Quotes of the Day:
“No fight for civil liberties ever stays won.”
- Roger Baldwin
“Madness is the result not of uncertainty but certainty.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
“Republics, one after another . . . have perished from a want of intelligence and virtue in the masses of the people. . . .”
- Horace Mann
1. An independent commission should review our National Defense Strategy
2. U.S. Allies Drive Much of World’s Democratic Decline, Data Shows
3. Will the Biden Administration Be Soft on Sanctions?
4. China’s Search for Allies- Is Beijing Building a Rival Alliance System?
5. Australian Official Says AUKUS Will Establish Rules-Based Order with China Other Countries
6. Don’t Be Evil: America Needs Its Mantra Back
7. Swift trans-Atlantic action kept Turkey from fueling Belarus’ hybrid attacks
8. Rising costs for troops’ pay and benefits could hurt military readiness, experts warn
9. United Nations’ transnational bureaucrats now do Beijing’s bidding
10. The death of democracy (USAGM/VOA)
11. A Veteran Diplomat, a ‘Tragic Figure,’ Battles Critics in the U.S. and Afghanistan
12. President Biden to visit Fort Bragg for early Thanksgiving with service members
13. Agile Multilateralism Is Needed to Address Cybercrime Safe Havens
14. Why Cyber War Is Subversive, and How that Limits its Strategic Value
15. More Deferential but Also More Political: How Americans' Views of the Military Have Changed Over 20 Years
16. China Locks Down Its History, to Its Peril and the World’s
17. COMMENT: China invokes history of Korean War, CCP and Xi in battle for hearts and minds
18. Authoritarian Leaders Are Weaker Than They Look, Thanks to Covid
19. The U.S. Military and the Coming Great-Power Challenge By Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr.
20. As U.S. spies look to the future, one target stands out: China
21. 9th U.S-Philippines Bilateral Strategic Dialogue
22. Joint Vision for a 21st Century United States-Philippines Partnership
1. An independent commission should review our National Defense Strategy
Excerpt:
Congressional authorization for a commission on the National Defense Strategy is an important step toward building support for how America’s military should be organized for today and tomorrow. When the latest independent commission completed its work on the 2018 defense strategy, then-Armed Services Committee Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) called it a “blueprint” to implement the NDS. He used the commission’s report to guide his work running the committee for the following two years. The next independent review should strive to do the same.
Reviewing the strategy is one thing. Reviewing the execution of the strategy is what should be the next step. This should be a function of Congressional oversight but if it is unable to do so then perhaps an independent commission would be useful. Though I am not optimistic that such a commission would ever be established and based on the experience of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction I am not sure anyone would pay any attention. He was providing a near real time assessment of the execution of the strategy (ies) and no one seemed to pay attention.
But as Eisenhower said, "Plans are nothing. Planning is everything." I would add, "but execution is the gold standard."
An independent commission should review our National Defense Strategy
The Hill · by Mackenzie Eaglen and Roger Zakheim, opinion contributors · November 16, 2021
Congress needs help conducting oversight of the Pentagon, particularly when there is one-party control of the White House and Capitol Hill. No one likes to be graded, but that is the tradition as it relates to major new defense reviews or strategies. Since 1997, Congress has approved four independent commissions to stress-test Pentagon leaders’ work. The efforts of the next defense strategy commission cannot begin soon enough.
Historically, both political parties have shared the belief in the importance of an independent review of the Pentagon’s defense strategy. Former Senator Dan Coats (R-Ind.), who co-sponsored the legislation to mandate regular Pentagon strategy reviews, endorsed the original independent panel, saying that the purpose of the report was “not based on distrust or suspicion of the Pentagon, but on the recognition that we need bold and innovative thinking from a variety of sources in this time of rapid change.”
In December 1997, the first National Defense Panel released a 94-page report entitled “Transforming Defense: National Security in the 21st Century.” The report challenged some of the core principles underpinning defense strategy at the time, fulfilling its mandate and contributing to a larger debate on the issues.
In the panel’s cover letter to Congress, Chairman Phillip A. Odeen captured the true aim of the work: “We have not attempted to provide all the answers. Rather, our intention is to stimulate a wider debate on our defense priorities.”
After the release of the panel report on the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review in 1997, President Clinton’s Secretary of Defense William Cohen expressed his strong backing for the panel’s findings. Senator Coats argued that the independent assessment had served two vital functions: (1) as a hedge against the status quo and (2) an “independent validation of innovative recommendations proposed” by the Pentagon’s strategy.
Unlike other congressional blue ribbon commissions, Congress has modified the purpose and organization of the commission to reflect the most urgent and important issues facing our national defense. The most recent iteration rightly focused its work on the National Defense Strategy (NDS) giving emphasis and prominence to the document that ought to drive the attention and resources of the Department of Defense.
Ensuring a proper check on the strategic assumptions and plans within the Pentagon — the same views that promise to drive the newest National Defense Strategy (NDS) right now — is a step Congress must initiate to better oversee the military’s budgets, policies and plans.
Thankfully, the Senate defense authorization bill proposes to continue the tradition of standing up an independent commission whose work may begin once the strategy drops. The Senate rightly proposes a special focus by the commission on the:
- force planning construct;
- resources needed to match the strategy;
- risks to the strategy;
- gaps or redundancies in service roles and missions; and
- review of new operational concepts.
In keeping with the original intention of the first National Defense Panel, no individual or group should be able to direct major future defense planning decisions absent a separate mechanism to test their analytical assumptions. As in the past, this panel should consist of a range of defense analysts with opposing views. It should require the consensus of the entire group. Its work should begin as soon as possible and be completed on time.
China already has the world’s largest standing army, navy, coast guard, maritime militia and sub-strategic missile force. The Defense Department’s 2021 China Military Report warns of China’s nuclear stockpile increases, ballistic missile buildup at various ranges, power projection investments, and directly acknowledged China’s ambition to “match or surpass U.S. global influence and power.” China’s military ascendancy reinforces the urgency and importance of designing and executing an effective national defense strategy.
Mackenzie Eaglen is a resident fellow based at the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. She is a former staff member in Congress and a former fellow with the Defense Department.
Roger Zakheim is the Washington director of the Ronald Reagan Institute. He was a congressionally-appointed member of the 2018 National Defense Strategy Commission.
The Hill · by Mackenzie Eaglen and Roger Zakheim, opinion contributors · November 16, 2021
2. U.S. Allies Drive Much of World’s Democratic Decline, Data Shows
Depressing data and analysis. But I do not want to accept this. I remain bullish on America and our federal democratic republic.
But once-positive impressions of American democracy have been rapidly declining.“
Very few in any public surveyed think American democracy is a good example for other countries to follow,” a recent Pew Research Center study found. On average, only 17 percent of people in surveyed countries called U.S. democracy worth emulating, while 23 percent said it had never offered a good example.
American prosperity may no longer look so appealing either, because of growing problems, like inequality, as well as the rise of China as an alternate economic model.
And awareness of the United States’ domestic problems — mass shootings, polarization, racial injustice — has greatly affected perceptions.
It may be more precise to think of what’s happening now as the rise of illiberal democracy as an alternate model. That system appears to be increasingly popular. Fuller democracy, with its protections for minorities and reliance on establishment institutions, is becoming less so.
But even people who want illiberal democracy for their country tend to find it unappealing in others, thanks to its nationalist tendencies. As impressions of U.S. democracy as a global model degrade, so does democracy itself.“
A lot of the appeal of democracy around the world is tied to appeal of the U.S. as a regime type,” Dr. Gunitsky said. “When one of those things decline, the other will decline.”
U.S. Allies Drive Much of World’s Democratic Decline, Data Shows
The Interpreter
Washington-aligned countries backslid at nearly double the rate of non-allies, data shows, complicating long-held assumptions about American influence.
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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey at the United Nations General Assembly in 2019. Turkey under Mr. Erdogan has seen a shift toward illiberal democracy.Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times
By
Nov. 16, 2021
The United States and its allies accounted for a significantly outsize share of global democratic backsliding in the last decade, according to a new analysis.
American allies remain, on average, more democratic than the rest of the world. But nearly all have suffered a degree of democratic erosion since 2010, meaning that core elements like election fairness or judicial independence have weakened, and at rates far outpacing average declines among other countries.
With few exceptions, U.S.-aligned countries saw almost no democratic growth in that period, even as many beyond Washington’s orbit did.
The findings are reflected in data recorded by V-Dem, a Sweden-based nonprofit that tracks countries’ level of democracy across a host of indicators, and analyzed by The New York Times.
The revelations cast democracy’s travails, a defining trend of the current era, in a sharp light. They suggest that much of the world’s backsliding is not imposed on democracies by foreign powers, but rather is a rot rising within the world’s most powerful network of mostly democratic alliances.
In many cases, democracies like France or Slovenia saw institutions degrade, if only slightly, amid politics of backlash and distrust. In others, dictatorships like Bahrain curtailed already-modest freedoms. But, often, the trend was driven by a shift toward illiberal democracy.
In that form of government, elected leaders behave more like strongmen and political institutions are eroded, but personal rights mostly remain (except, often, for minorities).
U.S. allies often led this trend. Turkey, Hungary, Israel and the Philippines are all examples. A number of more established democracies have taken half-steps in their direction, too, including the United States, where voting rights, the politicization of courts, and other factors are considered cause for concern by many democracy scholars.
The findings also undercut American assumptions, widely held in both parties, that U.S. power is an innately democratizing force in the world.
Washington has long sold itself as a global champion for democracy. The reality has always been more complicated. But enough of its allies have moved toward that system to create an impression that American influence brings about American-style freedoms. These trends suggest that may no longer be true — if it ever was.
“It would be too easy to say this can all be explained by Trump,” cautioned Seva Gunitsky, a University of Toronto political scientist who studies how great powers influence democracies. Data indicates that the trend accelerated during his presidency but predated it.
Rather, scholars say this change is likely driven by longer-term forces. Declining faith in the United States as a model to aspire to. Declining faith in democracy itself, whose image has been tarnished by a series of 21st century shocks. Decades of American policy prioritizing near-term issues like counterterrorism. And growing enthusiasm for illiberal politics.
With the American-aligned world now a leader in the decline of a system it once pledged to promote, Dr. Gunitsky said, “The international consensus for democratization has shifted.”
Inmates in an overcrowded jail in 2016 in Quezon City, in the Philippines. President Rodrigo Duterte oversaw a brutal crackdown on drug users.Credit...Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times
A Global Crisis
Since the Cold War’s end, American-aligned countries have shifted toward democracy only slowly but, until the 2010s, mostly avoided backsliding.
In the 1990s, for instance, 19 allies grew more democratic, including Turkey and South Korea. Only six, like Jordan, became more autocratic, but all by very small amounts.
That’s according to V-Dem’s liberal democracy index, which factors dozens of metrics into a score from 0 to 1. Its methodology is transparent and considered highly rigorous. South Korea’s, for example, rose from 0.517 to 0.768 in that decade, amid a transition to full civilian rule. Most shifts are smaller, reflecting, say, an incremental advance in press freedom or slight step back in judicial independence.
During the 1990s, the United States and its allies accounted for 9 percent of the overall increases in democracy scores worldwide, according to the figures. In other words, they were responsible for 9 percent of global democratic growth. This is better than it sounds: Many were already highly democratic.
Also that decade, allied countries accounted for only 5 percent of global decreases — they backslid very little.
Those numbers worsened a little in the 2000s. Then, in the 2010s, they became disastrous. The U.S. and its allies accounted for only 5 percent of worldwide increases in democracy. But a staggering 36 percent of all backsliding occurred in U.S.-aligned countries.
On average, allied countries saw the quality of their democracies decline by nearly double the rate of non-allies, according to V-Dem’s figures.
The analysis defines “ally” as a country with which the United States has a formal or implied mutual defense commitment, of which there are 41. While “ally” could be plausibly defined in several different ways, all produce largely similar results.
This shift comes amid a period of turmoil for democracy, which is retrenching worldwide.
The data contradicts assumptions in Washington that this trend is driven by Russia and China, whose neighbors and partners have seen their scores change very little, or by Mr. Trump, who entered office when the shift was well underway.
Rather, backsliding is endemic across emerging and even established democracies, said Staffan I. Lindberg, a University of Gothenburg political scientist who helps oversee V-Dem. And such countries tend to be American-aligned.
This does not mean Washington is exactly causing their retrenchment, Dr. Lindberg stressed. But it isn’t irrelevant, either.
An American flag used for a photo-op between President Biden and Mr. Erdogan at the Group of 20 summit meeting in Rome last month.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
American Influence, for Better or Worse
Despite decades of Cold War messaging calling American alliances a force for democratization, this has never really been true, said Thomas Carothers, who studies democracy promotion at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
While Washington encouraged democracy in Western Europe as an ideological counterweight to the Soviet Union, it suppressed its spread in much of the rest of the world.
It backed or installed dictators, encouraged violent repression of left-wing elements, and sponsored anti-democratic armed groups. Often, this was conducted in allied countries in cooperation with the local government. The Soviets did the same.
As a result, when the Cold War ended in 1989 and great power meddling receded, societies became freer to democratize and, in large numbers, they did.
“A lot of people came of age in those years and thought that was normal,” Mr. Carothers said, mistaking the 1990s wave as both the natural state of things and, because the United States was global hegemon, America’s doing.
“But then the war on terror hit in 2001,” he said, and Washington again pressed for pliant autocrats and curbs on democratization, this time in societies where Islam is predominant.
The result has been decades of weakening the foundations of democracy in allied countries. At the same time, American-led pressures in favor of democracy have begun falling away.
“Democratic hegemony is good for democratization, but not through the mechanisms that people usually think about, like democracy promotion,” said Dr. Gunitsky, the scholar of great power politics.
Rather than alliances or presidents demanding that dictators liberalize, neither of which have much of a track record, he said, “The U.S. influence, where it’s strongest, is an indirect influence, as an example to emulate.”
His research has found that the United States spurs democratization when other countries’ leaders, citizens or both see American-style governance as promising benefits like prosperity or freedom. Some may see adopting it, even superficially, as a way to win American support.
But once-positive impressions of American democracy have been rapidly declining.
“Very few in any public surveyed think American democracy is a good example for other countries to follow,” a recent Pew Research Center study found. On average, only 17 percent of people in surveyed countries called U.S. democracy worth emulating, while 23 percent said it had never offered a good example.
American prosperity may no longer look so appealing either, because of growing problems, like inequality, as well as the rise of China as an alternate economic model.
And awareness of the United States’ domestic problems — mass shootings, polarization, racial injustice — has greatly affected perceptions.
It may be more precise to think of what’s happening now as the rise of illiberal democracy as an alternate model. That system appears to be increasingly popular. Fuller democracy, with its protections for minorities and reliance on establishment institutions, is becoming less so.
But even people who want illiberal democracy for their country tend to find it unappealing in others, thanks to its nationalist tendencies. As impressions of U.S. democracy as a global model degrade, so does democracy itself.
“A lot of the appeal of democracy around the world is tied to appeal of the U.S. as a regime type,” Dr. Gunitsky said. “When one of those things decline, the other will decline.”
3. Will the Biden Administration Be Soft on Sanctions?
Sanctions without continuous enforcement are hardly worth the paper they are printed on.
Excerpt:
The bottom line. Notwithstanding its good elements, the sanctions review constitutes a missed opportunity. By seeking to limit sanctions, the Biden administration ultimately provides economic benefits to the regimes that least deserve them. In so doing, Washington only helps rogue regimes solidify their grip on power, further enabling them to advance malign policies that run counter to U.S. interests.
Will the Biden Administration Be Soft on Sanctions?
Nov 16
(Photo by Kyle Mazza/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images.)
The Treasury Department last month released its “Treasury 2021 Sanctions Review,” a report that aims, in the words of Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, to provide a “comprehensive” assessment of U.S. sanctions policy. While the review contains some important recommendations that would improve Washington’s approach to sanctions, its analysis suggests that the Biden administration may seek to limit the use of sanctions as a coercive tool without considering the downsides of tying its own hands in that way.
Sanctions are one of the most important non-military measures that have been used by successive administrations to create the leverage necessary for U.S. diplomacy to succeed. Multiple agencies, including the Departments of the Treasury, State, Commerce, and Justice develop, implement, or play a significant role in sanctions policy.
According to the review, there are currently 37 sanctions programs administered and enforced by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Controls (OFAC), and “over 12,000 OFAC designations and nearly 3,000 OFAC delistings.” These numbers tell only part of the story as other agencies, including the State Department and Commerce Department, have their own sanctions authorities.
Another complicating factor is the overlapping authorities issued by the executive and legislative branches. Each administration must navigate a complex web of discretionary and mandatory sanctions regimes. Sanctions can target specific countries or regions for specific activities, like those against Iran, Syria, or North Korea. Conduct or list-based sanctions address specific prohibited behavior, such as terrorism or counternarcotics sanctions.
The good. The report’s formulation of a fundamental set of principles and guidelines to pursue national security objectives using sanctions is a positive development. The review’s public and official articulation of these overarching tenets, such as the strategic imperative of linking sanctions to clear policy objectives, should constitute the first step in an ongoing, comprehensive review of the government’s use of sanctions. Subsequent administrations should issue their own sanctions reviews and implementation plans to ensure that the tool supports both near-term and long-term national security objectives.
Equally important is that the Treasury Department will develop an analytic construct to review sanctions programs and actions regularly. This construct, the review states, could include “recommendations to augment, adapt, or wind down individual authorities or to list or delist particular individuals or entities.” Institutionalizing this process will enable the Treasury to better refine and adapt sanctions regimes in a timely and efficient manner.
Finally, the review notes Treasury should improve communications with the public through additional outreach and engagement opportunities. Improving communications would also help advance consistent messaging on what specific steps designated individuals or entities must take to have their designations rescinded.
The bad. While the review noted the need for interagency coordination, it also noted that it is not a whole-of-government product. The simple question is: why not? A broader review should have been conducted through an interagency process led by the National Security Council (NSC) and involving not only the Treasury Department, but all other relevant departments and appropriate actors. As a result, its effectiveness will likely be limited to certain offices within the Treasury Department. Congress may want to consider mandating a periodic interagency sanctions review.
While the review stresses that sanctions should support a clear policy objective, it does not describe how sanctions operate within a broader strategic paradigm, and how the application of other elements of national power contributes to their success or failure. As a result, the review barely addresses ways to utilize other coercive economic measures—from export controls to trade promotion—to complement or reinforce sanctions.
The report implicitly claims that Washington overuses sanctions, causing a decrease in the use of the dollar as an international medium of exchange. However, this assertion fails to consider other macroeconomic factors affecting the dollar that are likely far more significant, such as the potential for inflation and the size and scope of the U.S. government’s debt obligations.
Similarly, the review’s claim that sanctions are “most effective” when coordinated with allies and partners fails to consider other factors. Certainly, the support of U.S. allies and partners can enhance the effectiveness of U.S. sanctions, but there are clear limits to that enhancement. In some circumstances, it is more effective for the United States to lead, setting an example for others to follow. While the review cites the successful Iran sanctions campaign that brought Tehran to the negotiating table in 2015, the United States first implemented many of those sanctions unilaterally to complement other sanctions that were multilateral.
The ugly. Perhaps most egregiously, policymakers could use the review as a justification to refrain from enforcing existing sanctions, including those mandated by Congress. For example, the review states that Treasury “will continue to review its existing authorities to consider the unintended consequences of current sanctions regimes on humanitarian activity necessary to support basic human needs, as well as potential changes to address them while continuing to deny support to malicious actors.”
While ensuring humanitarian access to jurisdictions under comprehensive sanctions is critically important, the report fails to recognize that sanctioned regimes themselves are the cause of humanitarian crises. Lifting sanctions would likely only strengthen those governments’ grip on power and exacerbate humanitarian problems. Treasury’s policies have likely already led to a decrease in the enforcement of Syria and North Korea sanctions, at a time when the U.S. needs to be building leverage by targeting senior Syrian and North Korean business elites and regime financiers.
The bottom line. Notwithstanding its good elements, the sanctions review constitutes a missed opportunity. By seeking to limit sanctions, the Biden administration ultimately provides economic benefits to the regimes that least deserve them. In so doing, Washington only helps rogue regimes solidify their grip on power, further enabling them to advance malign policies that run counter to U.S. interests.
Matthew Zweig and Anthony Ruggiero are senior fellows at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Follow Matthew and Anthony on Twitter @MatthewZweig1 and @NatSecAnthony. FDD is a Washington, D.C.-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
4. China’s Search for Allies- Is Beijing Building a Rival Alliance System?
I wish we could develop the strategic foresight you recommend in the conclusion. Lack of strategic foresight may arguably be one of our great strategic weaknesses.
China’s Search for Allies
Is Beijing Building a Rival Alliance System?
The United States’ network of alliances has long been a central pillar of its foreign policy—and, as competition with China has intensified in recent years, held up as a major U.S. advantage. The administration of President Joe Biden has put a particular emphasis on allies in its Asia strategy. In its first year, the administration has both strengthened long-standing alliances such as those with Japan and South Korea and put considerable energy into bolstering multilateral partnerships such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (with Australia, India, and Japan) and the newly formed AUKUS pact (with Australia and the United Kingdom).
