Quotes of the Day:
Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things."
- Denis Diderot
"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead. I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
- Thomas Jefferson
"Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul."
- Mark Twain
1. What Will Drive China to War?
2. Officials: Damaged US Navy sub struck underwater mountain
3. AUKUS, US allies and the age of conditional proliferation
4. Indo-Pacific Theater Design Working Paper 4 Assessing Alternative Theater Design Choices: A Framework for Analysis
5. Military weighs penalties for those who refuse COVID vaccine
6. Marine officer blasts major general for calling him 'narcissistic' in reprimand letter
7. United States Participates in Proliferation Security Initiative Exercise DEEP SABRE
8. What Can the Army do Best in the Indo-Pacific?
9. Special ops task force in Middle East restructured for ‘broad, regional’ ISIS fight
10. The Pentagon quietly removed more than 130,000 Afghanistan War photos and videos from public view
11. New policy protects sexual assault survivors from being charged with ‘minor’ infractions
12. Colombia, Washington’s “Closest Ally,” Looks to Beijing
13. Xinjiang’s Oppression Has Shifted Gears
14. UN Committee Votes 'Yes' On UK-US-Backed Space Rules Group
15. Netflix removes spy drama episodes after Philippines' complaint over China map
16. Combat mentality, exercising the mind for special operations
17. What traits make you ‘truly American?’ Democrats and Republicans disagree
18. FDD | Will the NBA Stand Up to China’s Bullying for Enes Kanter?
1. What Will Drive China to War?
Excerpts:
If conflict does break out, U.S. officials should not be sanguine about how it would end. Tamping or reversing Chinese aggression in the Western Pacific could require a massive use of force. An authoritarian CCP, always mindful of its precarious domestic legitimacy, would not want to concede defeat even if it failed to achieve its initial objectives. And historically, modern wars between great powers have more typically gone long than stayed short. All of this implies that a U.S.-China war could be incredibly dangerous, offering few plausible off-ramps and severe pressures for escalation.
The U.S. and its friends can take steps to deter the PRC, such as drastically speeding the acquisition of weaponry and prepositioning military assets in the Taiwan Strait and East and South China Seas, among other efforts, to showcase its hard power and ensure that China can’t easily knock out U.S. combat power in a surprise attack. At the same time, calmly firming up multilateral plans, involving Japan, Australia, and potentially India and Britain, for responding to Chinese aggression could make Beijing realize how costly such aggression might be. If Beijing understands that it cannot easily or cheaply win a conflict, it may be more cautious about starting one.
Most of these steps are not technologically difficult: They exploit capabilities that are available today. Yet they require an intellectual shift—a realization that the United States and its allies need to rapidly shut China’s windows of military opportunity, which means preparing for a war that could well start in 2025 rather than in 2035. And that, in turn, requires a degree of political will and urgency that has so far been lacking.
China’s historical warning signs are already flashing red. Indeed, taking the long view of why and under which circumstances China fights is the key to understanding just how short time has become for America and the other countries in Beijing’s path.
What Will Drive China to War?
A cold war is already under way. The question is whether Washington can deter Beijing from initiating a hot one.
The Atlantic · by Michael Beckley, Hal Brands · November 1, 2021
President Xi Jinping declared in July that those who get in the way of China’s ascent will have their “heads bashed bloody against a Great Wall of steel.” The People’s Liberation Army Navy is churning out ships at a rate not seen since World War II, as Beijing issues threats against Taiwan and other neighbors. Top Pentagon officials have warned that China could start a military conflict in the Taiwan Strait or other geopolitical hot spots sometime this decade.
Analysts and officials in Washington are fretting over worsening tensions between the United States and China and the risks to the world of two superpowers once again clashing rather than cooperating. President Joe Biden has said that America “is not seeking a new cold war.” But that is the wrong way to look at U.S.-China relations. A cold war with Beijing is already under way. The right question, instead, is whether America can deter China from initiating a hot one.
Beijing is a remarkably ambitious revanchist power, one determined to make China whole again by “reuniting” Taiwan with the mainland, turning the East and South China Seas into Chinese lakes, and grabbing regional primacy as a stepping-stone to global power. It is also increasingly encircled, and faces growing resistance on many fronts—just the sort of scenario that has led it to lash out in the past.
The historical record since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 is clear: When confronted by a mounting threat to its geopolitical interests, Beijing does not wait to be attacked; it shoots first to gain the advantage of surprise.
In conflicts including the Korean War and clashes with Vietnam in 1979, China has often viewed the use of force as an educational exercise. It is willing to pick even a very costly fight with a single enemy to teach it, and others observing from the sidelines, a lesson.
Today, Beijing might be tempted to engage in this sort of aggression in multiple areas. And once the shooting starts, the pressures for escalation are likely to be severe.
Numerous scholars have analyzed when and why Beijing uses force. Most reach a similar conclusion: China attacks not when it feels confident about the future but when it worries its enemies are closing in. As Thomas Christensen, the director of the China and the World Program at Columbia University, writes, the Chinese Communist Party wages war when it perceives an opening window of vulnerability regarding its territory and immediate periphery, or a closing window of opportunity to consolidate control over disputed areas. This pattern holds regardless of the strength of China’s opponent. In fact, Beijing often has attacked far superior foes—including the U.S.—to cut them down to size and beat them back from Chinese-claimed or otherwise sensitive territory.
Examples of this are plentiful. In 1950, for instance, the fledgling PRC was less than a year old and destitute, after decades of civil war and Japanese brutality. Yet it nonetheless mauled advancing U.S. forces in Korea out of concern that the Americans would conquer North Korea and eventually use it as a base to attack China. In the expanded Korean War that resulted, China suffered almost 1 million casualties, risked nuclear retaliation, and was slammed with punishing economic sanctions that stayed in place for a generation. But to this day, Beijing celebrates the intervention as a glorious victory that warded off an existential threat to its homeland.
In 1962, the PLA attacked Indian forces, ostensibly because they had built outposts in Chinese-claimed territory in the Himalayas. The deeper cause was that the CCP feared that it was being surrounded by the Indians, Americans, Soviets, and Chinese Nationalists, all of whom had increased their military presence near China in prior years. Later that decade, fearing that China was next on Moscow’s hit list as part of efforts to defeat “counterrevolution,” the Chinese military ambushed Soviet forces along the Ussuri River and set off a seven-month undeclared conflict that once again risked nuclear war.
In the late ’70s, Beijing picked a fight with Vietnam. The purpose, remarked Deng Xiaoping, then the leader of the CCP, was to “teach Vietnam a lesson” after it started hosting Soviet forces on its territory and invaded Cambodia, one of China’s only allies. Deng feared that China was being surrounded and that its position would just get worse with time. And from the ’50s to the ’90s, China nearly started wars on three separate occasions by firing artillery or missiles at or near Taiwanese territory, in 1954–55, 1958, and 1995–96. In each case, the goal was—among other things—to deter Taiwan from forging a closer relationship with the U.S. or declaring its independence from China.
To be clear, every decision for war is complex, and factors including domestic politics and the personality quirks of individual leaders have also figured in China’s choices to fight. Yet the overarching pattern of behavior is consistent: Beijing turns violent when confronted with the prospect of permanently losing control of territory. It tends to attack one enemy to scare off others. And it rarely gives advance warning or waits to absorb the initial blow.
For the past few decades, this pattern of first strikes and surprise attacks has seemingly been on hold. Beijing’s military hasn’t fought a major war since 1979. It hasn’t shot at large numbers of foreigners since 1988, when Chinese frigates gunned down 64 Vietnamese sailors in a clash over the Spratly Islands. China’s leaders often claim that their country is a uniquely peaceful great power, and at first glance, the evidence backs them up.
But the China of the past few decades was a historical aberration, able to amass influence and wrest concessions from rivals merely by flaunting its booming economy. With 1.3 billion people, sky-high growth rates, and an authoritarian government that courted big business, China was simply too good to pass up as a consumer market and a low-wage production platform. So country after country curried favor with Beijing.
Britain handed back Hong Kong in 1997. Portugal gave up Macau in 1999. America fast-tracked China into major international institutions, such as the World Trade Organization. Half a dozen countries settled territorial disputes with China from 1991 to 2019, and more than 20 others cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan to secure relations with Beijing. China was advancing its interests without firing a shot and, as Deng remarked, “hiding its capabilities and biding its time.”
Those days are over. China’s economy, the engine of the CCP’s international clout, is starting to sputter. From 2007 to 2019, growth rates fell by more than half, productivity declined by more than 10 percent, and overall debt surged eightfold. The coronavirus pandemic has dragged down growth even further and plunged Beijing’s finances deeper into the red. On top of all this, China’s population is aging at a devastating pace: From 2020 to 2035 alone, it will lose 70 million working-age adults and gain 130 million senior citizens.
Countries have recently become less enthralled by China’s market and more worried about its coercive capabilities and aggressive actions. Fearful that Xi might attempt forced reunification, Taiwan is tightening its ties to the U.S. and revamping its defenses. For roughly a decade, Japan has been engaged in its largest military buildup since the Cold War; the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is now talking about doubling defense spending. India is massing forces near China’s borders and vital sea lanes. Vietnam and Indonesia are expanding their air, naval, and coast-guard forces. Australia is opening up its northern coast to U.S. forces and acquiring long-range missiles and nuclear-powered attack submarines. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are sending warships into the Indo-Pacific region. Dozens of countries are looking to cut China out of their supply chains; anti-China coalitions, such as the Quad and AUKUS, are proliferating.
Globally, opinion polls show that fear and mistrust of China has reached a post–Cold War high. All of which raises a troubling question: If Beijing sees that its possibilities for easy expansion are narrowing, might it begin resorting to more violent methods?
China is already moving in that direction. It has been using its maritime militia (essentially a covert navy), coast guard, and other “gray zone” assets to coerce weaker rivals in the Western Pacific. Xi’s government provoked a bloody scrap with India along the disputed Sino-Indian frontier in 2020, reportedly out of fear that New Delhi was aligning more closely with Washington.
Beijing certainly has the means to go much further. The CCP has spent $3 trillion over the past three decades building a military that is designed to defeat Chinese neighbors while blunting American power. It also has the motive: In addition to slowing growth and creeping encirclement, China faces closing windows of opportunity in its most important territorial disputes.
China’s geopolitical aims are not a secret. Xi, like his predecessors, desires to make China the preponderant power in Asia and, eventually, the world. He wants to consolidate China’s control over important lands and waterways the country lost during the “century of humiliation” (1839–1949), when China was ripped apart by imperialist powers. These areas include Hong Kong, Taiwan, chunks of Indian-claimed territory, and some 80 percent of the East and South China Seas.
The Western Pacific flash points are particularly vital. Taiwan is the site of a rival, democratic Chinese government in the heart of Asia with strong connections to Washington. Most of China’s trade passes through the East and South China Seas. And China’s primary antagonists in the area—Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines—are part of a strategic chain of U.S. allies and partners whose territory blocks Beijing’s access to the Pacific’s deep waters.
The CCP has staked its legitimacy on reabsorbing these areas and has cultivated an intense, revanchist form of nationalism among the Chinese people. Schoolchildren study the century of humiliation. National holidays commemorate foreign theft of Chinese lands. For many citizens, making China whole again is as much an emotional as a strategic imperative. Compromise is out of the question. “We cannot lose even one inch of the territory left behind by our ancestors,” Xi told James Mattis, then the U.S. secretary of defense, in 2018.
