Quotes of the Day:

“With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.”

-William Lloyd Harrison - abolitionist, suffragist

“No amount of evidence will persuade an idiot.” 

- Mark Twain

“Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves. How to evaluate evidence and how to disagree with you.” 

- Richard Dawkins

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 26 (Putin's War)

2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (26.10.22) CDS comments on key events

3. With Limited Resources to Counter Violent, Nonstate Armed Groups, How Can We Do Triage and Set Priorities?

4. Ukrainians hold out in east, prepare battle for Kherson

5. Density not Dispersion: Evolving SOF for Integrated Deterrence

6. Another casualty of Russia's war: Some Ukrainians no longer trust their neighbors

7. Why Biden’s Block on Chips to China Is a Big Deal

8. Thinking through the China hype

9. War in Ukraine Likely to Speed, Not Slow, Shift to Clean Energy, I.E.A. Says

10. Inside the Dems’ elaborate attempt to woo TikTok influencers

11. Garry Kasparov Says Rishi Sunak's First Phone Call As UK PM Was To 'The Leader Of The Free World' — It Wasn't Joe Biden

12. Chinese Intel Officers Used Wasabi to Try to Hide Bribery of US Double Agent

13. Could America Win a New World War?

14. Yes, The U.S. Military Is Weak

15. Why Is Wanting Peace in Ukraine a Scary Political Idea?

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 26 (Putin's War)

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-26

Key Takeaways

• A Reuters investigation of Russian documents from Balakliya supports previous ISW assessments about the poor conditions of Russian forces.
• Putin stated that Ukraine has “lost its sovereignty” in an October 26 speech indicating that Russia likely retains its maximalist objectives in Ukraine and remains resistant to negotiations.
• Russian occupation officials in Kherson Oblast are attempting to mitigate the informational consequences of the Russian withdrawal from the west bank of the Dnipro River.
• Russian forces are attempting to fix Ukrainian forces on Ukraine’s northern border.
• Russian officials continued to acknowledge that Russian authorities are deporting Ukrainian children to Russia under the guise of adoption and vacation schemes.
• Yevgeny Prigozhin denied a previous ISW assessment that stated he confronted Putin and other siloviki factions regarding the progress of the war in Ukraine.
• Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations west of Svatove.
• Russian forces continued to prepare defensive positions on the west and east banks of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast.
• Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued to conduct counteroffensive operations in northwest Kherson Oblast.
• Russian forces conducted ground attacks in Donetsk Oblast.
• The Russian military is reportedly attempting to recruit foreigners to support its war effort in Ukraine.
• Russian occupation officials in Kherson Oblast continued to relocate residents from the west bank of the Dnipro River.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 26

Oct 26, 2022 - Press ISW

understandingwar.org

George Barros, Karolina Hird, Riley Bailey, and Frederick W. Kagan

October 26, 7:30 pm ET

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

A Reuters investigation of a document trove found in an abandoned Russian command post in Balakliya, Kharkiv Oblast, supports ISW’s longstanding assessments about the poor condition of Russian forces. ISW has long assessed that the conventional Russian military in Ukraine is severely degraded and has largely lost offensive capabilities since the summer of 2022, that Russian strategic commanders have been micromanaging operational commanders' decisions on tactical matters, and that Russian morale is very low. Reuters’ investigation found that Russian units near Balakliya were severely understrength, with a combat battalion at 19.6-percent strength and a reserve unit at 23-percent strength.[1] The investigation found that poor morale, bad logistics, and overbearing commanders contributed to Russian forces’ poor performance.[2] The report found that the Russian Western Military District explicitly forbade a subordinate from withdrawing from an untenable position in the small village of Hrakove (which has an area of less than three square kilometers).[3] Ukrainian forces defeated Russian forces in Balakiya and routed Russian forces in eastern Kharkiv Oblast around September 8-10.[4]

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric indicates that he is not interested in negotiating seriously with Ukraine and retains maximalist objectives for the war. Putin stated that Ukraine has “lost sovereignty” in a meeting with Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) security officials on October 26.[5] Putin stated that the United States is using Ukraine as a “battering ram” against Russia, the Russian-Belarusian Union State, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, and the CIS. Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin amplified this narrative, stating that “Ukraine has lost the ability to exist as a state,” “Ukraine is occupied by NATO,” and “[Ukraine] has become a colony of the US” on October 26.[6] This language is incompatible with negotiations on an equal basis for a ceasefire, let alone a resolution to the conflict that Russia began. It instead strongly suggests that the Kremlin still seeks a military victory in Ukraine and regime change in Kyiv that would affect the permanent reorientation of Ukraine away from the West and into Russia’s control. It also indicates that Putin’s aims transcend the territory he has claimed to have annexed, let alone the areas his forces actually control.

Russian occupation officials in Kherson Oblast are attempting to mitigate the informational consequences of the chaos of the initial Russian withdrawals from the west bank of the Dnipro River. Kherson Oblast occupation head Vladimir Saldo stated on October 26 that it would be “practically impossible” to completely destroy the dam at the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant (HPP) and that even the destruction of the dam locks at the HPP would only cause the water level of the Dnipro River to rise less than 2 meters.[7] Saldo’s statement directly contradicts his own prior statements and the warnings made by Commander of Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine Army General Sergey Surovikin on October 18 that Ukraine is planning to strike the Kakhovka HPP and cause flood damage along the Dnipro River.[8] Saldo’s apparent retraction of his own warnings may suggest that he seeks to quell anxiety accompanying the mass movement of civilians and Russian military and occupation elements across the Dnipro in order to preserve his own ability to rule. Saldo also issued assurances about the provision of basic utilities and financial services that he claimed will continue even as evacuations to the east bank are ongoing.[9] Saldo’s statements indicate that his administration is attempting to mitigate panic in the information space, likely in order to maintain control of the population of Kherson Oblast against the backdrop of ongoing evacuations.

Russian forces conducted an assault on Ternova, Kharkiv Oblast, likely to fix Ukrainian forces there and prevent them from reinforcing Ukrainian counteroffensive operations elsewhere. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on October 26 that Ukrainian forces repelled an attack on Ternova (40km northeast of Kharkiv city) which is well removed from areas encompassed by the eastern Ukrainian counteroffensive.[10] Russian forces likely do not intend to regain limited territory in border areas of Kharkiv Oblast but instead likely hope to keep Ukrainian forces in the area that otherwise could join counteroffensive operations. Russian forces are likely hoping for a similar outcome in northwestern Ukraine with their deployment of forces to the joint grouping of forces in Belarus and the messaging around it.

Russian officials continued to admit that Russia is deporting children to Russia under the guise of adoption and vacation schemes. Russian media reported on October 26 that the Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, adopted a Ukrainian child who was deported from Mariupol to Russia.[11] Lvova-Belova claimed that Russian officials have brought 31 children from Mariupol to Russia and that her office is working to “rehabilitate” Ukrainian children from active combat zones. As ISW has previously reported, the forced adoption of Ukrainian children into Russian families may constitute a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.[12]

Russia is also continuing to use the excuse of recreational trips to deport Ukrainian children to Russia and Russian-occupied territory. Member of the Zaporizhia occupation administration Vladimir Rogov reported on October 26 that over 500 children from Enerhodar went on “vacation” in Yevpatoria, Crimea and Anapa, Krasnodar Krai this year alone.[13] Rogov claimed that the children received “new knowledge” as part of the “educational program.”[14] Russian-appointed governor of Sevastopol Mikhail Razvozhaev similarly claimed that children from occupied Kherson City and Enerhodar took part in “excursions” in Sevastopol.[15] These reports are consistent with ISW‘s previous observations that Russian officials have used the veneer of such recreation and rehabilitation programs to justify the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russian-controlled territory and areas of the Russian Federation.[16]

On October 26, Wagner Group financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin denied ISW’s report that Prigozhin confronted Putin and other siloviki factions in the Kremlin regarding the progress of the Russian war in Ukraine.[17] Prigozhin explicitly denied ISW’s October 25 assessment and falsely insinuated that ISW receives classified intelligence. ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. ISW specifically does not receive information from Prigozhin’s deceased mother-in-law, as he (ironically) suggested.

Key Takeaways

• A Reuters investigation of Russian documents from Balakliya supports previous ISW assessments about the poor conditions of Russian forces.
• Putin stated that Ukraine has “lost its sovereignty” in an October 26 speech indicating that Russia likely retains its maximalist objectives in Ukraine and remains resistant to negotiations.
• Russian occupation officials in Kherson Oblast are attempting to mitigate the informational consequences of the Russian withdrawal from the west bank of the Dnipro River.
• Russian forces are attempting to fix Ukrainian forces on Ukraine’s northern border.
• Russian officials continued to acknowledge that Russian authorities are deporting Ukrainian children to Russia under the guise of adoption and vacation schemes.
• Yevgeny Prigozhin denied a previous ISW assessment that stated he confronted Putin and other siloviki factions regarding the progress of the war in Ukraine.
• Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations west of Svatove.
• Russian forces continued to prepare defensive positions on the west and east banks of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast.
• Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued to conduct counteroffensive operations in northwest Kherson Oblast.
• Russian forces conducted ground attacks in Donetsk Oblast.
• The Russian military is reportedly attempting to recruit foreigners to support its war effort in Ukraine.
• Russian occupation officials in Kherson Oblast continued to relocate residents from the west bank of the Dnipro River.

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

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

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

Eastern Ukraine: (Oskil River-Kreminna Line)

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian troops conducted counteroffensive operations west of Svatove on October 26. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Ukrainian forces launched five consecutive and unsuccessful attacks toward Kuzemivka (13km northwest of Svatove) from Pishchane (23km northwest of Svatove).[18] Several milbloggers claimed that Russian forces repelled multiple attempted Ukrainian attacks toward Svatove.[19] Another prominent milblogger posted a map that indicates that Ukrainian forces have advanced up to Dzherelne, about 16km due west of Svatove.[20]

Russian sources claimed that Russian troops regained lost positions west of the Svatove-Kreminna line on October 26. A Russian milblogger reported that units of the 3rd Motor Rifle Division of the 20th Combined Arms Army captured positions in Makiivka (20km northwest of Kreminna) and Novosadove (15km northwest of Kreminna) and pushed Ukrainian troops out of positions south of Makiivka along the eastern bank of the Zherebets River.[21] Another Russian milblogger claimed that fighting northwest of Kreminna has paused due to poor weather and muddy conditions but noted that Russian forces are holding Chervonopopivka (6km northwest of Kreminna) and that Nevske (18km northwest of Kreminna) is a “grey zone.”[22] However, footage posted to social media on October 26 shows a Ukrainian soldier raising a flag in Nevske, indicating that Ukrainian troops likely have taken control of the settlement, and Russian sources are trying to obfuscate the gain.[23] Russian sources also claimed that Russian troops repelled attempted Ukrainian attacks towards Bilohorivka, 10km south of Kreminna.[24]

Southern Ukraine: (Kherson Oblast)

Russian forces continued to prepare for the defensive on both the west and east banks of the Dnipro River on October 26. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces are continuing to prepare defensive positions on the east bank of the Dnipro River.[25] The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported that Russian forces in Nova Kakhovka are preparing defenses in the city for street fighting.[26] Russian sources reported that Russian forces are building fortifications in Kherson City and creating strongholds in case of future Ukrainian breakthroughs, with one source calling the fortifications the “Surovikin Line.”[27] Nova Kakhovka notably lies on the east bank of the Dnipro River, making Russian preparations for fighting in the city contrast with Russian claims that Russian forces intend to hold Kherson City and the west bank of the Dnipro. This may also indicate that Russian forces anticipate battles to take place on the east bank of the Dnipro River in Russian-occupied territory deeper in Kherson Oblast. Geolocated footage from October 26 shows a resident complaining about Russian forces withdrawing to the east bank of the Koshevaya River (5km southwest of Kherson City).[28] These continued reports of Russian withdrawals from the area suggest that the Russian military does not expect to hold Kherson City even if it intends to fight for it.

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued to conduct counteroffensive operations in northwestern Kherson Oblast on October 26. Russian sources claimed that units of the Russian Airborne Forces (VDV) and the 42nd Motorized Rifle Division of the 58th Combined Arms Army repelled a Ukrainian assault toward Ischenka in the vicinity of Davydiv Brid.[29] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces also repelled Ukrainian assaults north of the Beryslav-Nova Kakhovka area near Bruskynske (39km northwest of Beryslav), Piatykhatky (38km north of Beryslav), and Koshara (32km north of Beryslav) in northwestern Kherson Oblast.[30] Elements of the Russian 11th Guards Air Assault Brigade are reportedly operating in northeastern Kherson Oblast, likely near or in the Beryslav Raion.[31]

Ukrainian military officials largely maintained operation silence regarding Ukrainian ground maneuvers in Kherson Oblast on October 26. Ukraine’s Southern Operational command noted that Ukrainian troops repelled a Russian attempt to break through Ukrainian lines in an unspecified direction on October 25.[32] Ukrainian military sources also reiterated that Ukrainian troops are continuing their interdiction campaign to target Russian concentration areas in Kherson Oblast. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Ukrainian forces conducted more than 150 fire missions in the Southern Bug direction on October 26 but did not specify any Russian targets that were struck.[33]

Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces continued ground attacks in Donetsk Oblast on October 26. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian troops repelled Russian attacks on Bakhmut itself, northeast of Bakhmut around Bakhmutske (10km northeast of Bakhmut) and Soledar (12km northeast of Bakhmut), and south of Bakhmut around Ivanhrad (4km south of Bakhmut), Kurdiumivka (13km southwest of Bakhmut), and Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut).[34] Russian sources also reported that Russian troops conducted attacks around Soledar and other settlements northeast of Bakhmut.[35] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Ukrainian forces repelled limited Russian attacks north and west of Donetsk City and in western Donetsk Oblast.[36] Russian sources claimed that Russian troops have made limited gains northwest of Donetsk City and have taken control of half of Vodiane (10km northwest of Donetsk City).[37] Russian forces otherwise conducted routine artillery strikes around Bakhmut, the Avdiivka-Donetsk City area, and in western Donetsk Oblast.[38]

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

Russian forces continued to conduct routine air, missile, and artillery strikes west of Hulyaipole, and in Dnipropetrovsk and Mykolaiv oblasts on October 26.[39] Ukrainian sources reported that Russian forces struck Dnipro and Nikopol in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and Bereznehuvate in Mykolaiv Oblast.[40] Dnipropetrovsk Oblast head Valentyn Reznichenko reported that Ukrainian air defenses shot down a Shahed-136 drone over Nikopol on October 26.[41] A Russian milbogger posted an image of Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) Spetsnaz supposedly operating in Zaporizhia Oblast on October 26.[42]

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

The Russian military is reportedly trying to leverage foreigners to support its war in Ukraine. Foreign Policy reported on October 25 that Russian actors—reportedly of Russia’s Wagner Group—are contacting members of the US-trained Afghan National Army Commando Corps to recruit them to join a Russian “foreign legion” to fight in Ukraine.[43] Foreign Policy reported that many of these well-trained former soldiers have been in hiding since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021 and are without stable jobs or personal security, which means that up to 10,000 of these commandos may be vulnerable to Russian offers. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported that Belarusian military commissariats in Gomel Oblast mobilized Belarusian drivers and mechanics to repair Russian military equipment in Belarus.[44] The Kremlin likely seeks to augment its war effort with foreign elements as Russian combat forces continue to face acute personnel shortages.

