example in Poland demonstrates how nasty the group’s campaigns can be. Hackers there were able to gain access to the Facebook account of Marcin Duszek, a parliamentarian from the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, and to post compromising photos of his alleged secretary. The hackers also took control of the Twitter account belonging to politician Joanna Borowiak and, in her name, insulted supporters of abortion rights as "drug addicted prostitutes and child murderers." On the Twitter account of Marek Suski, a senior PiS parliamentarian, Ghostwriter published a photo of a local politician wearing red lingerie.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, members of Ghostwriter have been posting lies about the war on Facebook using hijacked accounts. One video, for example, seems to show a group of Ukrainian soldiers coming out of a forest and waving white flags as they surrender to the Russians. Security experts from Meta, Facebook’s parent company, later said the video was fake.

Germany’s Failures

State-sponsored hackers, spies with diplomatic passports, assassination units: Putin’s hidden attack on the West takes place on a number of different levels. How can the state defend itself?

Germany ignored the problem for too long, and now the deficits are difficult to make up for, at least according to former CIA agent John Sipher. His verdict on German counterespionage is scathing. "During my time working with a wide variety of services to track and defend against Russian subversion, I found the German services to be far less helpful and capable than most of their European counterparts," Sipher says. "I don't recall any serious cooperation."

"After reunification, German largely terminated its counterespionage efforts, whereas other countries continued doing what they had been doing during the Cold War," says Konstantin von Notz, a Green Party parliamentarian and head of the body that exerts parliamentary control over Germany’s intelligence agencies. "We were careless and didn’t pay attention to the details. And now, we have a significant security problem."

Dependence on Russian natural gas and oil, the hope that economic ties would produce political change and a romanticized view of Russia: All of that prevented Germany for many years from reacting to obvious hostility. "To be honest, we completely neglected the Russia issue," says a former senior member of the BfV.

Germany slightly intensified its approach to Russia following the hacking of the German parliament and the murder committed in the Berlin park, but efforts have now been significantly ramped up in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Previously, Germany used to only occasionally expel suspected Russian spies who were accredited as diplomats. More recently, though, Berlin targeted 40 employees of the Russian Embassy. Still, Germany wants to be careful with such expulsions out of concern that it would lose leverage in Russia. After all, Moscow tends to respond to such ejections by throwing an equal number of Germans out of Russia.

The problem with that, according to the German government, is that the German Embassy in Moscow is far smaller than the Russian representation in Berlin.

Other countries, like the United Kingdom, nevertheless made the decision years ago to throw all identified spies out of the country immediately. Officials in Britain and elsewhere say that doing so is far better from a counterespionage point of view. In total, European countries have expelled more than 400 suspected Russian spies since the invasion of Ukraine.

At the BfV, counterespionage has only returned as a significant focus in recent years. Whereas there were almost 400 people working in the agency’s counterespionage division at the end of the Cold War, that number quickly began dropping over the years and reached its lowest point since 1990 in 2014, the year in which Russia annexed Crimea. Essentially, the department was cut in half – despite numerous warnings from security experts.

Last year, the agency received authorization to hire an additional 350 people, with some of the new jobs dedicated to counterespionage. MAD, the military intelligence agency, also intends to go on a hiring spree to fill the counterespionage roster, with many of the more than 100 jobs in the department currently unfilled. But it isn’t easy to find good and reliable people.

Spying Operations in Germany

Among politicians in Germany, awareness of the dangers presented by Russia has increased dramatically since Feb 24. The hacker incursions at Green Party headquarters in May and June, which seem to be linked to Russia, have also played a role.

In the Bundestag, Green parliamentarians have recently taken rather unusual measures. Foreign and security policy experts along with three parliamentary state secretaries have decided to give up their prestigious offices looking out on the central Berlin boulevard Unter den Linden. Intelligence experts from the BfV told the politicians that such offices were easy to spy on, since they were right across the street from the Russian Embassy. The offices are now used by fellow party members with less sensitive areas of policy focus.

German officials are now examining scenarios that were unimaginable just a short time ago. One confidential paper from the security apparatus warns that there "could be increased spying on state and parliamentary targets" in Germany. The paper notes that the focus of such efforts will be on the Chancellery and on key ministries, such as the foreign, interior, defense and economy portfolios. Bundestag committees are also at risk, and security officials are likewise concerned about possible sabotage operations in Germany targeting, for example, weapons deliveries to Ukraine. It can also not be excluded, say officials, that the Russians may attempt to create unrest in Germany, such as through the delivery of explosives to terrorists or false flag operations.

Military intelligence agents were recently able to witness just what Russian spies in Germany are still capable of. The U.S. and Germany had hardly announced their intention this spring to train Ukrainian soldiers to use Western weapons before Moscow’s agents became active.

German officials suddenly began seeing suspicious vehicles in front of two military installations where U.S. and German soldiers are training Ukrainian recruits. Agents believe that they could have been using a scanner to intercept mobile data from the Ukrainians. Mini-drones outfitted with cameras were also seen flying over the training grounds before quickly disappearing again.

Officials believe that Russian opposition activists who have fled to Germany could potentially be at risk, with Putin’s agents perhaps targeting them. The same holds true for deserted Russian soldiers and defectors from the Russian military and security apparatus who may flee to Germany. Putin’s henchmen could even resort to assassinations as a way of dissuading others from deserting as well.

Just how fraught the situation is among German officials is illustrated by a recent incident in Berlin. One evening in August, police officers and firefighters were dispatched in the western part of the city, along with specialists for biological and chemical weapons. In their orange protective clothing, the men and women looked like they were straight out of a catastrophe film.