Taiwan is the place where China’s time pressures are most severe. Peaceful reunification has become extremely unlikely: In August 2021, a record 68 percent of the Taiwanese public identified solely as Taiwanese and not as Chinese, and more than 95 percent wanted to maintain the island’s de facto sovereignty or declare independence. China retains viable military options because its missiles could incapacitate Taiwan’s air force and U.S. bases on Okinawa in a surprise attack, paving the way for a successful invasion. But Taiwan and the U.S. now recognize the threat.
President Biden recently stated that America would fight to defend Taiwan from an unprovoked Chinese attack. Washington is planning to harden, disperse, and expand its forces in the Asia-Pacific by the early 2030s. Taiwan is pursuing, on a similar timeline, a defense strategy that would use cheap, plentiful capabilities such as anti-ship missiles and mobile air defenses to make the island an incredibly hard nut to crack. This means that China will have its best chance from now to the end of the decade. Indeed, the military balance will temporarily shift further in Beijing’s favor in the late 2020s, when many aging U.S. ships, submarines, and planes will have to be retired.
This is when America will be in danger, as the former Pentagon official David Ochmanek has remarked, of getting “its ass handed to it” in a high-intensity conflict. If China does attack, Washington could face a choice between escalation or seeing Taiwan conquered.
More such dilemmas are emerging in the East China Sea. China has spent years building an armada, and the balance of naval tonnage currently favors Beijing. It regularly sends well-armed coast-guard vessels into the waters surrounding the disputed Senkaku Islands to weaken Japan’s control there. But Tokyo has plans to regain the strategic advantage by turning amphibious ships into aircraft carriers for stealth fighters armed with long-range anti-ship missiles. It is also using geography to its advantage by stringing missile launchers and submarines along the Ryukyu Islands, which stretch the length of the East China Sea.
Meanwhile, the U.S.-Japan alliance, once a barrier to Japanese remilitarization, is becoming a force multiplier. Tokyo has reinterpreted its constitution to fight more actively alongside the U.S. Japanese forces regularly operate with American naval vessels and aircraft; American F-35 fighters fly off of Japanese ships; U.S. and Japanese officials now confer routinely on how they would respond to Chinese aggression—and publicly advertise that cooperation.
For years, Chinese strategists have speculated about a short, sharp war that would humiliate Japan, rupture its alliance with Washington, and serve as an object lesson for other countries in the region. Beijing could, for instance, land or parachute special forces on the Senkakus, proclaim a large maritime exclusion zone in the area, and back up that declaration by deploying ships, submarines, warplanes, and drones—all supported by hundreds of conventionally armed ballistic missiles aimed at Japanese forces and even targets in Japan. Tokyo then would either have to accept China’s fait accompli or launch a difficult and bloody military operation to recapture the islands. America, too, would have to choose between retreat and honoring the pledges it made—in 2014 and in 2021—to help Japan defend the Senkakus. Retreat might destroy the credibility of the U.S.-Japan alliance. Resistance, war games held by prominent think tanks suggest, could easily lead to rapid escalation resulting in a major regional war.
What about the South China Sea? Here, China has grown accustomed to shoving around weak neighbors. Yet opposition is growing. Vietnam is stocking up on mobile missiles, submarines, fighter jets, and naval vessels that can make operations within 200 miles of its coast very difficult for Chinese forces. Indonesia is ramping up defense spending—a 20 percent hike in 2020 and another 16 percent in 2021—to buy dozens of fighters, surface ships, and submarines armed with lethal anti-ship missiles. Even the Philippines, which courted Beijing for most of President Rodrigo Duterte’s term, has been increasing air and naval patrols, conducting military exercises with the U.S., and planning to purchase cruise missiles from India. At the same time, a formidable coalition of external powers—the U.S., Japan, India, Australia, Britain, France, and Germany—are conducting freedom-of-navigation exercises to contest China’s claims.
From Beijing’s perspective, circumstances are looking ripe for a teachable moment. The best target might be the Philippines. In 2016, Manila challenged China’s claims to the South China Sea before the Permanent Court of Arbitration and won. Beijing might relish the opportunity to reassert its claims—and warn other Southeast Asian countries about the cost of angering China—by ejecting Filipino forces from their isolated, indefensible South China Sea outposts. Here again, Washington would have few good options: It could stand down, effectively allowing China to impose its will on the South China Sea and the countries around it, or it could risk a much bigger war to defend its ally.
Get ready for the “terrible 2020s”: a period in which China has strong incentives to grab “lost” land and break up coalitions seeking to check its advance. Beijing possesses grandiose territorial aims as well as a strategic culture that emphasizes hitting first and hitting hard when it perceives gathering dangers. It has a host of wasting assets in the form of military advantages that may not endure beyond this decade. Such dynamics have driven China to war in the past and could do so again today.
If conflict does break out, U.S. officials should not be sanguine about how it would end. Tamping or reversing Chinese aggression in the Western Pacific could require a massive use of force. An authoritarian CCP, always mindful of its precarious domestic legitimacy, would not want to concede defeat even if it failed to achieve its initial objectives. And historically, modern wars between great powers have more typically gone long than stayed short. All of this implies that a U.S.-China war could be incredibly dangerous, offering few plausible off-ramps and severe pressures for escalation.
The U.S. and its friends can take steps to deter the PRC, such as drastically speeding the acquisition of weaponry and prepositioning military assets in the Taiwan Strait and East and South China Seas, among other efforts, to showcase its hard power and ensure that China can’t easily knock out U.S. combat power in a surprise attack. At the same time, calmly firming up multilateral plans, involving Japan, Australia, and potentially India and Britain, for responding to Chinese aggression could make Beijing realize how costly such aggression might be. If Beijing understands that it cannot easily or cheaply win a conflict, it may be more cautious about starting one.
Most of these steps are not technologically difficult: They exploit capabilities that are available today. Yet they require an intellectual shift—a realization that the United States and its allies need to rapidly shut China’s windows of military opportunity, which means preparing for a war that could well start in 2025 rather than in 2035. And that, in turn, requires a degree of political will and urgency that has so far been lacking.
China’s historical warning signs are already flashing red. Indeed, taking the long view of why and under which circumstances China fights is the key to understanding just how short time has become for America and the other countries in Beijing’s path.
The Atlantic · by Michael Beckley, Hal Brands · November 1, 2021
2. Officials: Damaged US Navy sub struck underwater mountain
I guess the entire world is not yet mapped (or at least the seabeds)
Officials: Damaged US Navy sub struck underwater mountain
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Navy has determined that a submarine damaged in a collision in the South China Sea in early October struck a seamount, or underwater mountain, two defense officials said Monday.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of a public announcement. The Navy has yet to fully explain how or why the USS Connecticut struck the seamount or to reveal the extent of damage to the Seawolf-class submarine.
The incident happened on Oct. 2 but was not reported by the Navy until five days later. The vessel made its way to Guam for a damage assessment, where it remains.
3. AUKUS, US allies and the age of conditional proliferation
Excerpts:
This new reality will be particularly hard to swallow for those US allies, particularly in Europe, which have become accustomed to the traditional model of US restraint and tend to view developments such as AUKUS as potentially triggering a destabilising ‘arms race’ (notwithstanding the fundamental problems with this concept). The default position of these countries appears to be that US and Western deterrent postures should continue to follow a logic of armament restraint. This is despite Russia and China’s ongoing arms build-up, including the deployment of advanced weapon systems, such as nuclear and conventional hypersonic missiles, coupled with revisionist foreign policies, thereby raising major challenges for crisis stability.
However, it is hard to see how deterrence can hold under these circumstances, not least since it is highly unlikely that either China or Russia will agree to verifiable limitations on their dual-capable missile arsenals, including advanced hypersonic systems and uninhabited aerial vehicles. Given their speed and manoeuvrability, hypersonic missiles pose new challenges in regional crises, limiting warning times, increasing ambiguity and reducing crisis stability. Thus, a conditional proliferation of US advanced, longer-range missile technology and more capable, networked missile defences to allies and partners in Asia and Europe, combined with greater flexibility for US naval in-theatre deterrence, could close a crucial gap in allied deterrent postures – and thus have a stabilising effect during a crisis. Likewise, a future Australian nuclear-powered submarine can have a deterrent effect in the Indo-Pacific in an allied strategy vis-à-vis China, just as advanced deeper-strike missile options strengthen South Korea’s (and the US–ROK) posture towards the DPRK and throughout the region.
The slow, but decisive, shift in US policy away from a traditional stance of non-proliferation of advanced weapons and technology as a principle, towards conditional and controlled proliferation to allies, does not mean that Washington has abandoned arms-control mechanisms altogether. It also does not diminish the important role that arms control should play in today’s world. But it signals that in this new era of strategic competition, helping key allies arm themselves with critical systems to increase their security and to reduce their deterrence gaps is becoming increasingly important.
AUKUS, US allies and the age of conditional proliferation
Washington’s willingness to share highly sensitive nuclear technology as part of the AUKUS deal serves as confirmation of a significant US policy shift. William Alberque and Ben Schreer explain how a new policy of ‘conditional proliferation’ could in fact deliver greater strategic stability.
The recent deal between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States (AUKUS) on delivering a nuclear-powered attack submarine for the Royal Australian Navy has been widely debated in terms of its ramifications for America’s nuclear non-proliferation commitments and for its alliance relationships, both in the Indo-Pacific and in Europe. While the attention has mostly focused on the reasons behind Australia’s decision and what it implies for US relations with European allies, Washington’s willingness to share highly sensitive nuclear technology is an equally important, yet little recognised part of the story.
It signals an enduring shift in strategy encapsulated by America’s increasing willingness to help key allies to ‘run faster’ and strategic competitors to ‘run more slowly’ in this era of prolonged great-power competition with China and Russia. This strategy includes enabling and supporting the ‘conditional proliferation’ of weapons and related technology – both as a means of helping allies to defend themselves but also to strengthen allied deterrence. In other words, the US has moved from a post-Cold War policy of unconditional non-proliferation, to a policy of controlled or conditional proliferation of advanced technologies where it can help to improve bilateral relationships and to achieve broader security and deterrence goals.
A history of restraint
Following the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the Kennedy administration sought to stop – and in some cases roll back – nuclear proliferation, even to its European and Asian allies. The US used a mixture of incentives and disincentives, including the offer or improvement of extended nuclear deterrence guarantees to its allies, to prevent further spread. Over time, US governments internalised this model of restraint, and, through to the end of the Cold War, persisted with a policy of limiting the proliferation of the most dangerous weapons and capable delivery systems, while assuming a disproportionate share of the burden in the defence of NATO allies, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, and others. For instance, successive US governments negotiated strict limits on the ROK’s missile systems in exchange for closer defence cooperation (known as the Missile Guidelines).
The first Obama administration marked the high point of this US model of proliferation restraint. The president not only campaigned on a platform of a nuclear ‘global zero’ and, to the consternation of Indo-Pacific allies such as Japan, completed the removal of America’s last sea-based tactical nuclear deterrent. But Washington also moved to restrict global access to highly enriched uranium (HEU) and weapons-grade plutonium through the Nuclear Security Summit. It continued a process initiated by the George W. Bush administration and removed the last remaining US battle tank in Europe in 2013. It even denied Ukraine anti-tank missiles and other lethal assistance in 2014, in the face of a massive Russian and separatist armoured assault, since it would be escalatory to be seen to help Ukraine defend itself.
However, things began to change during Obama’s second term, after the battlelines were drawn in Ukraine, and amid a growing recognition throughout the administration that Russia and China were both becoming increasingly assertive. Then, the US started deploying more capable military assets, both in Europe and Asia, in the belief that a new era of great-power competition and relative US decline demanded that allies be better able to defend themselves as part of a new deterrence and warfighting paradigm.
Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, accelerated this process. On his watch, Washington withdrew from arms-control arrangements, such as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. He also initiated a process to re-introduce tactical nuclear forces onto naval vessels that could sail into the Indo-Pacific, ended all limits on lethal assistance to Ukraine, and lifted many of the restrictions contained in the US–ROK Revised Missile Guidelines, accelerating South Korean missile development. There were also no objections in Washington over Japan’s decision to begin research and the development of hypersonic missile systems.
Conditional proliferation emerges as new policy
A new principled US policy position appears to have emerged out of an otherwise often chaotic Trump government: to frustrate the strategic postures of Russia and China, America has replaced its blanket policy of restraint on advanced weapons and technology, with one of conditioned proliferation among key allies and partners to allow them to better contribute to their defence.
AUKUS is an indicator that the Biden administration will continue and deepen this policy. Previous US governments would not have contemplated encouraging an ally – a non-nuclear weapon state, no less – to access HEU in defiance of nuclear non-proliferation norms, which have existed since the entry-into-force of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 1970. Now, faced with China’s growing strategic challenge, Washington appears to be supporting the proliferation of a significant nuclear technology to key allies.
Moreover, the Biden administration has also doubled-down on Trump’s approach to the ROK and completely eliminated all remaining limits on Seoul’s missile production, ending the era of the Revised Missile Guidelines. Tellingly, during the week of the AUKUS announcement, the ROK tested a full suite of heavy-warhead ballistic and cruise missiles beyond the 1,000km range, and became the first non-nuclear weapon state to launch a ballistic missile from a submarine, joining the US, Russia, China, India, the UK, France and North Korea.
It is prudent to expect this new US policy to continue – Washington is conscious that it cannot be the sole provider of defence capacities for its allies, particularly given the major changes in the international system, which continue to lay bare the structural and functional limitations of traditional arms-control and legacy non-proliferation regimes. To be sure, Washington will continue to support the existing arms-control and global non-proliferation processes, and it has made it clear that AUKUS remains an exception when it comes to the proliferation of nuclear-powered submarine technology. At the same time, however, the requirements of modern deterrence and crisis stability are changing – and helping allies to better arms themselves is one such requirement.
Potential stabilising effect
This new reality will be particularly hard to swallow for those US allies, particularly in Europe, which have become accustomed to the traditional model of US restraint and tend to view developments such as AUKUS as potentially triggering a destabilising ‘arms race’ (notwithstanding the fundamental problems with this concept). The default position of these countries appears to be that US and Western deterrent postures should continue to follow a logic of armament restraint. This is despite Russia and China’s ongoing arms build-up, including the deployment of advanced weapon systems, such as nuclear and conventional hypersonic missiles, coupled with revisionist foreign policies, thereby raising major challenges for crisis stability.
However, it is hard to see how deterrence can hold under these circumstances, not least since it is highly unlikely that either China or Russia will agree to verifiable limitations on their dual-capable missile arsenals, including advanced hypersonic systems and uninhabited aerial vehicles. Given their speed and manoeuvrability, hypersonic missiles pose new challenges in regional crises, limiting warning times, increasing ambiguity and reducing crisis stability. Thus, a conditional proliferation of US advanced, longer-range missile technology and more capable, networked missile defences to allies and partners in Asia and Europe, combined with greater flexibility for US naval in-theatre deterrence, could close a crucial gap in allied deterrent postures – and thus have a stabilising effect during a crisis. Likewise, a future Australian nuclear-powered submarine can have a deterrent effect in the Indo-Pacific in an allied strategy vis-à-vis China, just as advanced deeper-strike missile options strengthen South Korea’s (and the US–ROK) posture towards the DPRK and throughout the region.
The slow, but decisive, shift in US policy away from a traditional stance of non-proliferation of advanced weapons and technology as a principle, towards conditional and controlled proliferation to allies, does not mean that Washington has abandoned arms-control mechanisms altogether. It also does not diminish the important role that arms control should play in today’s world. But it signals that in this new era of strategic competition, helping key allies arm themselves with critical systems to increase their security and to reduce their deterrence gaps is becoming increasingly important.
Author
Director of Non-Proliferation and Nuclear Policy
Executive Director, IISS–Europe
4. Indo-Pacific Theater Design Working Paper 4 Assessing Alternative Theater Design Choices: A Framework for Analysis
October 2021
Indo-Pacific Theater Design Working Paper 4
Assessing Alternative Theater Design Choices: A Framework for Analysis
Nathan Freier
Robert Hume
Jason Rosenstrauch
Brian Evans
A working paper of the 2019-2020 US Army War College Integrated Research Project on US Army Theater Design in the Indo-Pacific Region The views presented in this paper are solely those of the authors. They do not represent US Government, US Department of Defense, or US Department of the Army policy
Introduction – A Two-Step Risk-Informed Framework for Analysis This working paper is a companion to Four Paths to the Grid and it is a continuation of Army War College work introduced in the Secretary of the Army-sponsored report An Army Transformed: Hypercompetition and US Army Theater Design in the INDOPACOM Theater. 1 This working paper provides senior defense and military leaders with an adaptable two-step qualitative analytic tool for assessing the hypercompetitive potential and risk associated with the Army pursuing any transformational change to its INDOPACOM theater design.
The 2020 report, An Army Transformed, offered one such alternative for transformational change in INDOPACOM theater design. And, last summer’s Four Paths to The Grid described four viable paths to change to illustrate how the Army might realize the recommendations advanced in An Army Transformed. 2 US Army Pacific’s (USARPAC) recent strategy America’s Theater Army for the Indo-Pacific is yet another—more official—alternative for INDOPACOM theater design.3 The framework for analysis provided here should help Army leaders gauge the relative value of competing approaches like these.
What this paper does specifically is describe an adaptable framework for analysis. What it does not yet do is employ the same framework to make qualitative judgments on either the design and paths introduced in An Army Transformed and Four Paths to the Grid or alternatives emerging from official service, Joint, or department-level posture work such as the recent USARPAC strategy. Army War College researchers invite senior leaders, staffs, and analysts to use the ideas in this paper to assess alternative options in light of their priorities and preferences.
While the animating intent of this framework is near-term assessment of specific Army changes in INDOPACOM theater design, the authors believe the framework’s utility is much broader. Though it emerged from Army War College INDOPACOM work occurring between 2018 and 2021, we suggest that the principles it advances apply equally to assessment of any significant design change to any US military theater of operations. This is especially true for those design choices focused on enhancing US and partner hypercompetitive position vis-à-vis great power rivals China and Russia.
Thus, as the Department of Defense (DoD) concludes its worldwide posture review and makes design recommendations to the Secretary of Defense and President, this framework may be one important analytic tool for weighing design and posture alternatives for the Army and for all of DoD. 4 While this will borrow from and refer to prior USAWC work on INDOPACOM, it is a simple construct through which senior defense leaders might assess and describe the opportunity and risk associated ANY path to a more hypercompetitive theater design in ANY functional or geographic context.
5. Military weighs penalties for those who refuse COVID vaccine
Military weighs penalties for those who refuse COVID vaccine
AP · by LOLITA C. BALDOR · November 1, 2021
WASHINGTON (AP) — As deadlines loom for military and defense civilians to get mandated COVID-19 vaccines, senior leaders must now wrestle with the fate of those who flatly refuse the shots or are seeking exemptions, and how to make sure they are treated fairly and equally.
The vast majority of the active duty force has received at least one shot, but tens of thousands have not. For some it may be a career-ending decision. Others could face transfers, travel restrictions, limits on deployments and requirements to repay bonuses.
Exemption decisions for medical, religious and administrative reasons will be made by unit commanders around the world, on what the Pentagon says will be a “case-by-case” basis. That raises a vexing issue for military leaders who are pushing a vaccine mandate seen as critical to maintaining a healthy force, but want to avoid a haphazard, inconsistent approach with those who refuse.
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Brig. Gen. Darrin Cox, surgeon general at Army Forces Command, said commanders want to ensure they are following the rules.
“Because of some of the sensitivities of this particular vaccine, I think that we just wanted to ensure that we were consistent and equitable” in meting out a punishment that would be “a repercussion of continuing to refuse a valid order.”
Military vaccination rates are higher than those of the general population in the United States and the reasons for objecting – often based on misinformation – are similar to those heard throughout the country. But unlike most civilians, military personnel are routinely required to get as many as 17 vaccines, and face penalties for refusing.
The military services are reporting between 1%-7% remain unvaccinated. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has called for compassion in dealings with those troops, which totals nearly 60,000 active duty service members, according to data released last week. Officials say the numbers change daily, and include those who may have gotten or requested an exemption. They have declined to say how many troops are still seeking an exemption or refused the vaccine.
Asked about possible variations in the treatment of those seeking exemptions or refusing the vaccine, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said it’s up to the services. “Each case is going to be treated specifically and individually as it ought to be,” he said.
Kirby said Monday that the secretary doesn’t want to tell commanders how to resolve the punitive measures, and instead trusts that they will do what is best for their units.
“So can we promise you that there will be absolute uniformity across the board? No. And we wouldn’t want to promise that because it wouldn’t be the same way we handle the orders violations for other offenses as well,” said Kirby.
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It unclear how widely religious exemptions will be granted. Under military rules, commanders can take into account the potential impact on a unit’s mission, and reject a religious exemption if it puts performance at risk.
Commanders can also move service members into another job, deny them overseas deployment or limit unit access if they get an exemption or while a request is being reviewed. Those steps may be more common in smaller units such a special operations forces who usually deploy in small numbers.
The Navy has warned that sailors who refuse the shot and don’t get an exemption may have to refund bonuses and other financial payments, based on existing military justice procedures for disobeying a lawful order. The other services are expected to follow similar procedures.
Unvaccinated troops will also be subject to routine testing, distancing guidelines and possibly travel restrictions.
The Air Force may be the test case in some instances, because they are the first to hit a deadline. The more than 335,000 airmen and Space Force guardians must be fully vaccinated by Tuesday, and the Air Guard and Reserve by Dec. 2. According to Air Force data, as many as 12,000 active duty airmen and guardians were still unvaccinated as of late last week. Some have requested or gotten exemptions, others have refused outright. They have until Monday to request exemptions.
Air Force Col. Robert Corby, commander of the 28th Medical Group at Ellsworth Air Force Base, said that after the vaccine became mandatory in late August, appointments for shots at the base clinic doubled. He said troops have an array of questions and concerns, and commanders, chaplains and medical personnel are providing information.
“I think you also have a segment of the population that probably does not feel that they are really at risk for COVID-19,” he added.
Air Force Capt. Molly Lawlor, 28th Bomb Wing chaplain, said a “very small percentage” are seeking a religious exemption at the base. “People are just trying to figure out how this new requirement fits into their belief system and the decisions that they want to make,” she said.
The more than 765,000 Defense Department civilians will be close behind the Air Force, with a mandated vaccine date of Nov. 22. Supervisors are grappling with the complex task of checking and recording the vaccine status of their workers, and determining who will be the final exemption arbiter.
Civilians have until Nov. 8 to seek an exemption, and as of last week, fewer than half had provided vaccination proof. Those who refuse the vaccine and don’t get an exemption will get five days for counseling. If they still refuse, they will be suspended for up to 14 days without pay, and could then be fired.
Vaccination numbers fluctuate for the military services, and drop off considerably for the National Guard and Reserve.
A bit more than half of the Army National Guard has gotten at least one shot, while the Air Guard is at 87%. Air Guard members must be fully vaccinated by early December, while the Army Guard, which is much larger and more widely scattered around the country, has until June,.