Local Russian military commissariats continue to contradict Russian regional governors. Military Commissar of Crimea Yevgeny Kutuzov promised that Crimea would complete its partial mobilization by November 1, in time for the start of the fall conscription cycle, as ISW previously forecasted.[45] Russian occupation Governor of Crimea Sergey Aksenov stated that mobilization activities in Crimea ended on September 25.[46] Fissures between regional Russian officials, the Russian Ministry of Defense and military commissariats, and the Russian civilian population from which mobilized forces are drawn will likely intensify in the coming months.[47]

Russian sources are complaining that the Russian Ministry of Defense is not maintaining contact with Russian forces and prisoners of war (POWs) in Ukraine. Russian journalist Anastasia Kashevarova wrote a public complaint on October 26 that an entire Russian company of mobilized men of the 55th Motorized Rifle Brigade operating near Svatove are without command.[48] Thirteen Russian mobilized men in a platoon of the 15th Motorized Rifle Regiment of the 2nd Guards Taman Motorized Rifle Division filmed a video in which they stated they hid in an empty house near Svatove after their unit’s defeat. The men report they had no connection with their company commander or the rest of command.[49] A Russian milblogger complained that Russian officials are abandoning Russian POWs in Ukraine and implored Russian authorities to do something to help Russian POWs.[50]

The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense (UKMOD) seemingly attributed an October 24 attack targeting a Russian rail line in Bryansk Oblast to a Russian anti-war group.[51] Unknown actors destroyed a segment of rail in Novozybykovo, Bryansk Oblast, about 15 km from the Russian-Belarusian border, with an explosive device on October 24.[52] The UKMOD reported that a Russian anti-war group called “Stop the Wagons” claimed responsibility for the attack and did not provide any further comment.[53] Belarusian opposition elements reportedly have conducted sabotage against Belarusian railways since February.[54] Russian military mobilization may be promoting similar actions from disaffected Russians.

Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied and annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian civilians into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Russian and occupation administration officials in Kherson Oblast continued to relocate residents from the west bank of the Dnipro River to the east bank on October 26. Kherson occupation administration head Vladimir Saldo claimed on October 26 that Russian and occupation authorities have relocated 70,000 residents from the west bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast in the past week.[55] Saldo claimed that 40,000 Kherson residents have resettled on the east bank of the Dnipro River and an unspecified number have resettled in other Russian-occupied territories and the Russian Federation itself.[56] Kherson occupation administration deputy head Kirill Stremousov claimed on October 25 that occupation authorities had relocated 22,000 residents from the west bank.[57] Stremousov also stated that the Kherson occupation administration’s resettlement program was designed to accommodate 60,000 residents.[58] The discrepancies between Saldo and Stremousov’s claimed figures underscore the chaotic nature in which occupation and Russian officials are relocating residents. Saldo may have released a figure that is reflective of the final number of residents that Russian and occupation officials intend to relocate from the west bank of the Dnipro River. Russian and occupation officials will likely increase efforts to relocate residents from the west bank as the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kherson Oblast progresses.

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

[5] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/69681

[11] https://rg dot ru/2022/10/26/gde-ty-mama.html

[23] https://t.me/ukr_sof/333; https://censor(dot)net/ua/video_news/3376413/biyitsi_sso_vstanovyly_prapor_ukrayiny_v_nevskomu_luganskoyi_oblasti_video

[26] https://sprotyv.mod.gov(dot)ua/2022/10/26/v-novij-kahovczi-rosiyany-zavaryuyut-kryshky-lyukiv-cherez-ostrah-ukrayinskyh-drg/?fbclid=IwAR0ljAXcs0E8B3YdTuejxvQgEeAQnhy-pfbeRFkagSLul0yjA1azveXQ280;

[44] https://sprotyv.mod.gov ua/2022/10/26/v-bilorusi-mobilizuyut-vodiyiv-shho-mayut-obslugovuvaty-armiyu-rf/

[45] https://t.me/Crimeanwind/13455; https://crimea.ria dot ru/20221024/plan-po-chastichnoy-mobilizatsii-v-krymu-esche-ne-vypolnen-1125062179.html

[46] https://rg dot ru/2022/09/25/reg-ufo/aksenov-chastichnaia-mobilizaciia-v-krymu-zavershitsia-v-eto-voskresene.html

understandingwar.org

2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (26.10.22) CDS comments on key events

CDS Daily brief (26.10.22) CDS comments on key events

Humanitarian aspect:

As a result of another exchange of prisoners, Ukraine returned home 10 Ukrainian servicemen and the body of American volunteer Joshua Alan Jones, reported by the head of the President's Office, Andriy Yermak, in Telegram. Among Ukrainian defenders who returned from Russian captivity, there are 9 sergeants and 1 officer. The youngest fighter is 21 years old; the oldest is

55. Joshua Alan Jones, a volunteer who fought in the "Foreign Legion," died in Donetsk Oblast on August 23, 2022.

Deputy Minister of Defense Hanna Malyar emphasized that the topic of the release of Ukrainian POWs is very sensitive, so excessive coverage can harm the negotiation process.

The Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories announced that about 18,000 Ukrainians were evacuated from the temporarily occupied and newly liberated territories in October. "Evacuation rates on the eve of winter remain high. About a thousand citizens leave for safer regions of Central and Western Ukraine daily," the message reads. Mandatory evacuation from the Donetsk Oblast continues. Just last month, more than 5,000 people left it for safer regions of Ukraine, including more than 700 children and more than 500 people with disabilities. The evacuation from the temporarily captured territories slowed down but did not stop. The ministry emphasized that the opportunity to leave has almost been exhausted, and occupation authorities put more obstacles. More than 1,300 people were evacuated from the Kherson Oblast, and about 1,400 residents from the Zaporizhzhia Oblast. At the same time, the evacuation rate from the liberated territories, where it is still impossible to restore life support systems on the eve of winter, is increasing.

Consequences of enemy shelling as of the morning of October 26:

•      In Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, two people died when a Russian rocket hit a gas station. Four are injured. In the Nikopol district, the Russian occupiers shelled the Chervonogrygorivska community. There is destruction and damaged power lines.

•      In Mykolaiv Oblast, Russians targeted two infrastructure facilities.

•      During the past day, the Russian military shelled Vasylivka and Polohy districts in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. 21 reports were received about damage to civilian homes and apartments, and infrastructure. In Orihiv, a multi-story building in the city center and private houses around it were on fire after the shelling. Information about the victims is being clarified. Two killed and one wounded in Preobrazhenka village were confirmed.

•      Over the past day, the enemy shelled the Kupyansk, Kharkiv, and Chuguyiv districts of Kharkiv Oblast. A 71-year-old was injured by a mine explosion while she was herding goats near Kozacha Lopan. In the afternoon, the sappers' car ran into an anti-tank mine in Kharkiv Oblast. As a result, one of the pyrotechnics died, and ten more were injured.

•      On October 25, 1 civilian died in Bakhmut (Donets Oblast) from enemy shelling. Four more people were injured.

After the last Russian missile attack on the energy infrastructure of Ukraine, power supply has been restored in most regions, but some towns still remain without reliable energy supply. Ukrenergo continues repairs but still urges Ukrainians to save energy resources. "Ukrenergo" is working on more convenient power outage schedules. "Unfortunately, in some regions, some consumers have access to electricity all the time, and some suffer from frequent blackouts." - chairman of the board of "Ukrenergo" Volodymyr Kudrytskyi said.

"Heroes of the Azov Regiment" street has officially appeared in Kyiv. The first plaque with the new name was unveiled today, October 26. "This dedication concerns, first of all, those Heroes who died defending our Country and those who are in enemy captivity," said the first commander of "Azov" Andriy Biletskyi.

As a result of the Russian invasion, 154 Ukrainian athletes and coaches died. Minister of Youth and Sports of Ukraine Vadym Gutzait reported on the number of athletes who died defending Ukraine on the battlefield and due to the enemy shellings.

Ukrainian journalistic organizations call on the International Federation of Journalists to revoke membership and condemn the Russian Union of Journalists, which forms its branches in the temporarily occupied territories - in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts.

As reported by Ukrinform, a corresponding protest was sent to the executive committee of the IFJ on October 25, as soon as it became known about the decision of the Russian Union of Journalists to form its branches in the four temporarily captured Oblasts of Ukraine. As reported by Ukrinform, according to the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine, as of September 14, at least 39 media workers became victims of the war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine.

Occupied territories:

In the temporarily occupied territories of the Zaporizhzhia Oblast, the Russian invaders kidnapped and captured a total of 540 people. 208 of them are still in captivity, and the rest have been released, said Oleksandr Starukh, the head of Zaporizhzhya Oblast Military Administration, during a briefing. Since March, the mayor of Dniprorudny, Yevhen Matveev, and the first deputy mayor of Energodar, Ivan Samoydiuk, have been in captivity. Currently, nothing is known about their whereabouts.

In Mariupol, Donetsk region, captured by Russian troops, people still live in tents, as the enemy bombed their houses, and new housing was not provided, the [Ukrainian] Mariupol City Council reported. The City Council published relevant photos from today's Mariupol.

Operational situation

It is the 245th day of the strategic air-ground offensive operation of the Russian Armed Forces against Ukraine (in the official terminology of the Russian Federation – "operation to defend Donbas"). The enemy tries to maintain control over the temporarily captured territories and improve its tactical position. It concentrates its efforts on disrupting the counteroffensive actions of the Ukrainian troops and, at the same time, does not give up attempts to conduct the offensive in the Bakhmut and Avdiivka directions.

Over the past 24 hours, units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces repelled the enemy attacks in the areas of Ivangrad, Bakhmut, Bakhmutske, Soledar, Kurdyumivka, Krasnohorivka, Novomykhailivka, Nevelske and Ternova.

The enemy fired at the positions of Ukrainian troops along the contact line. Russian military continued to fortify their positions in certain directions, and conducted aerial reconnaissance. In violation of the norms of International Humanitarian Law, the laws and customs of war, the Russian military continues to strike critical infrastructure. Over the past 24 hours, the enemy launched 5 rocket and up to 30 airstrikes, and fired more than 100 MLRS rounds. Areas of more than 40 Ukrainian towns and villages, including Dnipro and Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Prykolotne in Kharkiv Oblast, and Velyka Oleksandrivka in Kherson Oblast, were hit by enemy strikes. In addition, near the state border, Starykove, Seredyna-Buda, Basivka, Mykolaivka, Ryzhivka of Sumy Oblast and Vilkhuvatka, Budarka, Shevchenkove, Strilecha and Dvorichna of Kharkiv Oblast were shelled.

In the Russian Federation, the search for additional sources to replenish the combat losses is underway. Russian servicemen discharged due to injuries are offered to retrain for specialties that involve less physical work.

The Republic of Belarus continues to support the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. The threat of missile strikes and the use of attack UAVs on the territory of Ukraine remains.

Ukrainian Defense Forces aircraft carried out 21 strikes during the past 24 hours. Impact on 17 areas of concentration of enemy weapons and military equipment, 2 strongholds, 2 positions of the enemy's anti-aircraft missile systems is confirmed. Ukrainian air defense units shot down 5 enemy UAVs.

Over the past day, Ukraine's missile forces and artillery hit the enemy command and control post, two areas of concentration of manpower, weapons and military equipment, radar, and other important military targets.

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

• Zolochiv-Balakleya section: approximate length of combat line - 147 km, number of BTGs of the

RF Armed Forces - 10-12, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 13.3 km;

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

regiment of the 11th Army Corps, 80th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 14th Army Corps, 2nd and 45th separate SOF brigades of the Airborne Forces, 1st Army Corps of so-called DPR, PMCs.

The operational situation is unchanged.

Kramatorsk direction

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

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

The Russian troops shelled from tanks, mortars, barrel and jet artillery positions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces in the areas of Berestove, Pershotravneve, Nevske, Bilohorivka, Serhiivka, and Spirne.

With pointed strikes, Ukrainian artillery destroyed an enemy ammunition warehouse and more than 10 so-called "kadyrov combatants" in Novoivanivka, in Luhansk Oblast. Up to 10 Russian occupiers and up to 5 trucks with ammunition were also destroyed in Svatove.

Donetsk direction

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

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

The enemy shelled Ukrainian positions in the areas of Bakhmut, Bakhmutske, Soledar, Ivangrad, Klishchiivka, Kurdyumivka, Mayorsk, Odradivka, Novomykhailivka, Pervomaiske, Avdiivka, Krasnohorivka, Nevelske and Novokalynove from tanks, mortars, barrel and rocket artillery.

Zaporizhzhia direction

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

● Deployed BTGs: 36th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 29th Combined Arms Army, 38th and 64th separate motorized rifle brigades, 69th separate cover brigade of the 35th Combined Arms Army, 5th separate tank brigade, 37 separate motorized rifle brigade of the 36th Combined Arms Army, 135th, 429th, 503rd and 693rd motorized rifle regiments of the 19th motorized rifle division of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 70th, 71st and 291st motorized rifle regiments of the 42nd motorized rifle division of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 136th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 58 Combined Arms Army, 46th and 49th machine gun artillery regiments of the 18th machine gun artillery division of the 68th Army Corps, 39th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 68th Army Corps, 83th separate airborne assault brigade, 40th and 155th separate marines brigades, 22nd separate SOF brigade, 1st Army Corps of the so-called DPR, and 2nd Army Corps of the so-called LPR, PMCs.

The enemy fired at Defense Forces positions and civilian infrastructure in the areas of Vremivka, Vuhledar, Zaliznychne, Novopil, and Poltavka.

Tavriysk direction

-   Vasylivka – Stanislav section: approximate length of the battle line – 296 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 39, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 7,5 km;

-  Deployed BTGs of: the 8th and 49th Combined Arms Armies; 11th, 103rd, 109th, and 127th rifle regiments of the mobilization reserve of the 1st Army Corps of the Southern Military District; 35th and 36th Combined Arms Armies of the Eastern Military District; 3rd Army Corps of the Western Military District; 90th tank division of the Central Military District; the 22nd Army Corps of the Coastal Forces; the 810th separate marines brigade of the Black Sea Fleet; the 7th and 76th Air assault divisions, the 98th airborne division, and the 11th separate airborne assault brigade of the Airborne Forces.

Areas of more than 15 towns along the contact line suffered fire damage. The enemy made up to 20 sorties of UAVs of various types to conduct aerial reconnaissance.