The response came out of concern that Putin’s stooges may have targeted a Russian opposition activist. In Russia, the woman was declared a "foreign agent" and she escaped to Berlin a few months ago.

At a time when she wasn’t home, a neighbor called the authorities to report that someone was in the woman’s apartment and that voices could be heard speaking Russian. Then, the neighbor reported, several people ran out of the apartment and climbed into a black car.

Officials took the report seriously and experts searched the apartment for explosives and toxic agents. Thus far, nothing has been found, though the search for bugs is ongoing. Still, it looks as though it may have been a false alarm. This time.

Spiegel

20. The Emergence of War in Plato’s Republic

The classics are a wonder. How could they be so smart and wise then and why can't we be as smart and intellectually curious and grounded now?

Everytime I read something from the classics or something about them I learn something. To me they are still relevant.

Conclusion:

Philosophy deserves defense and Socrates was called to action. His spirit, like a guardian, invoked hatred against the other, opinion. Eventually, the philosophical education grounds itself again in the realities of war and law.[89] The city in speech acquiesces to the demands of war, and, in a way, of philosophy. Nevertheless, real philosophy cannot fail to forget its bellicose turning origins.[90] War is the last step out of the cave. Lastly, the city in war needs philosophy, for without it, war serves not just as a necessary part of the city’s inception but as a catalyst of its degeneration.[91]

The Emergence of War in Plato’s Republic

Olivia Garard September 6, 2022

thestrategybridge.org · September 6, 2022

Earlier this year, The Strategy Bridge asked civilian and military students around the world to participate in our sixth annual student writing contest on the subject of strategy.

Now, we are pleased to present an essay selected for Honorable Mention from Olivia Garard, a student at St. John’s College.

Plato’s Republic is endlessly rich. Broadly, it begins when Socrates and his friend Glaucon are compelled to stay at Cephalus’ house in the Piraeus.[1] Remaining just outside Athens, the many—including Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, and Adeimantus, among others—debate questions of justice. When no satisfactory answers emerge, Socrates originates the great thought experiment—to construct a city in speech. Over the course of the dialogue, the imagined city undergoes numerous revisions as the founders identify and fulfill the imagined city’s needs. War, it turns out, is not a need, but a consequence. It is only after Glaucon’s “relishes” are admitted that Socrates finds cause for war. To what extent does war make the city possible?

After Glaucon and Adeimantus remain unpersuaded that justice is better than injustice, Socrates suggests that they “watch a city coming into being in speech.”[2] Socrates advises they look for justice in the city based on the explicit notion that it is easier to read bigger letters than smaller ones and the implicit supposition that a man can be considered a city writ large. Socrates and Adeimantus begin to construct the city.

A first, provisional city is set forth as the “city of utmost necessity,” which “would be made of four or five men.”[3] These individuals came together because each, independently, is insufficient, in that they are not self-sufficient and must rely on others. To satisfy all the basic provisions, however, Socrates revises the city, and more than four citizens are now required. The city becomes a “throng,” and in so doing, this city demands another.[4] The other city is created out of this city’s need for imports, which requires still more citizens, the creation of money, and even more citizens as sailors. Socrates continues to “fill out the city” until it is saturated and judged to be complete.[5] Life in the city is barely satiated—there is neither art nor education. All the citizens must do is regulate the city’s size, “keeping an eye out against poverty or war.”[6]

I am skeptical that this first city is possible because an eye towards war is insufficient to prepare for war, either to defend or to attack. Naturally, this city would only ever seek to defend itself, as it has no acquisitive designs beyond essential needs. But the fact of this city makes no claim to the disposition of the other cities. And yet, just as this city entails other cities for trade, this city requires that all other cities are like itself in need.[7]

All other cities must be without acquisitive desires. For if no city ever desires more, nor believes they were slighted for what they were owed, then dispositions for war are unnecessary. The city has no need for war, and no fear of attack. Without fear of attack, there is no need to prepare. Defense-as-preservation is a waste because the basic functioning of the city, inherent in “one man one art,” is, in itself, the basis of self-preservation.[8]

At this point, Glaucon interrupts Socrates, and in my mind rightly so, because this city entails “men [who] have their feast without relishes.”[9] Bare minimum self-preservation is insufficient; humans want a kind of flourishing, and not, as Glaucon objects, a “city of sows.”[10] They want, Socrates patronizingly clarifies, a “luxurious city.”[11]

Athens under Hadrian (National Geographic)

Once the luxurious city is introduced, war becomes inevitable. This new “feverish city” expands beyond the previous “postulate [of] the mere necessities.”[12] There is a trust of the other cities inherent in the “healthy city,” which is only reasonable provided that all other cities were equally disposed. That this is so, but not explicit, may be a function of dialectic. The three are creating a city in speech and, therefore, in time. All the elements of the city cannot be present simultaneously but must manifest sequentially. They arrive in a somewhat haphazard order, based, chiefly, on the characteristics of the beginning, “the most important part of every work.”[13] Socrates began with mere necessity, but Glaucon demands a revision to include “relishes and desserts.”[14] Lives “[lived] in peace with health” are not considered to be lives worth living; Glaucon’s demands entail strife and beauty.