China, by contrast, has shied away from formal alliances, based on its supposedly distinct view of international relations and a pragmatic desire to avoid the risks of entanglement. But there are signs that Beijing’s resistance is starting to erode. In more recent years, it has upgraded its strategic partnerships and expanded military exchanges and joint exercises with countries including Russia, Pakistan, and Iran. These partnerships are still a far cry from U.S. alliances (which involve mutual defense clauses, extensive troop-basing agreements, and joint military capabilities). But they could in time form the basis of China’s own alliance network if Chinese leaders come to believe that one is necessary for both its deterrent effect and its operational value to prevail in a long-term competition with the United States and its allies. Such a development would mark a true turning point in this era of U.S.-Chinese competition and pave the way to an alarming new world with lower thresholds for regional and great power conflict.
China Creates a Network of Its Own
Today, China has only one formal ally—North Korea, with whom it shares a mutual defense treaty. But it has dozens of official partnerships with states around the world. At the top of the pyramid are Russia and Pakistan (whose extra-special ties with Beijing are denoted by long and exclusive monikers, “China-Russia Comprehensive Strategic Partnership of Coordination for a New Era” and “China-Pakistan All Weather Strategic Cooperative Partnership”). Then come several Southeast Asian states—Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos—as well as states farther afield, such as Egypt, Brazil, and New Zealand. Beijing has also invested great energy into building Chinese-led multilateral mechanisms, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, and the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum.
China has avoided building a traditional network of allies thus far for reasons ranging from long-standing ideological inclinations to hardheaded strategic calculations. Since the early days of the People’s Republic, Beijing has sought to portray itself as a leader of the developing world and a proponent of Non-Aligned Movement principles of noninterference and anti-imperialism. In more recent years, Chinese leaders have begun to insist that they practice a “new type of international relations,” eschewing traditional power politics in favor of “win-win cooperation.” Such language is meant to bolster the narrative that China’s rise should not be feared but be welcomed as a boon for global development and prosperity—and to distinguish Beijing from Washington, which Chinese leaders frequently criticize for maintaining an outdated “Cold War mentality.”
China has dozens of partnerships with states around the world.
In addition to such public diplomacy efforts, Beijing’s alliance-shy posture reflects a strategic decision to build relationships centered around economic ties in its quest for power and global influence. This is not to say that China uses only economic statecraft to advance its objectives. In fact, China has rapidly expanded its military capabilities over the last two decades and used its newfound might to intimidate Taiwan, jostle with India along a disputed border, and press its sovereignty claims in the East China and South China Seas. Nonetheless, while Chinese leaders consider military power essential for protecting their homeland, core national interests, and citizens and investments abroad, they have demonstrated little desire to take on external security commitments that could drag their country into far-flung conflicts.
Beijing has bet instead that offering loans, investments, and trade opportunities, and doing business with any sovereign entity, regardless of its character and track record at home, will win China friends and influence. And this strategy has paid off. Many of China’s partners, particularly in the developing world, have welcomed its engagement and supported its core interests in exchange. This support tends to be primarily diplomatic in nature—for instance, affirming Beijing’s “one China” principle; staying silent or even praising its repressive policies in Xinjiang; and endorsing its agenda in multilateral forums such as the United Nations. And along with economic inducements, Beijing has increasingly turned to economic coercion to punish states that defy its demands—as in the case of Australia, which saw stiff Chinese tariffs slapped on its exports after it banned the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from its networks and supported an international investigation into the origin of COVID-19.
Beijing’s Changing Calculations
In the near term, China is unlikely to abandon its geo-economic strategy for dominance altogether. But there are two possible scenarios that could drive it to build a bona fide network of allies: if Beijing perceives a sharp enough deterioration in its security environment that overturns its cost-benefit analysis on pursuing formal military pacts; or if it decides to displace the United States as the predominant military power, not just in the Indo-Pacific region, but globally. (These two scenarios are not, of course, mutually exclusive.)
Chinese leaders may come to such conclusions if they assess that the Communist Party’s core interests, such as its hold on power at home, authority over Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, and claims of sovereignty over Taiwan would be untenable without striking formal defense pacts with key partners such as Russia, Pakistan, or Iran. In fact, Chinese assessments have already begun to move in this direction. For instance, Chinese commentary on the significant deepening of Sino-Russian ties in recent years often points to growing “encirclement” by the West as the primary driver of this development and emphasizes the need for Beijing and Moscow to work jointly to push back on U.S.-led coalitions. Although Beijing continues to insist that China and Russia are “not allies,” it has begun to assert in the same breath that there are “no restricted areas” and “no upper limit” to their partnership.
Since 2012, China and Russia have conducted increasingly expansive military drills, including regular naval exercises in the East China and South China Sea, and at times in conjunction with third parties such as Iran and South Africa. Just last month, the two made headlines for holding their first ever joint patrol in the western Pacific, which the Global Times—a Chinese state-run tabloid—said was aimed at the United States as it “gangs up with its allies like Japan and Australia.” To be sure, Beijing and Moscow’s tenuous history of friendship and rivalry and the value both states place on strategic autonomy may limit the extent of their partnership. Still, the two states could conceivably strike a deal on rendering mutual aid, from logistical support up to direct assistance, including in grey zone or conventional military operations, if either government comes to believe it faces an existential threat.
China has embraced "rogue states."
Another example of China’s shifting posture is its embrace of “rogue states.” For instance, Chinese leaders have begun to characterize China-North Korea relations in strikingly different tones from just a few years ago when Beijing took pains to distance itself from Pyongyang. This past July, the two allies renewed their mutual defense treaty and vowed to elevate their alliance to “new levels.” Earlier this year, China also signed a 25-year cooperation agreement with Iran, providing economic projects and investment in exchange for access to Iranian oil. The two countries also pledged to deepen cooperation through joint military exchanges, intelligence sharing, and weapons development. China soon after endorsed Iran’s bid for full membership in the SCO, 15 years after Tehran’s initial application. According to Chinese analysts, Beijing had sidestepped the issue for more than a decade to avoid upsetting Washington and creating the impression that the SCO is aimed at countering the United States. But it decided to move ahead upon concluding that Washington’s “containment policy” toward China was here to stay.Although it remains to be seen just how much actual “upgrading” these partnerships will undergo, such developments suggest that Beijing’s desires not to entangle itself too deeply with actors such as Iran and North Korea for both strategic and image-driven reasons may be gradually eroding as it perceives an increasingly hostile external environment and, thus, greater urgency in enlisting allies. (This is notwithstanding questions about the reliability of these actors and their own suspicions of China, among other complicating factors.) Chinese leaders could very well decide in the foreseeable future that the best way to protect their interests and withstand pressure from Washington and its allies is for China to become an indispensable military power with its own network of allies—just as the United States did more than 70 years ago.
To be sure, emulating the U.S. historical playbook won’t be easy. Most of the world’s advanced economies, after all, are already official allies of the United States. Beijing also faces deep skepticism around the globe about its long-term intentions and hegemonic tendencies. That’s true even of its closest Belt and Road Initiative partners. And many states have made clear that they do not want to exclusively align with either Beijing or Washington. But the status quo is not immutable. China is swiftly cultivating ties with advanced economies and developing states, and it is attempting to drive wedges between the United States and its allies and partners. Even if it is unable to bring some players to its side, it could push for the “Finlandization” of key strategic areas such as the Korean Peninsula and parts of Southeast Asia, forcing states to renounce their strategic ties with the United States.
Alliances Have Consequences
The great strides the Biden administration has made to revitalize U.S. alliances and increase U.S. allies’ contributions to security in the Indo-Pacific region are essential in this era of shifting power balances and strategic competition. But Biden should be aware that when U.S. leaders vow to reimagine Washington’s alliances and work toward “a new 21st century vision” of “integrated deterrence,” Beijing could very well pursue the same with its own strategic partners.
This is not to say that Washington should distance itself from its allies in hopes of moderating China’s behavior. After all, Beijing’s choices will be chiefly informed by its own strategic vision and ambitions. Nevertheless, the Biden administration would do well to consider how its successes in rallying friends could impact Beijing’s threat perceptions and unwittingly spur the creation of a rival Chinese-led alliance network.
Serious thought should be given now on how to live with, and better yet prevent, such an outcome. Efforts along these lines should include considering ways to keep China invested in stable relations with the United States and its allies and making sure to engage with a broad array of states, not just like-minded democracies, so that those outside the United States’ traditional circle of friends do not conclude that their best or only option is to align with Beijing. Strategic foresight and planning will be essential to prevent the drift toward a truly divided world, with an opposing bloc helmed by a more entangled and interventionist China.
5. Australian Official Says AUKUS Will Establish Rules-Based Order with China Other Countries
Excerpts:
But Ambassador Arther Sinodinos said the deal will not only address China’s recent military developments, but will establish a “global, rules-based order” as geopolitics shifts focus to the Indo-Pacific.
“The aspiration that we have … is to have a global, rules-based order that applies to all countries big and small,” Sinodinos told the Defense Writers Group. “And our aspiration is for China to be very much a part of that order.”
Sinodinos emphasized that AUKUS is not “country-agnostic,” but rather addresses the Indo-Pacific region’s growing importance in geopolitics as a whole.
“If it has the effect of convincing other countries in the region to cooperate and be a part of the rules-based order, then it’s had the right sort of impact,” he said.
Australian Official Says AUKUS Will Establish Rules-Based Order with China Other Countries
11/16/2021
Australian Collins Class Submarines, HMAS Collins, HMAS Farncomb, HMAS Dechaineux and HMAS Sheean in formation while transiting through Cockburn Sound, Western Australia.
Commonwealth of Australia photo
As the technology sharing deal between the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom develops over the coming months, the three countries will aim to redefine standards for operations in the Indo-Pacific, the Australian ambassador to the United States said Nov. 16.
The trilateral partnership — known as AUKUS — was announced in September and will establish ways for the three nations to team up against China’s rising capabilities in the Indo-Pacific. A key element of the agreement is military technology transfers between the three countries, including eight nuclear-powered submarines for the Australian Royal Navy.
But Ambassador Arther Sinodinos said the deal will not only address China’s recent military developments, but will establish a “global, rules-based order” as geopolitics shifts focus to the Indo-Pacific.
“The aspiration that we have … is to have a global, rules-based order that applies to all countries big and small,” Sinodinos told the Defense Writers Group. “And our aspiration is for China to be very much a part of that order.”
Sinodinos emphasized that AUKUS is not “country-agnostic,” but rather addresses the Indo-Pacific region’s growing importance in geopolitics as a whole.
“If it has the effect of convincing other countries in the region to cooperate and be a part of the rules-based order, then it’s had the right sort of impact,” he said.
Australia will work with the United States and United Kingdom over the next 18 months to discern what the best pathway will be to develop the nuclear-powered submarine technologies. This includes the submarine’s design, as well as decisions related to workforce development and construction., Sinodinos added.
“We want to build a mature design, not spend the next few years redesigning submarines or whatever,” Sinodinos said. In the meantime, he said Australia will be extending the life of the country’s fleet of Collins-class submarines to fill any gaps.
Along with the submarines, the three AUKUS members will also share technology on a number of other areas such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cybersecurity and underwater technologies, Sinodinos said. Australia has identified over 60 critical technologies the country believes “are critical to national security going forward” and will be investing in, including those under the AUKUS partnership, he added.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison will announce those technologies Nov. 17, Sinodinos said.
Meanwhile, Australia continues to collaborate with the United States on other areas of military modernization. The two countries continue to work closely on developing air-launched hypersonic cruise missiles and “how they can be integrated into what we’re doing already,” he said.
6. Don’t Be Evil: America Needs Its Mantra Back
Conclusion:
Remember history’s lessons and its wisdom. Be better than me. Don’t roll the dice on foolish adventurism. Don’t fuel deception. Don’t fall for greed, anger, or foolish revenge masked as defending honor. Don’t enable the tricksters who bring you down. Most importantly: Don’t be evil.
Don’t Be Evil: America Needs Its Mantra Back
“We do not wish to be deceitful…It is simply a friendly match. We can fix the stakes so that no one is injured.”[1] So began many wars, going all the way back to Śakuni’s deceitful words in the ancient Hindu story, the Mahabharata. In it, the Pāṇḍavas are the good guys who rightfully rule the land with justice and equity.[2] Their fortune is boundless.[3]
But the Kurus, the jealous antagonists, repeatedly challenge them.[4] The Pāṇḍavas’ leader, thinking it morally right to defend their honor, accepts the Kuru challenge of an unrighteous and risky game of dice, continuing to gamble after repeated losses. The Kurus possess Śakuni’s skill at dice; the Pāṇḍavas do not see a choice.[5] Together, they destroy the world.[6]
Whether the United States behaves more like the Kurus or more like the Pāṇḍavas is a worthy question, but the problem of America behaving like either of them can be solved by reviving a few words famously used, and now mostly forgotten, by Google: “Don’t be Evil.”[7]
America and its conflicts are not so different from those in the Mahabharata. America has been called a shining city upon a hill, borrowing from the Christian Bible.[8] Like the Pāṇḍavas in their moral miscalculation, however, America has forgotten the importance of virtue. Does America rise to fight simply because challenged, with little to gain but much to lose? Does it honestly assess the continuing costs of war?
In 2016, I attempted and failed to become a Marine. I understood I might be questioned on my willingness to kill. I knew I may, one day, have to kill the enemy before they killed me.
In 2019, having rolled the dice in my own personal quest for adventure, I faced the possibility of flying MQ-9 Reapers.
A U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper from the Arizona Air National Guard 214th Attack Group parked on the flightline at the Alpena Combat Readiness Training Center, Mich. as its crew prepares to participate in the Northern Strike exercise on August 5, 2021. (Staff Sgt. Jay Grabiec/U.S. Air National Guard)
In 2019, having rolled the dice in my own personal quest for adventure, I faced the possibility of flying MQ-9 Reapers. In my mind, the duties would certainly destroy my own identity. I tried to make peace with what this mission would entail. I recalled an old story my old yoga teacher told me as a child. I began searching for it in the 45-hour Mahabharata “Retold” audiobook by Krishna Dharma. Restarting my friendship with my old sage and mentor, he directed my attention to the Bhagavad-gītā, the popular Mahabharata chapter, in which the main hero Arjuna suffers similar doubts about killing others in battle.[9] I listened earnestly. Even this abridged version of an ancient and unfamiliar story (to me) contained supremely poetic truths.
I feared I would slowly convince myself that “they’re all bad guys,” which I heard an instructor joke once. I feared becoming, and creating, yet more victims of these ill-begotten wars.
Waiting to hear my fate of whether I would fly remotely piloted aircraft equipped with weapons or without, I stared into my soul. I wondered if I would ever see it the same. I feared pulling a trigger based upon someone else’s legal and moral, or amoral, calculations. I feared I would slowly convince myself that “they’re all bad guys,” which I heard an instructor joke once. I feared becoming, and creating, yet more victims of these ill-begotten wars.
I also now faced the possibility of killing an enemy and associated “collateral damage” despite no threat towards myself. This type of killing stood in stark contrast to that which I had contemplated for the Marine Corps. It seems reasonable to require troops to kill simply as a cost of doing business: facing your enemy on the battlefield. This other kind, however, this cold, calculated killing, seems better-suited to those who specifically accept it. There are many warriors who bravely and tirelessly perform this mission. They have come to terms with how it is done, and they want to be there. I found I desperately did not want to join them.
Like the Pāṇḍava leader who kept falling for a dice game, I then rolled the dice in 2019 so that I could earn wings.[10] I cheated myself into believing I could do the mission. I left a perfectly good, peaceful existence. In my previous role as a military lawyer, leaders loved to encourage us about how we enabled the mission.[11] I had no romantic notions of this mission. I believed it did not, perhaps, differ so much from that of the Roman soldiers that I read about as a teenager in Hemingway’s “Today is Friday.”[12] These were not just any old Roman soldiers. These were the executioners of Christ. But Hemingway depicted them so elegantly, not as troops for an evil empire, but like regular Joes who happened to be in an American bar. Their unseen wounds came to life in just three pages. There was reluctance, guilt, sickness with their duties. There was even racism.[13] The story stuck with me. “Is being a soldier wrong?” I wondered. “Of all that Christ calls us to do, why this?”[14]
In his final lecture to my law school class in 2015, my esteemed civil rights law professor encouraged us to read poetry, offering us a diverse reading list. Soon after, he passed. This favorite professor of mine spent his life fighting for justice and paying it forward. Now that, I thought, was a life worth living. “Turn if you may from battles never done, I call, as they go by me one by one, Danger no refuge holds, and war no peace, For him who hears love sing and never cease.”[15] I found this poem and cherished it. Yet I would join the military twice more.[16] Now, in 2020, I fell into the story and become one of the characters, one of “their sad hearts, that may not live nor die.”[17]
My classmates and I received our assignments almost a year later, and I went first. I was spared Arjuna’s fate. I would not fly the Reaper. There would be no celestial weapons thrown by my hand.
Image courtesy of author.
My hubris felt ironic. Now in flight school, I wrote a verse on my “dolla ride” dollar, a customary gift instructors receive for a student’s first flight. My classmates and I received our assignments almost a year later, and I went first. I was spared Arjuna’s fate. I would not fly the Reaper. There would be no celestial weapons thrown by my hand.
I rolled the dice despite knowing better. Like Śakuni with the Kuru king, I tricked myself into thinking I could control the game.[18] I accepted a fundamentally unknowable, and therefore unacceptable, risk. My decision amounted to an inherently evil, immoral, and unwise gamble. This is my lesson-learned to you, decision-makers. Don’t be evil.[19] May Google’s old catchphrase become shorthand for wise decisions in the future. In the wake of America’s departure from Afghanistan, leaders cannot afford to commit another misadventure, the kind in which the righteous Pāṇḍavas lost everything for what began as a simple and foolish challenge; the kind that almost began after striking a hero of Iran’s tribe in early 2020.[20][21]
It is easy to discard old stories as lessons for children, and to become caught up in self-importance in the waging of war. Sometimes, if we aim to be successful, it helps to remember the old stories, or even to learn new ones. In my exploration of the Mahabharata, I found words that would be right at home in the Christian books of wisdom. As in the Bible, the poetic truths speak for themselves. They possess instructions on moral, ethical, and just behavior for both individuals as well as for warrior kings.
Statue of Bhishma. (Wikimedia)
One Mahabharata hero, Bhīṣma, was steeped in his own sin and that of his Kuru clan.[22] He was the most powerful bystander to a great injustice.[23] In that moment of immense personal failure he shared, “Sometimes what a great and powerful man calls religion is accepted as such, even though it may not normally be so. What a weak man says, no matter how moral it may seem, is generally disregarded.”[24] Like the Kurus, Americans became susceptible to powerful actors and persuasive charlatans. Moral leaders lost their strength.
When did America stop practicing virtue and morality? How, for example, did Air Force leaders allow hundreds of admitted cheaters at the Air Force Academy to continue on to become the leaders of tomorrow?[25] Whether one follows ancient biblical kingdoms or those of the Mahabharata, those who compromise their integrity will fall. In his guilt, Bhīṣma correctly predicted, “it is certain that as the Kurus have become slaves of greed and folly, our race will soon be destroyed.” [26] As the deceitful Śakuni fixed games of dice, leading a great many heroes to their end, we continue to lie ourselves into war. We lie ourselves into continuing war.
Christian thinker and monk Thomas Merton wrote a wake-up call in the early 1960s during the Vietnam War, stating “the world in its madness is guided by military men, who are the blindest of the blind.” His words could have been written today:[27] “The real threat, as he saw it, was far more serious. It lay precisely in the ‘sane’ men, the ‘well-adapted’ men, who will have ‘perfectly good reasons, logical well-adapted reasons’ for ringing down the curtain on the history of man when the time comes.”[28] Merton was speaking of Adolf Eichmann’s sanity as studied by Hannah Arendt, but he may as well have been talking about the Pāṇḍavas of the Mahabharata, who waltzed directly into their world’s destruction despite their best intentions.[29]
Thomas Merton (Ralph Eugene Meatyard/Meatyard Estate)
As asked in the Thin Red Line, “Are you righteous,” America? Is this nation more like the pious and moral Pāṇḍavas or more like the Kurus, who were not all bad? Jesus said, “No one is good but God alone.”[30] But what makes one nation “the good guys” they presume themselves to be? Is it simply that we must be good? Does our behavior matter? The question must be asked critically, lest we serve simply the religion of America and nothing else. Defending democracy, or defending freedom are often the feel-good answers for why we serve. Part of the bargain in those assertions, however, is that America remains a liberal democracy; that it uses its troops for appropriate defense purposes, and not as an imperial power simply competing with other imperial powers. There should remain some reasonable expectation that wars be entered into and fought justly. Without those higher principles, war is no different than the rigged dice competition that cost the Pāṇḍavas everything. Without them, military service is no different than service in the Roman army.
The sage grandfather to the Pandavas, Vyāsadeva, wisely said, “What is the value of a kingdom gained through sin and earning only sin, O King?”[31] More profoundly, Arjuna advised, “Listen, O King, as I tell you how only a few men can overpower a vast army . . . Those who desire victory do not conquer by prowess but by truth, compassion, piety and virtue. Fight with assurance, dear brother, for victory is always where righteousness is found.”[32]
Reading the Mahabharata, it became clear to me that this nation has lost sight of virtue and righteousness at the strategic level dealing with other nation-states. In recent memory, America wrought unexpected destruction by toppling Saddam, and it may have lost Afghanistan. But the world is not yet destroyed. There is no time like the present to start behaving as current circumstances require. The nation need not follow the deceitful ways of the Kuru trickster Śakuni, who destroyed his entire world through good but flawed men who enabled him.[33]
Remember history’s lessons and its wisdom. Be better than me. Don’t roll the dice on foolish adventurism. Don’t fuel deception. Don’t fall for greed, anger, or foolish revenge masked as defending honor. Don’t enable the tricksters who bring you down. Most importantly: Don’t be evil.