The most successful service has been the Navy, which says that only 1% of the force is unvaccinated as of last week — or about 3,500 sailors. The Air Force and Space Force was second, with 3.6% unvaccinated, followed by the Army and Marine Corps at about 7%.
Adm. Michael Gilday, chief of naval operations, told The Associated Press that even before the shots were mandated, some warships were seeing vaccination rates of 98%-99%.
“We feel like we’ve been leading the way across the services,” he said. “We’ve been promoting the vaccines since we started vaccinating last December, January timeframe.” For those who don’t want the vaccine, “we’ll deal with those on an individual basis as those challenges come up,” he said.
Marine Col. Speros Koumparakis, commander of Marine Corps Base Hawaii, said that the number of Marines who have requested exemptions at the base is fewer than two dozen, and most of those are seeking religious exemptions.
He said chaplains and pastors have been made available to discuss the religious issues, and he does the initial review of any request. But ultimately, decisions may be made by personnel leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia.
The nearly 350,000 Navy sailors and more than 179,000 Marines must be fully vaccinated by Nov. 28, and the reserves by Dec. 28. The Army, the military’s largest service at nearly 490,000, has given active duty soldiers until Dec. 15 to be fully vaccinated. Army National Guard and Reserve have until June 30, 2022. There are a total of almost 800,000 Guard and Reserve troops, with the Army accounting for more than 520,000 of them.
AP · by LOLITA C. BALDOR · November 1, 2021
6. Marine officer blasts major general for calling him 'narcissistic' in reprimand letter
I would never have thought to publicize my letters of reprimand.
Marine officer blasts major general for calling him 'narcissistic' in reprimand letter
Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com.
Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller Jr. responded defiantly Thursday to a scathing letter of reprimand calling his actions "narcissistic" for posting social media videos criticizing the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to documents exclusively obtained by Fox News.
"I am not narcissistic," wrote Scheller in the Oct. 28 letter. He pointed out that Maj. Gen. Julian D. Alford, who authored the letter of reprimand, had instructed him in his response to use "temperate language" and confine the contents to "pertinent facts."
"Yet in your letter, you felt compelled to use the word ‘narcissistic,’ which is neither ‘temperate,’ or ‘confined to pertinent facts,’" Scheller shot back.
Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller Jr. and his lawyers walk to the courtroom on Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina, on Oct. 14, 2021. (John Althouse-USA TODAY NETWORK)
The decorated Marine, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor-level violations of military law Oct. 15 during a special court-martial after spending nine days in the brig.
Military Judge Col. Glen Hines sentenced him to a letter of reprimand and a $5,000 fine – far less than prosecutors' recommendation of a $30,000 fine. The judge noted Scheller’s flawless 17-year record prior to posting the videos and said he "appeared to be someone in pain."
In the Oct. 26 letter, Alford wrote that Scheller had violated his solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution. "Your actions have harmed good order and discipline with the service as well as publicly discredited the U.S. Marine Corps," the general scolded. "Your narcissistic acts can serve only to erode the rule of law."
(Fox News)
In Scheller’s two-page response, he blasted his superiors for putting him in jail "on the claim that I was a flight risk, which was unsupported by any facts" – and refusing to provide underwear, socks and other basic necessities during the first five days in solitary confinement.
He also demanded an investigation of his supervisors for allegedly leaking his medical records to a journalist, which he said was retaliation for speaking out.
The Marine objected to Alford personally writing the letter of reprimand and overseeing the prosecution when he had named himself as a victim in the charging sheet. Scheller argued that this constituted a conflict of interest.
"I have accepted responsibility and accountability for my actions," he wrote in closing. "I hope you ensure the same degree of accountability is exacted from those who … failed in their duties to ensure that 13 service members did not have to die needlessly."
Parents of Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller, Stu Sr. and Cathy, speak out on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" after their Marine son was incarcerated. (Fox News )
The firestorm began Aug. 26 when Scheller, dressed in uniform, posted a video on social media slamming military brass for an ISIS-K suicide bombing at Kabul airport that left 13 service members and at least 169 Afghan civilians dead.
"I’m not saying we’ve got to be in Afghanistan forever, but I am saying: Did any of you throw your rank on the table and say, ‘Hey, it’s a bad idea to evacuate Bagram Airfield, a strategic airbase, before we evacuate everyone?’" said Scheller. "Did anyone do that? And when you didn’t think to do that, did anyone raise their hand and say, ‘We completely messed this up?'"
The next day Scheller was relieved of his command at one of Camp Lejuene’s infantry training battalions, but he continued posting videos critical of the U.S. exit from Afghanistan, leading to his stint in the brigs and his court-martial.
"This letter shows that Gen. Alford is allowing his ego to get in the way of his duties," said defense attorney Tim Parlatore when reached for comment. "This case represents more than Stu Scheller. Veterans are in pain after watching everything they fought for evaporate and knowing that it was avoidable."
A spokesperson for the U.S. Marine Corps didn't immediately return a request for comment.
7. United States Participates in Proliferation Security Initiative Exercise DEEP SABRE
This is good. We need to get more aggressive with PSI.
United States Participates in Proliferation Security Initiative Exercise DEEP SABRE - United States Department of State
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United States Participates in Proliferation Security Initiative Exercise DEEP SABRE
Media Note
November 1, 2021
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The United States and 23 partner countries recently participated in the Proliferation Security Initiative’s (PSI) DEEP SABRE 21 exercise, hosted by Singapore, in support of the U.S. commitment to countering global WMD proliferation threats.
This year’s DEEP SABRE 21 exercise was a hybrid (virtual/in-person) event that brought together PSI-endorsing and non-endorsing countries from North America, Europe, and Asia to practice their ability to engage in WMD interdiction activities and exchange valuable information on related capabilities and practices. DEEP SABRE 21 is the latest annual event in the PSI Asia-Pacific Exercise Rotation, established in 2013 by six leading PSI regional partner states, including Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea.
The PSI was established in 2003 to stop or impede transfers of WMD, delivery systems, and related materials flowing to and from states and non-state actors of proliferation concern. Thus far, 107 states have endorsed the PSI Statement of Interdiction Principles. In doing so, they have committed to take effective measures to interdict WMD-related transfers consistent with national law and international obligations, adopt streamlined procedures for rapid information exchange, and strengthen relevant national and international laws and frameworks.
The United States urges all remaining non-endorsers to endorse and participate in the PSI.
8. What Can the Army do Best in the Indo-Pacific?
What Can the Army do Best in the Indo-Pacific?
learn to love a good curry
In an incredibly important ... and silly drama over the last couple of years, some otherwise smart people in objectively important positions invested significant amounts of personal and professional capital trying to make an argument that the US Army - our land component, is the primary service ... here.
No.
Unless you want to get in to another land war in Asia from the Pacific approaches ... no.
However, we have friends who share our concerns with the People's Republic of China who, in addition to having four times the USA's population, have significant land borders and territorial issues with the PRC.
In a larger war, they may find themselves allied with us, and there are things we could do to help them on their front. To do it best, we need to know each other better and the environment we might find ourselves fighting alongside them.
This is something the US Army needs to be thinking about and growing their expertise in ... not the Pacific approaches;
...U.S. Army Alaska’s bilateral exercise with the Indian Army, dubbed Yudh Abhyas, drew to a close Friday after two weeks of cold weather warfare training...Roughly 350 Indian soldiers from 7th Battalion, Madras Regiment, participated in the exercise alongside Alaska-based U.S. paratroopers. The Indian forces may mostly originate from southern India, but they work in the Himalayas, where Indian and Chinese forces have brawled over border disputes in recent months....“There are no higher, nor more remote, mountains than the Himalayas, and that kind of subject matter expertise is going to make our Paratroopers that much more capable in Arctic warfare,” U.S. Army Col. Jody Shouse said of the Indian soldiers and the skills they brought to the exercise.
Shouse commands 4th Infantry Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, which worked with the Indian forces this year. The Indian unit — nicknamed “Shandaar Saath,” which means “Magnificent Seven” — was led by Indian Army Brigadier Parag Nangare.
...
The field training also involved cold weather and high altitude skill development in mountaineering and snow survival, medical evacuations and small arms firing.
“There are certain peculiar conditions which are specific to high altitudes, especially those that affect men and materials,” Nangare said. “Guns and other equipment face a lot of maintenance issues. Range calibration is a challenge and vehicles also face problems both during operations and repair.”
Good.
More of this.
9. Special ops task force in Middle East restructured for ‘broad, regional’ ISIS fight
Special ops task force in Middle East restructured for ‘broad, regional’ ISIS fight
To address evolving regional threats and streamline its command and control of special operations activities in the Middle East, Special Operations Command Central restructured its Special Operations Joint Task Force leading the fight against jihadi groups.
Commanded by Army Brig. Gen. Isaac J. Peltier, SOJTF-Levant also oversees activities in Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt, according to Special Operations Command Central spokesman Army Maj. Charles An.
While the overall mission remains supporting the Operation Inherent Resolve coalition to “ensure the enduring defeat of the ISIS caliphate,” the restructured task force “allows for a broad, regional approach to that fight,” according to Special Operations Command Central.
“We operate in a region with numerous terrorist and violent extremist organizations and share a common interest with partner nations in prevailing against these regional security challenges,” An told Military Times. “Including all countries in the Levant, expanding the SOJTF purview demonstrates our commitment to increasing stability in the region.”
An declined to disclose how many troops are attached to SOJTF-Levant, citing safety and security concerns.
Following the consolidation, SOJTF-Levant conducted two joint combined exchange trainings in Egypt with subsequent participation in Exercise Bright Star 2021, An said.
The trainings “were part of a series of training events that provided opportunities for the two elite forces to work together on a broad range of skills and tactics to strengthen defense ties and promote regional security,” he said.
The two multiweek joint combined exchange trainings were held at Inshas Air Base, Egypt, said An. One partnered U.S. Special Operation Forces with Egyptian special operations forces, while the other partnered U.S. special operations forces and Egyptian special operations airborne commandos.
“The latter exercise included 20 joint military free fall jumps,” said An. “This was the first time military free fall jumps have been conducted jointly between the U.S. and Egypt.”
Two additional trainings are scheduled in the coming months: one in Jordan and one in Lebanon, he said.
In Jordan, combat aviation advisers from a U.S. Air Force Operational Aviation Detachment mobile training team “worked with and through the Royal Jordanian Air Force to support building partnership capacity, foreign internal defense, and security force assistance,” said An.
Exercise Bright Star 2021, the 17th iteration of that training, was held at Mohamed Naguib Military Base, Egypt, between Sept. 2 and Sept. 16, with about 600 U.S. military personnel participating.
After its conclusion, the countries held the 32nd U.S.–Egypt Military Cooperation Committee in Cairo, on Sept. 20–21.
“The U.S. deeply values its long history of cooperation and friendship with the nations of the Levant,” said An.
Joseph Votel, the retired Army general who commanded both U.S. Special Operations Command and U.S. Central Command, told Military Times he views the new task force “as a maturing of our overall approach in the region.”
The idea, he said, “is about combining what were necessarily, at the time, multiple SOF headquarters and units that were conducting a variety of missions across” the area of responsibility.
Consolidation often has the effect of sustaining the effort over a long period of time, as well as increasing cultural knowledge and unity of effort and command, he said.
Another benefit is “strengthening relationships” with more permanent and stable headquarters (although this may not be the case in Syria, he said).