To reach for more, to reach beyond mere necessity, reveals a chasm to war and a way to philosophy.[15] “Nothing,” now “stands in the way.”[16] What satiates is fickle and a matter of taste. Art is “set in motion” and rare, expensive materials “must be obtained.”[17] To seek beyond swells the city in number and things. Teachers are required and land becomes a constraint. More people require more land, and now the land that the previous city cultivated is insufficient “for feeding the men.”[18] The luxurious city is incapable of satisfying a basic need, one of Socrates’ items of mere necessity, unless this city attacks and takes land from another city. This induced requirement does not emanate from scarcity, but from unnecessary needs, desires for ever more. The desires are unnecessary because the previous city would have satisfied this need.

Nevertheless, feeding one’s citizens is still a basic need. To seek beyond misprioritizes needs because it introduces and integrates other desires among the basic requirements. For “if they let themselves go to the unlimited acquisition of money, overstepping the boundary of the necessary” then, Socrates posits, the other city will seek more land, too.[19] War results from this interactive acquisitiveness. Socrates even goes so far to say this “origin” is found “in those things whose presence in cities most of all produces evils both private and public.”[20] What is it that produces these evils?[21]

The city grows bigger again. This is not, as Socrates declares, “by a small number but by a whole army.”[22] This army will be prepared to “go out and do battle with invaders” attacking “for all the wealth and all the things.”[23] To attack seeks to acquire wealth or land, while to defend seeks to preserve one’s own station, land, and wealth.[24] Still, Glaucon wonders why the number of the citizens of the city must be increased by an army: why are the city’s citizens unable to provide for their own defense? Given that the “struggle for victory in war” is an art, it then falls under the demands of “one man, one art.”[25] In the healthy city, no one cared for war. In the luxurious city, no one would care for war, unless it was their art. “Isn’t it,” Socrates asks rhetorically, “of the greatest importance that what has to do with war be well done?”[26]

The art of war demands more than someone’s “spare time.”[27] It demands more than the possession of a “weapon or tool of war.”[28] The art of war demands “knowledge” and “adequate training,” and, like all other arts, “a nature fit for the pursuit.”[29] Unlike the other arts, however, this nature must be identified, handpicked, and tested—the dynamics of warfare demand it.

What kind of person makes a guardian? To successfully defend their constructed city, Glaucon and Socrates must identify what characteristics are required for those “fit for guarding the city.”[30] War invokes the guardian, just as it informs their comportment. Guardians must be spirited (thymos) and like a “noble puppy” they must be “gentle to their own and cruel to enemies.”[31] An enemy, now, however so conceived, exists.

Prior to this point in the city’s founding, there had been no mention of an enemy in or of the city.[32] War, again, demands it.[33] The emergence of enemies is tangled. For Socrates wonders how such a spirited soul and strapping body would “not be savage to one another and the rest of the citizens?”[34] What controls limit their animation? What direction coordinates their defense? Without such a rule, “they’ll not wait for others to destroy them, but they’ll do it themselves beforehand.”[35] The founders fear that their defenders, predisposed to warlike action, will not harness their spirit and strength towards the city’s defense. Instead, they would in-fight and undermine the city itself.[36] Socrates tosses this conundrum to Glaucon, who likewise concurs that “a good guardian is impossible.”[37] Warfare requires opposing tendencies.

Contradictory tendencies are resolved as one turns toward philosophy. Hence, Socrates, in a moment of narrative clarity, explains to us, “I too was at a loss, and, looking back over what had gone before,” he sees, after turning and reflecting, that the way out is through the “image” they had “abandoned.”[38] Dogs prove the natural possibility: “When it sees someone it doesn’t know, it’s angry, although it never had any bad experience with him. And when it sees someone it knows, it greets him warmly, even if it never had a good experience with him.”[39] Knowledge without experience corresponds to temperament and cultivation: the known is good and the unknown is bad, notwithstanding prior interaction. Such a dog, Socrates grants, is “truly philosophic” because “it distinguishes friendly from hostile looks by nothing other than having learned the one and being ignorant of the other.”[40] War drags in a kind of philosophy, more so an education, to determine “what’s its own and what’s alien.”[41] Provided a guardian can properly do so, they will not attack the city’s citizens, but only defend against, or attack, the other, the alien. Rearing, education, and knowledge must be controlled.

War in all its forms comes into being with the luxurious city. The possibility of war—either to attack or to defend – demands an army, spirited and strong, docile to the known, and hostile to the unknown. An elaborate educational system, balanced between music and gymnastics, follows.[42] Censorship is employed to maintain the guardian’s precarious disposition. Women may even become guardians. Children of the guardians should be “spectators of war.”[43] Warfare is a perpetual concern because war constitutes the central problem for the founders. The question of how the guardians should be educated is predicated on the dictates of war.

But what is war? Before we can answer this question, let’s return to the origin of war. Recall, Socrates explains, there is a set of “things whose presence in cities most of all produces evils both private and public.”[44] This “thing” originates war, but not exclusively so.[45] What is this element of which war is a subset?

Hold onto that thought as Socrates, amid the second wave, and, again in dialogue with Glaucon, commences a military campaign.[46] They discuss bringing children to war, the conduct of soldiers in combat, the erotics of comradery, honor and reputation, the treatment of captured enemies, and the problem of plunder. But then, Socrates reiterates a prior question: “What sort of thing will your soldiers do to the enemies?”[47] In lieu of a scorched earth policy against other Greeks, the army, he suggests, will “take away the year’s harvest” because of, Socrates digresses, the difference between war and faction.[48]

War is defined in parallel with and in contradistinction to faction. Given that two names exist, Socrates contends, “two things also exist and the names apply to differences in these two.”[49] The difference is between things identified as “what is one’s own and akin and what is alien, and foreign.”[50] On top of these two things, there are two kinds of hatred. War is “hatred of the alien,” while faction is “hatred of one’s own.”[51] Hatred must be that “thing” in cities that originates war, along with all other private and public evils.[52] But what is hatred?