Dan Rust is an aviator and former military lawyer. He now focuses on crew resource management, inclusion, and organizational culture as studied by Dianne Vaughan. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.
The Strategy Bridge is read, respected, and referenced across the worldwide national security community—in conversation, education, and professional and academic discourse.
Thank you for being a part of the The Strategy Bridge community. Together, we can #BuildTheBridge.
Header Image: Krishna Counsels the Pandava Leaders, Brooklyn Museum, ~1830 (Unknown).
Notes:
[1] Dharma, Krishna. “The Dice Game.” Part I, Chapter 19. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time, 185. San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020.
[2] Dharma, Krishna. “Duryodhana’s Envy.” Part I, Chapter 18. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time. San Raphael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020. https://vedabase.io/en/library/mbk/1/18/.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Dharma, Krishna. “The Dice Game.” Part I, Chapter 19. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time, 187. San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020.
[5] Dharma, Krishna. “Duryodhana’s Envy.” Part I, Chapter 18. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time. San Raphael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020. https://vedabase.io/en/library/mbk/1/18/.
[6] Dharma, Krishna. “Bhīma Fights Duryodhana.” Part II, Chapter 27. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time. San Raphael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020. https://vedabase.io/en/library/mbk/2/27/.
[10] Dharma, Krishna. “The Dice Game.” Part I, Chapter 19. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time, 187. San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020.
[11] I enlisted in the Air National Guard in 2007, attempted Marine Corps Officer Candidate School in 2016 (washed-out after 29 days), and finally commissioned as an officer in the active duty Air Force in 2017.
[12] Hemingway, Ernest. “Today Is Friday.” Short Story. In The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. New York, NY: Scribner, 2003.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Yeats, W. B. “The Rose - 1893.” Essay. In The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, 29. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth, 2008.
[16] I enlisted in the Air National Guard in 2007, the Marine Corps OCS in 2016 (washed-out after 29 days), and finally commissioned as an officer in the active duty Air Force in 2017.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Dharma, Krishna. “Duryodhana’s Envy.” Part I, Chapter 18. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time. San Raphael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020. https://vedabase.io/en/library/mbk/1/18/.
[22] Dharma, Krishna. “Draupadī Dragged to the Assembly.” Part I, Chapter 20. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time, 198. San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020.
[23] Dharma, Krishna. “Śikhaṇḍī’s Destiny.” Part II, Chapter 2. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time. San Raphael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020. https://vedabase.io/en/library/mbk/2/2/.
[24] Dharma, Krishna. “Draupadī Dragged to the Assembly.” Part I, Chapter 20. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time, 201. San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020.
[26] Dharma, Krishna. “Draupadī Dragged to the Assembly.” Part I, Chapter 20. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time, 201. San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020.
[27] Merton, Thomas, and Gordon C. Zahn. “Original Child Monk: An Appreciation.” Foreword. In The Nonviolent Alternative, 25–27. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2010.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Mark 10:18 Revised Standard Version.
[31] Dharma, Krishna. “Into Position.” Part II, Chapter 3. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time, 542. San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020.
[32] Dharma, Krishna. “Into Position.” Part II, Chapter 3. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time. San Raphael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020. https://vedabase.io/en/library/mbk/2/3/.
[33] Dharma, Krishna. “Draupadī Dragged to the Assembly.” Part I, Chapter 20. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time, 195. San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020.
7. Swift trans-Atlantic action kept Turkey from fueling Belarus’ hybrid attacks
Excerpts:
Lukashenko devised this hybrid attack in retaliation for a range of EU economic and financial sanctions imposed in June over what Brussels referred to as Lukashenko’s “serious human rights violations.” The EU imposed these sanctions after a Belarusian jet in May forced down a commercial plane in order to arrest Roman Protasevich, a dissident journalist on board.
Although Putin insists that Russia has “absolutely nothing to do with” the ongoing crisis on the Poland-Belarus border, the Kremlin demonstrated its support for Lukashenko by flying nuclear-capable strategic bombers over Belarus last week. Such coordinated Russian-Belarusian action is precisely what Maj. Gen. William Hickman, director of strategic plans and policy for NATO Allied Transformation Command in Norfolk, Virginia, warned against in 2019: “Our adversaries or competitors are seeing an ability to work below the level of Article 5. Or, as NATO would say, to work below the level of conflict.”
What made the Belarusian crisis more challenging compared to earlier hybrid attacks was the allegations by journalists that Turkey, a NATO member state, was also complicit. Last Tuesday, one day after von der Leyen announced that the EU is exploring “how to sanction third country airlines that are active in human trafficking,” EU Observer reported that Turkish Airlines was one of the carriers complicit with Belarus and a Politico Europe report pointed the finger at Turkey as being “one of the main points of origin for flights landing in Minsk.” The same day, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki tweeted: “We can see fully synchronised actions – Turkey’s actions with Belarus and Russia. We are worried, we do not like this.”
Swift trans-Atlantic action kept Turkey from fueling Belarus’ hybrid attacks
Following her meeting with President Biden at the White House last Wednesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated on Twitter that the rising tensions on the Belarus-Poland border were not a “migration crisis” but a “hybrid attack,” a form of irregular warfare that blends military and non-military methods. She proceeded to announce that the European Union and the United States will cooperate on sanctioning third-country airlines involved in human trafficking. The unstated target of von der Leyen’s warning was the Turkish government, whose flag carrier had been delivering migrants to Belarus. When called out, Ankara reversed course, showing how coordinated transatlantic pressure can thwart a hybrid attack.
Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko, whom Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to support earlier this month against foreign “interference,” has been weaponizing migration into three EU member states—Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland—since June. Lukashenko has done so by luring migrants from Africa and the Middle East to Belarus, offering them unfettered passage to the EU border, often by government bus, and at times even forcing them at gunpoint to cross into the EU.
Lukashenko devised this hybrid attack in retaliation for a range of EU economic and financial sanctions imposed in June over what Brussels referred to as Lukashenko’s “serious human rights violations.” The EU imposed these sanctions after a Belarusian jet in May forced down a commercial plane in order to arrest Roman Protasevich, a dissident journalist on board.
Although Putin insists that Russia has “absolutely nothing to do with” the ongoing crisis on the Poland-Belarus border, the Kremlin demonstrated its support for Lukashenko by flying nuclear-capable strategic bombers over Belarus last week. Such coordinated Russian-Belarusian action is precisely what Maj. Gen. William Hickman, director of strategic plans and policy for NATO Allied Transformation Command in Norfolk, Virginia, warned against in 2019: “Our adversaries or competitors are seeing an ability to work below the level of Article 5. Or, as NATO would say, to work below the level of conflict.”
What made the Belarusian crisis more challenging compared to earlier hybrid attacks was the allegations by journalists that Turkey, a NATO member state, was also complicit. Last Tuesday, one day after von der Leyen announced that the EU is exploring “how to sanction third country airlines that are active in human trafficking,” EU Observer reported that Turkish Airlines was one of the carriers complicit with Belarus and a Politico Europe report pointed the finger at Turkey as being “one of the main points of origin for flights landing in Minsk.” The same day, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki tweeted: “We can see fully synchronised actions – Turkey’s actions with Belarus and Russia. We are worried, we do not like this.”
This is not the first time that Turkey’s authoritarian president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has played a spoiler role within NATO by rushing to the aid of fellow strongman Lukashenko. The Washington Post reported that Turkey used its veto power within NATO to water down an official condemnation of Lukashenko in May following the Protasevich incident. According to Reuters, Ankara blocked unspecified punitive steps that Baltic allies and Poland had advocated.
This follows two earlier episodes where the Erdogan government similarly blocked a harsher NATO response to Russia. First, Ankara watered down the wording of an April 15 NATO statement expressing solidarity with America over Russia’s cyberattacks on U.S. government agencies. Likewise, Turkey watered down an April 22 statement voicing concern over Russian military intelligence’s blowing up of ammunition storage depots in the Czech Republic in 2014. Turkey also blocked a NATO defense plan for Poland and the Baltic states for over six months until June 2020, prompting The New York Times to label the country as “NATO’s ‘Elephant in the Room.’”
The threats of coordinated U.S.-EU sanctions against Turkish Airlines — although neither Washington nor Brussels has explicitly indicated that the airline is in their crosshairs — appear to have delivered immediate results. The day after von der Leyen’s White House announcement, Turkey’s foreign ministry issued a press release stating that Ankara “understands the challenges Poland, Lithuania and Latvia have been exposed to” and is “ready to give all necessary support in order to overcome this issue.”
The following day, Turkey’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation announced that Ankara would not allow citizens of Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, who comprised the bulk of migrants Lukashenko has been weaponizing, to board Belarus flights. Less than 24 hours after a Turkish Airlines statement denying any wrongdoing, Ankara bowed to pressure from NATO allies to take immediate action.
Last week’s developments show that concerted and swift transatlantic pushback was key to thwarting Minsk’s hybrid attacks as well as reversing the course of a complicit NATO member state with a troubling record of playing a spoiler role. This is a lesson the transatlantic alliance needs to keep in mind as Belarus, Russia and the like plan for their next hybrid attack.
Aykan Erdemir is a former member of the Turkish parliament and senior director of the Turkey Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Follow him on Twitter @aykan_erdemir.
8. Rising costs for troops’ pay and benefits could hurt military readiness, experts warn
Go to a draft? Reduce troop levels and replace them with technology? Get involved in fewer conflicts? Or just cut pay and benefits? What are our choices?
Rising costs for troops’ pay and benefits could hurt military readiness, experts warn
Military leaders will need to make some difficult choices on pay and benefits in coming years if they want to maintain funding needed to keep up force readiness and end strength, a panel of defense experts said on Tuesday.
“We need to focus [military] benefits on those currently serving, but the problem is most of the benefits now have shifted to those no longer serving,” said Arnold Punaro, former staff director for the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“There are 2.4 million retirees [receiving benefits] compared to 1.3 million active -duty troops getting them … The deferred piece of military spending has to be dealt with.”
Purnaro’s comments came at a roundtable event on military challenges organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Other panelists echoed his concerns about personnel costs continuing to rise within the Defense Department even as the services’ end strengths have declined.
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The average cost per active duty service member for the military this fiscal year was $136,000.
Earlier this fall, CSIS released a report noting that the number of active-duty troops fell by more than 64 percent from 1952 to 2016, but total DOD personnel spending rose by 110 percent over the same period.
The average cost per active duty service member for the department in fiscal 2021 was $136,000. That takes into account things like basic pay, specialty bonuses, housing stipends, and medical benefits.
But panelists said they think troops — and the American public — have little concept how those rising personnel costs hurt other readiness and equipment needs for the military
“Would you really want to see your [battlefield] risk increase and your effectiveness decrease in order to protect every single personnel benefit?” asked Sam Nunn, former Democratic senator from Georgia and a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“But when you talk about making changes to benefits, even with a grandfather provision, the only people who know about it are basically the [troops], and lawmakers get no support politically for doing it.”
Mac Thornberry, a former Republican representative from Texas and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said his committee broached the topic of making military benefits more sustainable in recent years, but more needs to be done.
He said radical changes to military personnel rules — things like allowing temporary enlistment for high-demand specialists — could help ease some of those problems. But the complexity of those kinds of changes have deferred serious debate on them as other political problems dominate Capitol Hill.
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By Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Arnold L. Punaro (ret)
Punaro said also defense officials and political leaders need to reexamine legacy benefits such as the military’s commissary systems and the Department of Defense Education Activity to decide whether their expensive price tags still provide more value to the force than reinvestment of those dollars into equipment upgrades and weapons research.
He said while the United States military still boasts the strongest fighting force in the world, the creeping weight of the personnel costs could undermine that in coming years.
“If we don’t fundamentally improve the capability of our military soon, particularly technologically … we’re going to be in a really, really bad situation,” Punaro said. “We’ve got to get started on it right away.”
Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.
9. United Nations’ transnational bureaucrats now do Beijing’s bidding
Excerpts:
The People’s Republic of China sits on the U.N. Human Rights Council, along with Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Pakistan, and Qatar. The main preoccupation of the UNHCR has long been to demonize and de-legitimize Israel, the world’s most important Jewish community following the slaughter of European Jews in the 1940s and the mass expulsions of Jews from Arab countries in the years after World War II.
This just in: China has joined with Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and other egregiously unfree states to form a new U.N. caucus. They call it the Group of Friends in Defense of the United Nations. They claim that their members “suffer from unilateral coercive measures imposed by the U.S. and the E.U…in violation of the international law and the UN Charter.”
When will American and European leaders recognize the significance of such developments and the strategic threat they pose? When will they counter efforts to subvert the U.N. and make the world safer for authoritarians, tyrants, and human-rights violators? The case of Emma Reilly is a wake-up call. American and European leaders are sleeping through it.
United Nations’ transnational bureaucrats now do Beijing’s bidding
OPINION:
For decades, the United Nations has wasted billions of dollars, achieved little, and tolerated misconduct – the Oil-for-Food scandal and sexual exploitation by U.N. peacekeepers are just two examples.
The U.N.’s failures have not led to serious reform, and the U.N.’s misdeeds have not led to serious penalties. Nevertheless, its bank accounts are endlessly replenished, with American taxpayers contributing the lion’s share.
But the transnational bureaucrats who run the organization do respond to some outside influences. In particular, China’s rulers have been increasingly successful at commandeering multilateral agencies to further their unilateral ambitions.
I’m going to give you one example that I hope will clarify the depth and extent to which the U.N. has been demoralized – in the most literal sense.
Emma Reilly is an Irish human rights lawyer. In 2012, she was lucky enough – or so she thought – to get a job with the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
About a year later, the persecution of minorities within the borders of the People’s Republic of China began to receive some attention. Witnesses applied for accreditation to testify in Geneva, where the OHCHR and the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) are headquartered.
Ms. Reilly soon became aware that U.N. staffers, in violation of U.N. rules, were secretly providing Beijing with the names of those potential witnesses, including Uyghur, Tibetan, and Hong Kong dissidents and activists. Witnesses were subsequently threatened, imprisoned, and tortured. One reportedly died while in detention. The families of witnesses were harassed.
Ms. Reilly reported all this to her superiors, including the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Secretary-General. She provided documentary evidence.
Her superiors were outraged – not at those tipping off Chinese officials but at Ms. Reilly for doing her job, which, as she put it, was “to report deliberate endangerment of human rights activists.”
But they didn’t fire her. Initially, she figured there were two reasons for that. One: They knew she was telling the truth. Two: The U.N. has pledged to protect whistleblowers. From then on, however, she was ostracized, treated like a traitor, and given only busy work.
The OHCHR’s public response has been inconsistent. Spokesmen have denied handing over the names of witnesses, acknowledged that it was an ongoing practice, and claimed it was only a “limited practice,” which had ended.
Ms. Reilly appeared before U.N. tribunals but without clear results. She told her story to diplomats and government officials. Some expressed concern, but none did anything.
In July of 2020, a U.N. Ethics Officer belatedly recognized Ms. Reilly as a whistleblower. Investigations against her proceeded anyway, based not on the allegation that she was lying but rather for having spoken publicly about U.N. activities without “authorization.”
In August, she wrote a letter to Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., requesting a meeting, emphasizing “that this is not an employment dispute, but an issue of the protection of human rights defenders against reprisals, and the ability of U.N. staff to blow the whistle on the most serious misconduct.”
Ms. Thomas-Greenfield did not respond. Last week, Ms. Reilly was fired.
“My case is not unique,” Ms. Reilly wrote on the website UNintegrity.com. “The U.N. Administration cannot point to a single case of a public interest whistleblower who has been protected. Staff are fully and completely aware of that, so even most of the ethical staff members simply decide to turn the other way, knowing that their reports will not stop misconduct or lead to accountability, but merely signal the end of their own U.N. careers.”
She pointed out that “there is no freedom of information and no external oversight of the U.N.” That’s one reason the organization’s decadence receives little attention in the dominant media.
Another reason is that many journalists, for ideological reasons, are loath to cast aspersions on international organizations. Much of the media disputed or ignored the extent to which the World Health Organization acted as an agent of China’s rulers – increasing the damage caused by the virus that escaped from China and spread worldwide.
The Trump administration withdrew from the WHO and cut off American funding. The Biden administration has rejoined and turned the dollar faucet back on, demanding no reforms in exchange.
The WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has been nominated for re-election by Germany and 16 other members of the European Union. The Biden administration has not registered disapproval. The election is slated for next May. Mr. Tedros is likely to be the only candidate on the ballot.
The People’s Republic of China sits on the U.N. Human Rights Council, along with Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Pakistan, and Qatar. The main preoccupation of the UNHCR has long been to demonize and de-legitimize Israel, the world’s most important Jewish community following the slaughter of European Jews in the 1940s and the mass expulsions of Jews from Arab countries in the years after World War II.
This just in: China has joined with Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and other egregiously unfree states to form a new U.N. caucus. They call it the Group of Friends in Defense of the United Nations. They claim that their members “suffer from unilateral coercive measures imposed by the U.S. and the E.U…in violation of the international law and the UN Charter.”
When will American and European leaders recognize the significance of such developments and the strategic threat they pose? When will they counter efforts to subvert the U.N. and make the world safer for authoritarians, tyrants, and human-rights violators? The case of Emma Reilly is a wake-up call. American and European leaders are sleeping through it.
• Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times.
10. The death of democracy (USAGM/VOA)
Is there a "rest of the story" to this?
I pay close attention to the Korean Service on Voice of America and Radio Free Asia and I have never seen anything like this. I have only experienced the goal of what Mr. Peck sought to achieve:
Excerpt:
My goal, my only goal, was to return the news services to their legally mandated mission: to report news that is “accurate, objective, and comprehensive” (in the words of the VOA charter, which is U.S. law), and to promote American ideals like democracy and human rights around the world. In this modest, nonpartisan goal, I was doomed from the start.
The death of democracy
NOVEMBER 15, 2021 12:00 AM
BY MICHAEL PACK
I have witnessed the death of democracy. I don’t mean in a poor country with few democratic institutions and a weak rule of law. I don’t mean via a military coup or under pressure from a hostile power. I mean here in the United States, quietly and as a result of decades of decay — rot from within.
In a sense, we all witnessed it. From the moment Donald Trump was elected president until the day he left office, government officials refused to follow his orders that conflicted with their own views, in spite of their obligation to serve whoever is president. The permanent bureaucracy felt they knew better. After all, they were experts, while the president, in their estimation, was an ignoramus, or worse, unfit for office. For example, during Trump’s first impeachment, a parade of senior officials, many serving on the White House’s National Security Council or in the State Department, testified against their boss, making clear that their understanding of Ukraine was superior to his, liberating them to undermine his policies.
But I witnessed the death of democracy up close and personal. President Trump selected me to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which is responsible for all government international broadcasting. At a budget of about $850 million a year, USAGM is made up of five broadcasters: Voice of America, Cuba Broadcasting, Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Radio Free Asia, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Together, they reach over 350 million people a week in over 70 languages.
I’ve been told that the day after Trump was elected, the senior leadership of USAGM held a meeting to decide how best to block Trump from assuming authority over the agency, as they deemed Trump dangerous and unqualified. The White House selected me in March 2017, two months after President Trump was sworn in. Agency leadership, along with others in the federal bureaucracy and eventually Democrats in the Senate, blocked my confirmation for three years and three months. I finally walked through the door of USAGM in June 2020 for the final eight months of the Trump presidency.
My goal, my only goal, was to return the news services to their legally mandated mission: to report news that is “accurate, objective, and comprehensive” (in the words of the VOA charter, which is U.S. law), and to promote American ideals like democracy and human rights around the world. In this modest, nonpartisan goal, I was doomed from the start. The USAGM permanent bureaucracy was ready to undermine every move of my administration, with the help of their allies in the media, Congress, and the courts, as well as pro bono lawyers. After all, they had been preparing for years while my nomination languished.
To give a few highlights. On my first day, I removed or caused to resign the heads of the five networks, as was my explicit right under law, and as is a common practice among incoming CEOs in the private and public sector. This move was clearly nonpartisan, as I had removed Republicans as well as Democrats, and they were essentially political appointees. The purpose was a clean start. The media portrayed this as “the Wednesday night massacre,” though only five out of 4000 employees left. They repeated their claims that I intended to turn USAGM into “Trump TV,” which they had manufactured the day after the White House selected me in March 2017.
Every subsequent act of my administration was not only blocked, but lied about and used to discredit me personally and the Trump administration generally. My efforts were treated as an attack that merited the strongest counterattack from my purported employees. Out of innumerable examples, let me offer only one.
During the summer of 2020, in the midst of the presidential election, a whistleblower called our attention to a pro-Biden video on the Voice of America Urdu Service, the website of which could be viewed all over the world, including here in the U.S. The video was a repackaged Biden ad, literally. It featured then-candidate Biden, in Michigan, asking Muslims to vote for him with supporting appearances by Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, progressive Democratic congresswomen. No context was offered. Please view the video and decide for yourself:
Everyone knew this violated the VOA charter, which is U.S. law that we all are required to uphold, and possibly other campaign and broadcasting laws. When we called this to the VOA’s attention, they took it down, though reluctantly. A week later, we discovered an audio version was still available. As CEO, I decided to launch an investigation to determine who was responsible and what disciplinary actions should be taken. The investigation was led by USAGM career attorneys and our HR department, coordinated by a lawyer I had brought in to the agency. They recommended a series of actions, including terminating the contractors who produced the video and milder actions for their superiors, including leave without pay for a week or two.