“To me this makes sense and is not unlike things we (and I) tried to do in the past,” he said. “There is a time to have multiple headquarters and units addressing multiple problems — but there is also a time for consolidating … I think this is what is probably happening.”
Howard Altman is an award-winning editor and reporter who was previously the military reporter for the Tampa Bay Times and before that the Tampa Tribune, where he covered USCENTCOM, USSOCOM and SOF writ large among many other topics.
10. The Pentagon quietly removed more than 130,000 Afghanistan War photos and videos from public view
Good effort. But nothing is ever removed from the Internet. I am sure these photos are archived somewhere. The "Wayback Machine" https://archive.org/ probably can find these. And of course the Taliban and other nefarious actors probably accessed these long ago to support their future terrorist and vengeance actions.
The Pentagon quietly removed more than 130,000 Afghanistan War photos and videos from public view
The photos were ostensibly removed in order to protect Afghan civilians from Taliban reprisals, however many of the missing images show U.S. troops at war.
The Pentagon has quietly removed a massive collection of Afghanistan War footage totaling more than 120,000 photos and 17,000 videos from its official visual record.
The images and videos, which date back more than a decade, were previously published to the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, or DVIDS, a vast repository of public domain material that’s available for use by the public and the press.
The Defense Department began archiving the imagery in August and September as it was working to get Afghans out of the country, said Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby, who noted that the U.S. government continues to try to help Afghans who need to leave.
Kirby said on Monday that he made the decision to temporarily archive any images and videos that could put Afghans in danger.
“My guidance was: I want any imagery that could be used to identify individuals and/or family members over the last 20 years of war; I wanted it to be unpublished for a temporary period of time, and it is temporary,” Kirby told reporters at a Pentagon news briefing. “It was done out of an abundance of caution.”
All told, roughly 120,000 photographs and about 17,000 videos have been unpublished, said Kirby, who did not specify exactly when the imagery would be reposted. None of those images or videos are classified, he said.
“We did not delete, but we took off publicly accessible platforms and archived for future republication at a later date,” Kirby said. “We removed thousands of still imagery and videos that would show the faces or any other identifiable information about many of the Afghans that we have worked for and we have supported and who have supported us over the last 20 years.”
“This was an abundance of caution that we felt was necessary in keeping with our obligation to protect the identities of our Afghan allies and partners,” Kirby said. “When we don’t feel that that need is there, then we will absolutely republish them.”
Kirby also said his decision was not prompted by a specific security threat, but the U.S. government had reason enough to believe that the Taliban would hunt down Afghans who have worked with the American government or their families.
“I think those concerns were valid and we make no apology whatsoever for making this decision,” Kirby said. “I still believe it was the right thing to do. And at the right time, we’ll absolutely republish them. Nothing has been deleted from the record. It is simply being archived until we believe it’s the appropriate time to put them back up.”
While the Defense Department has long withheld most information about Afghanistan, the military’s concern for the security of Afghans who have worked with U.S. troops is legitimate. In late September, Task & Purpose was provided with several pictures and videos that appeared to show the Taliban carrying out gruesome reprisals against Afghans.
It is also true that the Afghans who are shown in the pictures that were taken down were at risk before the fall of Kabul, said retired Marine Col. David Lapan, a former Pentagon spokesman.
If the Defense Department felt it was necessary to remove pictures of Afghans in order to protect them from retaliation, then the Pentagon should have publicly explained why they were taking this step and how they decided which images needed to be taken down, Lapan said.
“Because the past several years have seen damage to the credibility – not just of DoD, but across the government – then it’s incumbent upon the department to explain this in a way that, again, doesn’t cause people to question the motives behind it,” Lapan said.
But Kirby described the effort to remove so many pictures and videos as a “mammoth undertaking” that took nearly two months; and he added: “The reason why I didn’t announce it was because we were in the middle of it and it wouldn’t make much sense to tell the world that we were archiving these images before we were done archiving them.”
Kirby also said that he didn’t want to have to discuss this issue because the U.S. government is still trying to get many Afghans at risk safely out of the country.
The Defense Department coordinated with the State Department and other government agencies as it unpublished the imagery, Kirby said.
In this Oct. 15, 2011 photo, a U.S. Marine with Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment is pulled down from a rooftop in the Kajaki district in Helmand province Afghanistan after taking enemy fire. This is one of the many images showing U.S. troops on combat operations that appear to have been removed from DVIDS. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by James Clark)
Despite the cited reason being to prevent Afghans from being targeted by the Taliban, a wide range of photos that do not show Afghan soldiers or civilians have also gone missing. Many other photos, from portraits of U.S. service members to patrols and troops in combat, have been archived. However, a review of existing images suggests that the methodology was not uniform, or that it may have been based on what “tag” was used — a word or phrase that can be searched for.
This concern was echoed in conversations with current and former service members in the public affairs field who deployed to Afghanistan and documented military operations first-hand, and who reported seeing differing volumes of their work disappear from the database.
Yet, evidence of their removal remains, resulting in dead links, or thumbnails of the original photo appearing on Google when the image is searched for. Additionally, because the images were previously released and, like all content uploaded to DVIDS, are public domain, they can be found on other websites.
Additionally, a widely shared 2012 photo by Marine Cpl. Reece Lodder showing two Marines sleeping alongside a military working dog in Helmand province has disappeared from DVIDS as well, despite still being on Wikimedia Commons and the Marine Corps’ official Facebook page.
U.S. Marine Lance Cpls. Matthew Scofield (left), 19, from Syracuse, N.Y., and Jarrett Hatley, 21, from Millingport, N.C., a squad automatic weapon gunner and an improvised explosive device detection dog handler with 3rd Platoon, Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, rest next to Hatley’s dog Blue after clearing compounds with Afghan National Army soldiers during Operation Tageer Shamal (Shifting Winds) in Kartaka, Helmand province, Afghanistan on Jan. 4., 2012. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Reece Lodder)
‘Now we have nothing to show for it, both physically and in memory’
The removal of this footage means that not only does the public now have a less complete visual record of the United States’ longest war, the stories those photos and videos told are also hidden from view, as are the American service members at the center of many of them.
On Jan. 18, 2010, U.S. Marines with Alpha Co., 1st Battalion 6th Marine Regiment set off on patrol from Observation Post Huskars, a remote base in Helmand province, Afghanistan. They headed south, along with a contingent of Afghan National Army soldiers in search of the Taliban. Called shaping operations at the time, their mission was straightforward: They were to patrol toward a nearby village until they got into contact — “contact” being military jargon for “taking fire” — and then engage the enemy.
Within a half hour they were getting shot at. As a fire-team stepped out past a break in a waist-high mudwall onto an open stretch of parched ground, the staccato clack-clack-clack of AK-47-fire rang out, followed immediately by the high-pitched zip of close-hitting rounds. For the next five hours the patrol returned fire, bounded across hundred-meter stretches from one position to the next, and cleared one compound and fired rockets at another. As night fell, the Marines found their attackers had withdrawn, and so they returned to the outpost.
These photos showing U.S. Marines with Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment during a Jan. 18, 2010 firefight in Helmand province, Afghanistan were among those that appear to have been removed from DVIDS. (U.S. Marine Corps photos by James Clark.)
A month later, that same battalion inserted into the Taliban-held city of Marjah by helicopter in the dead of night on Feb. 13. For the next 72 hours Marines battled Taliban fighters across the district, in what was then-heralded as the single largest military operation of the war since the invasion.
It was a grueling three days, and though the fighting eventually died down, it never really stopped. During that initial offensive push, American troops, alongside a freshly trained and largely inexperienced cohort of Afghan National Army soldiers, faced all manner of enemy fire: small arms, indirect fire, rocket-propelled grenades, improvised explosive devices, and ambushes. Often, Marines would be engaged by an enemy they couldn’t see, given the long flat stretches of land that dotted the agricultural region, which served as an opium hub and a source of income for the Taliban.
The terrain outside of the city center — a series of wide-open fields, buttressed by dirt berms — left the Marines in an exposed position.
Just a few hours after the burnt orange sun crept above the horizon and turned the sky purple on that first day, one Marine, Cpl. Jacob Turbett, was killed by sniper fire as he rounded the corner of a dilapidated dirt-brown compound.
The ensuing moments — Marines sprinting to cover, or diving onto the dirt, as mortarmen fired rounds at a cluster of buildings — were photographed and later shared far and wide online, in print, and appeared as brief snippets during evening broadcasts on cable news.
These photos of U.S. Marines with Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines on Feb. 13, 2010 during the insert into Marjah in Helmand province, Afghanistan no longer appear to be on DVIDS. (U.S. Marine Corps photos by James Clark)
The chaotic violence of those combat operations — and many others — have vanished; an apparent casualty of the decision to scrub public records clean in the name of security.
A photo showing Marines with Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment during a firefight in Marjah in August 2011 appears to have also been removed from DVIDS. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by James Clark)
For those Afghanistan War veterans whose job it was to document combat operations downrange, the idea that the military would remove vast numbers of its photos and videos from its public-facing database seems to be at odds with the rigorous approval process that same footage had to go through before being published in the first place.
“These are prior-approved by the same people who are now taking them down,” Clay Beyersdorfer, a former Army public affairs specialist, told Task & Purpose. “It seems to be incredibly hypocritical.”
With America’s longest war now over, a visual record of that era — the sacrifices made, hardships endured, and even the mistakes — takes on a greater meaning and importance, Beyersdorfer said.
“Now we have nothing to show for it, both physically and in memory.”
‘To provide an accurate, reliable source for media organizations’
DVIDS is an online database where images, photos, interviews, videos and news stories created by military personnel and civilian government employees are uploaded and made available to the public. Part of the military’s vast public affairs apparatus, DVIDS is the means by which the individual branches, and the Pentagon at large, distribute information about what is going on in the military.
The photos run the gamut from images of unit runs, to training, to massive naval and aerial exercises, to combat operations. Additionally, all of the material therein is available for use by the public, including media, which plays an outsized role for small news organizations like local papers which don’t have embedded journalists of their own, and may not have access to wire services.
In fact, DVIDS largely exists so that news organizations can report on the military, a fact that’s underscored by the database’s mission statement: “To provide an accurate, reliable source for media organizations to access U.S. service members and commanders deployed in support of military operations worldwide.”
Even so, the version of events published to the website are often heavily filtered, and imagery in particular is subject to close scrutiny that extends beyond operational security concerns — often with an eye toward what will reflect well on the military, and whether a line in a story, or a particular photo, sends a message that’s in lock-step with the Pentagon’s.
“It is easy to get a pulse on what story the military hopes to tell by looking at what images and videos it produces,” journalist Kelsey Atherton wrote on Aug. 31 for a story that closely looked at the military’s use of DVIDS to push a version of the Afghanistan War that hasn’t always mirrored reality.
However, the quiet and almost haphazard removal of these images remains problematic, and may even be at odds with the military’s own guidelines governing the public release of information.
According to the Defense Department’s Principles of Information, “A free flow of general and military information shall be made available, without censorship or propaganda, to the men and women of the Armed Forces and their dependents.” The guidance goes on to say that “information will not be classified or otherwise withheld to protect the Government from criticism or embarrassment.”
While the Pentagon has defended its decision to remove photos and videos from its database over security concerns for Afghans now living under Taliban rule, it’s unclear how that line of thinking would be used to justify the removal of unrelated photos from DVIDS — particularly those that show just U.S. troops engaged in combat operations; photos that have been online for years.
More great stories on Task & Purpose
11. New policy protects sexual assault survivors from being charged with ‘minor’ infractions
We still can and must do better on this terrible issue.