There are two points following this disambiguation that we must notice. First, the city becomes Greek.[53] Second, Socrates seeks to ratchet down the violence of war such that fighting between the Greeks, including this city, is limited. As Glaucon reiterates, “toward the barbarians they must behave as the Greeks do now toward one another.”[54] Socrates wants the default orientation toward the other to be one of kinship, of love. Socrates reiterates, “it seems that the faction is a wicked thing and that the members of neither side are lovers of their city.”[55] Consequently, let us provisionally conclude that hatred is the opposite of love. We can recall Socrates’ principle of non-opposites.[56] Let us assume that love and hatred are many and yet operate on “the same part and in relation to the same thing.” If so, they must “perform opposed actions'' at different times.[57] While we have introduced love and hatred at the public level, to understand what hatred is, we must follow Socrates back to private discussions of the soul.

Socrates establishes three sets of opposites: desiring, willing, and wanting are contrasted with not-desiring, not-willing, and not-wanting.[58] The former pertains to actions whereby the soul “longs for” and “embraces that which it wants to become its own” while the latter concerns “the soul’s thrusting away from itself and driving out of itself.”[59] Desiring, willing, and wanting seek toward, while the opposites are thrust away. Love and hatred are just such opposites.

Socrates tells of Leontius who desired to look at corpses, “but at the same time he was disgusted and made himself turn away.”[60] Hatred compels, like disgust, a turning away, while love compels, a turning toward. Either turning may be violent, nevertheless it entails a rotational movement based on recognition. Hatred underlies faction and war because, in the former, one turns away from one’s own, while in the latter one turns away from what’s alien. A turning away creates distance, perhaps the distance necessary to harm others.

We can now understand Socrates’ attempt to pacify the Greeks. First, he establishes a recognition of what is one’s own and, second, a revolution towards one another as Greeks.[61] The problem of war for the Greeks becomes a problem of faction, a problem of hating and not loving. Yet, while factions may be defused, war still seems necessary. Enemies exist and remain threats to the city. It is still necessary to cultivate hatred of the other because war between Greeks and the barbarians is still possible.

As Socrates’ campaign comes to an end, Glaucon grants that “if it should come into being, everything would be good for the city in which it came into being.”[62] He further grants that the guardians “would be best fighting their enemies” because of morale, comradery, integration of women, mass, reserve, and shock. “I know that with all this,” he admits, “they would be unbeatable.”[63] But this belief is conditional: “Is it possible for this regime to come into being, and how is it ever possible?”[64] The city in speech is forged by and for war; yet, it does not seem possible. The question of possibility, “[a]ll of sudden,” Socrates protests, “assaulted my argument.”[65] Socrates’ work is attacked and to defend himself he must invoke “so paradoxical an argument.”[66] Socrates suggests “one change” whereby “the philosophers rule as kings or those now called kings and chiefs genuinely and adequately philosophize” such that “political power and philosophy coincide.”[67] Some philosopher dogs must become philosopher kings, which requires further refined education. How do the dogs and the kings know who is alien, who is the enemy?[68] Who deserves to be hated?

The philosopher dogs are to be educated with music and gymnastics. Their character must be such that they “choose death in battles above defeat and slavery.”[69] The purging of the poets is meant to forge such reactions. A balance between music and gymnastics harmonizes a balance between the philosophic tendencies and spiritedness.[70] Education and testing further selects for the “complete guardians,” or rulers, and separates them from the “auxiliaries and helpers of the rulers’ convictions.”[71]

Socrates further refines the role of the guardians, as ones who “guard over enemies from without and friends from within—so that the ones will not wish to do harm and the others will be unable to.”[72] The philosopher dogs, as auxiliaries, need not decide who or what counts as known or unknown, they need only execute the “ruler’s convictions.”[73] That innate barking has been inculcated from the beginning. The remaining poetry protects against wayward influence and the noble lie establishes and embellishes who is one’s own and who is alien. The first portion of the lie ensures that all have the plan to defend their land, their mother, “if anyone attacks.”[74] Who is other rests outside their land.

The other is established by the guardians as rulers. Yet, the other is also defined by the three founders, Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus, in dialogue.[75] Foundational moments pepper the text, where intervention from beyond the rulers, the guardians, is necessary. Recall, Socrates invokes Glaucon’s response, and the city becomes Greek. From this moment, the city has delineated who is one’s own and who is alien. Such classification is philosophical; it is only possible for the city after the third wave and the invocation of the philosopher-king.[76] For the guardians to be philosopher kings, they must be drawn from war to philosophy, with the caveat, however, that their studies cannot “be useless to warlike men.”[77] They must be reeducated by number, “of distinguishing the one, the two, and the three.”[78] This practice leads to “intellection,” and is “apt to draw men toward being.”[79] War cultivates the skills necessary to move from the thinking and understanding of mathematical and scientific objects and hypotheses to intellection of the forms. War is the last step before philosophy.

Yet if the guardian is going to fully turn to philosophy, she or he must leave war behind. This is not immediately evident. Number is necessary because it allows the warrior to understand “dispositions for the army,” while for the philosopher it helps to “rise up out of becoming and take hold of being,” as evinced by the three fingers image.[80] Geometry, too, is valuable for war and philosophy, Socrates concedes.[81] But after Glaucon adds that astronomy is valuable for “generalship,” Socrates demands the split between war and philosophy. He accuses Glaucon, “You are like a man who is afraid…not wanting to seem to command useless studies.”[82] War demands practicality. It will always prevent one from fully looking up, because warriors must always be on the lookout for the enemy. Yet, philosophy is the only way to decide who they are to look out at.[83] Socrates, speaking in the language of war, demands that Glaucon “retreat.”[84] Only by retreating from the practicality of the world, can the same activity be applied to philosophy instead of war.