This was not the first time the VOA had flagrantly violated U.S. law and its charter. During the 2016 election, the VOA Ukrainian service ran Robert De Niro’s infamous attack on Donald Trump calling him “a pig” and “a dog” and saying he wanted “to punch him in the face.” This, too, ran without context. Viewers were not told it was part of a pro-Hillary Clinton ad. The VOA is free to criticize the president or any candidate, but this was advocacy for one side, pure and simple. Remember, these are your tax dollars at work.
However, never before I became CEO had there been any consequences for breaking the law. My inquiry was a shock to the system, but I felt I had to uphold the law.
My actions were immediately attacked by the legacy media and by concerned congressmen, all in touch with the people I had fired. They charged that I was interfering with journalists and, once again, trying to turn the VOA into Trump TV. One reporter mocked me for saying that the VOA spot was targeted at getting out the Muslim vote in Michigan for Biden, citing how few Urdu speakers there are in Michigan. But the VOA spot was in English, as he well knew, and he also knew that his readers would not know this.
Soon, the fired contractors were represented by pro bono lawyers who accused us of violating their first amendment rights. As contractors working for the U.S. government, are they free to express whatever views they wish, whatever the law says? Moreover, I am their boss at a media company. Do CNN journalists claim first amendment rights when Jeff Zucker tells them what to report? The big lie of this story was that I told any reporters what to report. I simply required them to follow the law and requested that the agency enforce its own rules.
The most senior person responsible was Kelu Chao, then the head of VOA language services. In her case, I merely gave her a verbal reprimand that did not appear in her personnel file. She, too, immediately signed on to a suit against us, alleging a violation of her first amendment rights. Today, she has been rewarded by the Biden administration and is the acting CEO of USAGM, my old position. All others involved in this scandalous misuse of taxpayer funds have been rehired and many promoted.
This is only one of a long list of similar stories. In short, there was no way for me, a Senate-confirmed agency head, to assume authority over this mid-sized agency. The permanent bureaucracy and their allies simply would not permit it. Bad as it was for me, it is so much worse at bigger agencies like the State Department, the Department of Defense, and the intelligence agencies. No matter that Donald Trump was the duly elected president of the United States, federal bureaucrats did not accept that. After all, they knew better how to run the country, so that is what they did. This is tyranny, pure and simple — government by unelected bureaucrats, subverting the will of the majority.
What to do about it? I do not accept the two favorite solutions put forward by conservative reformers.
The first group says the problem is that Donald Trump did not get enough qualified, experienced, government professionals in key political appointments soon enough. Next time, we need to have a government in waiting, ready to serve. Surely, this is a good idea, but far from sufficient. In my agency of 4,000 people, I could bring in about 10 political appointees. We were outnumbered 400-to-1.
As near as I can tell, all my mid-level and senior managers were partisan Democrats or not very political. Many lower-level workers, especially technicians, were more evenly divided, but they did not lead the agency. Those who did lead the agency made their opposition to President Trump and me personally very clear. No amount of management genius by a few could overcome this concerted opposition of the many who were out to undermine us. Only hubris could persuade otherwise, hubris which is likely to lead to ineffective and weak leadership. Usually, those who think they can manage the bureaucracy end up instead making an implicit deal with them: They are allowed a few conservative pet projects to burnish their credentials with their base, but they agree to let the bureaucracy run the remaining 95% of the agency — a recipe for a peaceful and “successful” time in office.
The second, more radical group of reformers advocates firing huge numbers of career bureaucrats in a short time. Some say we need to fire 30% in the first weeks of a new administration, an appealing slogan and rallying cry, but no more likely to succeed than a “good management” solution.
I highly doubt that this ambitious objective could be achieved, given the size and nature of the modern federal bureaucracy. Government bureaucrats have powerful civil service protections. In eight months, I could not fire a handful of people whom career adjudicators recommended terminating for cause, such as gross mismanagement leading to security lapses. I put them on administrative leave with pay and then started the process of removal. All have been brought back among those who wanted to return. Republicans often promise to eliminate entire departments. For example, candidate Ronald Reagan ran on eliminating the newly created Education Department. Not one department has been eliminated. Most grew in size, including the Education Department.
Even if the new administration could institute a 30% across-the-board cut, the wrong people would likely be fired. The best at scheming, the most committed ideologues, are the most skilled in surviving reductions in force. Declaring war on the bureaucracy, unless you have a real plan, will mire the new administration in endless internecine battles, in court and on the Hill, distracting it from the rest of its agenda. Remember all the supporting institutions, like the media, the courts, and whistleblower law firms? They would have a field day.
So, what can be done? The good news is that about half of Americans know, in their gut, that the government no longer represents the will of the people. They need to rise up and demand an end to this tyranny. We did it before, in 1776. This time, we have a constitution and a rule of law, so we don’t need an armed revolution, but we do need an unarmed one, a peaceful democratic revolution. If a large majority of the people forcefully demand change and reflect this at the ballot box in a clear mandate, then and only then reform can come. Democracy will then return, and we will once again have a government of, for, and by the people. Many gave their lives for this. Now, it is our turn.
Michael Pack is a documentary filmmaker, president of Manifold Productions, and former CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. He has produced over 15 documentaries for public television, most recently Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words.
11. A Veteran Diplomat, a ‘Tragic Figure,’ Battles Critics in the U.S. and Afghanistan
A Veteran Diplomat, a ‘Tragic Figure,’ Battles Critics in the U.S. and Afghanistan
Zalmay Khalilzad, who stepped down as the envoy for Afghanistan after the U.S. exit, has defended the deal he negotiated with the Taliban during the Trump administration.
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Zalmay Khalilzad is defending his reputation against charges that he bears special blame for the chaotic fall of Kabul, the Afghan capital, to the Taliban in August.Credit...T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times
By
Nov. 16, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON — The failure to rescue Afghanistan from the Taliban weighs on many American generals and diplomats. But few had as personal a stake as Zalmay Khalilzad.
Raised in Kabul and naturalized as a U.S. citizen, Mr. Khalilzad worked on Afghanistan policy under four American presidents before stepping down last month.
The battle for Afghanistan is lost, for now. But Mr. Khalilzad has embarked on a new fight: to defend his reputation against accusations that he bears special blame for the chaotic fall of Kabul, the Afghan capital, to the Taliban in August.
Mr. Khalilzad has been on a public-relations tour of sorts, sitting for numerous interviews in recent weeks to argue that he tried his best to broker peace despite vanishing leverage and an intransigent Afghan government. Calling his work incomplete, he is also applying unwelcome public pressure on the Biden administration to work with the Taliban.
His critics say the deal he reached with the Taliban under President Donald J. Trump was either delusional or cynical, a means of providing thin political cover for America’s abandonment of his native country.
Mr. Khalilzad “was the architect of the grand deception scheme,” Amrullah Saleh, who served as Afghanistan’s first vice president until the Taliban took control of Kabul, tweeted on Oct. 28. He said that Mr. Khalilzad treated Afghanistan “as a sacrificial goat,” caring for it “to the moment of slaughter.”
During a recent interview at his son’s high-rise apartment outside Washington, with sweeping views of the National Mall, Mr. Khalilzad rejected such criticism with a tone of bemused forbearance.
“I respect those who say, ‘This was a defining war for the future of the Islamic world, and no matter what we must prevail,’” he said. “Well, yeah. Sure, there’s a lot of things I wish for — but it wasn’t realistic, because they couldn’t convince the presidents, Congress and others.”
He added: “I tried to say, ‘OK, America wants to leave militarily. But let’s do also the right thing for Afghanistan. Because given my Afghan-ness, I was very much in touch with the feelings of the Afghan people. I took the job in part to see if I could end the war also for Afghanistan, for the people.”
The war ended on Mr. Khalilzad’s watch, but not on the terms he had hoped. Instead of the power-sharing government he imagined could restrain the Taliban, the militant group has assumed total control over the country, which is now facing economic collapse and famine.
“Zal emerges from this as a quite tragic figure,” said Eric S. Edelman, a former national security official who worked with Mr. Khalilzad under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
As colleagues at the Pentagon in the late 1980s, Mr. Edelman and Mr. Khalilzad helped drive U.S. policy in support of mujahedeen fighters in Afghanistan resisting Soviet occupiers. During the Bush administration, they again backed resistance fighters, who this time were battling the Taliban as the United States invaded in 2001.
“He did a lot to create a modern, post-Taliban independent state,” Mr. Edelman said of Mr. Khalilzad. “And then to be in part the handmaiden of its demise — I don’t know how you can see that as other than tragic.”
An Introduction
Mr. Khalilzad had been out of government for years when, during the 2016 presidential campaign, he introduced Mr. Trump for a foreign policy speech hosted by a think tank with which he was affiliated. A lifelong Republican, Mr. Khalilzad did not endorse Mr. Trump, noting his “provocative views.” But the introduction earned him good will in Mr. Trump’s inner circle.
Then, in 2018, Mr. Khalilzad told officials in the Trump administration that Taliban representatives were interested in talking about a peace agreement. That September, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo appointed him envoy for “the singular mission” of “developing the opportunities to get the Afghans and the Taliban to come to a reconciliation.”
In practice, however, the talks focused on the terms of the U.S. withdrawal that Mr. Trump sought. Eighteen months and hundreds of hours of bartering in Doha, the Qatari capital, produced an agreement in February 2020 under which the United States agreed to withdraw all its troops and the Taliban promised to halt attacks on American forces and never harbor terrorist groups.
The deal also included a Taliban pledge to begin direct talks with the U.S.-backed government in Kabul, as Mr. Pompeo had directed. But the Afghan government was reluctant, and the Taliban seemed unwilling to compromise on their goal to establish a religiously based Islamic emirate.
Critics say Mr. Khalilzad negotiated little more than a relatively safe U.S. retreat.
“I believe Ambassador Khalilzad was too willing to make concessions to the Taliban and to throw the Afghan government under the bus,” said Lisa Curtis, who worked closely with Mr. Khalilzad in the Trump administration as the National Security Council’s senior director for South and Central Asia. “It was clear to many people that the Taliban was not interested in a peace process, but only in pursuing a military path to power.”
Mr. Khalilzad’s supporters say that he was handed an impossible task when he joined the Trump administration.
“I’ve been very critical of the February 2020 agreement that he negotiated,” Mr. Edelman said. “But I will say in his defense: Trump cut the legs out from under it. What kind of negotiating leverage does he have when the president is repeatedly saying, ‘We’re going to get the hell out of Afghanistan!’”
While he defends the agreement, Mr. Khalilzad also argues that the United States lost the will to fight in Afghanistan, partly because of the failures of “my former military colleagues.”
Afghanistan Under Taliban Rule
With the departure of the U.S. military on Aug. 30, Afghanistan quickly fell back under control of the Taliban. Across the country, there is widespread anxiety about the future.
Ms. Curtis also noted that Mr. Khalilzad halted talks after a Taliban attack on Bagram Air Base, which killed two people and wounded 73 others — none of them Americans — but resumed them two days later. “It made the U.S. look weak and desperate,” Ms. Curtis said.
She lamented Mr. Khalilzad’s acceptance of a Taliban demand that the Afghan government release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, many of them hardened fighters, in exchange for only 1,000 prisoners. Mr. Khalilzad said that prisoner swaps were a traditional trust-building measure during peace negotiations.
One leading critic of the U.S. withdrawal, Mr. Trump’s now estranged former national security adviser, John R. Bolton, does not blame Mr. Khalilzad.
“I worried that Khalilzad was giving away too much, not because he was a poor negotiator, but because those were Pompeo’s instructions,” Mr. Bolton wrote in his 2020 memoir, “The Room Where It Happened.”
Mr. Bolton wrote that Mr. Trump once said of Mr. Khalilzad, in a meeting with several senior officials, “I hear he’s a con man, although you need a con man for this.”
It was unclear what Mr. Trump meant. But Mr. Khalilzad has been the subject of complaints about his profitable leaps between government and the private sector, and, in at least one previously unreported instance, his workplace conduct.
When the Taliban first took power in the 1990s, Mr. Khalilzad was a paid consultant for Unocal, a company exploring a possible oil pipeline through Afghanistan. He wrote at the time that the group “does not practice the anti-U. S. style of fundamentalism practiced by Iran” and called for American aid, which critics said could have benefited a pipeline project.
Shortly after leaving the Bush administration, in which he had served as the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Mr. Khalilzad represented the investment board of the country’s semiautonomous Kurdistan region. He was then a board member of an oil and gas investment company in the Persian Gulf with a financial stake in Kurdistan.
Mr. Khalilzad also underwent internal scrutiny at the State Department. Shortly before his departure, the department’s office of civil rights concluded a monthslong investigation into alleged workplace misconduct during the Bush administration. The Times reviewed emails from investigators sent in mid-August, days before the fall of Kabul, saying the report was headed to senior department officials. The officials believed Mr. Khalilzad had acted inappropriately, but the report did not recommend any disciplinary action.
Mr. Khalilzad denied wrongdoing and said that the same claim had been investigated by the Trump administration and found to be without merit. He said the claim was reopened under Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken “without the opportunity for me to provide my full input.”
Understand the Taliban Takeover in Afghanistan
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Who are the Taliban? The Taliban arose in 1994 amid the turmoil that came after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. They used brutal public punishments, including floggings, amputations and mass executions, to enforce their rules. Here’s more on their origin story and their record as rulers.
Who are the Taliban leaders? These are the top leaders of the Taliban, men who have spent years on the run, in hiding, in jail and dodging American drones. Little is known about them or how they plan to govern, including whether they will be as tolerant as they claim to be. One spokesman told The Times that the group wanted to forget its past, but that there would be some restrictions.
A State Department spokesman declined to comment on Mr. Khalilzad’s case. The department’s office of civil rights, which handled the case, would not discuss its Trump-era inquiry.
Miscalculations
On Feb. 29, 2020, Mr. Khalilzad signed a four-page agreement that pledged the withdrawal of all U.S. troops by the following May.
“Today is a day for hope,” Mr. Khalilzad said, sitting next to the Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar in Doha.
In the months afterward, U.S. troops began to draw down.
After the election last year, Mr. Blinken asked Mr. Khalilzad to stay on, in recognition of his “distinguished work” and the need for “continuity,” the State Department said at the time.
In April, President Biden announced that he would fulfill Mr. Trump’s pledge to withdraw troops by September. But Mr. Khalilzad said that “Blinken, like myself and others, would have preferred a conditions-based approach, I believe.”
Mr. Khalilzad continued to pursue a political settlement. With the Taliban demanding the resignation of President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan as a first step toward a transitional government, Mr. Khalilzad pressed him to accede.
“This is a historic opportunity for you,” he recalled telling Mr. Ghani. “Imagine! Forty years of war, millions killed and injured. And you — it’s during your period that Afghanistan ends its long nightmare.”
Mr. Ghani refused. Critics say that Mr. Khalilzad’s pressure undermined the Afghan leader while legitimizing the Taliban.
Mr. Khalilzad pressed President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan to accede during the final days of the U.S. presence.Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times
The two men have known each other for nearly 60 years, since their boyhood in Kabul, where Mr. Khalilzad recalled that his mother was protective of his physically smaller friend. “She wanted to make sure that we weren’t roughing him up or anything,” he said.
The men remained close after they moved to the United States for their education, but their relationship as adults has been colored by decades of ideological and political differences.
Mr. Khalilzad denied that he had leaned excessively on Mr. Ghani. He also suggested that Mr. Ghani tragically miscalculated his leverage and failed to understand that the United States was truly leaving.
As the Taliban closed in on Kabul in mid-August, Mr. Ghani fled the country, and his government collapsed. The war was finally over.
Mr. Khalilzad stayed on for several more weeks, helping to evacuate Americans and at-risk Afghans and pressing the Taliban to form an inclusive government that respects human rights.
Members of the Taliban at the Kabul airport in early September, after U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
On Oct. 18, Mr. Khalilzad submitted his resignation. America’s engagement with Afghanistan has entered a new phase, he said, one in which he was more useful as an independent voice — particularly to make the case that the United States must work with the Taliban to help avert Afghanistan’s collapse into anarchy that could lead to a surge of refugees and breed terrorism.
Asked whether he thought he would set foot again in the country of his birth, Mr. Khalilzad did not pause.
“Definitely,” he said. “The struggle for Afghanistan continues.”
12. President Biden to visit Fort Bragg for early Thanksgiving with service members
President Biden to visit Fort Bragg for early Thanksgiving with service members
President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden plan to visit North Carolina on Monday.
White House officials confirmed the president and his wife will visit Fort Bragg for an early Thanksgiving dinner with service members and their families.
Further information about the visit wasn’t immediately available.
First Lady Jill Biden visited North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune in September after the death of 13 service members, which included personnel from both Camp Lejeune and Fort Bragg, during a suicide bombing in Afghanistan.
It’s traditional for presidents to visit troops over Thanksgiving. Former President Donald Trump visited troops in Afghanistan in 2019 and did a video call with troops in Afghanistan in 2020 during the pandemic.
Fort Bragg bills itself as “the center of the military universe” and is one of the largest military complexes in the world, employing 53,700 troops and 14,000 civilians.
It is home to the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, Special Operations Command and Parachute Team.
In 2020, Congress ordered Fort Bragg change its name within three years because it honors a Confederate general.
Fort Bragg’s naming commission plans to have recommendations back to Congress by Oct. 1, 2022.
This story was originally published November 16, 2021 3:18 PM.
13. Agile Multilateralism Is Needed to Address Cybercrime Safe Havens
Excerpt:
In responding to the recent wave of safe haven-launched ransomware attacks, the Biden administration has shown promise in its pivot to a mixture of diplomacy and creative sanctions, but more remains to be done. The response thus far has focused on disrupting individual actors, which is critical but insufficient in the long term without also pursuing actions meant to change the larger permissive environment from which they operate. The Biden administration, and like-minded leaders, can better leverage existing international institutions while also exploring alliances with the potential to coordinate outside of established institutions. By recognizing the limitations and opportunities that come with different approaches to international engagement, like-minded stakeholders can find a more successful means of multilateral action. To secure the United States from the scourge of rampant ransomware, the Biden administration must continue to take the fight to the source but must find a way to do so in concert with others.
Agile Multilateralism Is Needed to Address Cybercrime Safe Havens
With the Treasury Department’s announcement of sanctions against the cryptocurrency exchange SUEX and the 30-nation summit led by the White House, the past few weeks have served as a reminder that in a particularly busy year for cybersecurity, important policy opportunities reside in work with international organizations and allies and partners.
The particular issue that has captivated such sustained attention is the harm caused by ransomware, which has reached critical levels both domestically and abroad. Broadly speaking, leaders are facing three interwoven challenges when dealing with ransomware. The first is the need to strengthen the resilience of digital infrastructure writ large. Basic business cyber hygiene can go a long way to addressing cyber vulnerabilities. For example, if hospitals, schools, police forces and municipal water authorities all implemented multi-factor authentication, ransomware would be far less of a problem. The second is disrupting criminals, for example, through arrests or inhibiting the financial flows that enable their operations. The third challenge is denying criminals a physical location from which they can conduct their operations, generally by empowering and pressuring governments to crack down on cybercrime emanating from within their borders. We point readers interested in building resilience to a robust body of analysis and work on the topic (including from the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, where the authors work). This post will focus on the second and third of these challenges, the success of which hinges on deliberate international engagement.
Today’s cybercrime, emanating largely from Russia, North Korea and China, has become “an escalating global security threat with serious economic and security consequences.” Solutions, too, must be global in nature, and they must go after not just the criminal networks themselves but also the safe havens from which they operate, which will certainly require international effort. We argue here that the Biden administration must further tailor its multilateral approach to work on two complementary but distinct tracks: working through established multilateral institutions, and developing the capacity to rapidly form flexible and agile coalitions of allies and partners to impose a cost on safe havens for illicit cyber activity. Articulating these two lines of effort helps to highlight possible improvements to the U.S. approach to combating ransomware.
Targeting the Crime Through Established Institutions
Cybersecurity is a team sport. Even though that saying borders on banality, it holds up. This is especially true in the multilateral fora, such as the United Nations, NATO, the EU and the G-7, which serve an integral role in building and sustaining a rules-based order in cyberspace. These bodies have created internationally agreed-upon norms of behavior for cyberspace, an enduring instrument for coordinating international law enforcement to combat cybercrime, and opportunities for dialogue on key issues. Working through such establishments is likely to yield the best results when focusing on building the kinds of international norms that are required to make a global system tick. It is because of this engagement that the international community has made clear that “States should not knowingly allow their territory to be used for internationally wrongful acts using [information and communication technologies].” To disrupt the criminal networks in cyberspace, policy leaders need to leverage broad support on the international stage, which is possible only when these widely accepted foundations are in place.