Over the past 5-6 days, the command of the enemy's troops has increased the total number of battalion-level units by 6. In total, at least 39 enemy BTGs are operating on both banks of the Dnieper, of which up to 22 BTGs are directly on the bridgehead.

As part of the enemy grouping, there is a separate operational-tactical grouping of the Russian Guard, which consists of eight combined tactical groups: 12th SWAT "Ural," 146th special motorized regiment, 94th and 96th regiments of operative purpose of the 46th separate brigade of operative purpose (Chechnya), and 50th separate brigade of operative purpose.

The artillery group consists of units of the 439th MLRS brigade of the Southern Military District, the 165th artillery brigade of the 35th Army, the 227th artillery brigade of the 49th Army, the 8th artillery regiment of the 22nd Army Corps, the 944th self-propelled artillery regiment of the 20th motorized rifle division, 1141th artillery regiment of the 7th Air assault division, 1140th artillery regiment of the 76th Air assault division.

During the last two days, in addition to regrouping and improving the defense system at the bridgehead, the enemy continued preparations for counterattacks to improve their tactical position. Thus, the enemy command is regrouping to the area south of Pervomaiskyi (where two BTGs from the 33rd and 255th motorized rifle regiments of the 20th motorized rifle division are currently deployed) forces and equipment from the 35th Army (probably up to two BTGs of the 64th and 38th separate motorized rifle brigades).

Azov-Black Sea Maritime Operational Area:

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

The Russian naval group at sea is comprised of 9 ships and boats. They are located along the southwestern coast of Crimea. Among them are 3 Kalibr cruise missile carriers: a project 11356R frigate, a small project 21631 missile ship, and a project 636.3 submarine with a total number of more than 20 missiles; and 3 large landing ships of project 775.

In the Sea of Azov waters, 6 enemy patrol ships and boats are on the approaches to the Mariupol and Berdyansk seaports to block the Azov coast.

Enemy aviation continues to fly from Crimean airfields Belbek and Gvardiyske over the northwestern part of the Black Sea. Over the past day, 15 combat aircraft from Belbek and Saki airfields were deployed.

Over the past day (in the interests of the Russian Federation), passage through the Kerch-Yenikal Strait was carried out:

-to the Sea of Azov by 35 vessels, of which 13 vessels were moving from the Bosphorus Strait;

-to the Black Sea by 31 vessels, of which 8 vessels continued their movement in the direction of the Bosphorus Strait.

Russia continues to violate the 1974 International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) by turning off automatic identification systems (AIS) on civilian vessels in the waters of the Sea of Azov.

"Grain initiative": NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called on Russia to continue the grain agreement and ensure constant food supplies. He said this at a joint press conference with the Prime Minister of Romania, Nicolae Chuke. He stated that the Russian war had turned part of the Black Sea into a war zone, and missile launches from Russian ships were aimed at Ukrainian cities. "For months, Russian forces have been blocking Ukrainian ports, creating the worst food crisis in years," the Secretary-General added.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, also made a special statement on October 26 regarding the situation with the grain initiative, stressing that the delay of ships is solely due to the actions of the Russian side.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely to use a possible extension of the grain export agreement to gain leverage and dominate next month's G20 summit in Indonesia, Reuters reported, citing a European diplomat.

From Wednesday, October 26, the state enterprise "Seaports Administration of Ukraine" introduced an electronic queue for the approach and processing of ships heading to the ports of the Odesa region as part of the "grain initiative." "The introduction of an electronic queue for the processing of ships in the ports of Greater Odesa is another step towards creating more transparent and comfortable conditions for business," commented the head of the enterprise. A similar technology was previously implemented in the Danube ports and proved to be effective.

Russian operational losses from 24.02 to 26.10

Personnel - almost 68,900 people (+480);

Tanks - 2,628 (+17)

Armored combat vehicles – 5,351 (+30);

Artillery systems – 1,686 (+12);

Multiple rocket launchers (MLRS) - 379 (+2); Anti-aircraft warfare systems - 192 (+2); Vehicles and fuel tanks – 4,076 (+22); Aircraft - 271 (0);

Helicopters – 248 (0);

UAV operational and tactical level – 1,379 (+7); Intercepted cruise missiles - 350 (0);

Boats / ships - 16 (0).

Ukraine, general news

60% of the Ukrainian budget goes to defense; another 16% goes to social needs. Medicine and education also require significant allocations. However, the Ukrainian government also recently managed to allocate 125 million euros for quick recovery. This is not enough, as it covers only 5% of the objects that have been destroyed, Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal said during a panel discussion at the International Conference on Reconstruction of Ukraine in Berlin.

761 Ukrainian enterprises have moved to safer areas from the regions where active hostilities are underway. 588 of them have already resumed their operation, and another 274 are looking for a location or means of transportation, Deputy Minister of Economy Tetyana Berezhna said.

International diplomatic aspect

Vladimir Putin compensates for his little gains on the battlefields in Ukraine with massive nuclear drills, which include all components of the triad (land, air, and sea). The plot of the exercise is a "massive nuclear strike" in retaliation for a nuclear attack on Russia. Moscow has been criticized for its nuclear saber-rattling and PSYOP of alleged Kyiv's plans to use a "dirty bomb." The Biden Administration warned the Kremlin of catastrophic consequences if it used a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. In a phone conversation between Russian and Indian ministers of defense,

the latter pointed out that "the nuclear option should not be resorted to by any side as the prospect of the usage of nuclear or radiological weapons goes against the basic tenets of humanity."

The mounting pressure might be why Moscow decided to cool down the situation. "The US was notified, and, as we've highlighted before, this is a routine annual exercise by Russia," the US Air Force spokesman announced. The Russians showed their commitment to the New START Treaty, which obliges them to provide the US with advance notification of such missile launches.

Moreover, the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (based in Moscow) published an Analytical Report, "Nuclear Factor in the Ukrainian Conflict," which says it's unlikely that Russia will use nuclear arms against Ukraine under current circumstances. "It can be assumed with a high degree of certainty that nuclear weapons will not be used provided that the conflict remains within the current borders and without the direct involvement of other participating states on the side of Ukraine," the Report concludes. The paper reminds that "the Russian Military Doctrine states that nuclear weapons can be used not just in case of "aggression with the use of conventional weapons" against the Russian Federation, but only in the case when this aggression would threaten "the very existence of the state." Such threats to the Russian Federation in connection with the conflict in Ukraine are currently not visible, in case NATO countries continue to adhere to their position - to provide military assistance to Kyiv, but without their direct military involvement in the conflict".

"Russia is not going to use nukes. It is out of the question," Russian Ambassador to the UK told CNN's anchor Christiane Amanpour. "Defense Minister Shoigu assured every minister that we are not going to use nuclear weapons… This is what has been said by the defense minister and our president," Andrey Kelin said.

Without a doubt, neither fellows of the government-controlled research institution nor Russian diplomats have influence over decisions of such nature or even knowledge of thereof. Such reports and statements and notification of the drills are undoubtedly a coordinated effort to portray Russia as a responsible nuclear power. However, all those public actions don't mean either cessation of the nuclear blackmail or a clear signal that the Kremlin will not use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine or elsewhere.

Russia's Ambassador to the UK has claimed that massive missile and [Iran-made] drone strikes across Ukraine were conducted because Kyiv has crossed a "red line," striking the Kerch bridge. "The Crimean bridge is essential for our infrastructure. Ukrainians are aware that this is a red line and that they should not attack it. They have severely damaged it, and it should not be a surprise that there is a serious response to that," Andrey Kelin told Christiane Amanpour of CNN.

However, Bellingcat's investigation supports the Ukrainian military intelligence's assessment that the massive, combined attack on Ukrainian critical infrastructure on October 10 had been planned in advance and was only rhetorically linked to the flames on the Kerch bridge. "There was a lull of communication for approximately two weeks, consistent also with the absence of

reports of intensive cruise missile use. This suggests that the planning for the October 10 attack began approximately one week earlier… This timing also implies that the attack on the energy infrastructure may not have been a direct consequence of the partial destruction of the Kerch Bridge in Crimea on October 8 2022," concluded the Report "The Remote-Control Killers Behind Russia's Cruise Missile Strikes on Ukraine."

The Polish Senate unanimously adopted a Resolution declaring the Russian Federation a terrorist regime and calling on the international community to support the International Criminal Court in investigating people responsible for war crimes in Ukraine. Russia "unleashed a beastly war on Ukraine… Its aim is to wipe a sovereign country off the map and to wipe out the Ukrainian nation," the Resolution reads. "The Russian invaders are terrorizing the residents of Ukrainian towns, bombarding civilian targets: kindergartens, schools, theatres, and housing estates. Bandits in Russian uniforms are torturing and murdering prisoners of war and civilians in the occupied territories. They are kidnapping Ukrainian children to raise them in a regime of Janissaries. They are deporting, resettling, and sending Ukrainian citizens to the farthest reaches of Russia," the Resolution explains the reason behind calling Russia a terrorist state.

The UK Prime Minister made his first international call to the President of Ukraine to highlight that the UK's "support for Ukraine would be as strong as ever under his premiership." "Both leaders agreed on the need to continue to place pressure on Putin's barbaric regime through continued economic sanctions," the Downing 10 Press-release reads.

Australia sent 30 additional Bushmaster Protected Mobility Vehicles to Ukraine, bringing the total number to 90. It's reported that the US is considering sending Hawk medium-range, surface-to- air guided missile systems to Ukraine. Earlier, NATO Secretary-General said that Spain also would supply the four Hawk anti-aircraft missile launchers. Meanwhile, Switzerland rejected German's request to send Ukraine ammunition for the Gepard anti-aircraft defense system.

A few believers of the Moscow Church staged a march to "exorcise demons" of Azov and Ukrainian Armed Forces around Azovstal and in the city of Mariupol, leveled by the Russian invaders. Earlier, an assistant secretary of Russia's Security Council called for "desatanization" of Ukraine. "Using network manipulation and psycho-technologies, the new authorities turned Ukraine from a state into a totalitarian "hypersect"," Aleksey Pavlov said.

Meanwhile, the Patriarch of the Moscow Church proposed to amend the National Security Strategy by including "faith, love for the motherland, and sacrifice" to the list of values. "It [the history of Russia] and our well-being are built, among other things, on the sacrifices of previous generations," Kirill Gundyev said. He also highlighted that "dignity", "human rights and freedoms" have been borrowed from Western European philosophy and should only follow the traditional Russian values. In the time of war, sacrifice is the "right" value Moscow Church should be promoting. On the one hand, Kirill Gundyev is reported to be a billionaire with luxury apartments, limousines, and a yacht. On the other, "the analysis showed that out of the total number of families of mobilized citizens [in Siberia], 46% of families have an average per capita income below the subsistence level," the Ministry of Labor of Khakassia calculated.

Russia, relevant news

Mercedes-Benz leaves Russia and sells its plant. The company has become the third major automaker to announce its withdrawal from Russia. The Mercedes plant in the Moscow region, which opened in 2019, will be sold to the dealer holding Avtodom. Presumably, the plant will start producing Chinese cars.

Reuters reports that the American car manufacturer Ford Motor Company has announced its exit from the Russian market. The announcement comes after the company completed a deal to sell its 49% stake in Russian joint venture Sollers Ford for an undisclosed "nominal" price. At the same time, the American company retains the option to buy them back within 5 years "if the situation in the world changes."

A fire broke out in a large warehouse of building materials not far from St. Petersburg. The area of the fire reached 12 thousand square meters. The fire was contained only in the morning.

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3. With Limited Resources to Counter Violent, Nonstate Armed Groups, How Can We Do Triage and Set Priorities?

Interesting analysis. And for those who follow the Philippines there is a discussion of its armed groups.

Excerpt:

As the United States and its allies and partners continue the shift toward a primary policy focus on China and strategic competition, they are trying to leave behind the past twenty-plus years of operations aimed at countering armed groups. Yet, as I (and several others) have demonstrated in these pages, such actors still present significant challenges on a global scale and, more importantly, actively threaten the stability of key countries and regions that are critical for US interests in strategic competition and possible conflict. Moreover, strategic competitors themselves have resorted or may resort to leveraging these actors for strategic gains. This reality requires policymakers to be able to assess which armed groups present the greatest threat in order to efficiently apply what limited attention, time, and resources they have to mitigating the challenge posed by these actors. Policymakers can use task-based indicators of combat effectiveness to assess which armed groups present the greatest threat in an ongoing conflict. They can also use the understanding of recruitment practices as a source of combat effectiveness to assess which armed groups might be effective in circumstances where data relevant to the task-based indicators does not yet exist (like at the start of a conflict before major fighting has occurred). In this way, the United States and its like-minded allies and partners can continue the priority shift in focus toward strategic competition with China while ensuring the greatest threats from armed groups are not left unattended.

With Limited Resources to Counter Violent, Nonstate Armed Groups, How Can We Do Triage and Set Priorities? - Modern War Institute

mwi.usma.edu · by Sam Plapinger · October 27, 2022

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Why did the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine outperform Fatah in their joint conflict with the US-allied monarchy during the Black September conflict in Jordan? What makes the Abu Sayyaf Group and the New People’s Army in the Philippines more or less effective than one another as they both fight against the government of a key American ally? In past and present conflicts, armed groups involved in conflict with governments have demonstrated their ability to pose serious challenges to such states in ways that may demand attention from the United States and its allies and partners, even with the shift toward prioritizing strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific. From the Philippines to Ethiopia to Yemen, these actors are challenging state sovereignty across the globe. In many cases, armed groups put at risk the stability of partners, countries, and regions that are vital to American and more broadly Western interests in strategic competition. They threaten to undermine key US partner governments, they jeopardize US access into critical regions, and they pose a challenge to broader international security issues like freedom of navigation on the seas and the free flow of commerce and energy supplies. To address this reality, policymakers need to be able to understand which of these armed groups present the greatest military challenge, especially amid the declining share of policy attention, time, and resources that can be devoted to the problem on an increasingly cluttered landscape of strategic challenges.

With fewer means available to confront these actors, how can policymakers do triage and assess which ones pose the greatest threats to such US and Western interests? My research shows that a promising way to do so is through the use of task-based indicators of combat effectiveness (e.g., ability to conduct ambushes, use of cover/concealment and dispersion). Groups that score well on them are more effective in combat and consequently pose a higher level of threat. Moreover, I show that armed groups’ recruitment practices—how they select, train, and induct members—shape their combat effectiveness, and consequently, the level of threat that they pose.