The guardian’s education is now philosophic, without the tendrils of war. It continues adding solid geometry, harmony, and dialectic. And yet, the philosopher maintains a warlike tendency, “going through every test, as it were, in battle.”[85] War is levied against opinion and becoming, in defense of knowledge and being. Real philosophers hate lies, they have “[n]o taste for falsehood; that is, they are completely unwilling to admit what’s false but hate it, while cherishing the truth.”[86] That is they turn away from lies.[87] At one point, Socrates admits he overreacts. He explains, “as I was talking I looked at Philosophy and, seeing her undeservingly spattered with mud, I seem to have been vexed and said what I had to say too seriously as though my spiritedness were aroused against those who are responsible.”[88]

The Death of Socrates (Jacques Louis David/The Met)

Philosophy deserves defense and Socrates was called to action. His spirit, like a guardian, invoked hatred against the other, opinion. Eventually, the philosophical education grounds itself again in the realities of war and law.[89] The city in speech acquiesces to the demands of war, and, in a way, of philosophy. Nevertheless, real philosophy cannot fail to forget its bellicose turning origins.[90] War is the last step out of the cave. Lastly, the city in war needs philosophy, for without it, war serves not just as a necessary part of the city’s inception but as a catalyst of its degeneration.[91]

Olivia A. Garard served as an active duty officer in the US Marine Corps and holds a master’s degree in war studies from King’s College London and an undergraduate degree in philosophy from Princeton University. She is currently attending St. John’s College Graduate Institute. She recently published her first book, An Annotated Guide to Tactics: Carl von Clausewitz’s Theory of the Combat.

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Header Image: Statue of Plato at The Academy of Athens. (Edgar Serrano/World History Encyclopedia)

Notes:

[1] All uses of Socrates should be remembered to be Plato’s conception, just as all dialogue should be remembered to be Socrates’ recollection.

[2] Plato, The Republic, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 2016), 368a.

[3] Plato, The Republic, 369e.

[4] Plato, The Republic, 370d.

[5] Plato, The Republic, 371e.

[6] Plato, The Republic, 372c.

[7] This cannot be exactly the case because trade entails some level of difference; the purpose of trade is to obtain different things. The differences between cities, however, can be considered superficial, provided that all other cities are not acquisitive, just like this city.

[8] Plato, The Republic, 370b.

[9] Plato, The Republic, 372c.

[10] Plato, The Republic, 372d.

[11] Plato, The Republic, 372e.

[12] Plato, The Republic, 372e, 373a. As much as I am disinclined to like Hobbes, I cannot get away from self-defense as a prerequisite for self-preservation.

[13] Plato, The Republic, 377a.

[14] Plato, The Republic, 372d.

[15] What leads down into the cave housing the Ring of Gygyes leads up and out of the cave to the sun, the child of the Good.

[16] Plato, The Republic, 372e.

[17] Plato, The Republic, 373a.

[18] Plato, The Republic, 373d.

[19] Plato, The Republic, 373d. Italics mine.

[20] Plato, The Republic, 373e.

[21] For the purposes of this essay, we will prioritize the public evils, however interesting war in the soul may be.

[22] Plato, The Republic, 374a.

[23] Plato, The Republic, 374a.

[24] Poverty, it must be remembered, was the only other looming threat for the healthy city.

[25] Plato, The Republic, 374b, 370b. This is further evidence that the city of pigs never would nor could defend itself.

[26] Plato, The Republic, 374c. Whether wars were ever “well done” could only ever be evaluated by philosophers, as we shall see.

[27] Plato, The Republic, 374c.

[28] Plato, The Republic, 374d.

[29] Plato, The Republic, 374d, 374e.

[30] Plato, The Republic, 374e.

[31] Plato, The Republic, 375a, 375c.

[32] The last prior use of enemy was at 364c, in Adeimantus’ speech castigating justice. The city of pigs had no enemies, which is why it was in peace.

[33] I prefer to consider that war demands it rather than that the city needs it. If war functioned differently, then there would be different demands of the city and the city would have different needs. The dynamics of war are prior to the city.

[34] Plato, The Republic, 375b.

[35] Plato, The Republic, 375c.

[36] They will succumb to faction in lieu of a proper deployment in war.

[37] Plato, The Republic, 375d.

[38] Plato, The Republic, 375d. Images function throughout, although they are deliberately provoked in Book VI. “The question you are asking,” Socrates tells Adeimantus, “needs an answer given through an image.” Plato, The Republic, 487e.

[39] Plato, The Republic, 376a. The reduction of the various cities, and its parts, to animals is curious. The first city is a city of pigs, philosopher dogs are the model for guardians, and the family dynamics parallel the breeding of animals.

[40] Plato, The Republic, 376a. I am unsure what degree of irony to read into Socrates’ characterization of philosopher dogs.

[41] Plato, The Republic, 376b.

[42] The education clarifies that the initial use of guardians was inclusive of the real guardians, the rulers, and the auxiliaries, the professionalized military.

[43] Plato, The Republic, 467c.

[44] Plato, The Republic, 467e.

[45] I am reminded of Heidegger’s point in his Parmenides lectures that the conflictual essence of truth encompasses war and is prior to it.