New policy protects sexual assault survivors from being charged with ‘minor’ infractions
One of the toughest hills to climb in the military’s work to tackle its sexual assault problem is that so few survivors report their attacks, often for fear or retaliation or other negative consequences. Now, as part of Defense Department policy, troops who were drinking underage, out past curfew or fraternizing at the time of an assault don’t have to worry about being charged if they come forward.
The Safe-to-Report Policy, mandated by Congress in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, requires commanders to disregard any “minor” collateral misconduct a survivor might have committed in the context of his or her assault.
“The Safe-to-Report Policy will allow us to build on the support we strive to provide to victims of sexual assault, while ensuring due process for the accused and good order and discipline for the Force,” Gil Cisneros, Defense Under Secretary for Personnel and Readiness, wrote in a memo signed Oct. 25.
Examples of minor infractions include underage drinking, an unprofessional relationship with the accused or violation of other lawful orders, which can include curfews, off-limits businesses and housing policies.
The services must also take into account aggravating circumstances when deciding whether an infraction is minor. If a survivor’s actions interfere with a military mission or objective; threaten another’s health or safety; or result in significant property damage, commanders are able to prosecute them.
There are also a handful of mitigating circumstances that could push a minor infraction into a no-prosecute situation. Those include age and military experience; whether the suspect is in a position of power over the survivor; whether the suspect stalked, harassed or otherwise pressured the survivor into sexual behavior; whether the command would have known about any collateral misconduct if not for the survivor reporting their assault; and whether any misconduct occurred after an assault, suggesting it is a reaction to trauma.
If, using these guidelines, a commander finds that any collateral misconduct is not minor, he or she retains the ability to charge the service member. If the misconduct is indeed minor, it won’t be prosecuted, but commanders can still refer survivors to substance abuse or behavioral health screening if there is a concern.
RELATED
The four-part plan will be implemented over the next eight years.
The new policy drops as the Pentagon is working to implement dozens of recommendations from an independent commission, which announced its findings in July. DoD’s implementation timeline gives up to eight years to complete changes.
One of those changes is to take prosecution of sexual assaults out of a commander’s purview, which will require a law change. If that legislation interferes with Safe-to-Report, according to the memo, the Joint Service Committee on Military Justice will be in charge of revising the policy to keep it current.
Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members. Follow on Twitter @Meghann_MT
12. Colombia, Washington’s “Closest Ally,” Looks to Beijing
We must not neglect Latin America. "Strategic Competition" is global competition.
Colombia, Washington’s “Closest Ally,” Looks to Beijing
This article is part of a series examining the evolving relationships between China and Latin America.
BOGOTÁ – It’s been said a lot over the past 20 years, but it remains true today: Colombia is one of the closest allies and strategic partners of the United States in Latin America.
Decades of bipartisan support from the U.S. have resulted in billions of dollars invested through many programs including Plan Colombia, as well as more recent initiatives that have supported the implementation of the peace accord with the FARC and have helped cope with the nearly 1.8 million Venezuelan migrants currently living in Colombia. The U.S. is also Colombia’s main trading and investment partner, leveraged by preferential access through the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement signed in 2012. The combined value of exports and imports of goods between the two countries averaged $27.6 billion per year for the past decade.
As recently as 10 years ago, things were completely different with China, the U.S.’ main rival for global power. Colombia exported on average a mere half a billion dollars per annum to China in the first decade of the 21th century, while importing about $2.3 billion. China was ranked 37th in terms of importance as a destination of Colombia’s exports in 2000. But these numbers have changed at an accelerated pace for the past decade. China is now Colombia’s second most important trading partner, with average annual exports between 2011 and 2020 ($3.4 billion per year) almost seven times as large as those in the prior decade. Imports of $9.9 billion, meanwhile, now represent almost a quarter of Colombia’s total imports.
The growing importance of Colombia and China’s trade links was particularly valuable during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although Colombia has been the largest recipient of vaccine donations from the U.S., receiving 6 million doses out of the 38 million donated by the U.S. government, the early arrival of Sinovac vaccines during February and March “saved the day” by preventing thousands of deaths among the elderly. Indeed, by the end of March Colombia had received 3.5 million doses, of which 2.5 million came from China. In this sense, U.S. vaccine diplomacy to Colombia was generous, but China came first when it most mattered.
In terms of investment, China has had a relatively small presence in Colombia, especially compared with some of its neighbors, like Ecuador and Venezuela. The largest investment from China came last year with $64 million, which amounts for less than 1% of total net foreign direct investment. But, again, things appear poised to change rapidly. Chinese companies have made investment commitments of more than $6 billion, including the construction of Bogotá’s first metro line, the largest civil works project in the country for the next years, as well as the construction of a tram line in the Bogotá metropolitan region. There are also investments in the mining and energy sector, with prospects for further investments in the coming years.
The U.S.-China conundrum
These trends now threaten to put Colombia, as well as many other Latin American countries, in an uncomfortable position. Given the recent deterioration in Sino-American relations and its implications for global geopolitics, many are asking: Should Colombia further strengthen its ties with the U.S., or continue advancing its rapid pace of trade and investment integration with China?
Barring a full-scale military confrontation, which would force the country to “choose sides,” Colombia should continue to do both. The U.S. has been and will continue to be a strong partner and will act strategically to counterbalance China’s increasing influence in the region. To this end, the U.S. has led the recent launch of the Build Back Better World initiative to help close the $40 trillion infrastructure gap in the developing world, aimed squarely at rivaling China’s own Belt and Road Initiative, adopted in 2013. Colombia should quickly tap into this opportunity and secure funds for infrastructure, climate, health, and digital technology investments, among others.
On the Chinese front, Colombia should follow the example of some countries in the region like Chile and Peru and evaluate the possibility of joining the Belt and Road Initiative. As well, following the example of strong U.S. allies like Australia and the United Kingdom, the country should seriously consider joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, a $100 billion multilateral development bank led by China that could also provide much needed cheap capital for narrowing investment gaps in infrastructure and sustainable development. Although these moves could raise some eyebrows among U.S. government officials, the limited availability of cheap financing, especially in a world of higher interest rates as rich countries retire monetary policy stimuli, makes a very compelling argument for increasing and diversifying future sources of finance.
Things are a little more complicated on the trade front. On the exports side, there are still gains to be had, as exports to China ($2.8 billion in 2020) are less than a third than those to the U.S. ($8.9 billion). On the imports side, however, the numbers are about the same ($10.5 billion in 2020). One worry is that China has still not achieved a market-economy status according to the World Trade Organization. It is one thing to deepen competition in domestic markets by opening your borders to imports at market-determined prices, and another completely different to do it at government-subsidized prices at which local producers are unable to compete. Colombia should then carefully monitor imports from China, strengthening trade-observing institutions and acting swiftly to protect local producers from unfair trade practices.
What the future holds…
It is still too early to tell whether China will join the U.S. in the global landscape as the second superpower. Elections in Colombia in 2022 also raise the prospect of a shift in foreign policy, should an anti-establishment figure win. What is certain though, is the extent of China’s growing economic, technological, and political influence in the world, as well as in the Latin American region. The new government will have to carefully balance its approach to both countries, by bolstering its relationship with the U.S, its more important ally, but at the same time reaping the benefits of further trade and investment ties, in a market-oriented framework, with a country like China, that due to its growing size and middle class constitutes an immense opportunity for Colombia.
—
Mejía is the executive director of Fedesarrollo. He was deputy minister and minister of planning of Colombia from 2014-2018, leading the ministry in its implementation of the sustainable development goals agenda. He has also held positions as director for macroeconomic policy at Colombia’s ministry of finance, as well as researcher at Colombia’s central bank and the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington. Follow him on Twitter @LuisFerMejia
Any opinions expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect those of Americas Quarterly or its publishers.
13. Xinjiang’s Oppression Has Shifted Gears
Excerpts:
Community control is driven by the fanghuiju program, a Xinjiang-specific human surveillance policy run by the region’s Organization Department of the Chinese Communist Party, through which mainly Han officials are dispatched to Uyghur homes to spy on their activities, monitor their thoughts and feelings, and carry out indoctrination.
“This redistribution of law enforcement power to civilians and civil society groups blurs the line between civilians and cadres, victims and perpetrators,” the Australian Strategic Policy Institute report said. Everyone is responsible.
Indoctrination is hidden behind the walls of reeducation facilities but is also a part of daily life—in schools, office buildings, and public squares.
Life is punctuated by public loyalty pledges, chants wishing Chinese President Xi Jinping good health, and public denunciation sessions of “two-faced” traitors. Many people are gathered in public arenas to “speak up and brandish the sword,” putting a fist next to their face, condemning “religious extremism,” and praising the CCP.
People are pitted against one another and incentivized to self-police their own neighborhoods. Some of them are convinced the enemy hides among them and they need to uproot a phantom evil taking over their children’s brains. Others going along with it for the sake of their own safety.
The way Xinjiang is governed is invisible at first glance, and that may be the party’s biggest achievement so far. But without this level of control at the grassroot level, the architecture of repression would quickly crumble.
Xinjiang’s Oppression Has Shifted Gears
Militarization is being scaled down as internal surveillance and propaganda increase.
Police officers ride horses as they prepare to publicize laws and government policy to nomad herders in a remote area in Altay in China's northwestern Xinjiang region on April 22. STR/AFP via Getty Images
Kites fly and children run outside renovated mosques. This is Xinjiang, China’s western frontier region, in 2021. Or at least, this is what outsiders are allowed to see and what Chinese propaganda presents.
Beyond the sanitized streets of tourist areas, a different reality persists.
Kites fly and children run outside renovated mosques. This is Xinjiang, China’s western frontier region, in 2021. Or at least, this is what outsiders are allowed to see and what Chinese propaganda presents.
Beyond the sanitized streets of tourist areas, a different reality persists.
The government is focused on redefining the region’s image as an exotic travel destination and a safe haven for cultural integration.
Propaganda posters of smiling minorities flood the landscape while information operations use dancing Uyghur individuals as their main subjects to convince the world that people in Xinjiang are happy and grateful to the Chinese Communist Party.
But since the first revelations of the Chinese government’s repression of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang back in 2017, a lot has come to light.
A robust array of government sources, police leaks, and first-hand testimonies have depicted a ruthless and systematic attempt to take control over and forcibly assimilate people perceived as an imminent (if imaginary) threat to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Since May 2014, with the beginning of a region-wide counterterrorism campaign, the government has put in place an intricate and brutal system of repression using arbitrary incarcerations, heightened and extremely intrusive surveillance mechanisms, and the installment of what became known as reeducation camps—a net of detention and indoctrination facilities that have detained more than 1 million people.
In the government’s version, this was to defeat the “three evil forces” of terrorism, extremism, and separatism. In reality, it put Xinjiang’s Indigenous populations under a state of constant fear.
Much has been said about what is happening in Xinjiang. But how did this all come about? And what comes next?
A recent report by a team of researchers, including myself, at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute explores the whos and hows of Xinjiang’s governance system. It brings to light previously unknown aspects of the mass political campaigns that have mobilized not only all sectors of China’s party-state system but also most areas of Xinjiang society.
We had access to leaked police records from Urumqi, China, which prompted the first stages of our investigation. We then examined thousands of pages of government and party documents—mostly found online through virtual private networks (VPNs) that were later archived, some scraped directly from official government websites, and some from state media publications and social media posts—to have a broader view of Xinjiang’s governance.