Yes, Armed Groups Still Matter

Armed groups and the civil wars in which they fight continue to pose a significant threat to the interests of the United States and its allies and partners, particularly concerning the relationships, the access that they facilitate, and broader international security priorities that the United States and other Western powers have. For starters, civil war remains the prominent form of global conflict, with one dataset published in 2019 noting a “sharp rise” in civil wars over the past decade. Going to the individual conflict and country levels today illustrates the nature of this threat more clearly. For the past several years, the Houthis in Yemen have consistently targeted key economic and civilian infrastructure in Saudi Arabia (which remains a primary American partner in the Middle East), in addition to their significant territorial gains in Yemen since 2014. In 2021, the Houthis conducted 325 such cross-border attacks against Saudi Arabia using unmanned aerial vehicles and ballistic missiles, and 45 such attacks in 2022 prior to the (now-expired) ceasefire. The group also expanded its targeting to another key US regional partner, the United Arab Emirates, via engagements that included an attack on al-Dhafra Air Base, which houses American troops. The Houthis have also repeatedly demonstrated their capability to attack maritime shipping in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb, a key global chokepoint. In Iraq, Iran continues to support armed groups like Kata’ib Hezbollah and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haqq, which have continuously threatened and conducted attacks on American bases and troops, fomented chaos in Iraq’s fragile political system, and deliberately targeted oil fields in Iraq as recently as June. It remains an open question exactly how much control Iran actually has over these actors, leaving the possibility of even more escalatory attacks in the future.

Parts of Sub-Saharan Africa—recently reaffirmed as “critical” for American “global priorities”—are not different. Al-Shabaab continues to present a significant threat to not only the Somali government but the wider Horn of Africa. This threat is clearly concerning to the United States, given President Joe Biden’s decision this past summer to send more American forces back into Somalia, provide “standing authority” to target al-Shabaab’s leadership, and carry out airstrikes as recently as this past Sunday. In Ethiopia, the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front continues to wage an insurgency against the central government that started in late 2020 and has destabilized the Horn’s most strategic state and a longstanding US partner. Boko Haram—or, more accurately, the two main factions of the original group—remains active in northern Nigeria and has demonstrated past intent and capability to disrupt oil exploration in the country. The capabilities of Islamist insurgents in Mozambique have necessitated intervention from Rwanda and even the United States on the part of the Mozambican government, and recent developments in the country threaten a key source of liquified natural gas. In Southeast Asia, the Philippines—a strategic location for deployments and rotations of US forces as well as for potential US operations in a conflict against China—required the help of American special operations forces back in 2017 to combat its own ISIS-related threat, and continues to face internal threats from several other armed groups. Strategic competitors may leverage armed groups as part of their own strategies, as Russia demonstrated in Ukraine and elsewhere over the past decade. In the same vein, recent research on Beijing’s military strategy indicates that in a conventional conflict, China may resort to irregular warfare–style activities that very much overlap with armed groups’ ways of combat.

So, What to Do? Learning from the Past to Inform the Present

In an article published in Security Studies, I show how we can determine, prior to a conflict’s conclusion, which armed groups pose the biggest threats by evaluating combat effectiveness using seven task-based indicators. This approach differs from other commonly used measures like territorial control or number of fighters. This type of combat effectiveness is more likely to be achieved by groups whose recruitment practices—that is, how they select, train, and induct members—are consistent and comprehensive. In the article, I demonstrate this via a comparative analysis of the three main insurgent groups that participated in the Black September conflict in Jordan (1968–1971), a civil war in which ten Palestinian fedayeen armed groups tried to overthrow the monarchy in Jordan. The analysis is based on thirteen months of fieldwork in Jordan, Lebanon, and the United States that included: (1) 105 interviews I personally conducted in Arabic with ex-insurgent commanders and fighters, retired Jordanian military and intelligence officials, and former United States government diplomats and intelligence officials who served in Jordan during the conflict; and (2) English and Arabic archival documents gathered from public and private or restricted collections across the three countries.

My analysis leverages these various sources to show how the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) outperformed Fatah and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) during the most intense period of fighting in the civil war as a result of the groups’ differences in recruitment practices (what I call robust versus deficient). The PFLP’s robust recruitment practices included consistently applied membership criteria, a background investigation, and full-fledged military training and indoctrination. This contrasted with the deficient practices of Fatah and the DFLP, which both allowed anyone to join, provided inconsistent or inchoate military training, and varied or no indoctrination. As a result of the PFLP’s recruitment practices, the group was able to successfully execute ambushes, use cover and concealment, and perform affirmatively on the other task-based indicators during the conflict, while Fatah and the DFLP both demonstrated the opposite.

Triaging the Contemporary Armed Group Threat

My historical findings from the Black September conflict in Jordan, developed more fully in an underlying book project, have implications for contemporary operational assessments of armed groups that can in turn inform the policy challenge discussed earlier. In particular, the findings enable assessments of the threats posed by armed groups both in real time prior to a conflict’s conclusion and even before the major fighting begins. The same seven indicators used in my historical analysis can be applied to contemporary armed groups using information on their combat operations drawn from media reports, social media, research that leverages fieldwork in the relevant conflict zone, and open-source datasets. These assessments can then inform policymakers as to which armed groups actually present an acute threat and should therefore be given a priority claim to the limited resources in order to respond.

To briefly illustrate this, consider the earlier example of the Philippines (especially given its postulated central role for US operations in a future conflict against China). There are several armed groups actively fighting the central government, such as the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), the New People’s Army (NPA), and remaining elements of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and Islamic State–Philippines. Analysts assessing the capabilities of these various armed groups should examine their abilities to execute the seven tasks I outlined as measures of combat effectiveness. For instance, reports indicate that the ASG has demonstrated the ability to conduct ambushes on multiple occasions as recently as September 2021. Likewise, the NPA has demonstrated the ability to conduct ambushes throughout its history up to the present. Substantiating this task execution via other information sources according to the coding guidelines I outlined and doing the same for the other six indicators of combat effectiveness can provide a general assessment of these armed groups’ performance and the corresponding threats they pose. Affirmative scores on all seven tasks would indicate a combat effective group to which the maximum available attention and resources should be devoted to address the corresponding threat.

Examination of these armed groups’ recruitment practices can be informative to both understand why these armed groups are effective (and others ineffective), and also provide a sense of potential threat prior to the onset of major fighting. For instance, like the PFLP did in Jordan, the NPA devotes considerable time to carefully screening and selecting combatants and then leveraging the group’s ideology for indoctrination and training, per field research published in 2018. A detailed examination of how the NPA and other armed groups in the Philippines recruit their combatants using the same varied mix of information sources can help shed light on: (1) why such armed groups may or may not be combat effective at present; and (2) the potential for changes in their combat effectiveness (and, by extension, the threats they pose) depending on the trajectory of their recruitment practices. Moreover, in situations where armed groups are forming but combat has not yet started (thereby limiting the applicability of the task-based indicators), a focus on recruitment practices can point analysts to which groups might ultimately be the most effective in combat and will therefore eventually present the greatest threat.

As the United States and its allies and partners continue the shift toward a primary policy focus on China and strategic competition, they are trying to leave behind the past twenty-plus years of operations aimed at countering armed groups. Yet, as I (and several others) have demonstrated in these pages, such actors still present significant challenges on a global scale and, more importantly, actively threaten the stability of key countries and regions that are critical for US interests in strategic competition and possible conflict. Moreover, strategic competitors themselves have resorted or may resort to leveraging these actors for strategic gains. This reality requires policymakers to be able to assess which armed groups present the greatest threat in order to efficiently apply what limited attention, time, and resources they have to mitigating the challenge posed by these actors. Policymakers can use task-based indicators of combat effectiveness to assess which armed groups present the greatest threat in an ongoing conflict. They can also use the understanding of recruitment practices as a source of combat effectiveness to assess which armed groups might be effective in circumstances where data relevant to the task-based indicators does not yet exist (like at the start of a conflict before major fighting has occurred). In this way, the United States and its like-minded allies and partners can continue the priority shift in focus toward strategic competition with China while ensuring the greatest threats from armed groups are not left unattended.

Dr. Sam Plapinger is a research scientist at CNA, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and analysis organization in Arlington, Virginia. He spent the past two years as the embedded CNA field representative to the commander of US Naval Forces Central Command/Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, conducting on-site research and analysis for the senior US Navy commander in the Middle East. At CNA, his work has focused on strategic competition, irregular warfare, urban warfare, force design, and fleet operational issues. His book manuscript, Combat Effectiveness in Civil War: How Insurgent Groups Generate Fighting Power, explains why some insurgent groups are more effective in combat than others.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or that of any organization the author is affiliated with, including CNA.

Image credit: Ilyas A. Abukar, AMISOM Public Information

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mwi.usma.edu · by Sam Plapinger · October 27, 2022

4. Ukrainians hold out in east, prepare battle for Kherson

Ukrainians hold out in east, prepare battle for Kherson

Reuters · by Jonathan Landay

• Summary
• Companies
• Russian artillery rains on two eastern towns - Zelenskiy
• Ukrainian counter-offensive in Kherson slows
• Russian forces dig in for Kherson battle
• Moscow stages nuclear drills

FRONT LINES NORTH OF KHERSON, Ukraine, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Ukrainian troops are holding out against repeated attacks by Russian forces in two eastern towns while those on the southern front are poised to battle for the strategic Kherson region, which Russia appears to be reinforcing.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a Wednesday evening video address that there would be good news from the front but he gave no details.

He did not mention what was happening in Kherson in the south, which officials and military analysts have predicted will be one of the most consequential battles of the war since Russia invaded Ukraine eight months ago.

The most severe fighting in eastern Ukraine was taking place near Avdiivka, outside Donetsk, and Bakhmut, Zelenskiy said.

"This is where the craziness of the Russian command is most evident. Day after day, for months, they are driving people to their deaths there, concentrating the highest level of artillery strikes," he said.

Russian forces have repeatedly tried to seize Bakhmut, which sits on a main road leading to the Ukrainian-held cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

The looming battle for Kherson city at the mouth of the Dnipro River will determine whether Ukraine can loosen Russia's grip on the south.

The Russian-appointed Kherson regional government said it had rebased to the left bank of the Dnipro, Russia's RIA news agency reported, as forces braced for an increase in fighting.

SHELLING

While much of the front line remains off limits to journalists, at one section north of the Russian-occupied pocket on the west bank of the Dnipro, Ukrainian soldiers said Russian shelling was stepping up again after having tailed off in recent weeks.

Radio intercepts indicated freshly mobilised recruits had been sent to the front and Russian forces were firmly dug in.

"They have good defensive lines with deep trenches, and they are sitting deep underground," said Vitalii, a Ukrainian soldier squatting in a weed-choked irrigation canal, concealed from any prowling enemy drones by overhanging trees.

Ukrainian forces advanced along the Dnipro in a dramatic push in the south at the start of this month, but progress appears to have slowed. Russia has been evacuating civilians on the west bank but says it has no plans to pull out its troops.

[1/5] A woman passes by a gas station destroyed by yesterday's Russian military strike, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, in Dnipro October 26, 2022. REUTERS/Mykola Synelnykov

Oleksii Reznikov, Ukraine's defence minister, said wet weather and rough terrain were making Kyiv's counter-offensive in Kherson harder than it was in the northeast, where it pushed Russia back in September.

At the front, intermittent artillery fire echoed from both sides, with towers of smoke rising in the distance.

A Ukrainian helicopter gunship swept low over fields, loosed rockets at the Russian positions and wheeled around spitting flares to distract any heat-seeking anti-aircraft rockets fired at it.

Australia said it was sending 30 more armoured vehicles and deploying 70 soldiers to Britain to help train Ukrainian troops there to bolster Kyiv's war effort.

"We're mindful that Ukraine needs to now be supported over the longer term if we're going to put Ukraine in a position where it can resolve this conflict on its own terms," Defence Minister Richard Marles told ABC television.

NUCLEAR REHEARSAL

Since Russia began losing ground in a counter-offensive in September, Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken a series of steps to intensify the conflict, calling up hundreds of thousands of Russian reservists, proclaiming the annexation of occupied land and repeatedly threatening to use nuclear weapons to defend Russia.

This month, Russia launched a new campaign of strikes using missiles and Iranian-made drones against Ukraine's energy infrastructure, also hitting parks and homes across the country.

Russians continued to "terrorise" the Kyiv region, launching several attacks on Wednesday night, governor Oleksiy Kuleba said on the Telegram messaging app.

"The elimination of the fire and the consequences of the attack is ongoing," he said, adding there were no casualties.

In Russia, the military staged a high-profile rehearsal for nuclear war, with state television broadcasts dominated by footage of submarines, strategic bombers and missile forces practicing launches in retaliation for an atomic attack.

Moscow has conducted a diplomatic campaign this week to promote an accusation that Kyiv is preparing to release nuclear material with a so-called "dirty bomb", an allegation the West calls baseless and a potential pretext for Russian escalation.

Despite the rising tensions, United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths said he was "relatively optimistic" that a U.N.-brokered deal that allowed a resumption of Ukraine Black Sea grain exports would be extended beyond mid-November.

Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Grant McCool; Editing by Cynthia Osterman

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by Jonathan Landay

5. Density not Dispersion: Evolving SOF for Integrated Deterrence

Excerpt:

Denser SOF investments in selected allies and partners’ territories bears out a second SOF imperative for integrated deterrence; namely, that SOF must begin to define operations and effects differently. Integrated deterrence specifically asks allies and partners to leverage more of their capabilities towards shared security challenges which threaten the rules-based order. Asking allies and partners to take on larger roles means emphasizing security cooperation and partner force capacity building efforts. For SOF formations long accustomed to being the “doers” in military operations, SOF must now measure effects in terms of how they enable, influence, and support strategically selected partner nations. The action verbs of SOF mission statements should change from “conduct,” and “execute,” to ones such as “facilitate,” “assist,” and “enable.” That is, facilitating and supporting selected allies and partners under integrated deterrence becomes a task – not a purpose. This is not to suggest that SOF should wholly cede its “doer” role in national security operations. Reframing SOF perspectives on operations and effects to support integrated deterrence is not about limiting SOF freedom of action or capability. Rather, it means emphasizing allied and partnered integration for geographic effects over integration for geographic coverage. In the emerging environment, such an approach creates the most desirable effects for supporting a national strategy focused on great power competition.

​Yes geographic effects​ are more important than geographic coverage. Facilitating and supporting allies and partners has been a hallmark of traditional Special Forces, PSYOP, and Civil Affairs forces and operations. This is the essence of "through with, and by."  SOF in Colombia, Africa, and the Philippines get this. SOF (and inparticular SF) in Ukraine have long understood this.

​I think our mission statement in the Philippines is ​illustrative of how we focused on aiding an ally to achieve effects. The emphasis is on enabling the Philippines armed forces to defeat sleceted terrorist groups.

JSOTF-P, in coordination with the Country Team, builds capacity, and strengthens the Republic of the Philippines security forces to defeat selected terrorist organizations in order to protect ​RP and U.S. citizens and interests, while preserving ​RP sovereignty.