[46] Plato, The Republic, 472an34. Bloom explains that what he has translated as “loitering” has, in other manuscripts, a sense of a military campaign. I believe this campaign begins at 466e: “For, as to war,” Socrates prompts, “I suppose it’s plain how they’ll make war.”

[47] Plato, The Republic, 470a. The prior question was at 469b: “How will our soldiers deal with enemies?”

[48] Plato, The Republic, 470a.

[49] Plato, The Republic, 470b.

[50] Plato, The Republic, 470b. In note 32 of Book V, Bloom explains that “[t]he Greek words for ‘being at war’ and ‘enemy’ are polemein and polemios.” Inherent in war is a hostile orientation towards the other.

[51] Plato, The Republic, 470b.

[52] Plato, The Republic, 373e.

[53] Plato, The Republic, 470e.

[54] Plato, The Republic, 471b.

[55] Plato, The Republic, 470d.

[56] “It’s plain that the same thing won’t be willing at the same time to do or suffer opposites with respect to the same part and in relation to the same thing. So if we should ever find that happening in these things, we’ll they weren’t the same, but many.” Plato, The Republic, 436b.

[57] Plato, The Republic, 436b, 439b.

[58] Plato, The Republic, 437c. Book IX revises the relationship between desire, love, and pleasure, and the soul, but the for the purposes of this essay we can just consider that love is a kind of desire within the soul, without worrying about where it is found.

[59] Plato, The Republic, 437c.

[60] Plato, The Republic, 439e.

[61] I hear future echoes of Kant’s “Perpetual Peace” argument here. By unifying of all the Greeks as family, Socrates seeks to eliminate the possibility of war because none are alien. Quite fitting, too, given that Plato was writing this in the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War: a civil war between the Greeks based on faction.

Plato, The Republic, 471d.

Plato, The Republic, 471d.

[64] Plato, The Republic, 471d.

[65] Plato, The Republic, 472a.

[66] Plato, The Republic, 472a.

[67] Plato, The Republic, 473d.

[68] This echoes the discussion between Socrates and Polemarchus (literally war lord) on justice as doing good for one’s friends and harm to one’s enemies. Plato, The Republic, 334b-335e.

[69] Plato, The Republic, 386b.

[70] Plato, The Republic, 411e. Only the Dorian and Phrygian modes remain. One is “violent,” mimicking “a man who is courageous in warlike deeds and every violent work…[ who] stands up firmly and patiently against chance,” while the other “voluntary” encourages “acting moderately and in measure and being content with the consequences,” or, as describing the dogs, gentle and cruel. Plato, The Republic, 399a-399c.

[71] Plato, The Republic, 414b.

[72] Plato, The Republic, 414b.

[73] Plato, The Republic, 414b.

[74] Plato, The Republic, 414d.

[75] Plato, The Republic, 414d. Socrates admits, “I’ll attempt to persuade first the rulers…” Italics mine. This is another problem of the beginning.

[76] Or for the city in speech because of Socrates as an interlocutor.

[77] Plato, The Republic, 521d.

[78] Plato, The Republic, 522c. Counting troops seems so simple, and yet, accountability, for troops, gear, and government property, is still a fundamental tenet of discipline and military responsibility.

[79] Plato, The Republic, 523a.

[80] Plato, The Republic, 525b.

[81] Plato, The Republic, 526d. Socrates admits, “What you said about war, of course.” Plato, The Republic, 527c.

[82] Plato, The Republic, 527d. Note the word command.

[83] Here one is reminded of the ship of state.

[84] Plato, The Republic, 528a.

[85] Plato, The Republic, 534a.

[86] Plato, The Republic, 485c. Italics mine.

[87] The “noble lie” is not hated since it prevents the classes from “hating and being hated” whereas the “true lie” is hated by “all gods and human beings.” Plato, The Republic, 414d, 416b, 382a.

[88] Plato, The Republic, 536c.

[89] Plato, The Republic, 537d.

[90] Is this why Socrates asks for war story in the Timaeus?

[91] It makes sense then that the devolution of regimes in Book VIII stems from a failure of number – the fundamental balance necessary to maintain the city even in the city of pigs. Once births are ill-timed, they are ill-disposed, and the dynamics of war (and faction) follow the descent of man and the city. This reading emphasizes less the nuptial failure and more the numerical one.

thestrategybridge.org · September 6, 2022

21. Russia switches off Europe’s main gas pipeline until sanctions are lifted

It is going to be a cold winter in Europe.

This story this morning from NPR is worth listening to. I will forward the transcript when it is published (probably in tomorrow's news distro). I wonder if Bonaprate was plannig this far forward when he was marching on Moscow or the Germans when they were heading to Moscow. Probably not as they assumed victory ebfore the winter. At least the Ukrianian people are preparing now for the upcomign frezzing horor.

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/06/1121201345/ukrainians-prep-for-winter-if-russia-hits-heating-systems-cities-will-freeze

Ukrainians prep for winter. If Russia hits heating systems, cities will freeze

NPR · by Tim Mak · September 6, 2022

The temperatures in the Ukrainian capital have been in the 70s lately. But as summer wanes, residents are already preparing for a harsh winter ahead.

NPR · by Tim Mak · September 6, 2022

Russia switches off Europe’s main gas pipeline until sanctions are lifted

Financial Times · by Max Seddon · September 5, 2022

Russia’s gas supplies to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline will not resume in full until the “collective west” lifts sanctions against Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has said.

Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, blamed EU, UK and Canadian sanctions for Russia’s failure to deliver gas through the key pipeline, which pumps gas to Germany from St Petersburg via the Baltic Sea.

Although Moscow continues to claim technical faults have caused the cuts in gas supplies, Peskov’s comments were the starkest demand yet by the Kremlin that it wants the EU to roll back its sanctions in exchange for Russia resuming full gas deliveries to the continent.

European leaders have said Russia’s technical issues are a ruse and have accused Moscow of “weaponising” its energy exports to retaliate against the western sanctions.

“The problems pumping gas came about because of the sanctions western countries introduced against our country and several companies,” Peskov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. “There are no other reasons that could have caused this pumping problem.”

Gazprom, Russia’s state-run gas monopoly, said late on Friday it would halt gas supplies through Nord Stream 1 because of a technical fault, which it blamed on difficulties repairing German-made turbines in Canada.

The announcement came just hours after G7 nations announced efforts to introduce a price cap on Russian oil exports.

The plan is aimed at hampering Moscow’s efforts to fund its war machine through hydrocarbon sales. Russia has offset much of the economic hit from the sanctions thanks to its oil and gas revenues, which are benefiting from the sky-high energy prices since the conflict began.

Peskov said the sanctions made it impossible to service the turbines or receive guarantees they would be repaired. “It was these sanctions, that western governments introduced, which brought the situation to what we see now,” he said.

The German government and the EU have disputed the technical justification.

“It is important to recall that there is not just one gas pipeline from Russia to Europe,” said Tim McPhie, the European Commission’s energy spokesman on Monday. “If there was a technical problem which was impeding supplies via Nord Stream 1, there would be a possibility, if there was willingness, to deliver gas to Europe through other pipelines. That’s something we’re not seeing happening.”

The euro fell to a 20-year low against the dollar, dropping as much as 0.7 per cent to $0.988 in London trading on Monday, the first time markets have been open since Gazprom’s surprise announcements.

Russia is still supplying gas to Europe via Soviet-era pipelines through Ukraine that have remained open despite the invasion, as well as the South Stream pipeline via Turkey.

But supplies along the northern pipeline routes, including Nord Stream 1 and the pipelines through Ukraine, have fallen by more than 90 per cent between September last year and today, according to Refinitiv data.

Serhiy Makogon, chief executive of Ukraine’s gas transportation pipeline operator, said there were “no signs” Russia planned to compensate by pumping more natural gas through Ukraine.

He said Gazprom was currently pumping 41m cubic metres of gas daily through the Ukrainian route — just over half the maximum possible 77mcm under their contract.

Volumes on the southern TurkStream pipeline, which primarily supplies Turkey and countries in southern Europe, have not fallen in the same way but are less critical to supplying Europe’s largest economies.

Higher supplies from Norway, the UK, north Africa and increased imports of LNG have helped to an extent offset the loss of Russian supplies, which prior to the crisis made up about 40 per cent of European consumption. But the shortfall in September for countries reliant on the northern routes was still in the region of 20 per cent compared with last year.

Laurent Ruseckas, an analyst at S&P Global, said that Russian flows to Europe were now down more than 80 per cent since the start of 2021. Russia started gently squeezing supplies prior to the invasion of Ukraine, but has made much larger cuts in recent months after the west sanctioned Moscow over the war.

Josep Borrell, the EU’s chief diplomat, on Monday acknowledged that certain political factions in the bloc wanted the EU to drop its support for Ukraine, push Kyiv into a ceasefire and abandon sanctions against Russia to ease economic pressure on European countries. He said those views were “not representative” of the position adopted by member states.

Borrell spoke after protests in recent days in Czech Republic and Germany against the rising cost of living and comments from Czech politicians on Monday calling for a new attitude from the EU.

Borrell, speaking alongside Ukraine’s prime minister in Brussels, said there is “clear, complete, unwavering support of all [EU] governments to our position”.

Additional reporting by Roman Olearchyk in Kyiv

Financial Times · by Max Seddon · September 5, 2022

22. China accuses U.S. of cyberattacks on university that allegedly does military research

​This is the counter accusation part of "admit nothing, deny everything, and make counter accusations."

China accuses U.S. of cyberattacks on university that allegedly does military research

SEPTEMBER 5, 2022 / 12:23 PM / AP

CBS News

China on Monday accused Washington of breaking into computers at a university that U.S. officials say does military research, adding to complaints by both governments of rampant online spying against each other.

Northwestern Polytechnical University reported computer break-ins in June, the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center announced. It said the center, working with a commercial security provider, Qihoo 360 Technology Co., traced the attacks to the National Security Agency but didn't say how that was done.

China and the United States are, along with Russia, regarded as global leaders in cyberwarfare research.

China accuses the United States of spying on universities, energy and internet companies and other targets. Washington accuses Beijing of stealing commercial secrets and has announced criminal charges against Chinese military officers.

The U.S. actions "seriously endanger China's national security," said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning. She also accused Washington of eavesdropping on Chinese mobile phones and stealing text messages.

"China strongly condemns it," Mao said. "The United States should immediately stop using its advantages to steal secrets and attack other countries."

The American Embassy in Beijing didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Security experts say the ruling Communist Party's military wing, the People's Liberation Army, and the Ministry of State Security also sponsor hackers outside the government.

A photo taken on Sept. 5, 2022 shows the campus of Northwestern Polytechnical University in the Beilin district of Xi 'an, in China's Shaanxi province. CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images

Northwestern Polytechnical University, in the western city of Xi'an, is on a U.S. government "entity list" that limits its access to American technology. Washington says the university helps the PLA develop aerial and underwater drones and missile technology.