This methodology is bound to become the norm when it comes to China research, as most journalists and researchers no longer have access to the country and free, on-the-ground research is not permitted. Despite attempts by the government to block key information from foreign audiences—most Xinjiang government websites, for example, are currently only accessible via certain VPNs—there is still a great amount of data available online that is worth saving and analyzing.
Our main focus is on two features that may help answer unresolved questions on Xinjiang: the return to Maoist-style political campaigns, where the masses are unleashed on the nation’s hidden enemies, and the penetration of the CCP down to the most intimate aspects of citizens’ daily lives.
Although previous political campaigns in Chinese history, such as the Cultural Revolution or the “Strike Hard!” anti-crime campaigns, ended abruptly with a subsequent push to reinstate normality, the CCP desires to normalize campaign-style governance tools and methods in Xinjiang to achieve and maintain what it calls “comprehensive stability.”
This system’s potential longevity is made possible by a convoluted architecture of party and government institutions, summarized in this interactive chart, as well as the insidious penetration of the party-state into remote villages and the homes of Xinjiang’s Indigenous populations.
Neighborhood and village committees represent the lowest tier in the CCP’s hierarchy across the country. They are, in theory, voluntary self-governing organizations. In Xinjiang, they have become the true focal point of the party’s approach to control people at the community level, with new exceptional policing powers.
Officially paired with local police stations, human surveillance, and mosque management teams to form the “trinity” mechanism, the committees manage their respective jurisdictions and are at the forefront of the reeducation system.
On the streets, tourists may now be able to observe sights common to many destinations in China, exploring the newly built “cultural sites” that replace ancient symbols of Uyghur culture, which is continuously under threat.
Yet just across the road, down to residential neighborhoods and more remote, rural villages, the party runs business as usual with an army of cadres and civilians at their mercy.
Community control is driven by the fanghuiju program, a Xinjiang-specific human surveillance policy run by the region’s Organization Department of the Chinese Communist Party, through which mainly Han officials are dispatched to Uyghur homes to spy on their activities, monitor their thoughts and feelings, and carry out indoctrination.
“This redistribution of law enforcement power to civilians and civil society groups blurs the line between civilians and cadres, victims and perpetrators,” the Australian Strategic Policy Institute report said. Everyone is responsible.
Indoctrination is hidden behind the walls of reeducation facilities but is also a part of daily life—in schools, office buildings, and public squares.
Life is punctuated by public loyalty pledges, chants wishing Chinese President Xi Jinping good health, and public denunciation sessions of “two-faced” traitors. Many people are gathered in public arenas to “speak up and brandish the sword,” putting a fist next to their face, condemning “religious extremism,” and praising the CCP.
People are pitted against one another and incentivized to self-police their own neighborhoods. Some of them are convinced the enemy hides among them and they need to uproot a phantom evil taking over their children’s brains. Others going along with it for the sake of their own safety.
The way Xinjiang is governed is invisible at first glance, and that may be the party’s biggest achievement so far. But without this level of control at the grassroot level, the architecture of repression would quickly crumble.
Daria Impiombato is a researcher at the Australia Strategic Policy Institute.
14. UN Committee Votes 'Yes' On UK-US-Backed Space Rules Group
Excerpts:
The government official said that it is possible that “in the future, elements of the behaviors approach may feed in to discussions on a legally-binding treaty,” but noted that “we are nowhere near that yet, and we do not know which elements might feed in to treaty discussions.”
The official further explained that the outcomes of the OEWG might range from specific recommendations to simply identifying what the resolution refers to as, “actions, activities and omissions” by governments and militaries.
“In some cases, the OEWG might recommend specific items that could be delivered, like a ban on kinetic DA-ASAT [direct-ascent anti-satellite weapons] tests that create long-lived debris,” the official told Breaking Defense. “In other cases it will probably talk about areas where responsible space behaviors might reduce the risk of miscalculation, such as if a nation lasers a satellite while it is imaging ballistic missile silos (the image builds trust, the lasing is not responsible).”
Canadian diplomats raised the idea of a ban on debris-creating ASATs during the First Committee discussions this year. Such a ban further has been championed by hundreds of former UN and government officials from around the world, including Chris Hadfield, the wildly popular former Canadian astronaut, as well as academic experts and scientists in a Sept. 2 letter sponsored by the Outer Space Institute based at the University of British Columbia.
The UK resolution itself, however, stops short of advocating for such a ban, instead it simply stresses “that the creation of long-lived orbital debris arising from the deliberate destruction of space systems increases the risk of in-orbit collisions and the potential for misunderstanding and miscalculations that could lead to conflict.”
UN Committee Votes 'Yes' On UK-US-Backed Space Rules Group - Breaking Defense
The delicate compromise between the US, Russia and China "may actually accomplish something," said Victoria Samson, head of Secure World Foundation's Washington office.
Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov addresses the 76th Session of the U.N. General Assembly at U.N. headquarters on September 25, 2021 in New York City. (Photo by Eduardo Munoz – Pool/Getty Images)
The vote, while a baby step, is an indication of growing political concurrence that action, not just political posturing, is required to mitigate the ratcheting risks of conflict as nations pursue technologies to best each other in the military space domain.
“This may actually accomplish something,” said Victoria Samson, head of Secure World Foundation’s Washington office. “As we see different actors coming up with a lot of the same ideas of responsible/irresponsible behavior, we actually stand the chance of getting some progress in multilateral fora about this instead of having the same tired circular arguments that have been held for decades.”
The plan for the Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG), which would meet twice in 2022 and 2023 and work on a basis of consensus, was pushed by the United Kingdom and co-sponsored by a number of Western countries including the United States. It passed First Committee with 163 “Yes” to eight “No” votes, and nine abstentions — 13 more votes than last year’s UK-sponsored resolution passed last year by the UN General Assembly soliciting national views on military space threats and how to ameliorate them.
In order to become a reality, the full UN General Assembly now needs to approve the OEWG plan during their session in December, but given the First Committee vote, this is pretty much a foregone conclusion.
“The prevention of an arms race in outer space is a UK priority. There is no doubt that there is a growing range of threats to space systems, and a risk that those threats could lead to miscalculation and, in turn, escalation and conflict. Only together can we find solutions to keep space peaceful, sustainable and open to all,” said James Cleverly, the UK minister responsible for space security in a statement following the vote in New York.
“As the current National Space Policy states, ‘The Secretary of State, in coordination with the heads of agencies, shall…Lead the consideration of proposals and concepts for arms control measures if they are equitable, effectively verifiable, and enhance the national security of the United States and its allies’,” a State Department spokesperson said in an email to Breaking Defense. “Additionally, the President’s Interim National Security Strategic Guidance instructs that we will lead in promoting shared norms on space.”
James Cleverly, UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Political Compromise Raises Hopes For ‘Real’ Outcome
The fact that language of the resolution (A/C.1/76/L.52) allows for consideration by the new OEWG of legally binding (i.e. treaty-based) measures, as well as voluntary rules that would constrain certain military actions agreed as threatening, is a surprise. The issue of any new treaty to prevent an arms race in outer space — a long-time UN concern, known as PAROS in diplomatic circles — consistently has been politically divisive, with factions led on one side by the United States and on the other by China and Russia.
The UK language, sources involved in the debate said, represents a compromise. Washington now has accepted the possibility the OEWG might recommend legally codified norms of behavior. In exchange, while Beijing and Moscow voted “No” on the OEWG’s formation, they at the same time refrained from pushing a competing UN venue for discussions based on their long-proposed treaty barring the placement of weapons in space, known as the PPWT.
“The work on responsible space behaviors currently runs in parallel to the treaty-based approach,” explained one government official intimately involved with crafting the language. The resolution raises the “hope that the two strands of work can co-exist at some point in the future.”
Samson said it is significant that “two of the biggest hold-outs to thinking about space security as behavior-related instead of technology-related, Russia and China, both are starting to use behavior language when discussing multilateral initiatives for space.
“I think that they are recognizing that this is where the winds are blowing on this and thus they don’t want to be left behind. That also gives me some small hope for the progress of the OEWG,” she added.
Jessica West of the Canadian non-governmental organization Project Ploughshares told Breaking Defense that “being more open to a potentially legally-binding agreement is important, because this what the majority of states prefer.
“It also provides an alternative focus for such an agreement, other than the PPWT,” she said in an email. She added that another plus in the language is that “it makes reference to VERIFICATION, which has been a persistent complaint of the PPWT draft,” that simply hand-waves the issue for future discussion — a key objection raised often by the US.
The resolution approved today states: “Reaffirming that verification is one of the essential components of legally binding arms control instruments, and encouraging further consideration of effective verification regarding space systems.”
Kinetic ASATs could create enormous amounts of dangerous space debris. National Space and Intelligence Center image
Possible Future Legal Measures, A Ban On Debris-Creating ASATs?
The government official said that it is possible that “in the future, elements of the behaviors approach may feed in to discussions on a legally-binding treaty,” but noted that “we are nowhere near that yet, and we do not know which elements might feed in to treaty discussions.”
The official further explained that the outcomes of the OEWG might range from specific recommendations to simply identifying what the resolution refers to as, “actions, activities and omissions” by governments and militaries.
“In some cases, the OEWG might recommend specific items that could be delivered, like a ban on kinetic DA-ASAT [direct-ascent anti-satellite weapons] tests that create long-lived debris,” the official told Breaking Defense. “In other cases it will probably talk about areas where responsible space behaviors might reduce the risk of miscalculation, such as if a nation lasers a satellite while it is imaging ballistic missile silos (the image builds trust, the lasing is not responsible).”
Canadian diplomats raised the idea of a ban on debris-creating ASATs during the First Committee discussions this year. Such a ban further has been championed by hundreds of former UN and government officials from around the world, including Chris Hadfield, the wildly popular former Canadian astronaut, as well as academic experts and scientists in a Sept. 2 letter sponsored by the Outer Space Institute based at the University of British Columbia.
The UK resolution itself, however, stops short of advocating for such a ban, instead it simply stresses “that the creation of long-lived orbital debris arising from the deliberate destruction of space systems increases the risk of in-orbit collisions and the potential for misunderstanding and miscalculations that could lead to conflict.”
15. Netflix removes spy drama episodes after Philippines' complaint over China map
Netflix: A strategic communications tool.
Netflix removes spy drama episodes after Philippines' complaint over China map
The Netflix logo is seen on the company's office in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, U.S. July 16, 2018. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
- Summary
- Philippines rejects scenes showing China's nine-dash line
- Netflix drama also pulled out from Vietnam over China map
MANILA, Nov 1 (Reuters) - Netflix Inc (NFLX.O) has removed two episodes of spy drama "Pine Gap" from its streaming service in the Philippines, after the Southeast Asian country rejected scenes involving a map used by China to assert its claims to the South China Sea.
The Philippines on Monday asked Netflix to remove certain episodes of the six-part Australian series, saying the map depicted on the show was a violation of its sovereignty.
The second and third episodes of the show were no longer available in the Philippines by late Monday, with Netflix announcing on its platform that those episodes had been "removed by government demand". It did not elaborate.
Netflix did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment.
China lays claim to most of the South China Sea waters within the so-called nine-dash line, a U-shaped feature used on Chinese maps. Parts of the resource-rich waters are also contested by the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam.
After a thorough review, the Philippines' movie classification board has ruled that certain episodes of Pine Gap were "unfit for public exhibition", the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said in a statement.
The Philippine films board, acting on the DFA's complaint, handed down its ruling on Sept. 28. It was not clear why the decision was only made public now.
The board, according to the DFA, noted that the appearance of the map was "no accident as it was consciously designed and calculated to specifically convey a message that China's nine-dash line legitimately exists".