​I would offer these eight considerations for irregular warfare that ​I think reinforce some of the author's points. https://maxoki161.blogspot.com/2018/07/eight-points-of-special-warfare.html

​Conclusion:

Every powerful corporation understands that favorable conditions allow for the liberal allocation of resources to support emerging, enhancing, and experimental initiatives in addition to the critical tasks required to maintain market dominance. During lean years, when competition tightens, corporations adapt by making strategic resource decisions to preserve their advantages. In many ways, the GWOT era benefited SOF formations. It supported a liberal dispersion of forces around the globe. Today’s conditions differ: nation-state competition has tightened and great power challenges could affect the rules-based order in generational ways. In this environment, force dispersion may no longer enable success or efficiency. Instead, SOF needs to strategically pick its team of allies and partners based on where great power competition is likely to be fiercest and choose which countries to leverage for the most capabilities, power, and influence to effect deterrence. Such choices will make SOF denser in the areas that matter most to national security. SOF density reflects the right approach, from the right tool, to support U.S. national strategy. The right tool, used the right way, breeds success.

​

​But I'm not sure the density versus dispersion argument is entirely correct. I fear that will lead some to say we need to focus solely on China and since China is in Asia that is where we need to focus. But in strategic competition China is operating in a dispersed manner (e.g., One Belt One Road). We cannot focus solely on preparing SOF to fight a direct war with China. We need to help friends. partners, and allies build resilience to China's malign activities as well as demonstrate resistance potential of a population to any attempts at occupation. This will require SOF to operate in many counties and not simply train for war with CHina.

The SOF contribution to integrated deterrence must be what Bob Jones at USSOCOM's Donovan Group called unconventional deterrence a number of years ago.

Unconventional Deterrence and Resilience

Robert Jones, USSOCOM, J5 Strategy​/Donovan Group​:

•The premise is simple – deter unwanted competition with little risk of escalation through the credible threat of unconventional warfare.

•The goal of UD is not to destabilize the societies of our enemies, rather the goal of UD is to deter our enemies from destabilizing our own society, and those of our Allies and Partners.

•In many ways, unconventional resilience is the opposite of unconventional deterrence. Instead of deterring the bad actor, unconventional resilience works to preclude the bad actor by denying the opportunity for action. 

•https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/deterring-competition-short-war-are-gray-zones-ardennes-our-modern-maginot-line

•(see also counter-unconventional warfare and SOC​EU​R’s resistance operating concept)

DENSITY NOT DISPERSION: EVOLVING SOF FOR INTEGRATED DETERRENCE

warroom.armywarcollege.edu · by Scott Harr · October 27, 2022

Since 2001, SOF has been the right counterterrorism tool for the job of combatting, dismantling, and defeating terrorist organizations who threaten U.S., allied, and partner interests around the world.

It is not enough to simply choose the right tool for the job. Success also depends on choosing the right approach. This is as true for home improvement projects as it is for national security. Emerging U.S. national security strategy features a new concept, “integrated deterrence,” which demands all national security stakeholders’ analysis and attention. Among other things, integrated deterrence will involve leveraging allies and partners towards shared security concerns to maintain the current rules-based order. For U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) to address emerging national security challenges with continued excellence, it must adapt its approach to meet the new objectives and requirements integrated deterrence demands. For any who may dispute integrated deterrence’s merits, this means shrinking SOF’s global dispersion, but increasing its density, in areas (with the allies and partners) that are critical to great power competition. Not adapting to great power competition’s changing security requirements and to integrated deterrence will misalign SOF resources and forgo opportunities to leverage its exquisite capabilities on behalf of U.S. interests.

Since 2001, SOF has been the right counterterrorism tool for the job of combatting, dismantling, and defeating terrorist organizations who threaten U.S., allied, and partner interests around the world. The Global War on Terrorism’s (GWOT) national strategy rightly dispersed SOF throughout over seventy percent of the world to achieve success. Such dispersion not only made strategic sense supporting a national security strategy that was by definition “global,” but also represented a key driver of SOF operational agility — responding to terrorist threats capable of cropping up anywhere on the planet. However, the national defense priority shift from global terrorism to great power competition involves much more geographically and geopolitically bounded threats which will require SOF to define and prioritize its operations and effects differently. Against a specifically defined threat profile largely corresponding to nation-state capabilities for great power competition, the dispersion approach that served SOF so well in the GWOT may become a liability in an environment demanding an integrated deterrence approach.

As an imminent and emerging national strategy concept, integrated deterrence entails at least two imperatives that warrant SOF consideration and attention. First, it necessitates deliberate choices, investing in allies and partners to leverage multilateral approaches to security. Rather than trying to be everywhere, SOF needs to analyze and choose the strategic allies and partners necessary to “grow partnerships” in only the most likely and most dangerous geographic areas connected to great power competition. In other words, SOF needs to emphasize density over dispersion. This is an approach well-understood by American politicians who routinely tailor their campaigns to address strategically valuable states as opposed to dispersing their efforts to cover numerically more states. Density trumps dispersion because the political effects of winning, for example, Texas, are not the same as winning Wyoming, Alaska, and Montana. Similarly, SOF needs to concentrate (not disperse) its efforts in those areas that create the best effects for integrated deterrence and great power competition. Deploying to seventy percent of the world, while perfectly appropriate and supremely effective for waging a global war on terror, is almost certainly inefficient for great power competition. SOF must densify its forces in the emerging environment to make efficient and effective contributions supporting national strategy.

Denser SOF investments in selected allies and partners’ territories bears out a second SOF imperative for integrated deterrence; namely, that SOF must begin to define operations and effects differently. Integrated deterrence specifically asks allies and partners to leverage more of their capabilities towards shared security challenges which threaten the rules-based order. Asking allies and partners to take on larger roles means emphasizing security cooperation and partner force capacity building efforts. For SOF formations long accustomed to being the “doers” in military operations, SOF must now measure effects in terms of how they enable, influence, and support strategically selected partner nations. The action verbs of SOF mission statements should change from “conduct,” and “execute,” to ones such as “facilitate,” “assist,” and “enable.” That is, facilitating and supporting selected allies and partners under integrated deterrence becomes a task – not a purpose. This is not to suggest that SOF should wholly cede its “doer” role in national security operations. Reframing SOF perspectives on operations and effects to support integrated deterrence is not about limiting SOF freedom of action or capability. Rather, it means emphasizing allied and partnered integration for geographic effects over integration for geographic coverage. In the emerging environment, such an approach creates the most desirable effects for supporting a national strategy focused on great power competition.

Denser SOF investments to support integrated deterrence with selected allies and partners naturally assume risk, as SOF global dispersion contracts. However, the underlying (and arguably animating) principle behind integrated deterrence is trust in the interagency as a unified team. The interagency already exists abroad in U.S. embassies, designed explicitly for dispersion. As SOF prioritizes density over dispersion, it must rely on the interagency’ s capabilities and global dispersion to mitigate the risk of SOF not being everywhere it used to be. Since the GWOT, like SOF, the interagency is a much evolved and capable entity regarding national security. As such, it is a worthy vessel for SOF trust, because it fields a quality team, with the personnel, capabilities, and coordination processes to enable SOF’s smart contraction of its global footprint, in exchange for denser forces supporting integrated deterrence. Mitigating risk to accomplish national security objectives is a hallmark of SOF’s ethos that has been a powerful and proven backer of SOF credibility addressing some of the nation’s most difficult security missions around the world.

For critics, relying on allies and partners instead of building and maintaining unilateral lethal forces represents a reduction in “hard power” capabilities that some see as essential for deterring 21st century conflict.

Even as integrated deterrence appears set to frame U.S. national security strategy going forward, some have rightly questioned its merits. For critics, relying on allies and partners instead of building and maintaining unilateral lethal forces represents a reduction in “hard power” capabilities that some see as essential for deterring 21st century conflict. Based on the perceived failure of deterrence in Ukraine, they may be right. That is, many view U.S. and NATO efforts to deter aggression by supporting and investing in nation-state partners as insufficient. Such people argue that building lethal capabilities is the only way to truly deter threats. However, even given conceptual issues and debates with integrated deterrence, a SOF approach densifying its forces around the globe makes sense. As joint warfighting formations, SOF elements provide both the credible combat forces that critics say integrated deterrence lacks as well as the force multiplying capabilities required for coalition-building that supporters of integrated deterrence demand. Bluntly, dense SOF formations make sense in the current environment because they support strategic concepts (integrated deterrence) and/or strategic approaches (great power competition) simultaneously.

Pointing out the need for strategic resource decisions to evolve SOF for integrated deterrence does not imply that such discussions and resource analysis are not already occurring within and amongst SOF leaders. The outlay of SOF personnel each year fluctuates as leaders rightly and diligently weigh requirements against shifting priorities, world events, and the expected return on investment for SOF operations abroad. However, largescale shifts in national strategy (such as the introduction of “integrated deterrence” as a framing approach to security) alter existing SOF resource discussions and prioritization. Here, an analogy to the Army’s newly minted Commander Assessment Program is useful. Legacy selection processes for Army commanders use official evaluations to generate an initial prioritized list of qualified officers. The Commanders Assessment Program subjects such officers to a new and diverse set of screening criteria that churns out a different prioritized list of qualified officers, reflecting the additional inputs. Thus, the Program does not nullify existing processes but rather, it adds depth and precision to them.

Similarly, “integrated deterrence” concepts should not invalidate existing SOF resource prioritization methods. They should, however, inform them, to generate new approaches and additional priorities, based on SOF imperatives for integrated deterrence discussed above. SOF should identify only the most capable allies and partners in only those areas where great power competition is fiercest and focus efforts and commit resources in those places. In the emerging operational environment, SOF approaches to national security that do not result in denser force outlays risk a potential misalignment between SOF approaches and national strategy. Misalignment will lead to missed opportunities for SOF to leverage its exquisite capabilities against national priorities.

Every powerful corporation understands that favorable conditions allow for the liberal allocation of resources to support emerging, enhancing, and experimental initiatives in addition to the critical tasks required to maintain market dominance. During lean years, when competition tightens, corporations adapt by making strategic resource decisions to preserve their advantages. In many ways, the GWOT era benefited SOF formations. It supported a liberal dispersion of forces around the globe. Today’s conditions differ: nation-state competition has tightened and great power challenges could affect the rules-based order in generational ways. In this environment, force dispersion may no longer enable success or efficiency. Instead, SOF needs to strategically pick its team of allies and partners based on where great power competition is likely to be fiercest and choose which countries to leverage for the most capabilities, power, and influence to effect deterrence. Such choices will make SOF denser in the areas that matter most to national security. SOF density reflects the right approach, from the right tool, to support U.S. national strategy. The right tool, used the right way, breeds success.

Scott J. Harr is an Army Special Forces Officer with over five years of overseas deployments around the world; he is a Ph.D. Candidate in foreign policy currently working in the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia. He holds an undergraduate degree in Arabic Language Studies from West Point and a master’s degree in Middle Eastern Affairs from Liberty University and is a distinguished graduate from the Army Command and General Staff College, Ft Leavenworth, Kansas. A trained Arabic and Farsi speaker with over ten years in special operations, his work has been featured in The Diplomat, RealClearDefense, The Strategy Bridge, Modern War Institute, Military Review, The National Interest, and Joint Force Quarterly among other national security focused venues. The views stated here are solely those of the author and do not represent those of DoD or any official U.S. government entity.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army War College, the U.S. Army, or the Department of Defense.

Photo Description: U.S. Army Special Forces operators prepare to conduct rapid infiltration and exfiltration of a U.S. Air Force CV-22 Osprey during exercise Fiction Urchin near Vinnytsia, Ukraine, Sept. 21, 2020. The 352d Special Operations Wing, Royal Air Force Mildenhall, England, deployed to Ukraine to demonstrate commitment to the Black Sea region, support the Ukraine Special Operations Forces capability and increase recruitment efforts through various training engagements.

Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Mackenzie Mendez

warroom.armywarcollege.edu · by Scott Harr · October 27, 2022

6. Another casualty of Russia's war: Some Ukrainians no longer trust their neighbors

Another casualty of Russia's war: Some Ukrainians no longer trust their neighbors

NPR · by Franco Ordoñez · October 26, 2022

A man clears pieces of glass from his shop on Oct. 1 in Kupiansk, Ukraine, after the city was liberated from Russian occupation. Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

KUPIANSK, Ukraine — Volodymyr Tsyba was insulted.

Sipping homemade wine, Tsyba recounts how four intelligence agents showed up at his house outside Kupiansk early last month, just a few days after the northeastern Ukrainian town was liberated from Russian occupation.

They were looking for Russian collaborators.

"'Are you these people?" he says the agents asked him and his wife. "Get your things. Come with us."

The agents were part of the Security Service of Ukraine, known as the SBU. They had badges. They had weapons.

"It was scary," says his wife Svitlana.

Volodymyr and Svitlana Tsyba speak in their home in Hrushivka, Ukraine, on Oct. 18. They say they were detained by Ukrainian intelligence officials looking for Russian collaborators. Franco Ordoñez /NPR

The officers drove them to the police station, where they questioned the couple for two hours. They pressed Svitlana about her work as a clerk for the surrounding villages of Kupiansk.

They wanted to know why she was continuing to work for the Russians. She told them she didn't feel like she was. She said she was simply continuing her work and helping her neighbors endure a very difficult reality.

As a clerk, she handles all the legal paperwork for civilian life — wills, marriage certificates. But during the occupation, she also was collecting names of qualified villagers who could receive Russian payments of 10,000 rubles, a little more than $160.

"I understand that we should have probably realized with our actions ... maybe by helping people, we were also helping the occupiers," she says.

She doesn't blame the SBU for questioning her. They were doing their job, she says. And, she points out, they let her go. She says they told her they didn't think she broke any laws.

But she doesn't understand why her neighbors — who she says she was trying to help — reported her as a collaborator. She said they asked to be included in the Russian payments.

"From our village, there wasn't a single person who didn't take that money," she says. "But I understand. People had to survive. I don't blame anybody. But how am I guilty?"

As towns recover from occupation, residents perceive their neighbors differently

In recently liberated towns along the front lines of the war in Ukraine, authorities have been focused on reaching survivors, documenting war crimes and beginning the process of rebuilding homes and buildings.

But another challenge that is emerging is how months of Russian occupation have ripped apart the social fabric of these towns and villages.

Neighbors no longer know whom they can trust. They don't know who was a collaborator.

Andriy Besedin, the acting mayor of Kupiansk, calls this a "huge problem."

His town was liberated on Sept. 9 as part of the large Ukrainian counteroffensive across the east and south. It's a strategically important location along the Oskil River, with a bridge and railway depot.

The residents have been through tremendous turmoil.

Refugees flee over a destroyed bridge in Kupiansk on Oct 1. Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

First, the Russians invaded the town just a few days after the war began in February. Officials say Russian forces held and tortured many residents.

During the occupation, people were simply trying to survive. As the months went by, resisting turned into adapting.

Now, after more than six months of occupation, the Russians are gone. Ukrainians are back in control. And residents, again, are having to adjust.

Besedin says some people feel betrayed by their neighbors and colleagues. Some of the smallest acts of cooperation with Russian occupiers are interpreted as signs of collaboration.

Those convicted face up to 15 years in prison, based on new laws passed after the start of the war.

Schools and hospitals are slow to heal

Other residents blame themselves for not resisting the Russians enough, Besedin says.

"It will take time," he says. "People need to psychologically recharge. And we as a government need to provide them with the conditions so that they can understand that Ukraine cares for them."