However, the structure and deliberation that make these bodies invaluable for building a widely accepted system are precisely what hampers their effectiveness in dealing quickly with politically charged issues such as coercion of safe havens. Consensus is hard to come by when a small number of states can bring the body’s work to a halt. In one-state, one-vote bodies, even a majority of votes can be beyond reach when success requires extensive outreach to swing states. As a result, and quite naturally, these bodies are a forum for codifying the most broadly shared opinions—what could be called the lowest common denominator—on the rules of the road for cyberspace. This is further complicated by the lack of trust in cyberspace, coupled with the lack of tools to verify compliance. For the U.S. and its allies, this makes the “trust but verify” axiom normally applied to agreements with authoritarian regimes difficult to implement. Finally, large multinational organizations are not the right tool for formulating an agile response to acute cybercrime incidents. For that, the United States needs a different kind of international outreach.
A Coalition Approach to Pressure Safe Havens
For the United States to act with flexibility and agility to disrupt cybercrime safe havens, it must rely on coalitions of like-minded allies and partners to construct a durable, proactive multilateral effort. This should not come at the expense of vigorous participation in the previously mentioned establishments; instead, the U.S. should work through an additional, agile multilateral task force model that is built around a shared vision for cyberspace and a shared commitment to action. Doing so offers the U.S. the ability to strike back decisively, rapidly and coherently in concert with its allies. This summer’s joint attributions of China in the Microsoft Exchange hack discovered in March serves as evidence that this work is already underway. This effort included multilateral organizations—namely the EU and NATO—but was not explicitly a product of those bodies. Rather, it was a broad coalition that also included many individual countries, an approach that provided a united front while not limiting action to the lowest common denominator of willingness to respond.
Working with coalitions of partners and allies is not a new idea in cyberspace strategy, but the Biden administration has an opportunity to improve its effectiveness. A first step is improving the capacity to form these coalitions quickly as—for better or worse—a matter of routine. While the China attribution was a remarkable step forward, it came four months after the primary attack it addresses (and longer, for some of the specific criminal incidents addressed). This is both a significant improvement over prior timelines and entirely too long. To achieve meaningful change, an attribution is only a necessary precursor to a more muscular response, and so delays only hamper an agile response. These examples predominantly focus on attributing an attack to a nation-state actor; calling out permissive attitudes toward perpetrators of ransomware is likely to be an even harder task.
Beyond simply increasing speed, the Biden administration can improve the effectiveness of a coalition approach by improving information sharing between trusted partners. Congress and the Cyberspace Solarium Commission have identified necessary changes to facilitate such a development. Whether as a function of policies that lead to rapid declassification, colocated personnel or improved attribution capacity, coalition members must be able to agree on basic facts. Based on those facts, individual governments can participate in cost-imposition activities to the extent they are willing, without undermining the widespread agreement on ground truth. More generally, all these steps require careful care and feeding by U.S. cyber diplomats. And in order to make a coalition model work, national leaders must ensure that the State Department has the capacity, personnel and organizational structures needed to build these coalitions quickly.
Creative Cost-Imposition
No matter how aligned the U.S. and its allies are, creating innovative multilateral solutions is a tall order. In developing and executing strategies to alter the calculus of safe haven states, we propose four guiding principles.
The first is to frame potential responses by focusing on the intended effect. That is to say, in determining how to respond to safe havens, such a coalition should begin by identifying the largest levers in the relevant environment that can be used to impose a cost on the host government. Such examples may include internet or cloud service providers in-country that host the malicious traffic. This recognizes the centrality of legitimate infrastructure in serving as a conduit for international cybercrime and aims to impose a cost on the crime-permissive government by inhibiting the infrastructure that carries ransomware while motivating change among business leaders with the power to influence policymakers.
This brings us to our second point: A creative solution must also be a feasible and sustainable solution. Too often, recommendations of sanctions against critical industries or actors fall flat because they are too drastic for the stated ends or they do not impact the incentives of the actors with the power to change the targeted behavior. The first point aims to ameliorate this dilemma by focusing on the largest attributable, legitimate actors in a state apparatus as the lever by which to apply pressure to the host government. The second recognizes that the points of leverage used to put pressure on a government playing host to cybercriminals may not always be directly connected to cyberspace policy, but they do need to be tailored to the appropriate actors. Issue linkages that pull across different facets of the relationship with foreign leaders—from creature comforts to domestic approval ratings to the support of local industry leaders—are a rich vein of leverage points. Rather than starting with the policymaker’s reflexive toolkit of sanctions and other tried-and-true responses, feasible and sustainable solutions to ransomware safe havens must consider what matters most to the actors the U.S. is attempting to influence and then draw on the policy tools available to viably tap into those leverage points.
The third point to consider in developing novel policy tools is to increase efforts of owning the narrative. As authoritarian governments strive to paint themselves as responsible and inclusive custodians of the internet, an increasingly viable point of leverage for the U.S. and its partners and allies is simply to pull back the curtain on such activities by highlighting both ongoing and prior violations of existing norms and the ulterior motives underwriting their posturing. Doing so has the potential to erode support for those governments’ cyberspace policy proposals domestically and—perhaps more importantly—internationally as governments around the world come to better understand what greater sovereign control over the internet would mean in practical terms. Coercive tools require careful crafting and even more precise public messaging.
Together, targeted and flexible multilateral coalitions may be able to find success in changing the calculus of states that currently do not do their part in taking action against domestic cybercriminals whose damage is felt internationally. Meanwhile, large multilateral institutions create a foundation for developing a consensus on what, exactly, that part is. The line between these two approaches is not always binary, and plenty of edge cases exist where multilateral organizations, especially those formed around shared viewpoints, can be an excellent forum to articulate that viewpoint without the need to cultivate global consensus. For example, the recent G-7 communique makes no bones about calling on Russia to “hold to account those within its borders who conduct ransomware attacks.” While recognizing that international engagement does not separate cleanly into two distinct approaches, distinguishing between them highlights the different advantages and weaknesses of each approach. In combating cybercrime, it is clear that both are necessary.
A fourth and final point is that the U.S. must always preserve its right to respond unilaterally in cyberspace if U.S. national security interests are put at risk. An international response is almost always preferable when dealing with malicious adversary behavior, but the U.S. must ensure it has a comprehensive capability, stretching across law enforcement, economic, diplomatic, and cyber and non-cyber military tools ready to respond if its national interests are jeopardized.
In responding to the recent wave of safe haven-launched ransomware attacks, the Biden administration has shown promise in its pivot to a mixture of diplomacy and creative sanctions, but more remains to be done. The response thus far has focused on disrupting individual actors, which is critical but insufficient in the long term without also pursuing actions meant to change the larger permissive environment from which they operate. The Biden administration, and like-minded leaders, can better leverage existing international institutions while also exploring alliances with the potential to coordinate outside of established institutions. By recognizing the limitations and opportunities that come with different approaches to international engagement, like-minded stakeholders can find a more successful means of multilateral action. To secure the United States from the scourge of rampant ransomware, the Biden administration must continue to take the fight to the source but must find a way to do so in concert with others.
14. Why Cyber War Is Subversive, and How that Limits its Strategic Value
I think this point will be debated:
In short, cyber operations do not enable a new strategic space but rather offer new tools to pursue strategies of subversion. As such, explaining and prevailing in cyber conflict does not require new strategic theory. Rather, building on existing knowledge on strategies of subversion and their limitations promises key insights. Cyber operations share not only the strategic promise, but also the operational challenges, of subversion. The trilemma between speed, intensity, and control limits the actual strategic value they can deliver in most circumstances. Much current thought and strategy development focuses on what is theoretically possible, yet the trilemma limits what is practically feasible. Recognizing these limitations is crucial in order to clearly understand the strategic role of cyber operations and develop effective strategies that maximize their value within the constraints of the trilemma.
Why Cyber War Is Subversive, and How that Limits its Strategic Value - War on the Rocks
For three decades, defense planners and analysts have worried about cyber war. It has not happened. Instead, now their fear is that cyber operations open a new space of strategic competition where adversaries can shift the balance of power without going to war. The sea change in the United States’ cyber strategy from deterrence toward persistent engagement aims to counter this threat. These current expectations, however, overestimate both the extent of this threat and its novelty. Rather than new instruments, my research, recently published in International Security, shows cyber operations are, in fact, instruments of subversion — an understudied mechanism used in covert operations. Subversion holds great strategic promise but faces an operational trilemma that limits its strategic value. Cyber operations face the same limitations. To assess their strategic value, we thus should not confuse what is theoretically possible with what is practically feasible. Otherwise, strategy risks fighting phantom threats.
Subversion is a key instrument in non-military covert operations. It promises to bring down an enemy from within, stealthily and without using force. Instead, subversion hollows out the adversary’s sources of strength or even turns them against the adversary. It exploits weaknesses in institutions and societies to undermine their integrity and manipulate them. This strategic promise of weakening adversaries without going to war is great but so are subversion’s pitfalls. Actors face significant operational challenges they must overcome to reach their goals. These challenges pose an operational trilemma that limits its strategic value. In practice, subversion is often too slow, too weak, and too volatile to achieve strategic goals. The same applies to cyber operations.
Apart from entire political systems, however, exploitation can also target smaller-scale institutions to infiltrate and manipulate them. The classic means of subversion are human spies, who can infiltrate targets under cover identities by exploiting pathologies of human psychology or flaws in security rules and practices. The Soviet KGB’s infamous “illegal agents” program is a key example. The effects subversion can produce depend on the type of system targeted and vary widely. They range from influence on public opinion to sabotage, economic disruption, and, in the extreme case, regime change.
Through exploitation, subversion promises a way to weaken adversaries at even lower risks and costs than secret war. Using force secretly can help limit escalation risks and reputational damage. Yet, doing so still requires guns and grunts. Subversion requires far fewer resources because it primarily relies on an adversary’s own assets to produce effects. Moreover, subversion hides not only the identity of the sponsor but the activity itself (known as a clandestine approach). Hence, if done right, it interferes without revealing that interference is taking place.
The parallels to cyber operations are obvious. Cyber operations share the reliance on exploitation, the range of effects, and the perceived strategic promise. Accordingly, a recent “intelligence turn” in cybersecurity scholarship highlights the parallels between cyber conflict and intelligence operations. Joshua Rovner argues that cyber conflict is an intelligence contest, laying out the strategic scope of cyber operations as means to collect information and covertly weaken adversaries. The strategic value of the latter type of operations, namely those pursuing active effects (i.e., manipulation and disruption of targeted systems rather than information collection), remains unclear though. Yet, those types of operations inform persistent fears around the cyber threats adversaries pose. Examining the subversive nature of active effect cyber operations clarifies their strategic value. It also explains why, in practice, they tend to fall short of expectations.
Instead of social systems, cyber operations subvert computer systems. Hacking, the core mechanism they employ, is by definition subversive since it involves the exploitation of vulnerabilities in computer programs. Programs, as Erickson explains, are “made up of a complex set of rules” while “exploiting a program is simply a clever way of getting the computer to do what you want it to do, even if the currently running program was designed to prevent that action.” Typically, hackers use such vulnerabilities to gain access to systems and install malicious programs, viruses that allow them to control and manipulate the system. In doing so, cyber operations promise a means to turn the computer systems that have produced such dramatic efficiency gains in modern societies into liabilities, using them to weaken the targeted society and state instead. Moreover, while traditional subversion requires infrastructure in the field to deploy and maintain human agents, cyber operations can exert influence entirely remotely. Hence, they promise even lower cost. Moreover, they enable potentially vastly greater scales of effect since computer viruses can proliferate automatically.
In theory, these advantages endow cyber operations with a near-irresistible strategic promise, namely an unprecedentedly effective way to shift the balance of power short of war. Yet, getting there in practice is hard. The same mechanism of exploitation that enables this promise also carries the seeds of failure. To explain why, it is useful to distinguish between the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of conflict. At the tactical level, cyber conflict involves the subversion of software and systems. Hackers often succeed, and examples of high-profile compromises such as the SolarWinds compromise continue to fill newspapers, evoking fears of proliferating cyber war. At the operational level, however, subversion poses a distinct set of challenges that constrain its effectiveness and limit its strategic value. Importantly, cyber operations face the same challenges.
Secret exploitation poses distinct operational challenges that constrain its speed, intensity, and control. Speed is limited because actors must reconnoiter target systems, identify flaws even their designers missed, develop means able to exploit them, and establish access — while obscuring all of this activity from the victim. Discovery allows the victim to neutralize most operations, typically by arresting or executing the spies involved. In cyber operations, victims can “patch” vulnerabilities, delete malware, or disconnect systems. There are limits to how much cyber subversions can achieve, because the intensity of the effect depends on what system is targeted. The greater the capacity of a system to wreak havoc — for instance, producing physical damage and destruction — the harder exploitation tends to be. Manipulating physical machinery by cyber means is highly challenging, for example, and such systems typically have added protection measures in place to prevent such meddling. Dependence on target systems also constrains control, since target systems remain unfamiliar and subversive actors only have control over parts of the system. Control is, furthermore, temporary since victims can neutralize it in different ways upon discovering subversion. Most importantly, the system may respond unexpectedly to manipulation, failing to produce the desired effects or producing unintended effects.
These constraining variables pose a trilemma. Efforts to improve one tend to produce corresponding losses across the remaining ones. For example, the faster one proceeds, the less time there is for reconnaissance and development, and accordingly the more limited the knowledge of the target system, the more limited the extent of control, and the greater the likelihood of failure or unintended consequences. This operational trilemma limits the strategic value of these kinds of operations. Subversion thus tends to be too slow, too weak, or too volatile to produce strategic value when and where it is needed. The same applies to cyber operations.
Consider Stuxnet. This operation, which produced the most intense effects by cyber means to date — namely, physical damage to nuclear enrichment centrifuges — required extensive development time. Forensic evidence indicates at least five years of development. Conversely, the attempted disruption of Ukraine’s election in 2014 moved very fast, at 2 months development time — but failed to produce its intended effect since the hackers missed the existence of backups. Finally, evidence of control loss abounds. It is no coincidence that one of the first computer viruses, the Morris Worm from 1988, was in fact an accident — the program was designed as a harmless network mapping tool, but it proliferated out of control and consumed far more resources than intended, shutting down most of the early internet.
Similarly, the infamous 2017 NotPetya operation, which disrupted businesses across 65 countries by disabling computer systems, is widely seen as “the most devastating cyber attack in history.” Some suggest this self-proliferating virus and the havoc it caused was a carefully calibrated signaling tool, designed to send a warning to businesses operating in Ukraine and/or to foster a perception of Ukraine as a failed state. Yet, rather than a carefully targeted effort, forensic evidence shows NotPetya’s authors lost control over its spread — leading to significant collateral damage beyond Ukraine, even affecting the state behind the operation: Russia. The same capacity for automated self-proliferation that made NotPetya’s massive scale possible led to a loss of control over its spread and effects. Without control, there is little predictability. And, without predictability, whether effects will contribute to strategic goals ultimately becomes a game of chance.
Consequently, rather than revolutionizing conflict, cyber operations represent an evolution of subversion. They offer a distinct set of tradeoffs compared to traditional subversion. They do likely have a scale advantage over traditional subversion since viruses can spread automatically across networks. Yet, this potential for automatic proliferation also likely brings an increased risk of control loss. Cyber operations thus have some distinct advantages and disadvantages, but overall they face the same operational trilemma as traditional subversion. This situation has two major implications for cyber conflict and its study.
First, cyber operations fulfill an independent strategic role as an alternative to warfare when diplomacy falls short but will rarely provide strategic value. Their strategic promise renders them highly attractive, if not irresistible to leaders — even as their shortcomings become more readily apparent. The same pattern applied to traditional subversion. Throughout the Cold War, leaders continued to opt for regime change attempts despite their abysmal track record. Hence, we can expect actors to continue to deploy cyber operations frequently. Accordingly, we will likely continue to see frequent intrusions and, less frequently, disruptions. Some of these disruptions will be large enough to produce strategically significant effects. Yet, because of the challenges involved, we can also expect cyber operations to rarely produce significant strategic value for their sponsors. They will be too slow, too weak, and too volatile to shift the balance of power in a targeted, predictable, and timely fashion in most circumstances.
Second, and consequently, the United States’ emerging strategy of persistent engagement may have it — at least partially — wrong. Its underlying idea is that states are subject to a structural condition of interconnectedness, which puts actors in constant contact and thus necessitates a strategy of persistent engagement to prevail. In practice, this involves continuous efforts to compromise adversary infrastructure, introduce friction in their operations and disrupt them where possible. Persistence is important. It is only one component of a successful subversive operation, however. Without sufficient consideration of the needs for secrecy, for example, the strategy risks giving away the element of surprise that is crucial for success. The more persistent one’s engagement, the more predictable one risks becoming. Moreover, the goal of persistent engagement is to improve stability by establishing and reinforcing tacitly agreed rules of behavior — most importantly, limiting the intensity of effects. Yet, rather than tacitly agreed rules, the trilemma that all subversion operations face is a more likely cause of the low intensity of cyber conflict we observe. Pushing adversaries too far is then likely to have the opposite effect of stabilizing conflict, as doing so may increase the perceived benefits of taking greater risks.
In short, cyber operations do not enable a new strategic space but rather offer new tools to pursue strategies of subversion. As such, explaining and prevailing in cyber conflict does not require new strategic theory. Rather, building on existing knowledge on strategies of subversion and their limitations promises key insights. Cyber operations share not only the strategic promise, but also the operational challenges, of subversion. The trilemma between speed, intensity, and control limits the actual strategic value they can deliver in most circumstances. Much current thought and strategy development focuses on what is theoretically possible, yet the trilemma limits what is practically feasible. Recognizing these limitations is crucial in order to clearly understand the strategic role of cyber operations and develop effective strategies that maximize their value within the constraints of the trilemma.
15. More Deferential but Also More Political: How Americans' Views of the Military Have Changed Over 20 Years
Excerpts:
But the dangers are greater still. Democratic civil-military relations, like other elements of liberal democracy, rest as much on informal norms and practices as on formal institutional arrangements and rules. If Americans do not expect the military to remain on the political sidelines, if their attitudes toward the military swing with the political winds, the professional military’s adherence to these norms — which so far remains fairly secure at the highest levels among active-duty officers — will eventually decay. In a democracy, Samuel Huntington long ago observed (and feared), the military will eventually roughly reflect society’s values and mores. If the military is thought of and treated as just one political actor among many in a polarized polity, it will eventually start to act as just one political actor among many in a polarized polity.
We are not envisioning anything as dramatic as active-duty officers openly endorsing political candidates or threatening a coup if a particular candidate takes office. The country remains, thankfully, a long way from such depths. But the death of democracy takes place by a thousand cuts. It comes about through erosion, not explosion. Were the military to tumble far down the slippery slope of politicization, civic-minded Americans on both sides of the political aisle would surely wake up and howl. But they would be too late.
It is not too late now. Restoring the military’s apolitical standing will make significant demands of both the military and civilians. It requires a renewed commitment from the active-duty military, which has, in various ways, subverted democratic control and contributed to public confusion about the military’s role, from openly disparaging presidents to threatening resignation to making public statements on policy to issuing damaging leaks. It requires discipline from retired generals, who have too often traded on their military credentials and embraced an active role in politics and punditry. But, first and foremost, it requires politicians to sail a clear course between military veneration and vilification. The only thing worse than the nation worshipping its most senior military officers is the nation reviling them.
More Deferential but Also More Political: How Americans' Views of the Military Have Changed Over 20 Years - War on the Rocks
Americans’ views on the relationship between civilian leaders and the military are disturbing. When it comes to decisions about the use of force, recent surveys demonstrate that Americans are inclined to disempower civilians and defer to the professional military’s judgment. Nor are Americans much troubled by active-duty, let alone retired, military leaders publicly intervening in policy debates. Moreover, Americans’ opinions on the subject are driven by their partisan political commitments. When Donald Trump was in the White House, this meant that Democrats were surprisingly deferential to the military, which they hoped would act as a check on this president whom they distrusted and often reviled.
But is the public’s lack of commitment to democratic civil-military relations, and its politicized view of the military, a new problem? Or is it just the normal state of affairs, amplified into a crisis by the churn of the news cycle? It is hard to know because scholars and pollsters have not done regular, or even occasional, deep dives with identical questions that allow for direct comparisons. Over 20 years ago, in fall 1998 and spring 1999, the Triangle Institute for Security Studies conducted a comprehensive survey — more comprehensive than any before or since — of Americans’ views on civil-military relations. While occasional surveys have been fielded since, including by us, they have asked different questions. As a result, we do not know how Americans’ views on civil-military relations may have changed over the course of the last two decades. In June 2021, therefore, we fielded a survey, via the Lucid platform, to a representative United States-based sample of 913 respondents that replicated many of the questions asked by the Triangle Institute nearly a quarter-century ago.
The survey results are concerning — especially when compared to the older Triangle Institute data. They show that Americans’ deference to the military has grown over the last two decades, and that members of the U.S. public, particularly Republicans, are increasingly worried about the military’s involvement in politics. This is troubling news for the health of U.S. democracy and American national security.
The Pull of Deference
Americans across the political spectrum express considerably more deference to the military today than they have in the past. In 1998 and 1999, the Triangle Institute survey asked respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: “In general, high ranking civilian officials rather than high ranking military officers should have the final say on whether or not to use military force.” A majority — 53 percent — of respondents agreed. This result, among others, suggested that Americans in the late 1990s had not fully grasped the principle of civilian control of the military. But even fewer of our 2021 respondents concur — just 43 percent.