The board believes that "such portrayal is a crafty attempt to perpetuate and memorialize in the consciousness of the present generation of viewers and the generations to come the illegal nine-dash line", the DFA said.
Reporting by Enrico Dela Cruz; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Emelia Sithole-Matarise
16. Combat mentality, exercising the mind for special operations
Good to see this from one of the units I served longest in and have been associated with for more than 30 years. (going back to when it was SOC-K and located in a building that was once a Japanese military bathhouse next to the old 8th Army HQ and located in an old Japanese military morgue and bio weapons testing facility on Camp Kim!). SOCKOR has come a long way.
Combat mentality, exercising the mind for special operations
Photo By Cpl. Dae Hyeon Choi | U.S. Special Operations Command-Korea psychologist, Dr. Richard Sohn, is focused on brain advancement training through a program called Brain Headquarters (Brain HQ). This program enhances participants’ brain functions and accuracy in regard to decision-making skills. The Brain HQ program is designed for special operators to increase their battlefield skills in uniquely training the mind. Through repeated computer-based training scenarios, the end goal is for participants to act faster, increase short-and long-term memory and increase accuracy in decision-making. | View Image Page
PYEONGTAEK, 41, SOUTH KOREA
11.02.2021
Special operations is known for its physicality – operators are able to adapt and overcome scenario-based challenges in any environment. But how does the mind play into that?
U.S. Special Operations Command– Korea is exploring the importance of exercising the brain as much as operators train their physical health through a program called Brain Headquarters. This program is intended for special operations forces to improve their psychological, cognitive, and emotional behaviors to fight more tactically and strategically on the battlefield.
Brain HQ is the part of the Preservation of the Force and Family program at SOCKOR. The overall program provides support uniquely designed for special operators and SOF employees.
Service members are provided with battlefield practice scenarios through computer-based training. Participants are given options to choose sessions based on what they want to focus on. There are options of exercises focusing on brain speed, attention, and memory categories.
“Brain HQ’s main objective is to provide the participants opportunities to enhance and measure their level of response when it comes to speed of attention or concentration as well as monitoring the ability to sustain cognitive effort,” said, Dr. Richard Sohn, SOCKOR psychologist. “There’s also opportunities to enhance short-and long-term memory, visual and spatial reasoning or navigation, and decision-making speed and accuracy.”
One of the exercises involves the participants being given a scene of constantly moving targets to increase the ability to identify targets faster. Brain HQ’s model foundationally is that cognitive skills are learnable skills, and this natural ‘plasticity’ allows service members in SOF to re-wire the brain for better functioning.
“Brain HQ training is specific to cognitive and emotion skills,” said Sohn. “The training is based on repetition as similar scenarios are provided over and over. Participants are able to see their scores over time as they become familiar with given scenarios like combat situations.”
These brain skills are just as essential as the physical skills. Strong mental focus provides opportunities for service members to perform better and accomplish the missions.
NEWS INFO
Date Taken: 11.02.2021 Date Posted: 11.02.2021 04:05 Story ID: 408493 Location: PYEONGTAEK, 41, KR Web Views: 23 Downloads: 0
PUBLIC DOMAIN
17. What traits make you ‘truly American?’ Democrats and Republicans disagree
Some fascinating statistics and insights. This excerpt gives me some hope though some of the oher statistics are troubling.
The positive statistics beg the questions: "Why can't we all just get along?"
I would note that if you believe in the inalienable rights that are in the Bill of Rights you should accept all the rights.
I wonder how independents feel since they are the majority "party" today.
Excerpts:
Another potentially surprising takeaway from the survey is that Democrats and Republicans rate several traits the same way.
For example, almost all members of each party said believing in individual freedoms, like freedom of speech, and accepting people of diverse racial and religious backgrounds is a “very” or “somewhat” important part of being truly American. Most Republicans and Democrats also agreed that being of Western European heritage doesn’t matter.
“It’s rather remarkable that there seems to be a great deal of agreement among Americans of all partisan stripes,” said Nazita Lajevardi, an assistant professor of political science at Michigan State University, during the virtual event.
She was particularly struck by the similar share of Republicans (94%) and Democrats (96%) who said true Americans believe every citizen has a right to vote. Current debates over election rules would lead you to think that wasn’t the case, Lajevardi noted.
What traits make you ‘truly American?’ Democrats and Republicans disagree
A new survey explores the partisan gap in beliefs about what traits make you ‘truly American’
Democrats and Republicans have different ideas about how “true Americans” should relate to religion, according to the 2021 American Values Survey, released Monday by Public Religion Research Institute.
Nearly 8 in 10 members of the GOP (78%) said believing in God is “very” or “somewhat” important to being “truly American,” the survey showed. Less than half of Democrats (45%) made the same claim.
Republicans were also much more likely to believe that true Americans are Christian. Just under two-thirds of the GOP (63%) held this opinion, compared to 35% of Democrats.
Religion isn’t the only factor that members of the two parties rate differently, researchers noted. Republicans and Democrats also disagree on whether true Americans are born in America, speak English or love the country’s economic system.
“Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats to think (the) belief that capitalism is the best economic system ... (is) important to being truly American,” researchers reported.
These findings are notable not just because of what they reveal about the partisan divide, but also because they complicate some commonly held assumptions about the Democratic Party, said William Galston, a senior fellow in governance studies at Brookings, during a virtual event accompanying the survey’s release.
“We tend to think of Democrats as the secular party, but we find that fully 45% of Democrats say that belief in God is essential to being truly American. ... We think of the Democratic Party as the religiously pluralistic party, but more than one-third of Democrats say you can’t be truly American unless you’re a Christian,” he said.
Natalie Jackson, director of research for Public Religion Research Institute, agreed that the Democratic Party is internally diverse. Black Protestant Democrats often have more in common with conservatives than with their fellow party members, she noted.
Another potentially surprising takeaway from the survey is that Democrats and Republicans rate several traits the same way.
For example, almost all members of each party said believing in individual freedoms, like freedom of speech, and accepting people of diverse racial and religious backgrounds is a “very” or “somewhat” important part of being truly American. Most Republicans and Democrats also agreed that being of Western European heritage doesn’t matter.
“It’s rather remarkable that there seems to be a great deal of agreement among Americans of all partisan stripes,” said Nazita Lajevardi, an assistant professor of political science at Michigan State University, during the virtual event.
She was particularly struck by the similar share of Republicans (94%) and Democrats (96%) who said true Americans believe every citizen has a right to vote. Current debates over election rules would lead you to think that wasn’t the case, Lajevardi noted.
“Much of our national discourse (around voting) has been divided along partisan lines,” she said.
The 2021 American Values Survey was conducted online from Sept. 15-29 among 2,508 U.S. adults. The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus 2.1 percentage points.
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18. FDD | Will the NBA Stand Up to China’s Bullying for Enes Kanter?
FDD | Will the NBA Stand Up to China’s Bullying for Enes Kanter?
If the United States wants to send a message regarding China not only to Beijing but also to the international community, then America must first stand with Enes Kanter.
fdd.org · by Zane Zovak Research Analyst · November 1, 2021
Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter made headlines last week when he uploaded videos to social media calling Chinese president Xi Jinping a “brutal dictator” and criticizing Chinese repression in Tibet and Xinjiang. The last time an NBA employee criticized the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the league offered an abject apology to Beijing. This time, the NBA should defend its players’ right to speak their minds about abuse overseas, the same way it encourages them to speak out against injustice here at home.
In 2019, then-general manager of the Houston Rockets Daryl Morey tweeted, “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.” He promptly deleted it amid growing pressure from China as well as prominent players around the league. Fellow Rocket James Harden said, “We apologize. You know, we Love China.” Lebron James suggested Morey was “either misinformed or not really educated on the situation.” In retaliation for Morey’s tweet, Chinese companies pulled their NBA sponsors and refused to air Rockets games, costing the league hundreds of millions of dollars.
Morey received a measure of bipartisan support in Washington, however, where Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) accused the NBA of “shamefully retreating” in pursuit of profit, while former presidential hopeful Julian Castro tweeted that the United States must “not allow American citizens to be bullied by an authoritarian government.” President Donald Trump declined to take an explicit stance on the matter, saying that the NBA and China “have to work out their own situation.” However, he did assert that silence from the coaches was “pandering to China.”
Despite undermining Morey and his support of the Hong Kong protests, the NBA has attempted to rebrand itself as an organization committed to social justice. During the 2019-20 playoffs, players from six teams refused to take the court in protest of police violence and the death of Jason Blake. The playoffs resumed after the NBA reached an agreement with the players union to establish a social justice coalition to promote civic engagement through voting drives and advocate for police reform.
In a letter to league employees, Commissioner Adam Silver declared, “I wholeheartedly support NBA and WNBA players and their commitment to shining a light on important issues of social justice.” Kanter’s recent videos are poised to test whether the NBA’s commitment to social justice stops at the water’s edge.
From Turkey, Kanter previously sparked controversy in his home country with partisan attacks on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at one point calling him the “Hitler of our century.” Kanter is a vocal supporter of former Erdogan ally Fethullah Gulen, a cleric who presides over a shadowy network that used to be highly influential within Turkey’s media and law enforcement circles. Gulen’s network helped Erdogan consolidate power by eliminating his secular opponents through smear campaigns and show trials, only to become a target of Erdogan’s ire.
As a supporter of Gulen, Kanter may not be an ideal representative of democratic values. But free speech is not reserved for those who have the most admirable opinions. Despite Erdogan’s attempts to intimidate him, Kanter continues to be outspoken on human rights issues both within Turkey and beyond, and has expressed gratitude for the voice the NBA has given him. “This platform allows me to speak my mind,” he said in 2019.
Yet antagonizing Beijing is much more expensive than offending Ankara. Tencent, the NBA streaming partner in China, has temporarily ceased live-streaming its coverage of Celtics games. Beijing responded similarly to criticism from another prominent Turkish athlete, Mesut Ozil, who was playing for the British soccer club Arsenal when he expressed support for the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang. Beijing removed Arsenal from the national broadcast schedule.
China’s response to Kanter may narrow the NBA’s profit margins, but now the league has a second chance to show it won’t capitulate to Beijing. The NBA along with the Celtics should issue a formal statement supporting Kanter’s right to express himself freely. President Joe Biden should also issue such a statement, projecting a united front against Chinese authoritarianism. Congress and the administration should also reaffirm the Tibetan Policy and Support Act, which asserts Tibet’s right to select its own leader, and the Uyghur Human Rights Protection Act, which requires U.S. government agencies to report on human rights abuses against the Uyghur Muslim minority.
The NBA is not the only organization guilty of subverting its values to protect its access to the Chinese market. Hollywood has frequently issued apologies for referring to Taiwan as a country or cut images of the Taiwanese flag from movies. Tech companies have blocked apps such as Yahoo Finance or the New York Times to comply with arbitrary Chinese complaints.
Kanter posted his videos about Tibet and Xinjiang just one day after the Olympic torch arrived in Beijing, amid consistent calls from human rights groups to boycott the games over Chinese treatment of Tibet, Uyghur Muslims, and Hong Kong. How the United States and the NBA respond to Kanter’s video will likely set the precedent for how others vocalize their concerns in the lead-up to the games. If the United States wants to send a message regarding China not only to Beijing but also to the international community, then America must first stand with Kanter.
Zane Zovak is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he focuses on the diplomatic and military actions of the People’s Republic of China. He contributes to FDD’s China Program and Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP). For more analysis from the author, the China Program, and CMPP, please subscribe HERE. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_CMPP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Zane Zovak Research Analyst · November 1, 2021
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FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