Andriy Besedin, the acting mayor of Kupiansk, discusses the village's challenges outside the local hospital on Oct. 18. He says distrust is a huge problem that must face be faced immediately. Franco Ordoñez/NPR

He notes that the challenge is especially great in Ukrainian schools. Teachers who resisted the Russians are now refusing to work with colleagues who accepted contracts to teach under the Russian education system.

Some of the teachers who accepted Russian positions now say they were unaware of the potential consequences and felt they were simply helping the children.

Tatiana Shmyhyrska, the principal of the largest elementary school in the nearby village of Shevenchoke, acknowledges that there are different levels of cooperation, but says teachers who traveled to Russia for training — and began the school year under the Russian system — should not be allowed to teach Ukrainian children.

And she's uncomfortable that she's being asked by Ukrainian officials to collect information on possible collaborators.

"Why the situation is so disturbing is because there is a feeling that they are trying to push responsibility onto our shoulders," she says.

There are similar challenges at the Kupiansk hospital, where doctors were pressured to treat Russian soldiers.

Dr. Yevgeniy Sinko, the hospital's head of medicine, says he was held hostage and tortured by Russian forces after refusing to turn the hospital over to the Russians.

But he says some doctors did agree to treat Russian soldiers. He believes they should not be judged unfairly.

"According to the Geneva Convention, we have to treat them," he says. "We are doctors here."

Dr. Yevgeniy Sinko inside his hospital's ambulance in Kupiansk on Oct. 18. He says he was held hostage for over two months by Russian soldiers. Franco Ordoñez/NPR

Sitting at their kitchen table, Volodymyr and Svitlana Tsyba say they're ready to move on, but acknowledge they're more reserved with neighbors now than they were before the war.

"I just take it as another life situation," Svitlana says.

Volodymyr is less circumspect. He insists he's not someone who keeps a grudge. But, he says, he has a good memory.

"Now I know who I would go into battle with and who I wouldn't," he says. "Even amongst my friends."

NPR · by Franco Ordoñez · October 26, 2022

7. Why Biden’s Block on Chips to China Is a Big Deal

Excerpts:

Xi’s best route would be to negotiate a settlement on chips with Washington that keeps American technology flowing. But Xi, who poses at home as an implacable defender of Chinese interests, cannot be seen to kowtow to Washington. Instead, Biden’s export controls will likely reinforce Xi’s need to act as China’s defender against Washington’s predations—returning to his mantra of self-sufficiency and his efforts to push back American power. The belligerent rhetoric was already there in Xi’s report to the party congress when he described “external attempts to blackmail, contain, blockade, and exert maximum pressure on China,” which the country has faced with “a fighting spirit and a firm determination to never yield to coercive power.”

Such self-sufficiency is more rhetorical than real: Building a fully Chinese supply chain in advanced microchips will prove immensely expensive, and may simply be impossible, at least in the near term. For now, China’s technology sector will suffer. Biden’s controls will also hurt some American chip-equipment companies; Applied Materials and Lam Research have already warned that compliance with the new rules will cause significant revenue losses. But both sides seem willing to accept the costs—in that regard, Biden and Xi share a common intent to protect their own perceived national-security interests, even if that means commercial sacrifices.

That priority does not bode well for the future. The mutual economic benefit brought by greater integration was a foundation of the U.S.-China partnership. As their two economies move apart, so will other relations attenuate. In a search for security, both leaders may be making their countries less secure.

Why Biden’s Block on Chips to China Is a Big Deal

The new U.S. export controls on semiconductor technology will hurt Chinese industries. Xi Jinping has only himself to blame.

By Michael Schuman

The Atlantic · by Michael Schuman · October 25, 2022

As the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th congress wrapped up at the weekend, its general secretary and the country’s president, Xi Jinping, emerged with his new leadership team—loyalists to a man—and with more commanding control over China than any political figure has held in the country for nearly half a century. Having shoved aside his political rivals, Xi can rule over the world’s rising great power virtually uncontested.

Yet, amid this display of pomp and power, President Joe Biden showed Xi who’s boss. Two days earlier, on October 21, Biden had dropped the hammer on China’s semiconductor industry by fully implementing a slew of tough controls on the export of American chip technology to China. This is a painful blow to Xi’s ambitions to rival the U.S., delivered at the very moment when the Chinese leader has reached the pinnacle of his political influence. Even as Xi laid out his vision for the nation’s “great rejuvenation,” indicating that he considers China’s technological achievements central to it, Biden demonstrated that the U.S. still possesses the fight—and the bite—to defend its primacy.

Biden’s new policy reveals that the standard narrative of China’s unstoppable ascent and America’s inexorable decline is based on flawed assumptions. The U.S. continues to hold tremendous economic and technological advantages over China, which, as Biden just signaled, Washington is becoming more willing to use against its Communist competitor. Above all, Biden’s export-control measures are a ruthless expression of American clout—and an intentional reminder that, in many respects, America has it and China does not. The technology analyst Gregory Allen, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote that Biden “is exercising technological and geopolitical power on an incredible scale.”

Read: The tech site that took on China’s surveillance state

The curbs Washington has imposed involve the export of certain chips and manufacturing equipment to China (and, in some cases, to particular blacklisted Chinese companies). The goal is to impede China’s efforts to develop the high-end semiconductors required for artificial intelligence and supercomputing. Though they target a narrow range of chip technologies, the controls are comprehensive. The regulations block Chinese firms that are trying to develop advanced chips from accessing non-Chinese factories that rely on U.S. technology to manufacture their products, and deprive those firms of expertise by barring American citizens and companies from assisting them.

How damaging the controls will be depends on how stringently they are enforced. In theory, they allow U.S. companies to apply for licenses to sell the proscribed products to China. But the purpose of the policy is clear enough: to hobble China’s quest to catch up with the U.S. in crucial industries of the future.

And the policy could work. The U.S. is a leader in the global businesses of artificial-intelligence chips, chip-design software, and much of the equipment indispensable for manufacturing chips, enabling Washington to constrain Chinese access to important segments of the global chip supply chain. Dan Wang, a technology analyst at the research firm Gavekal Dragonomics, told me that Biden’s controls “will likely have a fairly large impact on China’s ability to make advanced semiconductors.”

These controls mark a distinct shift in Washington’s approach to China. On top of trying to outcompete China, which is the intent of the CHIPS Act recently passed to support the U.S. semiconductor sector, Washington is now purposely and openly working to hold back Chinese economic progress. Allen called the controls a “genuine landmark in U.S.-China relations” that heralds “a new U.S. policy of actively strangling large segments of the Chinese technology industry—strangling with an intent to kill.” Wang also put it bluntly, describing in a report the controls as “a new China containment strategy.”

Read: Behold, Emperor Xi

In Washington, the policy is seen as a rational response to heightened geopolitical threats, and the central role technology plays in them. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in a speech in September that “we have to revisit the long-standing premise of maintaining ‘relative’ advantages over competitors” in which the U.S. “maintained a ‘sliding scale’ approach that said we need to stay only a couple of generations ahead.” But, he went on, “that is not the strategic environment we are in today. Given the foundational nature of certain technologies … we must maintain as large of a lead as possible.”

And in remarks earlier this month, he explained that the chip restrictions “are premised on straightforward national-security concerns.”

Emerging technologies such as AI and supercomputing have applications in advanced weapons systems, and Washington can’t run the risk of helping China upgrade its military capabilities. “Our strategic competitors should not be able to exploit American and allied technologies to undermine American and allied security,” Sullivan added. But the impact of these controls will also be commercial. Holding back Chinese chipmakers means they are less likely to compete with established American players, sustaining U.S. economic competitiveness vis-à-vis China.

To Beijing, Biden’s new stance appears terribly unfair: a dominant power desperately trying to hold a rising rival down. Xi is clear-eyed about the fact that China’s future economic development, and therefore its ability to become the world’s premier superpower, depends to a great degree on closing the technology gap with the U.S. and its allies. During the past week’s congress, Xi highlighted the importance of technological progress to China’s continued ascent, describing it as one of the “foundational and strategic pillars for building a modern socialist country” and “our primary productive force.”

But Xi brought this reversal on himself. His oft-repeated call for a world-class military is aimed at tipping East Asia’s balance of power in China’s favor, and he would be foolish to expect Washington to hand him the technology to help him reach his goal. Economically as well, Xi’s industrial programs deploy huge state financial support with the clear goal of overtaking the U.S. in key technologies and pushing American companies out of the China market, and ultimately making them uncompetitive. Biden’s harsh controls are less surprising than Xi’s apparent assumption that the U.S. would blithely participate in bringing about its own economic doom.

More surprising, perhaps, is that Biden’s shift took so long. Although Washington has imposed export controls and sanctions on China for some time, specifically targeting the People’s Liberation Army and individual firms such as the telecom giant Huawei, U.S. policy makers have generally been reluctant to interfere with private commerce on a wide scale. The chip controls suggest that is no longer the case.

Jeffrey Goldberg: A conversation with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan

The U.S. could exploit other advantages over China in a similar fashion. Xi recently touted China’s domestic-made jetliner, the Comac C919, as a major achievement for Chinese industry, but this supposed competitor to the Boeing 737 is so reliant on U.S. aviation technology that Washington could probably ground it. China’s continued dependence on the U.S. dollar for international transactions also leaves Chinese banks and companies susceptible to sanctions. Many in Washington are concerned about the important position China holds in American industries and supply chains, and the risk that presents to the U.S. economy. But the integration of the American and Chinese economies cuts both ways, rendering China at least as vulnerable to the U.S. as the other way around.

Xi’s awareness of that threat drives his quest to eliminate Washington’s economic and technological leverage by achieving his stated aim of “self-sufficiency” in chips and other indispensable products. But that goal, which he stressed during the congress, is proving elusive. The Chinese government has poured untold billions of dollars into its chip industry, but it still lags badly behind the U.S. The problem for Xi is that he picked a fight with a wealthier and technologically more advanced power well before his nation had attained the economic strength to wage it. Xi has thus put China in the awkward, probably untenable position of reliance on support from a country he is determined to undermine.

Xi’s best route would be to negotiate a settlement on chips with Washington that keeps American technology flowing. But Xi, who poses at home as an implacable defender of Chinese interests, cannot be seen to kowtow to Washington. Instead, Biden’s export controls will likely reinforce Xi’s need to act as China’s defender against Washington’s predations—returning to his mantra of self-sufficiency and his efforts to push back American power. The belligerent rhetoric was already there in Xi’s report to the party congress when he described “external attempts to blackmail, contain, blockade, and exert maximum pressure on China,” which the country has faced with “a fighting spirit and a firm determination to never yield to coercive power.”

Such self-sufficiency is more rhetorical than real: Building a fully Chinese supply chain in advanced microchips will prove immensely expensive, and may simply be impossible, at least in the near term. For now, China’s technology sector will suffer. Biden’s controls will also hurt some American chip-equipment companies; Applied Materials and Lam Research have already warned that compliance with the new rules will cause significant revenue losses. But both sides seem willing to accept the costs—in that regard, Biden and Xi share a common intent to protect their own perceived national-security interests, even if that means commercial sacrifices.

That priority does not bode well for the future. The mutual economic benefit brought by greater integration was a foundation of the U.S.-China partnership. As their two economies move apart, so will other relations attenuate. In a search for security, both leaders may be making their countries less secure.

The Atlantic · by Michael Schuman · October 25, 2022

8. Thinking through the China hype

Excerpts;

These are great historical tides. On the historical record, governing elites are very slow to recognize alterations in historical tides. Changed policies tend to occur only when the inertia of ingrained ideas and institutionalized doctrines hits a brick wall.

The assumptions that China’s rise is inexorable, that Xi’s policies are forever, and that the Sino-America relationship is a zero-sum game are already so ingrained in US officialdom and US academia that they are not likely to change soon in line with altered reality.

The brick wall is not currently visible. Let us hope that it will be economic rather than military.

Thinking through the China hype

Graying demographics are worse than Japan’s, meaning China and US economic growth potential will be roughly equal by 2030

asiatimes.com · by William H. Overholt · October 27, 2022

China’s economic aspirations have evolved rapidly. What has remained constant for centuries is a determination to return to the domestic wealth and international power that most Chinese view as the only acceptable norm for a civilization that long led the global economy.

Under Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin (1978– 2003), the leadership’s model of how to achieve that evolved rapidly in the direction of market-oriented reform and international opening to trade and investment, along with political and administrative institutionalization and meritocracy.

Under Hu Jintao (2003–2013), reform, opening, and institutionalization as thus understood largely stagnated; that administration’s achievements focused on elimination of some unfair treatment of farmers, spreading the economic miracle to China’s interior, and surviving the 2008 global financial crisis.

Hu’s legacy included these achievements, but also worsened problems of coordinating parts of the central government, dissonance between the central and local governments and a spectacular increase in the visible scale of corruption.

China’s changing view of the Western model

Until the mid-2000s, China looked up to Western economies and Western polities. That absolutely did not mean that the Chinese intended to copy them in detail, but they saw them as models of how both mature economies and mature polities work.

They took most World Bank advice. They imported Hong Kong officials wholesale in the belief that Hong Kong’s market-friendly structure provided a primary economic model for China. At the turn of the century, the Central Party School was working on three models for democratization, including one modeled on Japan and one on Taiwan.

At a RAND Corporation conference in November 2001, during a debate about Taiwan, the political leader of a Central Party School delegation surprised the Americans by declaring, “We hate everything [then-president] Lee Teng-hui is doing in cross-Straits relations, but we admire the way he has taken Taiwan politics to a new level.”

The Carter Center and the International Republican Institute were advising on village elections. There was even high-level discussion of whether someday Taiwan’s Guomindang Party might be allowed to compete and win in China’s Fujian Province.

A helicopter flies a Taiwanese flag in Taoyuan, Taiwan. Photo: Ceng Shou Yi / NurPhoto / Getty Images

Two things changed that reverence for supposedly more mature Western models. The global financial crisis of 2008 shocked and damaged China and convinced officials there that greater government control of the economy was essential to prevent crises and recover from them.

The emergence of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson reduced to absurdity, in their view, any argument that Western democracy would ensure governance in the interest of the people.

This puts us in a situation analogous to the 1920s and 1930s. On one side was visionary socialism charging forward with attractive social arguments, but implemented by institutions that severely damaged human dignity. On the other side was laissez-faire democratic capitalism that produced advanced technology but also catastrophic business cycles, wanton ecological destruction exemplified by the Dust Bowl, unsafe food and a combination of tycoons and heartlessly exploited workers that was morally indefensible.

Subsequently, the totalitarian socialist side proved unable to adapt and self-destructed. The democratic capitalist side learned to moderate its business cycles through novel fiscal and monetary policies and it borrowed socialist and socialist-like ideas such as social security, government medical insurance, strong unions, support for farmers, food safety regulation and suffrage for women and Native Americans. This ability to learn and adapt ensured survival and victory.