Monday's announcement accused the United States of taking information about the university's network management and other "core technologies." It said Chinese analysts found 41 "network attack" tools that it said were traced to the NSA.

Last year, a Chinese man, Shuren Qin, was sentenced to two years in prison by a federal court in Boston after he pleaded guilty to exporting underwater and marine technology to Northwestern Polytechnical University without required licenses.

The NSA, part of the Department of Defense, is responsible for "signals intelligence," or obtaining communications and other data.

The Computer Virus Emergency Response Center, set up in 1996 by the police department of the eastern city of Tianjin, describes itself as the Chinese agency responsible for inspection and testing of anti-computer virus products.

A report by Qihoo 360 in 2020 said hacking tools used in attacks on Chinese companies and government agencies in 2008-19 were traced to the Central Intelligence Agency by comparing them with code in CIA tools disclosed by the Wikileaks group.

The virus center accused the NSA of carrying out other "malicious network attacks" in China but gave no details. It said 13 people involved in the attacks had been identified.

The hackers targeted a "zero day," or previously unreported, vulnerability in the school's security, the statement said. It said the break-ins were conducted from servers in 17 countries including Japan, South Korea, Sweden, Poland, Ukraine and Colombia.

The statement described what it said were NSA software tools with names such as "Second Date" and "Drinking Tea" but didn't say which might have been used at the university.

CBS News​

23. Opinion | Why I’ve stopped fearing America is headed for civil war

interesting perspective from Tom Ricks.

Opinion | Why I’ve stopped fearing America is headed for civil war

The Washington Post · by Thomas E. Ricks · September 5, 2022

Thomas E. Ricks’s latest book, “Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968,” will be published in October.

Five years ago I began to worry about a new American civil war breaking out. Despite a recent spate of books and columns that warn such a conflict may be approaching, I am less concerned by that prospect now.

Back then, I wrote in a series of articles and online discussions for Foreign Policy that I expected to see widespread political violence accompanied by efforts in some states to undermine the authority and abilities of the federal government. At an annual lunch of national security experts in Austin, I posed the question of possible civil war and got a consensus of about a one-third chance of such a situation breaking.

Specifically, I worried that there would be a spate of assassination attempts against politicians and judges. I thought we might see courthouses and other federal buildings bombed. I also expected that in some states, right-wing organizations, heavily influenced by white nationalism, would hold conventions to discuss how to defy enforcement of federal laws they disliked, such as those dealing with voting rights. Some governors might vow to fire any state employee complying with unwanted federal orders. And I thought it likely that “nullification juries” would start cropping up, refusing to convict right-wingers committing mayhem, such as attacking election officials, no matter what evidence there was.

We still may see such catastrophes, of course. Our country remains deeply divided. We have a Supreme Court packed with reactionaries. Many right-wingers appear comfortable with threatening violence if things don’t go their way, and a large minority of the members of Congress seems unconcerned with such talk. I continue to worry especially about political assassinations, because all that takes is one deranged person and a gun — and our country unfortunately has many of both.

And yet, for all that, I am less pessimistic than I was back then.

Oddly enough, the main things that give me hope arise from former president Donald Trump’s attack on the electoral process, culminating in the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. At the time I feared that the unprecedented insurrection was the beginning of a sustained war on American democracy.

Yet nothing much happened. Rather, with the executive branch crippled and the legislative branch divided, the judicial branch of the federal government held the line. Again and again, both federal and state courts rejected claims of election fraud. Now those who alleged fraud without substantial evidence are themselves being investigated. Hundreds of people who invaded the Capitol, attacked police and threatened lawmakers were tracked down and charged with crimes. It was as if the American system had been subjected to a stress test and, albeit a bit wobbly, passed.

Moreover, the Capitol invaders turned out to lack the courage of their convictions. Having broken the law, they shied away from the consequences. Unlike the civil rights activists of the 1960s, they did not proudly march into jails, certain of the rightness of their cause, eager to use the moment to explain what they had done and why. They lacked the essentials that gave the civil rights movement and others sustainability: training, discipline and a strategy for the long term.

More recently, the House select committee examining how Jan. 6 came to pass has established a factual record that cannot be denied. While unfortunately not truly bipartisan, it also shows part of the legislative branch of the federal government finally awakening and responding to the attack that branch suffered. The Justice Department’s slow but steady pursuit of Jan. 6 perpetrators “at any level” targets those who thought they could speak or act without repercussions. And the American people are paying attention. A recent NBC News poll found that “threats to democracy” topped the list of pressing issues facing the nation.

Yes, we still have a long way to go. There are no signs of a national reconciliation in the offing. Some Trump followers no doubt will be elected to Congress and to state offices this fall, and control of both houses of Congress is uncertain.

But it is beginning to feel to me like the wave of hard right — not “conservative” — reaction has crested. As we saw in the recent vote in Kansas, the Supreme Court’s ruling against abortion has awakened many women, and some men, to the dangers of letting that court go wildly out of step with the American people.

In addition, the events of the past few years, most notably the pandemic and some natural disasters, have reminded many Americans that there is a place for good and effective government, especially in providing the basic societal needs of public health, public safety, air and water quality, and roads and other forms of transportation. That revived appreciation is one more reason why I think the danger of civil war is receding.

So, while the patient is not yet healthy, I see some signs that the fever is breaking and the prognosis is improving.

The Washington Post · by Thomas E. Ricks · September 5, 2022

​

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

VIDEO "WHEREBY" Link: https://whereby.com/david-maxwell

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com