Deference to the military has increased among self-identified members of both major political parties: Around 30 percent of both Republicans and Democrats in the late 1990s strongly agreed with the statement that civilians should have the final say on the use of force, but just 15 percent of Republicans and 24 percent of Democrats similarly strongly agree in 2021.
One might have plausibly hypothesized that the Triangle Institute survey represented the high point of deference to the military. In the late 1990s, the U.S. armed forces were still riding high off its unexpectedly easy triumph in the Gulf War. That victory had salved the wounds of Vietnam and seemed to confirm the wisdom of ending the draft and installing the all-volunteer force. A series of generals earned accolades that decade — from Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf, whose bluntness and frankness the press found refreshing during the Gulf War, to Colin Powell, whose unflappable professionalism and unimpeachable integrity seemed to epitomize the army’s transformation, to Wesley Clark, the Rhodes Scholar who served as the Supreme Allied Commander Europe.
Meanwhile, the leading civilian politicians of the day seemed militarily suspect. Bill Clinton’s evasion of the Vietnam draft did not help, nor did his decision early on to challenge the military over its discrimination against gay soldiers. Critics derided the U.S. armed forces’ peacekeeping missions in places like the Balkans — which civilians insisted upon, over the professional military’s hesitation and objections — as armed “social work.” The 1990s were marked by numerous instances of civil-military dysfunction in the United States, but, as far as the U.S. public was concerned, the military came up smelling of roses.
One might even have hypothesized that the next two decades should have laid the groundwork for less deference. In the “Global War on Terror,” the U.S. military was given the mission of pacifying and stabilizing Afghanistan and Iraq and stamping out Islamist extremism around the globe. Civilians granted the armed forces immense resources — over $2 trillion in supplemental overseas contingency appropriations and nearly $1 trillion in increases to the Defense Department’s base budget — as well as substantial autonomy in designing and implementing military operations. But victory proved elusive. Insurgency and terrorism waxed and waned and waxed again amidst the “forever wars.” Despite the U.S. military’s deep involvement in arming, equipping, and especially training the Iraqi and Afghan militaries, they repeatedly lost on the battlefield to the Islamic State and the Taliban.
Yet deference to the military has risen, despite the U.S. armed forces’ setbacks in the Global War on Terror. We can only speculate as to the reasons. It may be related partly to Americans’ generally declining trust in government. The military is the one major national institution that has bucked the steady post-Vietnam fall in trust. Moreover, it seems clear that civilian politicians, more than the professional military, have taken the blame for the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.
These plausible explanations, however, beg the question: Why has the U.S. military retained Americans’ trust in the last two decades, and why has it evaded blame for the failures of Afghanistan and Iraq? The answer likely lies in the popular militarism that is a key part of modern American culture. The United States has long granted the military unusual social standing, cast officers as heroes and soldiers as paragons of good citizenship and patriotism, and hailed servicemembers as models for their fellow Americans. Such militarism dates back to the early days of the all-volunteer force, established in 1973, but it reached an even higher peak during the Global War on Terror.
American politicians of both political parties, who have regularly reproduced these rhetorical tropes for decades, bear some responsibility for this militarist myth-making. As a result, discourse and images valorizing the military, including its top officers, have been dominant in the popular sphere — from politicians’ speeches to television to movies. Such militarism is manifest as well in the belief among a very large majority of Americans in soldiers’ and officers’ patriotism and competence: over three-quarters of our respondents trust military officers because they “put the interests of the country first” and because they are “good at what they do.” Given such veneration of the military, why wouldn’t Americans call for their political leaders to suspend their own judgment in favor of that exercised by such exceptionally patriotic, competent heroes?
Politicians’ militarism helps to insulate the global American footprint from domestic political criticism. But that has come at a cost: rising public deference to the nation’s senior military officers.
Eroding Faith in a Military Above Politics
But the second major finding of our survey is even more troubling. Its results suggest that the U.S. military is in danger of becoming, in the eyes of the public, a political actor just like any other in Washington.
For the time being, the U.S. public’s trust in the armed forces remains secure. In 1998–1999, 93 percent of Americans said they trusted the military “a great deal” or “only some.” Likewise, today, you are hard-pressed to find anyone who distrusts the military. Over 86 percent of our respondents express at least some degree of trust in the armed forces. True, compared to a survey we conducted in 2019, when Trump was still president, Republican trust in the military has waned slightly, and Democratic trust has intensified a bit. But this is par for the course whenever the White House changes hands: Partisans affiliated with the loser of the most recent presidential election express less trust in all institutions of government, including the military, and partisans affiliated with the winner express more. Overall, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents continue to trust the military more, and distrust the military less, than do Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.
But dig a little deeper, and the U.S. military’s standing as a uniquely apolitical institution comes into doubt. Like the Triangle Institute for Security Studies, we asked respondents whether they agree or disagree with the following statement: “Members of the military should be allowed to publicly express their political views just like any other citizen.” Two decades ago, a solid majority of respondents (55 percent) strongly agreed. However, in our June 2021 survey, only 28 percent of respondents strongly agree. The drop in agreement is bipartisan, but it is especially strong among Republicans. In the late 1990s, 52 percent of Republicans agreed strongly that members of the military should be able to express their political views. This dropped dramatically, to 23 percent, in our survey. Meanwhile, 59 percent of Democrats in the late 1990s strongly agreed, compared to 35 percent in 2021.
We see similar drops in Republican support for military policy advocacy and criticism of civilian leaders. Two decades ago, the vast majority of Republican respondents (nearly 90 percent) agreed to some extent that “it is proper for the military to advocate publicly the military policies it believes are in the best interests of the United States.” Just 69 percent of Republicans agree in 2021. Similarly, in the Triangle Institute survey, 60 percent of Republicans agreed to some extent that “members of the military should not publicly criticize senior members of the civilian branch of government.” In our survey, 72 percent of Republicans agree.
Some of these results might appear, at first glance, to be good news for democratic civil-military relations. After all, it is inconsistent with the principle of civilian supremacy if military officers “publicly express their political views just like any other citizen,” or “advocate publicly the military policies [they] believe are in the best interests of the United States,” or “publicly criticize senior members of the civilian branch of government.” One might infer that the U.S. public has internalized the message of democratic civil-military relations to a greater degree over the last two decades.
We wish. One would expect conservative Americans to be disposed to defer to the military, which epitomizes the values they prize (e.g., discipline, tradition, and order), and political liberals to support tighter civilian control of an institution they, relative to conservatives, tend to distrust. One would further expect political conservatives to be less troubled by the prospect of assertive public military policy advocacy. Indeed, that is what the Triangle Institute for Security Studies found in 1998–1999, when over 89 percent of Republicans supported public military policy advocacy, versus 77.5 percent of Democrats. While Republican support has plummeted, to 69 percent, Democrats’ beliefs have remained comparatively stable, holding at 71 percent. Likewise, it seems reasonable to expect Republicans to be less bothered by the prospect of members of the military publicly criticizing senior civilian officials. This was true in 1998–1999, when over 68 percent of Democrats opposed the prospect of servicemembers criticizing civilians, compared to around 60 percent of Republicans. Today, Democratic opposition has fallen slightly, to below 64 percent, while Republican opposition has grown to 72 percent.
Importantly, these flips in partisan support are not explained by who occupies the White House. Both surveys were conducted when Democrats were in the Oval Office. Republicans could have been expected to welcome public military policy advocacy and criticism, so as to check a Democratic president — which is what we wrongly predicted in a scholarly article published last year.
Instead, these peculiar findings appear to reflect what we have elsewhere called the “Tucker Carlson effect.” Led by Trump, Republican pundits’ and politicians’ longstanding veneration of the military’s senior leadership seems to be coming to an end. As president, Trump quickly soured on “my generals,” whom he had appointed to Cabinet posts, and he reportedly lashed into the top brass as “dopes” and “babies” during an infamous meeting in the Pentagon’s “Tank” in July 2017. But these tensions largely remained behind closed doors until July 2020, when Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, walked back his misguided June walk with Trump across Washington’s Lafayette Square. It accelerated in June 2021 when, during the ongoing controversy over “critical race theory,” Milley emerged as a surprising defender of the importance of teaching about systemic racism. In response, Republicans declared the nation’s top generals “woke,” attacking the senior leadership for falling prey to, and even inculcating, political correctness.
It seems that — compared to fellow Democrats in 1998–1999 and to contemporary Republicans — Democrats today are more confident that senior military officers share their policy preferences and so are happy for the top brass to speak out. If Democrats seem comfortable with senior military officers publicly criticizing civilian politicians, it is presumably because they think that senior officers are their political allies, who will direct their criticism against Republicans. Meanwhile, compared to fellow Republicans of the past and to contemporary Democrats, more Republicans today appear to suspect that senior military officers do not share their policy views and therefore oppose military engagement in policy debates.
Greater apparent U.S. public support for democratic civil-military norms — such as senior military officers refraining from intervening in public debates over policy — masks Americans’ growing underlying anxiety about civil-military relations. In the Triangle Institute survey, Americans were nearly equally divided on the question of whether “civilian control of the military is absolutely safe and secure in the United States.” Today, over 48 percent of Americans disagree with that statement, while just over 37 percent agree. Republicans are especially apprehensive in 2021: just 35 percent think civilian control of the armed forces “absolutely safe and secure,” while 56 percent have their doubts.
The Stakes
It is distressing that, in 2021, a majority of Americans do not affirm the principle of civilian supremacy over the military. It is even more disquieting that support for this principle has fallen over the last two decades. As scholar Peter Feaver once memorably wrote, in a democracy, “civilians have the right to be wrong.” Civilians should have the final say over the use of force because they — compared to military officers — are much more directly accountable to the people. While military officers have a right and responsibility to advise civilian politicians and officials, they have no right to substitute their judgment for that of civilians. The will of civilians must reign supreme. As go civil-military relations, so goes the health of U.S. democracy.
Yet we are equally distressed by the mounting evidence that the U.S. military’s status as a uniquely apolitical and nonpartisan institution is eroding. Politicized denigration of the military is no less problematic than its politicized adoration. This poses risks for decision-making about prospective and ongoing military operations: If one party believes that a “woke” military leadership too highly values political correctness, might they not be skeptical of those officers’ expressed professional judgment? It poses risks for recruitment: If one set of partisans — currently Republicans, but perhaps Democrats in the future — comes to believe that the officers setting military policy are the enemy of right-thinking Americans like them, would they not be hesitant to send their children into that institution’s ranks? And it poses risks for the military’s warfighting capability if, as a result, Congress undertakes intrusive investigations into the political leanings of prospective senior officers and applies political litmus tests.
But the dangers are greater still. Democratic civil-military relations, like other elements of liberal democracy, rest as much on informal norms and practices as on formal institutional arrangements and rules. If Americans do not expect the military to remain on the political sidelines, if their attitudes toward the military swing with the political winds, the professional military’s adherence to these norms — which so far remains fairly secure at the highest levels among active-duty officers — will eventually decay. In a democracy, Samuel Huntington long ago observed (and feared), the military will eventually roughly reflect society’s values and mores. If the military is thought of and treated as just one political actor among many in a polarized polity, it will eventually start to act as just one political actor among many in a polarized polity.
We are not envisioning anything as dramatic as active-duty officers openly endorsing political candidates or threatening a coup if a particular candidate takes office. The country remains, thankfully, a long way from such depths. But the death of democracy takes place by a thousand cuts. It comes about through erosion, not explosion. Were the military to tumble far down the slippery slope of politicization, civic-minded Americans on both sides of the political aisle would surely wake up and howl. But they would be too late.
It is not too late now. Restoring the military’s apolitical standing will make significant demands of both the military and civilians. It requires a renewed commitment from the active-duty military, which has, in various ways, subverted democratic control and contributed to public confusion about the military’s role, from openly disparaging presidents to threatening resignation to making public statements on policy to issuing damaging leaks. It requires discipline from retired generals, who have too often traded on their military credentials and embraced an active role in politics and punditry. But, first and foremost, it requires politicians to sail a clear course between military veneration and vilification. The only thing worse than the nation worshipping its most senior military officers is the nation reviling them.
Robert Ralston is a lecturer in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, and a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Follow him on Twitter @RobertJRalston.
16. China Locks Down Its History, to Its Peril and the World’s
Conclusion:
Though the situation appears stable on the outside, this dual dynamic creates strategic risks. Such an absolutist atmosphere relies on suppressing not just history, but any truthful information that doesn’t shine a positive light on Xi. It could foster risky delusions in Beijing about China’s power and influence, make it harder to tackle its very real domestic challenges, and misunderstand or deliberately misreport the intentions and activities of the U.S. and its allies. In turn, if China’s 68-year-old leader should suddenly become ill or pass from the scene, a succession crisis could easily follow. More directly, any miscalculations made by Xi from this point forward are on him: when it comes to major decisions, there is no one else who can take credit...or blame.
China Locks Down Its History, to Its Peril and the World’s
Xi Jinping’s effort to cement lifelong power brings rigidity and fragility.
By revising official history to glorify himself, Xi Jinping is taking a page from China’s earlier rulers, not to mention Russia’s Stalin and Putin. But what may have worked in the past is far more dangerous and destabilizing in our hyperconnected present and near future.
The worshipful tones in official Chinese media coverage of this week’s plenum, or meeting, of the Chinese Communist Party’s Congress recall earlier centuries’ attempts to make the past serve the present. The ruthless emperor Qin Shi Huang (259-210 BCE) killed hundreds of scholarly critics and torched thousands of books to glorify himself and erase the achievements of predecessors and rivals. Not to be outdone, CCP founder Mao Zedong (1893-1976) quipped that although the emperor Qin “buried 460 scholars alive—we have buried 46,000…we have surpassed Qin Shi Huang a hundredfold.”
After Mao’s passing in 1976, Deng Xiaoping ascended to become paramount leader of the CCP, and therefore of China. He banned “all forms of personality cult” and installed a collective leadership in the place of the previous de facto emperor, Mao. But that was an illusion: in 1989, CCP Secretary Zhao Ziyang publicly revealed that he—on paper, the country’s the top leader—was not really in charge. Final decisions were made by Deng Xiaoping, under a secret order issued two years earlier at the 13th Party Congress. Deng was retired only in form, not in reality.
After Deng passed away in early 1997, Jiang Zemin rose to lead the CCP. But neither Jiang nor his successor, Hu Jintao, had the political heft of Mao and Deng, whose prominent roles in the Chinese Communist Revolution underpinned their power to rewrite CCP history, settle questions, and end debates. In 1945, Mao rammed through a party resolution on history that defined himself as the unchallenged leader of the revolution and denounced earlier rivals. In 1981, Deng’s own resolution recognized Mao’s achievements but blamed him for the “left errors of the Cultural Revolution” (1966-1976). This new official version of history broke the grip of Mao’s “thought,” with its continuous revolution and endless class struggle, and freed the Chinese economy to follow a capitalistic path to explosive growth.
Now the CCP has released a third resolution on history. According to the CCP’s official communique in Chinese and English (courtesy of China Neican), the resolution credits the Party “with Xi Jinping at the core” for the “tremendous transformation from standing up and growing prosperous to becoming strong…China’s national rejuvenation has become an historical inevitability.” The communique also seems to elevate Xi over other post-Mao leaders, in part by stating that he has “solved many tough problems that were long on the agenda but never resolved and accomplished many things that were wanted but never got done. With this, it has prompted historic achievements and historic shifts in the cause of the Party and the country.” This lofty rhetoric likely prepares the party and country for Xi’s continued dominance of the leadership into the 2020s, to be confirmed at next year’s 20th Party Congress. That would mean Xi Jinping would stay in power indefinitely, regardless of formal title, without any clear successor or the constraints of the earlier, post-Deng collective leadership.
Xi Jinping’s rise to absolute power and rejection of the collective leadership model under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao is, in historical terms, a return to normal. China only emerged a century ago from 3,000 years of emperor rule. What followed—the warlord era, foreign invasion, and civil war—was chaotic and brutal. The victory of the CCP returned a measure of stability to China under the proto-emperor figures of Mao and Deng. If any recent period was abnormal in Chinese history, it was the collective leadership model in-between Deng and Xi.
China faces an immediate future with a leader who is likely surrounded by the political equivalent of yes-men. (There is only one woman in the Politburo, and none on its all-powerful Standing Committee.) If they wish to survive, China’s elite leaders have little choice but to heap praise upon Xi or risk accusations of secretly plotting his downfall. This atmosphere is not conducive to managing increasingly complex challenges.
And in a system as controlling as modern China’s, this suffocating dynamic shapes far more than internal party politics. It affects everything from political discourse to media and social media. Praise for the Party and its leader is the only kind of utterance tolerated in the public square of China’s internet. The CCP, which has for decades sought to erase undesirable online content, has worked under Xi to fabricate positive social media posts as well—in toto, what the Stanford researcher Jen Pan calls “the largest selective suppression of human expression in history.”
Though the situation appears stable on the outside, this dual dynamic creates strategic risks. Such an absolutist atmosphere relies on suppressing not just history, but any truthful information that doesn’t shine a positive light on Xi. It could foster risky delusions in Beijing about China’s power and influence, make it harder to tackle its very real domestic challenges, and misunderstand or deliberately misreport the intentions and activities of the U.S. and its allies. In turn, if China’s 68-year-old leader should suddenly become ill or pass from the scene, a succession crisis could easily follow. More directly, any miscalculations made by Xi from this point forward are on him: when it comes to major decisions, there is no one else who can take credit...or blame.
Matt Brazil is a senior analyst with BluePath Labs, a Fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, and a former U.S. Army officer and diplomat.
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17. COMMENT: China invokes history of Korean War, CCP and Xi in battle for hearts and minds
COMMENT: China invokes history of Korean War, CCP and Xi in battle for hearts and minds
PHOTOS: The Battle of Lake Changjin's movie poster (Vernon Lee/Yahoo News Singapore) and President Xi Jinping of China (Getty Images)
SINGAPORE — In an early scene of “The Battle at Lake Changjin”, the world’s top grossing movie so far this year, supreme leader Mao Zedong was in a contemplative mood prior to China’s entry into the Korean War.
“The foreigners look down on us. Pride can only be earned on the battlefield,” the Great Helmsman told a top commander of the Korea-bound Chinese People’s Volunteer Army (PVA). Mao even allowed his eldest son Anying to participate in the war, despite the vehement objection of the commander.
The glorification of the sacrifices made by Mao and the PVA in the state-supported movie is China’s clarion call to its people that the history of what it calls the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea must never be forgotten, amid the rise of the emerging superpower to challenge the same American nemesis on the global stage today.
Since its release in September, the movie has been a domestic box-office smash hit with earnings of close to US$900 million as of late October, making it the second highest ever grossing movie in China. It is part of a series of history education campaigns this year by China to trumpet its achievements, with a focus on the period after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seized power in 1949. Above all, the campaigns aim to solidify the leadership of President Xi Jinping as he strives to write a new chapter in China’s history.
The release is timed to coincide with two momentous occasions this year: the 100th anniversary of the founding of the CCP and the 50th anniversary of China’s entry into the United Nations. Commissioned by the Central Propaganda Department and the National Film Administration, the movie cost more than US$200 million and boasted three marquee directors Chen Kaige, Tsui Hark and Dante Lam.
Associate Research Fellow James Char from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) told Yahoo News Singapore that the movie is part of the ongoing CCP-directed attempts to “reflect the greatness and correctness” of the party-state and to forge “Chinese nationalism shaped by the CCP”.
During the Battle of Lake Changjin, also known as the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, in late 1950, China staged a surprise attack against United Nations (UN) forces under US leadership around the reservoir area to relieve its besieged communist ally North Korea. The outcome of the battle ended the UN’s expectations of a reunification of the Korean peninsula and forced it to retreat south of the 38th parallel.
No deviation from official history allowed
Those who are familiar with the history of the Korean War and have watched “The Battle at Lake Changjin” would have noticed some glaring gaps in the movie. Among them, North Korea’s flagrant invasion of the South on 25 June 1950 that triggered the war was glossed over. Instead, the movie incorrectly dates the start of the war to the Battle of Incheon where US and UN forces staged an amphibious landing assault – almost three months after the North Korean invasion.
Not surprising, the movie has ignited anger among South Koreans over what they perceived to be China’s whitewashing of history. They lambasted China for a propaganda exercise highlighting the supposed selfless sacrifices of the “Chinese volunteers” who had helped the Korean people, when in reality they had wreaked colossal havoc and caused the two Koreas to be divided.
In China, there is no leeway to question the official narratives of the war, after a law making it an offence to question the contributions of “heroes and martyrs” was passed in 2018.
A former journalist, Luo Changping, had questioned the legality of China’s role in the war in a social media post about “The Battle at Lake Changjin” and was detained in October under the law. Slamming Luo for his “insult”, state-run Global Times newspaper said, “Infringing upon martyrs' reputations is tantamount to challenging the spiritual order of the whole country and nation. This is the reason why those people must be punished by law.”
To ensure indoctrination of the official version of the war’s history across China, CCP cadres have organised group outings to watch the movie. Such screenings have spurred patriotic fervour among the Chinese who look up to the PVA characters as inspirational role models, according to state media. As of late October, more than 115 million people in China had watched the movie in cinemas, the Xinhua news agency reported.
US Marines in winter gear fighting Chinese troops during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir on 7 December 1950. (PHOTO: PhotoQuest/Getty Images)
Mining Korean War for propaganda
Of the major wars that China was involved in after 1949, the Korean War is the ultimate treasure trove for the CCP to mine and serve its propaganda objectives on the big screen.