Western democratic capitalism is again in trouble. Pew Research polls show US popular support for democracy declining rapidly. Viktor Orbán of Hungary and other illiberals are more sustainable than Trump. Whether our system retains its historic ability to adapt is an open question.

Unlike the late Soviet Union, China has been very adaptable, but one must ask whether Beijing’s current leaders are destroying that adaptability.

China’s new economic model

Under Xi Jinping, China seeks to create a new system with extremely centralized executive leadership of the government and state enterprise leadership of the economy while retaining the full benefits of market competition.

It wants to strengthen the state enterprises while retaining the benefits of a private sector that provides 90% of urban employment, 100% of net job creation, over 50% of exports, and, according to Vice Premier Liu He, more than 70% of all innovation.

Likewise, it wants to retain the advantages of foreign direct investment while preventing foreign companies from attaining a leadership role in any Chinese sector and while achieving Chinese global dominance in every aspect of modern manufacturing.

In this new system, state enterprises will control the commanding heights of the economy. The government will support the private sector, but every company will have a party secretary with ultimate decision power over strategic business decisions and every company will eventually have at least a small share of government ownership.

Foreign investment will be encouraged, but foreign companies will never be allowed to dominate any important sector. The education system will be remodeled and shortened to rigorously support industrial needs.

A worker in a motorcycle parts factory in Huaibei, in China’s eastern Anhui Province. Photo: AFP / Stringer / China OUT

The overarching theme of Xi’s new model is “common prosperity,” and the core promise of common prosperity is a fairer system without the divisive income and wealth inequality that currently plagues both China and the United States.

This is an inspiring wish list – as socialist critiques and promises a century ago were inspiring. Actual policies are accomplishing much that Western democracy currently seems incapable of implementing, such as exceptionally rapid progress on green energy.

But it is also a wish to have one’s cake and eat it too. Foreign companies and countries will reject a system where they are lured in for their technology but excluded from the kind of market access that China demands from the West.

Xi’s support for the private sector is sincere – but no matter how many times he tells the big Beijing banks to lend more to private companies, they still will never get their money back if they obey. Bank executives are punished, sometimes severely, when the money doesn’t come back. Subsidized state enterprises eat up the private ones. Private sector investment and growth have plunged.

The extensive political controls on business will be either costly or ineffective. Xi’s administration has forgotten one of the central lessons of socialism’s history: Political leaders believe state ownership will give them control of the economy, but the big companies inexorably end up owning the politicians.

The German education and apprenticeship model, which Xi seems to be copying, is seductive – but it has largely confined the German economy to refining early twentieth-century technologies like the automobile while the United States dominates the modern service economy.

China’s industrial policies look like 1970s Japan, which had some very expensive successes and even more expensive failures. While Xi has waged a sincere war against corruption, hierarchical single-party states grow corruption the way a wet log grows mushrooms.

The Beijing administration is imposing this new system, or important parts of it, in the context of the weakening of the core drivers that have driven China’s exceptional growth, along with emerging drags on growth. More on this below.

Above all, achieving the fairness promised by the “common prosperity” slogan will ultimately require a substantial property tax, a highly progressive income tax, termination of the controls on migration to the cities, greatly liberalized rural land rights and a shift in the balance of taxing power between the center and the localities.

So far, Xi has used campaign-style tools – fire top executives, press big companies and rich people to contribute to charities, weaken the political power of companies – but 11 years of high-level conversation about the needed property tax have failed to implement even an experimental version.

Ultimately, Xi and Biden appear equally impotent to alter their countries’ egregious maldistribution of wealth.

China’s long-term economic prospects

Ironically, just as Chinese triumphalism is fading in China, a mirror of it continues in the United States. Many commentators, particularly those associated with the US defense establishment, project superior Chinese economic growth indefinitely into the future and infer that China will soon overwhelm US power.

I suppose I bear some responsibility as the first one to compile impressive Chinese statistics and predict that China would become a superpower, back in my then-controversial 1993 book The Rise of China: How Economic Reform Is Creating a New Superpower. But three decades have elapsed and the gee-whiz industry is becoming obsolete.

That industry assumes that superior past Chinese growth implies superior future Chinese growth. Even though forecast numbers are adjusted downward, they typically are not based on clear economic analysis of what will drive growth.

A surprising amount of higher level “Chinese” manufacturing is actually foreign companies’ production based in China, and the technological progress of many Chinese companies has relied on collaboration with foreign companies that are becoming disillusioned with unfair Chinese practices.

Historically, the United States overestimates its competitors and underestimates itself. Throughout the Cold War, Americans (intelligence agencies, economists, media opinion makers and informed public opinion) egregiously overestimated the Soviet economy. In the 1970s and 1980s, we grossly exaggerated Japan’s prospects. Most recently, we have grossly overestimated Russian military capabilities.

One way the prowess of Japan and China has been exaggerated is by focusing on manufacturing prowess and ignoring the service economy, which is larger and more important than manufacturing even in China. US dominance of services likely will persist.

US President Joe Biden speaks at a ‘Build Back Better’ clean energy event on July 14, 2020. Photo: AFP / Olivier Douliery

The core drivers of China’s “miracle” growth have been heavy infrastructure, property development and urbanization. During this decade, those drivers will be largely exhausted.

Property already shows signs of plateauing or tipping over. The property and infrastructure booms leave mountains of debt that must be serviced. This means that by 2030 China’s growth potential should be similar to that of the United States.

The heavy political controls that Xi is imposing will, if they persist and are strongly implemented, slow that growth. Officials’ innovative entrepreneurship at all levels has been a crucial source of growth; under Xi’s tight controls, that entrepreneurship has largely died.

In China’s graying society, the number of working-age people is declining and the welfare burden of caring for the aged is increasing. The Japanese experience shows what an extraordinary burden a graying society can be. China’s graying problem is worse. Increasingly, China is mimicking Japan’s failed industrial policies.

In addition, the party is using party committees and government ownership stakes to intrude into the decision-making of every business. A banking system that has become much more centralized and hierarchical cannot adequately service the private sector economy that provides most economic growth, all net new jobs and most innovation.

Vice Premier Liu believes that innovation will replace the old drivers, but the political controls, the emphasis on state enterprise control of the commanding heights of the economy and the collapse of private sector funding and investment will hinder innovation.

For decades of the reform era, GDP grew fast and government revenue grew at twice that rate. This created the illusion in Beijing and abroad that China had unlimited resources. Now GDP grows more slowly and government revenue growth has to converge with GDP.

The severe belt-tightening of the Belt and Road Initiative and the debt problems resulting from its early extravagance are indicators of incipient, painful sobriety.

Xi having gotten his third term, the controversies over zero-Covid, Russia, decapitation of the big platform companies, political controls on the economy, private sector malaise, severe political repression and extreme decoupling of Chinese elites from global society will be sand in the gears of the economy for five years, possibly followed by a historic succession struggle.

Xi Jinping faces massive challenges in his third term. Image: Xinhua

In all these aspects non-economists tend to repeat the errors of the past, exaggerating the power of a competitor and undervaluing their own country. A slower-growing China will remain a huge market and a superpower, but it will not remain today’s dominant driver of growth in developing economies and dominant magnet for developed countries’ corporations.

While China’s GDP may still become as large as America’s, that may not imply overwhelming geopolitical clout. In purchasing power terms, China is already larger. In nominal terms, it may well reach America’s by 2030 or earlier. But its per capita income will still be a fraction of America’s and its technological level may seriously lag.

Harvard Professor Lawrence Summers vividly captured the comparison problem when he recently pointed out that, if the United States absorbed Mexico, its GDP would increase but its international power would not necessarily increase. Inside China are many Mexicos.

Likewise, University of California Professor Bradford DeLong has characterized China as sixty million people living at Spanish levels, three hundred million living at Polish levels, and one billion living at Peruvian levels.

Given its loss of powerful drivers and its demographic problems, China’s potential growth after 2030 is probably similar to that of the United States. Xi’s over-centralization, Japan-style industrial policy, kneecapping of the private sector, and political controls may further reduce China’s potential growth.

Therefore, if the United States keeps growing at recent rates, the curve of Chinese GDP might rise to bounce off America’s and then be left behind.

That outcome would depend on efficient US economic management, at best an uncertain prospect. The reality of Sino-American economic competition is that we are currently in a historic race between Xi Jinping and Trump-Biden to see which country can degrade its economic management faster through protectionism, failure to deal effectively with great social changes and dominance of politics over economics.

Presently, Xi is winning that downward race, but no outcome is inevitable.

Geopolitical responses

These are great historical tides. On the historical record, governing elites are very slow to recognize alterations in historical tides. Changed policies tend to occur only when the inertia of ingrained ideas and institutionalized doctrines hits a brick wall.

The assumptions that China’s rise is inexorable, that Xi’s policies are forever, and that the Sino-America relationship is a zero-sum game are already so ingrained in US officialdom and US academia that they are not likely to change soon in line with altered reality.

The brick wall is not currently visible. Let us hope that it will be economic rather than military.

William H Overholt is a senior research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School. The author of multiple books about China, he has held RAND’s Distinguished Chair of Asia Pacific Policy and served as president of Fung Global Institute.

This article was first published by The International Economy. Asia Times is republishing it with kind permission.

asiatimes.com · by William H. Overholt · October 27, 2022

9. War in Ukraine Likely to Speed, Not Slow, Shift to Clean Energy, I.E.A. Says

​Wishful thinking?​

War in Ukraine Likely to Speed, Not Slow, Shift to Clean Energy, I.E.A. Says

While some nations are burning more coal this year in response to natural-gas shortages spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that effect is expected to be short-lived.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/climate/global-clean-energy-iea.html?referringSource=articleShare&smid=nytcore-ios-share&utm_source=pocket_mylist

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Sheep grazing in front of a coal-fired power plant and wind turbines near Luetzerath, Germany, in October, 2022.Credit...Martin Meissner/Associated Press

By Brad Plumer

Oct. 27, 2022

Updated 7:11 a.m. ET

Climate Forward  There’s an ongoing crisis — and tons of news. Our newsletter keeps you up to date. Get it in your inbox.

WASHINGTON — The energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is likely to speed up rather than slow down the global transition away from fossil fuels and toward cleaner technologies like wind, solar and electric vehicles, the world’s leading energy agency said Thursday.

While some countries have been burning more fossil fuels such as coal this year in response to natural gas shortages caused by the war in Ukraine, that effect is expected to be short-lived, the International Energy Agency said in its annual World Energy Outlook, a 524-page report that forecasts global energy trends to 2050.

Instead, for the first time, the agency now predicts that worldwide demand for every type of fossil fuel will peak in the near future.

One major reason is that many countries have responded to soaring prices for fossil fuels this year by embracing wind turbines, solar panels, nuclear power plants, hydrogen fuels, electric vehicles and electric heat pumps. In the United States, Congress approved more than $370 billion in spending for such technologies under the recent Inflation Reduction Act. Japan is pursuing a new “green transformation” program that will help fund nuclear power, hydrogen and other low-emissions technologies. China, India and South Korea have all ratcheted up national targets for renewable and nuclear power.

And yet, the shift toward cleaner sources of energy still isn’t happening fast enough to avoid dangerous levels of global warming, the agency said, not unless governments take much stronger action to reduce their planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions over the next few years.

Based on current policies put in place by national governments, global coal use is expected to start declining in the next few years, natural gas demand is likely to hit a plateau by the end of this decade and oil use is projected to level off by the mid-2030s.

Meanwhile, global investment in clean energy is now expected to rise from $1.3 trillion in 2022 to more than $2 trillion annually by 2030, a significant shift, the agency said.

“It’s notable that many of these new clean energy targets aren’t being put in place solely for climate change reasons,” said Fatih Birol, the agency’s executive director, in an interview. “Increasingly, the big drivers are energy security as well as industrial policy — a lot of countries want to be at the leading edge of the energy industries of the future.”

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Assessing ProgressA new United Nations report on past emissions commitments indicates that severe disruption would be hard to avoid on the current trajectory.

Current energy policies put the world on track to reach peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2025 and warm roughly 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100 compared with preindustrial levels, the energy agency estimated. That is in line with separate projections released Wednesday by the United Nations, which analyzed nations’ stated promises to tackle emissions.

In Paris in 2015, world leaders agreed to try to limit average global warming to around 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) to avoid some of the most dire and irreversible risks from climate change, such as widespread crop failures or ecosystem collapse. That would require much steeper cuts in greenhouse gases, with emissions not just peaking in the next few years but falling nearly in half by the end of this decade, scientists have said. The planet has already warmed an average of about 1.1 degrees Celsius.

Understand the Latest News on Climate Change

Card 1 of 5Shifting patterns. The melting of the snowpack in the high Cascades has long been a source of sustenance in the Pacific Northwest. But as climate change makes seasons less predictable and precipitation more variable, people there are reimagining the region’s future and the tools that will be needed to manage it.

Facing drought. The story of the Netherlands’ long struggles against excess water is written all over its boggy landscape. Now that climate change is drying it out, the Dutch are hoping to engineer once again their way to safety — only this time, by figuring out how to hold onto water instead of flushing it out.

A more extreme monsoon. South Asia’s annual monsoon is inextricably linked, culturally and economically, to much of Asia, bringing life-giving water to nearly one-quarter of the world’s population. But climate change is making the monsoon more erratic, less dependable and even dangerous, with more violent rainfall as well as worsening dry spells.

Wildfire smoke pollution. Smoke from wildfires has worsened over the past decade, potentially reversing decades of improvements in Western air quality made under the Clean Air Act, according to new research. Some areas in the Western United States had increases in particulate pollution from smoke that were about the same amount as the improvements in air quality from regulating factories and other sources of pollution.

Relinquishing a fortune. Yvon Chouinard, the founder of the outdoor apparel maker Patagonia, transferred ownership of his company to a trust and an organization devoted to fighting climate change. The move comes at a moment of growing scrutiny for billionaires whose rhetoric about making the world a better place often don’t match reality.

With each fraction of a degree of warming, tens of millions more people worldwide would be exposed to life-threatening heat waves, food and water scarcity, and coastal flooding while millions more mammals, insects, birds and plants would disappear.

“If we want to hit those more ambitious climate targets, we’d likely need to see about $4 trillion in clean energy investment by 2030,” Dr. Birol said, or double what the agency currently projects. “In particular, there’s not nearly enough investment going into the developing world.”

This year, global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are expected to rise roughly 1 percent and approach record highs, in part because of an uptick in coal use in places like Europe as countries scramble to replace lost Russian gas. (Coal is the most polluting of all fossil fuels.)

Still, that is a far smaller increase than some analysts had feared when war in Ukraine first broke out. The rise in emissions would have been three times as large had it not been for a rapid deployment of wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles worldwide, the agency said. Soaring energy prices and weak economic growth in Europe and China also contributed to keep emissions down.