Barely a year after Mao prevailed against Kuomintang forces and seized power, communist China was involved in its first major international war as a key combatant against the might of the US and the UN. As such, the history of the war is crucial in cementing the foundation myth of the Mao era.
While China has been trumpeting an outright victory in the war since its ceasefire took effect in 1953, military historians generally agree that the outcome was effectively the pre-conflict status quo. With the release of “The Battle at Lake Changjin”, state media has been making parallels between the war and the current simmering Sino-US tensions, proclaiming that China would emerge triumphant again.
In the following decades, China was involved in several other international conflicts such as the border wars with the Soviet Union and India, and the Sino-Vietnamese War. However, the limited scope of some of the conflicts and China’s complex relations with the Soviet Union and Vietnam – its erstwhile communist allies turned foes – meant that these wars do not provide enough propaganda grist for cinematic fodder.
To further highlight the importance of the Korean War to China’s historical narratives, President Xi gave an assertive speech in October last year to mark the 70th anniversary of the start of China’s involvement in the conflict. The war had “resisted imperialist aggression and expansion,” Xi said. “Let the world know that the people of China are now united, and are not to be trifled with.”
A slew of other Korean War-themed movies have been released since the anniversary or are being planned in China. Among them was the controversial blockbuster movie “Sacrifice”, revolving around the Battle of Kumsong, which was released in China last year. The movie’s screening in South Korea was cancelled after it triggered a backlash in the country over the movie’s pro-China propaganda and historical distortion.
Due to the overwhelming success of “The Battle at Lake Changjin”, Chinese moviemakers are again tapping the battle’s propaganda goldmine. A sequel entitled “Water Gate Bridge” is in the pipeline, with its plot focusing on the attempts by Chinese forces to blow up the bridge in order to thwart the retreat of US troops.
"A Brief History of the Communist Party of China" book. (SCREENCAP: cypressbooks.com)
History of China under Xi
China’s obsession with history this year is encapsulated by a 531-page book entitled “A Brief History of the Communist Party of China", also launched to coincide with the CCP’s centenary celebrations.
About a quarter of the book – only the third such edition ever – is devoted to Xi and his continuous efforts to build socialism with Chinese characteristics as he guides the CCP towards the next century.
In a speech ahead of the launch of the book, Xi proclaimed in February that the “best nourishment” for China is the history of his party’s revolution. “Our party has always attached importance to the study and education of party history, focused on using the party’s struggle history and great achievements to inspire fighting spirit and clarify the direction,” Xi said.
The book, however, downplays the darkest chapters of China’s modern history including the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square Massacre, and the calamitous mistakes made by Mao.
For instance, the 2010 edition of the book pinned the blame on Mao for the Cultural Revolution and had a chapter focused on the tumultuous event. The latest edition covers the event over a mere 13 pages, subsumed within a chapter. It avoids any criticism of Mao, stating that his “correct ideas” weren’t fully implemented.
Referring to the example of the Great Leap Forward as no longer being portrayed as a disaster in the book, RSIS’s Char said, “Political leaders throughout Chinese history are obsessive about the past, and the CCP is no different. The party has no qualms about rewriting its past to serve its political needs in the present.”
Xi warned against “historical nihilism” and attempts to “wantonly smear and distort the party’s history” in his speech. The battle for the hearts and minds of the Chinese people continues to be waged after the book launch. China has set up a hotline for anyone to report online criticisms of the CCP and its history. In line with this diktat, the book will become part of university examinations in China.
In a related development, the powerful Central Committee last week endorsed a resolution that called for upholding "the correct view of party history" under the leadership of Xi. The resolution underscores Xi’s unrivalled position as China’s most powerful leader since Mao and serves to fortify his place in history.
Char said, “The passing of the resolution shows Xi’s desire to portray himself as China’s latest philosopher king after Mao, and an Expert on Everything. We can infer that only he alone is capable of leading the party forward since he has already achieved so much.”
18. Authoritarian Leaders Are Weaker Than They Look, Thanks to Covid
Perhaps something positive about COVID?
Conclusion:
Xi is consolidating his power in China to levels surpassed only by Mao Zedong. But two years into the pandemic, the world’s authoritarians collectively are in worse shape than they’d have the world believe, and that’s anything but reassuring, for them or their neighbors. “We’re looking at fragile states not only from the traditional perspective of the Global South,” says Antonenko. “Fragility is increasingly present now in the Global North, too.”
Authoritarian Leaders Are Weaker Than They Look, Thanks to Covid
Xi, Putin, and Erdogan may be confident and belligerent abroad, but they’re on shakier ground at home.
By Marc Champion
China’s President Xi Jinping is cracking down on Big Tech, rattling sabers over Taiwan, and testing hypersonic missiles in space. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has taken on global financial markets and briefly threatened to throw out ambassadors from 10 countries. And in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin moved enough troops toward Ukraine to convince the U.S. that invasion could be imminent. Almost two years into a pandemic that left many democracies reeling, authoritarians around the globe are getting feisty.
But scratch through the rhetoric—sometimes triumphant, other times belligerent—and much of what these strongmen do also reveals their domestic vulnerability, because the pandemic has been tough on them, too. Many failed the Covid-19 response test at least as dismally as their counterparts in democratic countries. The resulting mix of insecurity at home and confidence abroad is a recipe for instability and risk.
At the start of the Covid crisis, authoritarian leaders as a group seemed better able to avoid the public and economic backlash suffered by many governments in developed democracies. That was true regardless of whether they, like Xi, imposed tough lockdowns and restrictions, or they, like Putin, downplayed the disease’s threat. (Remember the advice of Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko to fight Covid with vodka and tractor riding?)
Now, as the pandemic grinds on, that advantage is in doubt.
Russia is struggling to reduce record Covid fatalities; its households have been getting poorer, and Putin’s approval ratings have fallen. China’s strict Covid policies paid big dividends when its economy bounced back, with growth from a year earlier hitting 18.3% in the first quarter of 2021. But Xi’s zero-case approach to battling Covid forced the continued lockdown of borders and cities that, together with his crackdown on capitalist excess, has sapped growth. Erdogan, above all, has floundered in his attempt to contain what you might call economic long Covid.
Many democratic governments are in deep trouble, too, including that of the U.S. But one advantage of democracies is coming into its own at this stage of the pandemic, says Ivan Krastev, chairman of the Bulgaria-based Centre for Liberal Strategies, a think tank: They can afford failure. When elected governments are perceived to have bungled so fundamental a task as protecting the lives of their citizens, they can pay the price at the ballot box, leaving the state bruised but intact.
That’s even true for populists, the would-be authoritarians who still face the test of meaningful elections. Pandemic failures contributed to the defeat of former President Donald Trump in the U.S. and more recently Andrej Babis, the Czech prime minister. “We’re seeing the end of a populist cycle,” says Krastev—but there’s no such cycle for leaders able to rig or ignore elections. “In an autocracy, all problems are owned by the system itself,” he says.
Prime Minister Andrej Babis attends a no-confidence vote at the Czech Parliament Chamber of Deputies in Prague on June 3, 2021.PHOTOGRAPHER: MILAN JAROS/BLOOMBERG
At a Moscow event in October with foreign policy analysts from around the world, Putin seemed relaxed and confident, treating the pandemic as final proof that the U.S.-dominated liberal world order was dead. Covid performed a geopolitical function similar to a major war and tilted the balance of power in Russia’s favor, according to Sergei Karaganov, the dean of Russian foreign policy research and a co-founder of the Valdai Discussion Club forum where Putin spoke on Oct. 21. “Never has Russia been in better geopolitical shape,” he says. “China is an ally, and the West is disorganized, so we have no opponent worth talking about.”
There’s a caveat to Karaganov’s triumphalism. “Covid or not,” he says, “if Russia continues with a good economic policy and returns some elements of democracy, it will be OK.”
Those are big “ifs.” Russians have been watching their disposable income fall for years, in part because of policies that have cut trade with and investment from the West. And the recent political trend has been away from democratization toward a security state, exemplified by the unusually harsh crackdown on Putin’s political opponents ahead of September’s elections.
None of that demonstrates confidence at home, says Thomas Graham, a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who served on the U.S. National Security Council under former President George W. Bush. Officials inside the Kremlin know Russians are unhappy, and “they have done what they do in these circumstances—crack down hard on anything that could be a threat,” he says.
Putin, like Xi, faces no foreseeable risk of removal and for now is enjoying a revenue boost from high energy prices. But the pandemic has accelerated some worrying trends, says Dmitry Suslov, an international relations scholar at Moscow’s HSE University. In Russia’s case, it has exposed a chasm between citizens and the authorities, even as the ability to quickly develop the Sputnik V vaccine confirmed the country’s position as a technological power.
“In Russia the vaccine has been more available for longer than anywhere else in the world,” yet, at about 35%, its vaccination rate lags the world average, says Suslov. “It just shows the climate, the general mistrust of the state. That does not necessarily result in protests but in indifference and alienation.”
It was precisely the Communist Party of China’s awareness of these systemic risks that shaped its zero-tolerance response to Covid, according to Bruno Macaes, a former Europe minister in Portugal and a China specialist. The party leadership cast the fight against the virus as a national security threat from the start, shaping a more assertive foreign policy, encapsulated by so-called Wolf Warrior diplomacy. At home, Xi’s Marxism-tinged pressure on tech companies, property speculation, and private tutoring was meant to shore up the party’s legitimacy with a public exhausted by some of these pathologies of China’s transformation, Macaes says.
The question is whether Xi has taken on so many simultaneous challenges as a carefully calibrated tactic to consolidate his position or as an act of hubris, says Andrew Gilholm, a principal focusing on Asia at Control Risks, a consulting firm that assesses threats for corporations. Hubris—encouraged not just by democracies’ struggles with the pandemic but the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan—would be more dangerous.
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Xi’s response to the Covid challenge has been deft compared to Erdogan’s in Turkey. Faced with falling popularity, Erdogan forced the central bank to lower interest rates, pumping credit into the economy even as inflation hit 19.9% in October. That tightrope act worked in the past to keep the economy afloat ahead of elections, but at a price so high to Turkey’s currency and open economy that any advantages to be gained from cheaper exports were swamped. And it may not work again. Measured against the dollar, the Turkish lira today is worth less than a fifth of what it was in 2012, before Erdogan started imposing direct control over the central bank and other institutions.
More threatening to Erdogan’s hold on power is that poorer Turks, the bedrock of his political support, were hit hardest during the pandemic. “Turks were left on their own,” and their overwhelming concern is the economy now, says Galip Dalay, a Turkey specialist and fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy, a Berlin think tank. Opposition parties have already won control of the country’s major cities. So though Erdogan in recent years seemed to take a leaf out of Putin’s book—tapping nationalist pride to lift support through operations in Azerbaijan, Libya, and Syria—he’s unlikely to benefit from a repeat. “For the first time,” says Dalay, “I think Erdogan is in real trouble.”
Putin arrives in Geneva for a summit with U.S. President Joe Biden on June 16, 2021. PHOTOGRAPHER: ALESSANDRO DELLA VALLE/BLOOMBERG
The conundrum for Erdogan and Putin, says Oksana Antonenko, a director at Control Risks focused on Europe and Africa, is that their old playbooks no longer seem to work. Another Russian military adventure abroad can’t be ruled out; Russia’s continued backing of Lukashenko as he weaponizes Middle Eastern migrants against the European Union, and its renewed buildup of forces around Ukraine, suggests little in the Kremlin’s toolbox has changed. Yet military aggression is no longer guaranteed to bring cheers from Putin’s domestic audience. Only 32% of Russians still say the country’s status as a great power is the most important issue, compared with 66% whose top concern is their standard of living, according to an August poll by the Moscow-based Levada Analytical Center. The bigger risk to stability now, says Antonenko, may lie in the fragility of a regime that seems unable to adapt.
Xi is consolidating his power in China to levels surpassed only by Mao Zedong. But two years into the pandemic, the world’s authoritarians collectively are in worse shape than they’d have the world believe, and that’s anything but reassuring, for them or their neighbors. “We’re looking at fragile states not only from the traditional perspective of the Global South,” says Antonenko. “Fragility is increasingly present now in the Global North, too.”
19. The U.S. Military and the Coming Great-Power Challenge By Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr.
Commentary on Eldridge Colby's new book:
As with all strategies, Colby’s is not without risk. Until now, Washington’s NATO allies have shown little inclination to pick up the strategic slack against Russia as the United States concentrates more attention on China. If Vietnam is left out of new U.S. security arrangements, as Colby suggests, it could become an early victim of Chinese regional expansion, thus compromising Colby’s anti-hegemonic coalition before its foundations are securely established.
Yet already, several of Colby’s designated core members seem to have acquired a new resolve to band against the aspiring Asian hegemon. Japan has promised to boost—even double—the percentage of its GDP devoted to defense. Australia is seeking to enlarge its major air and naval bases to welcome an expanded U.S. military presence, even as it moves to introduce nuclear attack submarines into its fleet with the AUKUS (Australia–United Kingdom–United States) security pact. From India to Vietnam, from Indonesia to South Korea, there are signs that Colby’s anti-hegemonic coalition is not simply an aspiration but a real possibility—if the United States is prepared to take the lead.
Even with these encouraging developments, though, Colby warns that success will not come “easy or cheap.” The United States cannot afford to hold defense budgets flat lest its strategy become one of “big hat, no cattle.” Nor, after nearly a decade of intellectual drift, can the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff continue to delay in providing a credible “operational concept” for defending the western Pacific to inform defense budget priorities.
The Strategy of Denial shows the breadth and depth of Colby’s insights into the challenges posed by the revisionist great powers to U.S. security and the international system. Like all serious strategies, Colby’s acknowledges that U.S. resources are limited and that tough choices must be made. In brief, Colby’s well-crafted and insightful Strategy of Denial provides a superb and, one suspects, essential departure point for an urgent and much-needed debate over U.S. defense strategy.
The U.S. Military and the Coming Great-Power Challenge
Can an American-Led Coalition Prevent the Next War?
For many of the last 30 years, the notion that the United States was locked in direct contest with other great powers seemed as outdated as the Cold War itself. Instead, successive U.S. administrations have pursued collective security on the assumption that the world’s great powers shared a common interest in preserving the existing international order.
U.S. leaders have often promoted collective security following a great-power struggle. After World War I, President Woodrow Wilson pushed for the League of Nations, and in the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, the future Axis powers Germany, Italy, and Japan joined the Western democracies in renouncing war as a means of resolving international disputes. Yet war began in the Far East only three years later and a world war less than a decade after that.
With victory on the horizon in World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt reprised Wilson’s approach. Calling for the formation of the United Nations, FDR wagered that the “Four Policemen”—the United Kingdom, nationalist China, Soviet Russia, and the United States—shared sufficient common security interests to maintain peace and order. His hopes were quickly dashed by Joseph Stalin’s subjugation of Eastern Europe and the fall of nationalist China to the communists.
After the Cold War, the pattern was repeated. With Soviet communism defeated, the administration of President Bill Clinton envisioned a U.S.-led liberal democratic order centered around “Cooperative Security” and a “Partnership for Peace.” In the early years of this century, despite growing tensions with Russia and China, President George W. Bush declared he found Russian President Vladimir Putin “trustworthy” and accepted China’s membership in the World Trade Organization. Doubling down on this approach, President Barack Obama attempted to “reset” relations with Russia while pursuing “engagement” with China.
By the late 2010s, however, it was increasingly clear that these efforts had failed. Russia seized the Crimea from Ukraine and supported its proxies in occupying parts of that country’s Donbas region. And despite reassurances to the contrary, China militarized the South China Sea islands. Simply put, China and Russia had no interest in joining a U.S.-led international order. They had long rejected it. They had only lacked the means to openly contest it.
Hence the growing recognition among U.S. policymakers that “great-power competition” had never ceased following the Cold War. This was formalized in the 2017 National Security Strategy, and the challenge was given a full airing in the 2018 National Defense Strategy, which prioritized the growing challenge posed by a revanchist Russia and a rising China. Although it identified these threats to the international order, however, the NDS did not advance a robust new strategy to address them.
This task has now been taken up by one of the NDS’s principal architects, Elbridge Colby, who served in the administration of President Donald Trump as a deputy assistant secretary of defense. In his book The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict, Colby provides a timely exposition of—and argument for—a new U.S. defense posture. Colby’s strategy focuses on the United States’ century-old objective of preventing a rival power from establishing hegemony on the Eurasian landmass. Colby accepts that the United States’ “unipolar moment” is over and warns that we now face a “new reality” in which Washington must accept that a war between great powers, “which once seemed a thing of the past...now seems considerably more plausible.”
The Taiwan Problem
In describing this dangerous new world, The Strategy of Denial touches on a range of topics, including the challenge posed to NATO from a resurgent Russia, rival nuclear arsenal growth, an unstable Middle East, and global terrorism. Colby’s overwhelming focus, however, is on China. Since President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, China has leveraged its rapid economic growth to acquire advanced military technology, seeking to match or even exceed U.S. capabilities in many areas. As an “aspiring hegemon,” Colby writes, China may be tempted to use its increasingly capable armed forces to secure its “core interests,” which include absorbing Taiwan and the islands within the South China Sea’s “nine-dash line.” More likely, however, Beijing calculates that absent a countervailing U.S. effort, its growing military power will enable it to “Finlandize” its neighbors without direct force.
To accomplish these goals, Colby argues, China will likely pursue a “focused and sequential strategy,” isolating its targets from effective U.S. support and then dealing with them one by one. Should this effort succeed, China could attempt what Colby calls an armed “fait accompli” against targeted territories such as Taiwan. In military strategy, a fait accompli describes a situation in which an aggressor achieves its objectives rapidly, before an effective defense can be mounted. It also implies that once the territory has been seized, attempts to retake it will be viewed by the victim and its allies as prohibitively expensive. Colby argues that a fait accompli invasion of Taiwan could create a new reality in Asia, much as Adolf Hitler’s sequential rapid—and bloodless—seizures of Austria and the remains of Czechoslovakia shifted the European military balance and destroyed the Western democracies’ credibility with Soviet Russia.
Even if a U.S.-led coalition held together in the wake of a successful Chinese fait accompli against Taiwan, Colby finds that a military campaign to retake that country from Beijing would be both very costly and extremely difficult, and thus highly unlikely to succeed. Consequently, he writes, the United States must do everything in its power to deter China from attempting a fait accompli against Taiwan or any other U.S. western Pacific ally or quasi ally. And should deterrence fail, it must defeat such an attempt at the point of attack. This is the “strategy of denial” from which Colby takes his title.
Should a Chinese fait accompli succeed against Taiwan, Colby argues that a U.S. strategy focused on “punishment” would prove ineffective. If the United States chose to escalate the war by seizing Chinese assets in other parts of the world, for example, or to impose an economic embargo, any pain suffered by Beijing would be insufficient to cause it to forfeit Taiwan. And if instead the United States opted to escalate the war’s intensity—for example, by conducting large-scale attacks on China’s critical infrastructure—the conflict could morph from limited to total war, in which both belligerents could incur costs out of all proportion to any prospective gains.
Strengthening the Skeleton
By Colby’s own account, preventing China from executing a fait accompli will require formidable political and military resources. To begin with, Washington will need to play a far more active role in Asia. And since U.S. military dominance in the region no longer exists, and cannot be restored, the United States cannot simply declare its intention to “pivot” or “rebalance” its political and military resources to the western Pacific. To establish a favorable military balance, Colby argues, the United States will also have to build an “anti-hegemonic coalition” whose combined military power exceeds China’s.
The new coalition that Colby calls for is not an alliance and certainly not a latter-day NATO. Instead, he envisions a confederation of nations, including U.S. allies and a larger group of regional partners. Colby sees the coalition’s “steel skeleton” formed by Washington’s “hub and spoke” allies—Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea—as well as Taiwan. Led by the United States, this core group must be bolstered by a broader array of security partners. At the top of Colby’s prospective list is India, a great power and the fourth member of the increasingly prominent “Quad,” the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue that also includes Australia, Japan, and the United States. Colby finds Indonesia’s size and strategic location attractive and would also welcome Malaysia and Singapore as members. But he is hesitant about Vietnam, which he sees as a potentially valuable coalition member but highly vulnerable to a Chinese fait accompli, given its common land border with Beijing.
Although he argues for Washington to take the lead in forming the coalition, Colby is clear-eyed about the means the United States has available to achieve it. He observes that any strategy of denial must be realistic about what the U.S. military can—and cannot—do. Despite the temptation to hold back resources to address other global threats, he warns that Washington must remain focused on China. Attempts to sustain a coalition on the cheap could compromise efforts to convince partner governments that the United States is “all in.” And if push comes to shove, Colby argues, the United States must adopt a “one-war posture” toward China and accept increased risk in dealing with other threats. While acknowledging the danger of Russian aggression against NATO states in Europe, he asserts that a fait accompli by China would be far more difficult to reverse than a similar act of Russian aggression against one of NATO’s frontline states. Simply put, the United States “should not size, shape, or posture its military to deal simultaneously with any other scenario alongside a war with China over Taiwan.”
If push comes to shove, Colby argues, the U.S. must be "all-in" with China.
What would a one-war posture within the framework of an anti-hegemonic coalition look like? In The Strategy of Denial, Colby outlines a series of steps that the U.S. military should take. To be able to respond effectively and rapidly, U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific region will need to be expanded. Given the risk of “Pearl Harbor” attacks against the few large existing U.S. bases in places such as Guam, Kadena in Japan, and Osan in South Korea, he also argues for dispersing U.S. forces among a larger number of coalition members. Such a shift, Colby notes, would also reassure the host coalition partners of the U.S. commitment to their defense.
Although the principal objective of Colby’s anti-hegemonic coalition is to deter Chinese aggression in the first place, he recognizes the need to confront a Chinese fait accompli with force should deterrence fail. Yet even if a military response succeeds, China could still choose to continue the war, perhaps by mobilizing additional forces for a more methodical attack on Taiwan or by escalating the conflict to a higher level of intensity. But China would, he believes, likely be reluctant to contemplate a larger, far more costly war, and in either case the burden of escalation would rest uncomfortably on its shoulders. In the case of the former, however, it’s far from certain that the United States and its allies could defeat a redoubled Chinese offensive on Taiwan. China’s current production of military hardware, including submarines, planes, missiles, and warships, exceeds that of the United States, and by a significant margin. If the war became a race to “reload,” as it currently stands Colby’s anti-hegemonic coalition runs a high probability of coming out second best.
The Price of Prevention
As with all strategies, Colby’s is not without risk. Until now, Washington’s NATO allies have shown little inclination to pick up the strategic slack against Russia as the United States concentrates more attention on China. If Vietnam is left out of new U.S. security arrangements, as Colby suggests, it could become an early victim of Chinese regional expansion, thus compromising Colby’s anti-hegemonic coalition before its foundations are securely established.
Yet already, several of Colby’s designated core members seem to have acquired a new resolve to band against the aspiring Asian hegemon. Japan has promised to boost—even double—the percentage of its GDP devoted to defense. Australia is seeking to enlarge its major air and naval bases to welcome an expanded U.S. military presence, even as it moves to introduce nuclear attack submarines into its fleet with the AUKUS (Australia–United Kingdom–United States) security pact. From India to Vietnam, from Indonesia to South Korea, there are signs that Colby’s anti-hegemonic coalition is not simply an aspiration but a real possibility—if the United States is prepared to take the lead.
Even with these encouraging developments, though, Colby warns that success will not come “easy or cheap.” The United States cannot afford to hold defense budgets flat lest its strategy become one of “big hat, no cattle.” Nor, after nearly a decade of intellectual drift, can the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff continue to delay in providing a credible “operational concept” for defending the western Pacific to inform defense budget priorities.
The Strategy of Denial shows the breadth and depth of Colby’s insights into the challenges posed by the revisionist great powers to U.S. security and the international system. Like all serious strategies, Colby’s acknowledges that U.S. resources are limited and that tough choices must be made. In brief, Colby’s well-crafted and insightful Strategy of Denial provides a superb and, one suspects, essential departure point for an urgent and much-needed debate over U.S. defense strategy.
20. As U.S. spies look to the future, one target stands out: China
Excerpts:
So where does the CIA recruit these new officers? The ideal candidate would be a fluent Mandarin speaker, with an advanced degree in artificial intelligence — and a willingness to work for a government salary.
"So that is quite a unicorn, right? It's not easy, but they're out there," said Cynthia Strand, who retired last year after 35 years at the CIA.
She's now at a private company called Primer, which uses artificial intelligence to sort through huge volumes of data, find specific information, and then summarize it and translate it from, say, Mandarin to English.
"Imagine if you had a large cadre of a good interns," Strand said. "You want to put them on the tasks where they can cut their teeth and learn, and leave the higher thought work to people who have been trained and practicing for a long time."
She says human intelligence remains critical, but technology keeps leaping forward.
"No one, no human being, no matter how exceptional they are, can consume and make sense of the volumes of data that are available. Machines can do that beautifully," Strand added.
It's just one example, she says, of how technology is redefining spycraft for a new era — an era that's here to stay.
As U.S. spies look to the future, one target stands out: China
NPR · by Greg Myre · November 16, 2021
After reviewing the CIA's priorities, Director William Burns recently announced the establishment of a China Mission Center at the spy agency. U.S. intelligence officials, current and former, recently spoke at a conference about the challenges posed by China's large spying operation directed at the U.S. Ian Morton/NPR
It's pretty rare for U.S. spies to gather at a conference and talk openly about the most pressing national security threats.
"I've got to tell you all, it's so odd after 27 years of being in the clandestine service, to see your picture and your bio pop up," said Cynthia Saddy, a retired CIA officer. As she spoke to a ballroom filled with current and former intelligence officials at a resort in Sea Island, Ga., a huge screen displayed her photo and the high-powered positions she held at the agency, including chief of staff in the Directorate of Operations.
"First of all, you've got to go to China. And then second of all, you've got to go go to China. And the third one is, you've got to go to China. And he said, 'OK, I got it,'" Hayden recounted.
The U.S. intelligence community focused on the Soviet Union for decades. Then the priority was Middle East terrorism. Now, the intelligence community says, a new era has begun.
"I call this entering the third epoch of intelligence," said Sue Gordon. In a series of high-level jobs, she provided intelligence briefs to five of the past six presidents before retiring in 2019 as the principal deputy director of national intelligence.
"We kind of woke up out of our counterterrorism stupor to realize that the world had become digital, and that we hadn't been focusing on all the things we needed to," she said. "The rise of China happened during those years, and now you see us talking about Great Power competition."
Chinese President Xi Jinping walks past an honor guard in Beijing in September. The U.S. intelligence community, along with other parts of the national security establishment, are increasingly focused on China as the main U.S. competitor. Andy Wong/AP
A CIA center devoted to China
CIA Director Burns has seemingly embraced all this advice. After reviewing the CIA's priorities, his first big move was announcing the establishment of a China Mission Center to focus more on the country seen as the principal U.S. competitor.
David Cohen, the no. 2 official at the CIA, told the conference this means more resources will be devoted to China, the different parts of the agency will more closely coordinate their work on China, and Burns will host a weekly meeting devoted entirely to that country.
"What we've come to realize is that we need to enhance and synchronize our efforts around China," he said.
This comes as the U.S.-China competition heats up on several fronts, and China's leader Xi Jinping talks increasingly about his country's growing global clout and what he views as the decline of the U.S.
The U.S. intelligence community wants to know what Xi is thinking about Taiwan, where tensions have been rising. China's recent test of a hypersonic missile seemed to catch the U.S. by surprise. And there's the ongoing race for cutting-edge technologies, like artificial intelligence.
Critics say this constant drumbeat of threat warnings about China can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, inflaming tensions with Beijing and leading the U.S. to overlook other potential flashpoints from Russia to Iran to North Korea.
David Cohen offered this response: "I will hasten to add that we are the Central Intelligence Agency. We are not the China Intelligence Agency."
Still, the conference was a vivid demonstration of how the U.S. intelligence community is making a pivot to China.
China's massive intelligence operation focuses on technology
The current and former officials say that no country — not even the Soviet Union at its peak — spied on the U.S. in such a comprehensive way as China now does.
"They've got more people than we could ever dream of having. They are going to collect as much data as they can get, put it in a big data pool and and use artificial intelligence, use machine processing to then target us," said Larry Pfeiffer, a former CIA chief of staff. "I mean, it is scary."
China pursues traditional spying targets — government and military secrets. But Beijing wants much, much more. China is unique in its sweeping, systematic approach to gather cutting-edge technology from U.S. companies and universities.
So how should the U.S. protect itself?
"Our system is really set up to fight a nation-state. It focuses on things that are illegal, things that are a direct military application. What we're seeing now, and especially the focus in academia, in commerce," said Anna Puglisi, a former intelligence official who focused on China. She's now at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology. "It's a very, very different threat than we had in the past."
She says academia in particular has a spirit of sharing, and is often reluctant to impose restrictions.
"We do get a lot of pushback on that because (academics) will say, 'Well, this is open research,'" she said. "And that is so true. We don't want to stem that. But what's key is our academics should have the choice of when they share their information and when they don't."
China had more than 300,000 students at U.S. universities, far more than any other country, before the COVID pandemic reduced the numbers. Many study in high-tech fields and are involved in important research.
Bill Evanina, who led many government investigations into the theft of intellectual property, says the U.S. shouldn't close the door to top-flight students from China and elsewhere. But, he argues, universities need a better understanding of the risks. After leaving government this year, he set up a company that helps schools protect themselves in the STEM fields.
"It's the small proportion of people that we have to be concerned about, the postgraduate STEM world, where (China's government) is looking to obtain research and intelligence that's going to help their military and academic world," he said.
A hard target to spy on
Another key point is that China is a notoriously hard target for the U.S. to spy against because of its tight internal security and ubiquitous surveillance.
The U.S. may want to collect more intelligence on China, but it's hard to make that happen, said Paul Kolbe, a former CIA officer who now runs the Intelligence Project at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
"You can't flip a switch and suddenly have a stable of Chinese assets, great penetrations of the inner sanctum of government," Kolbe said. "You have to develop officers who know the language, the culture, and that can establish deep relationships of trust that are required to do agent operations."
U.S. intelligence agencies went through an overhaul after the 9/11 attacks. Agencies that had been geared toward the Soviet Union and Russia for decades suddenly found themselves in need of Arabic speakers with a deep knowledge of Islamist extremism.
So where does the CIA recruit these new officers? The ideal candidate would be a fluent Mandarin speaker, with an advanced degree in artificial intelligence — and a willingness to work for a government salary.
"So that is quite a unicorn, right? It's not easy, but they're out there," said Cynthia Strand, who retired last year after 35 years at the CIA.
She's now at a private company called Primer, which uses artificial intelligence to sort through huge volumes of data, find specific information, and then summarize it and translate it from, say, Mandarin to English.
"Imagine if you had a large cadre of a good interns," Strand said. "You want to put them on the tasks where they can cut their teeth and learn, and leave the higher thought work to people who have been trained and practicing for a long time."
She says human intelligence remains critical, but technology keeps leaping forward.
"No one, no human being, no matter how exceptional they are, can consume and make sense of the volumes of data that are available. Machines can do that beautifully," Strand added.
It's just one example, she says, of how technology is redefining spycraft for a new era — an era that's here to stay.
Greg Myre is an NPR national security correspondent. Follow him @gregmyre1.
NPR · by Greg Myre · November 16, 2021
21. 9th U.S-Philippines Bilateral Strategic Dialogue
9th U.S-Philippines Bilateral Strategic Dialogue - United States Department of State
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9th U.S-Philippines Bilateral Strategic Dialogue
Media Note
November 16, 2021
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The United States and the Republic of the Philippines held the ninth Bilateral Strategic Dialogue November 15-16 in Washington, D.C. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Kritenbrink and Assistant Secretary of Defense Ely Ratner met with counterparts from the Government of the Philippines, including Ambassador to the United States Jose Manuel Romualdez, Department of Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Ma. Theresa P. Lazaro and Department of National Defense Undersecretary Cardozo M. Luna. Throughout the meeting, the two sides reaffirmed their commitment to peace, security, and economic prosperity in the Asia Pacific region.
Both countries consulted extensively on joint efforts to end the COVID-19 pandemic, uphold the rules-based maritime order in the South China Sea, foster respect for human rights, and strengthen interoperability of the U.S. and Philippine armed forces. Additionally, the two parties discussed concrete measures to deepen the extensive economic relationship between our two countries by cooperating in areas such as science and technology, fisheries, and infrastructure, among others.
22. Joint Vision for a 21st Century United States-Philippines Partnership
Joint Vision for a 21st Century United States-Philippines Partnership - United States Department of State
On the occasion of the 9th United States-Philippines Bilateral Strategic Dialogue co-hosted by Assistant Secretary of State Daniel J. Kritenbrink and Assistant Secretary of Defense Ely S. Ratner, the United States and the Philippines issued the following statement:
Begin text:
- The United States and the Philippines reaffirm our commitment to a partnership of sovereign equals. We resolve to uphold and reinforce our special relationship by holding steadfast to our shared democratic values, enhancing our mutual security and defense capabilities, and working together to meet the common challenges that we will face in the future. We resolve to further fortify our mutual trust and respect, ensuring that the relationship remains relevant and mutually beneficial in the face of the changing geopolitical landscape and the emergence of new challenges and opportunities, especially those brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.
- A STRONGER PARTNERSHIP: As we mark the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations, the United States and the Philippines pay tribute to a relationship that was forged by a shared history and common values, anchored by our collective commitment to democracy and human rights, tested in both clement and cruel circumstances, and made firm and resilient by the strong and abiding friendship between its peoples. We recognize the important role of our bilateral ties in enhancing the well-being and prosperity of our peoples and in promoting peace, security and stability in the region and beyond. We commit to further deepen, expand and strengthen this relationship through sustained engagement in all fields so that our countries are better equipped to address current geopolitical tensions, exacerbated by the prevailing pandemic, and contribute to regional and global peace and stability. We resolve to review, update and follow up on our action plans across key areas of cooperation, taking into account both existing and emerging challenges, through regular and sustained high-level visits and dialogue, including the Bilateral Strategic Dialogue, the United States-Philippines Two-Plus-Two Ministerial Dialogue, the Mutual Defense Board-Security Engagement Board (MDB-SEB) and the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) Meetings.
- AN ENDURING ALLIANCE: The Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) signed in 1951, later enhanced by the 1998 Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), remains a key pillar in our bilateral defense and security relations. The Treaty supports regional and global security by enabling our readiness and providing flexibility. Through enhanced reciprocal access and security cooperation, this alliance also facilitates an open, interconnected, resilient, and secure Indo-Pacific region.
- For the past seventy years, our two nations have worked collaboratively to address complex security challenges across the Indo-Pacific region, consistently demonstrating that we are stronger together. As we celebrate 70 years of the alliance, we reaffirm our treaty commitments, including our MDT Article IV obligations to respond to an armed attack in the Pacific Area on either the United States or the Philippines. The Philippines welcomes the United States position in its July 13, 2020 statement that the Pacific Area includes the South China Sea.
- Looking ahead, we seek to enhance the posture of our alliance to address new and emerging challenges. We intend to ensure the MDT’s continued relevance to addressing current and emerging threats. To strengthen our combined deterrence capabilities, we plan to develop new bilateral defense guidelines that support a mutual understanding of roles, missions, and capabilities within the framework of the alliance. We also intend to enhance bilateral coordination and communication processes to facilitate more effective operationalization of alliance priorities and promote mutual understanding of the provisions of the Treaty. We intend to continue to implement infrastructure projects at current EDCA locations and explore additional sites for further development.
- We remain intent on enhancing the defense capabilities of the Armed Forces of the Philippines more so given the prevailing geopolitical tensions, especially in the maritime areas of the Philippines, and plan to pursue avenues, including funding arrangements, towards this end, demonstrating our mutual, unshakeable commitment to the alliance, assuring each other that it is strong as it can be, and will remain so for many decades to come.
- The United States and the Philippines resolve to sustain defense and security cooperation by conducting regular high-level visits and dialogues. Through these engagements, we intend to promote interoperability of the U.S. and Philippine armed forces. We plan to update bilateral planning documents, establish a coordination center to improve bilateral information sharing and planning, develop joint command and control capability for operations, and complete a bilateral maritime framework to enable more comprehensive and timely execution of activities. We seek to strengthen this cooperation through education and training, capacity-building, interoperability, and modernization of defense and security institutions. We intend to continue to build the capacity of the Philippine security forces, and prioritize concluding a General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) in the next year to complement information-sharing and equipment modernization efforts. We seek to ensure that joint activities under the MDB-SEB are of high impact and great value to deepen cooperation in priority areas.
- AN INTERNATIONAL LAW-BASED MARITIME ORDER: The United States and the Philippines seek to further coordinate diplomatic efforts in building an international coalition that supports the international law-based maritime order. We share the view that the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) expansive maritime claims in the South China Sea are inconsistent with the international law of the sea as reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with the unanimous July 12, 2016 Award in the South China Sea Arbitration (The Republic of Philippines v. The People’s Republic of China), a decision that, pursuant to the Convention, is legally binding on the Philippines and the PRC. The United States fully stands by its “Position on Maritime Claims in the South China Sea”, released on July 13, 2020. The United States and the Philippines affirm that the PRC cannot lawfully assert a maritime claim – including any Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) claims derived from Scarborough Reef and the Spratly Islands – vis-a-vis the Philippines in areas that the Tribunal found to be in the Philippines’ EEZ or on its continental shelf. Additionally, the PRC’s harassment of Philippine fisheries and offshore energy development within those areas is unlawful, as are any unilateral PRC actions to exploit those resources. The United States and the Philippines express their support for compliance with the international law of the sea and are continuing activities and cooperation to exercise and support safety and freedoms of navigation, overflight, and other lawful uses of the sea in the South China Sea and around the world. Towards this end, we decided to launch a Maritime Dialogue in 2022.
- REGIONAL SECURITY ARCHITECTURE: The United States and the Philippines recognize and uphold the central role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the Indo-Pacific region. We affirm that a strong and unified ASEAN is vital to regional security and prosperity. The United States supports the Philippines’ important role within ASEAN and in other international fora that contribute to the peace and security of the Indo-Pacific region and promote the international law-based order. We support efforts to strengthen ASEAN-based institutions, including the ASEAN Regional Forum, ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting-Plus and the East Asia Summit, to enhance their ability to promote mutual trust and confidence.
- EMERGING THREATS AND ABIDING PRINCIPLES: The United States and the Philippines intend to enhance cooperation in the face of new and emerging threats to both countries’ common welfare, including but not limited to diseases, cyber threats, and transnational criminal and terrorist networks. To this end, we commit to maintaining open channels of communication, to discussing the application of the MDT to new and emerging threats, while respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms, and tirelessly pursuing our commitment to shared principles of democratic governance. In this regard, we plan to hold regular, candid dialogue and to explore and develop new areas of cooperation to strengthen the protection of human rights and revitalize democracy at home and abroad. The United States supports the recently launched Philippines-UN Joint Program on Human Rights (UNJP), acknowledging that it can be a model of meaningful cooperation on human rights promotion and protection between a sovereign Member State and the UN, and the international community, and that it could strengthen Philippine domestic institutions and support domestic processes through technical cooperation with the UN and other partners.
- Recognizing our mutual dedication to combating trafficking in persons, the United States and the Philippines commit to strengthening efforts to protect workers’ rights in both our countries and around the world. We are working to strengthen our cooperation and collaboration to counter terrorism financing, money laundering, and its predicate offenses to strike such criminals at the root of their operations: their sources of funding, illegal assets and financial transactions, and thereby maintain the integrity of the global financial system. We also recognize the threat posed by terrorist travel and intend to strengthen cooperation on using national watchlists and other databases to detect and deter terrorist travel. In an environment of evolving violent extremist threats, both sides recognized the need to continue to address the drivers of violent extremism and counter violent extremist ideology.
- SHARED PROSPERITY, SHARED PLANET: The Philippines recognizes and thanks the United States for its leadership role providing vaccines for COVID-19, including as the largest contributor to the COVAX Facility. We are convinced that COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics should be accessible and affordable for all as they are pivotal in the global pandemic recovery.
- With the pandemic still very much upon us, the United States and the Philippines seek to identify areas for broader engagement in the economic sphere to help pave the way for swift recovery. We acknowledge that a steady and equitable supply of COVID-19 vaccines as well as boosters will be crucial in this regard. The Philippines thus welcomes the United States’ support for the Philippines’ complementary efforts to develop domestic vaccine, therapeutics, and diagnostics manufacturing capabilities.
- The United States and the Philippines recognize the existential threat that the climate crisis poses to the world today and the critical need, as affirmed by all Parties to the Paris Agreement at the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, for all countries to act on climate mitigation and adaptation with urgency and ambition in this decisive decade for action. Our two governments intend to take the required steps to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and to ensure that our emission reduction targets reflect this goal. Jointly and in concert with the private sector, we are working to pursue financing of climate-related initiatives and programs to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, including through enhanced (clean) energy cooperation to accelerate renewable energy deployment, phase out high-carbon sources of power and achieve a just and sustainable energy transition.
- We are also working to support the sustainability of marine resources, such as rehabilitating coastal marine and terrestrial ecosystems, adopting transformative ocean science solutions, and employing technological innovations for cutting edge monitoring, control and surveillance systems, as well as supporting the long-term sustainable management of fisheries and aquaculture.
- We intend to continue to address pollution, combat wildlife and timber trafficking, prevent seafood fraud, and secure sustainable financing for the conservation and protection of natural resources with significant support for the growing number of biodiversity-friendly enterprises. We likewise resolve to utilize market-related measures in line with our commitments under the Port State Measures Agreement to ensure that seafood obtained via IUU fishing are denied access to global commerce.
- Recognizing that science, technology and innovation are crucial drivers of development, the United States and the Philippines plan to pursue the implementation of the 2019 Science and Technology Agreement to advance these initiatives and address emerging challenges.
- The United States and the Philippines endeavor to accelerate, advance and increase trade and investments, while upholding our mutual non-proliferation obligations and capabilities. We are working to strengthen the resiliency of regional supply chains, in consultation with the private sector where appropriate, and explore bilateral platforms for closer economic engagement.
- Acutely aware of the strain on our economies and our shared planet that was magnified and exacerbated by COVID-19 and the climate crisis, the United States and the Philippines commit to pursue initiatives that foster the resilience of our infrastructure, peoples, ecosystems and economies, especially in support of pandemic and economic recovery efforts.
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