Image

Houses with solar panels in Roeselare, Belgium are part of a larger initiative by The Aster project, which aims to add 395,000 solar panels to homes.Credit...Kurt Desplenter/Sipa, via Associated Press

And the recent rise in coal use may prove fleeting. European nations are currently planning to install roughly 50 gigawatts worth of renewable power next year, which would be more than enough to supplant this year’s increase in coal generation. And globally, the agency does not expect investment in new coal plants to increase beyond what was already expected.

Russia, which had been the world’s leading exporter of fossil fuels, is expected to be hit especially hard by the energy disruptions it has largely created. As European nations race to reduce their reliance on Russian oil and gas, Russia is likely to face challenges in finding new markets in Asia, particularly for its natural gas, the report said. As a result, Russian fossil fuel exports are unlikely to return to their prewar levels.

But even though the current energy crisis is expected to be a boon for cleaner technologies in the long run, it is exacting a painful toll now, the report found.

Governments around the world have already committed roughly $500 billion this year to shield consumers from soaring energy prices. And while European nations currently appear to have enough natural gas in storage to get them through a mild winter this year, the report warns that next winter in Europe “could be even tougher” as stocks are drawn down and new supplies to replace Russian gas, such as increased shipments from the United States or Qatar, are slow to come online.

The situation looks even more dire in developing countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, which are facing energy shortages as deliveries of liquefied natural gas are diverted to Europe. Nearly 75 million people around the world who recently gained access to electricity are likely to lose it this year, the report said. If that happens, it would be the first time in a decade that the number of people worldwide who lack access to modern energy has risen.

There is still a possibility that soaring energy prices could produce social unrest and pushback against climate and clean energy policies in some countries. While the report concluded that climate change policies are not chiefly responsible for the spike in prices —  instead, it notes that renewable power and home weatherization efforts have actually blunted the impact of energy shocks in many regions — there is always the risk that governments could feel pressured to change course, Dr. Birol said.

The new report comes less than two weeks before nations are set to gather at U.N. climate talks in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, where diplomats will discuss whether and how to step up efforts to curb fossil fuel emissions and provide more financial aid from richer to poorer nations.

Separately on Thursday, the United Nations released its annual “emissions gap” report which details actions nations could take if they hope to slash emissions roughly in half this decade and stabilize global warming at around 1.5 degrees Celsius to avoid a drastic increase in heat waves, droughts, flooding and wildfires across the globe.

The report notes that most countries have now announced ambitious “net zero” emissions goals — broad promises to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by a certain date — that, if followed, could limit global warming to 1.8 degrees Celsius. But the report says these targets are “currently not credible” since most countries don’t have policies in place to achieve them.

And nations have delayed so long in cutting emissions that they will now have to pursue “rapid transformation of societies” to meet those net-zero goals, the report said. That might include, for instance, rapidly phasing out conventional coal power or ending the sale of gasoline-powered cars over the next decade.

“Can we reduce greenhouse gas emissions by so much in that time frame? Perhaps not. But we must try,” Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, said in a statement. “Every fraction of a degree matters: to vulnerable communities, to species and ecosystems, and to every one of us.”

Brad Plumer is a climate reporter specializing in policy and technology efforts to cut carbon dioxide emissions. At The Times, he has also covered international climate talks and the changing energy landscape in the United States. @bradplumer

10. Inside the Dems’ elaborate attempt to woo TikTok influencers

​Not sent as a partisan statement but for the context of information and influence activities.

​

Inside the Dems’ elaborate attempt to woo TikTok influencers

A free trip to D.C., a private chat with Obama and an hour in the Oval Office with Biden: The Democrats are rolling out the red carpet for social media influencers

By Taylor Lorenz

October 27, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Taylor Lorenz · October 27, 2022

President Biden spent more than an hour this week at the White House with eight TikTok stars with a combined following of more than 67 million who were brought to Washington in hopes that their posts will turn out votes for Democrats in the Nov. 8 midterms.

In addition to the Oval Office meeting, the TikTok creators held a session with former president Barack Obama, toured the Supreme Court and the Capitol, and met with leaders of the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the principal campaign arm for House Democrats.

The trip, which was organized by the DNC, was the most visible effort to date of Democrats attempting to leverage TikTok’s vast audience to influence the midterms and is likely to prove controversial with Republicans, many of whom have been harshly critical of TikTok’s Chinese ownership. Former president Donald Trump at one point ordered TikTok to be shut down in the United States, then tried to force the sale of its U.S. operations. Those efforts failed, however, though Republicans have continued to accuse the app of being a threat.

Since then, TikTok has been downloaded more than 100 million times by users in the United States, and it has surpassed Meta’s Facebook and Instagram to become the nation’s fastest-growing social media app.

“House Democrats are committed to reaching voters where they’re at and reminding them what’s at stake on November 8th,” said Cara Koontz, the DCCC’s digital communications director. “We’re thrilled to have their partnership in this first-of-its-kind effort for the DCCC.”

It remains to be seen how the creators will make use of the visit. Many had previously been largely apolitical, encouraging their fans to vote but not explicitly backing parties or candidates. For several, it was their first time in the nation’s capital and their first interaction with government.

“I think the DNC brought me in as a fairly independent, attempting to be a nonpartisan, creator who did not vote for Obama,” said V Spehar, host of Under the Desk News, a TikTok news channel with 2.7 million followers.

It was clear during the visit that while their names and faces might be unknown to many in Washington political circles, that did not hold true for all. A kickoff dinner at We, The Pizza on Capitol Hill became so chaotic with swarms of young fans snapping photos and asking to take TikTok videos with the creators that the staff soon cleared an upstairs space so the stars could dine in peace.

The dinner conversation focused on issues like reproductive rights and strategizing how to best leverage their audiences for the midterms, several attendees said.

“We felt very excited, very optimistic,” Spehar said. “A lot of the creators talked about how they didn’t get a lot of civics education in school. They were excited to learn about the structure of government and see it in person.”

That lack of familiarity with government also apparently applied to their audiences. After the group solicited questions about the midterms on Instagram Stories, one influencer, Nia Sioux, 21, an actress and creator with 8.3 million followers on TikTok, realized her young followers were confused by references to midterms in her posts. They thought she was speaking about her UCLA midterm exams. She rephrased her posts to clarify she meant the midterm elections.

The trip was organized with the help of Daniel Daks, the founder of Palette, a talent management firm. The DNC contacted Daks because he had previously organized influencer efforts for the 2020 Biden campaign.

The DNC covered the creators’ travel costs and expenses for the trip but is not compensating them directly for the videos they post. “Content creators have platforms that can reach millions, and we’re excited about this collaboration as part of our effort to reach young voters to remind them of the stakes in this election and how to make a plan to vote,” said Shelby Cole, deputy chief mobilization officer at the DNC.

Their first stop Monday was to the Supreme Court. The group filmed content on the steps of the building and created videos reiterating the importance of the court in deciding issues like abortion rights and same-sex marriage.

Then they met with Obama in his D.C. office. The former president spoke to them about the importance of these midterm elections, calling a Democratic victory in November crucial. Afterward, the creators filmed one-on-one TikTok videos with him.

DCCC leadership welcomed the creators to the organization’s offices on Monday. The influencers held a meeting with high-level DCCC staffers who projected the midterm election battleground map on to a large screen and outlined key districts they hoped the TikTokers could help them sway. They also instructed the group on effective messaging strategies.

“To a group of people who consider a video that gets only 400,000 views a flop,” Daks said, “being told that many elections come down to fewer than 5,000 votes was eye opening.”

Mattie Westbrouck, 22, an online creator with more than 10.2 million followers on TikTok, said that it was their first time in D.C. and that the trip was a big learning experience. “The one takeaway was that the Michigan 3rd District was really important, because that’s where young voters matter the most,” Westbrouck said. “I’m going to try to promote content to reach those voters best.”

After a long Monday, the influencers dined with DNC staffers at Brasserie Liberté, a French restaurant in the city’s Georgetown neighborhood.

On Tuesday, the group received a private tour of the Capitol. As they walked through the halls, a tour guide explained the branches of government and how the House and Senate operate. They saw the House chamber and Nancy Pelosi’s office, though the congresswoman was not there. At one point, a creator pointed out that there were images of corn etched into the columns right before the old Senate chamber and the group joked about the “it’s corn” TikTok meme.

“It was incredible to see the creators interpret the government through the lens of internet culture,” Daks said.

Next, it was off to the White House for a news conference where President Biden received a covid booster. The TikTokers had a brief encounter with the White House press corps, some of whom tried to sit in their seats.

“Nobody in our group was recognized by the press,” Spehar said. “After they tried to steal our seats, they didn’t have any other questions or curiosity about why we were there or who we were.”

The trip to the White House was arranged directly, not through the DNC. Biden has embraced TikTok creators throughout his presidency, often hosting briefings with them on key issues such as the war in Ukraine and the coronavirus pandemic. After the news conference, Biden ushered the content creators into the Oval Office for an hour-long private meeting.

Creators said that during the meeting, Biden recounted his personal story and explained why he got into politics. He showed the creators family photos and asked if any of them would consider running for office. Some creators said it was something they’d consider. He personally walked them through the West Wing and encouraged them to get the coronavirus vaccine booster.

“It felt like a little room tour but by the president,” Westbrouck said.

“He didn’t mention the election or voting,” Spehar said.

“We know people listen to trusted messengers, and as an increasing number of young people turn to Instagram, TikTok and other platforms for news and information, we need to engage with the voices they trust directly,” said Rob Flaherty, the White House director of digital strategy.

Young people are increasingly getting their news and information from content creators on TikTok, surveys show. The percentage of people who consume news on TikTok has tripled since 2020, and over 26 percent of adults under 30 regularly get news on TikTok, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center.

The DNC opened a TikTok account in March, making it the only U.S. political party on the platform. The DNC employs a full-time content strategist dedicated solely to TikTok, building out the group’s platform through posting news clips, explainers and trending memes.

“In all my years in politics, I’ve never seen a single strategy that could flip a state on its own,” said Madeline V. Twomey, founder of digital consulting firm Rufus and Mane who also worked to organize the trip. “TikTok is that strategy — it impacts culture and politics in a way that no other media reaches.”

“We’re seeing more politicians and the party establishment start to embrace this new medium and incredibly effective way of reaching young people,” said Aidan Kohn-Murphy, founder of Gen Z for Change, a group that was formerly known as TikTok for Biden. “We’re seeing a lot of campaigns and party organizations start to embrace the tactics that digital organizers have been saying work for years.”

In 2020, TikTok for Biden assembled a coalition of more than 500 TikTok creators to endorse Biden in his election campaign against Trump.

Creators invited on the trip said they felt more comfortable speaking about policies and candidates after their time in D.C. “I genuinely think it’s a scary time for people who can get pregnant and won’t be able to have rights to an abortion,” Sioux said. “I will be talking about my stance on that, and I will have more information in my social media content.”

Kat Wellington, 24, a lifestyle and fashion content creator, said she was previously hesitant to get political on her TikTok account, but that was likely to change after the D.C. meetings. “I realized I want to share more about what I believe in,” she said. “This trip helped me make the push to use my platform for that. I don’t want to be afraid to share my genuine beliefs about politics, even if it’s going to upset some people.”

The Washington Post · by Taylor Lorenz · October 27, 2022

11. Garry Kasparov Says Rishi Sunak's First Phone Call As UK PM Was To 'The Leader Of The Free World' — It Wasn't Joe Biden

​Unknown accuracy. But it is interesting if true,

Garry Kasparov Says Rishi Sunak's First Phone Call As UK PM Was To 'The Leader Of The Free World' — It Wasn't Joe Biden - Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA)

benzinga.com · by Navdeep Yadav

Russian Chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov, who holds a pro-Ukraine stance, said the new U.K. Prime Minister made his first call "to the leader of the free world" after Rishi Sunak and the Ukrainian president discussed the war on Tuesday.

What Happened: Kasparov, in a tweet on Thursday, said that according to "old tradition," the first call by a U.K. prime minister is usually made to Washington. However, defying norms this time, Sunak, who took charge as prime minister on Tuesday, made his first call to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and not U.S. President Joe Biden.

Following old tradition, the first phone call of the new UK prime minister went to the leader of the free world. But this time it was to Zelensky in Kyiv, not DC! https://t.co/cPBsDZE0QK

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) October 26, 2022

Benzinga could not independently verify the fact, and the U.K. prime minister's office did not immediately respond to our request for comment.

Zelenskyy was the first world leader to speak to Sunak on Tuesday night as he became the new PM of the U.K. after Liz Truss resigned within 45 days in office — the shortest tenure of any U.K. prime minister.

"I believe that the partnership between our countries and the already traditional British leadership in defense of democracy and freedom will be further strengthened. I invited the prime minister to visit Ukraine," Zelenskyy said.

Meanwhile, Kasparov on Monday came down hard on Tesla Inc. TSLA CEO Elon Musk for his comments about the Ukraine war. In a CNBC interview, Kasparov said, "Why are people sitting in the comfort of their Silicon Valley mansions telling Ukraine how to run their own business?" Musk later hit back on Twitter and even called Kasparov "an idiot."

Check out more of Benzinga's Europe and Asia coverage by following this link.

benzinga.com · by Navdeep Yadav

12. Chinese Intel Officers Used Wasabi to Try to Hide Bribery of US Double Agent

All I can think of is the "wasabi TV commercial."

Chinese Intel Officers Used Wasabi to Try to Hide Bribery of US Double Agent – 24/7 Wall St.

247wallst.com · by Tim Fries October 26, 2022 8:01 pm

Investing

Chinese Intel Officers Used Wasabi to Try to Hide Bribery of US Double Agent

According to a recent analysis, the two Chinese agents charged by the DoJ on the 24th used a privacy wallet called Wasabi to obfuscate their actions. The intelligence officers stand accused of attempting to bribe a US government employee in order to obstruct an ongoing prosecution widely believed to be the case against Huawei.

Chinese Agents Were Using Wasabi to Obfuscate Their Crypto Transactions

Elliptic, a crypto risk management company, recently published an analysis stating that the two Chinese agents were using Wasabi, a crypto privacy wallet when committing bribery. The two intelligence officers attempted to pay off a US government employee with BTC worth $61,000 in order to steal documents from the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.

Wasabi Wallet is a mixer, not unlike the OFAC-sanctioned Tornado Cash, used to conceal the origin of transactions by mixing crypto from various sources. On its website, Wasabi describes itself as an open-source program designed to prevent both the developers and the public from breaching the user’s privacy.

Crypto has been popular with the intelligence community, as well as various criminal organizations, since the very beginning. While the use of digital assets by various criminal organizations like a Russo-Venezuelan oil-smuggling ring and the North Korean Lazarus Group have lately been rather well-documented, government use for covert operations is somewhat less known. Allegedly, the Swiss Federal Intelligence Service (FIS) was contemplating Bitcoin as means to pay its foreign intel sources as early as 2014.

DoJ Charges Two Chinese Intelligence Officer For Trying to Bribe US Govt Employee Using BTC

This Monday, the Department of Justice revealed that it is charging two PRC nationals, Guochun He and Zheng Wang, for attempting to bribe a government employee using $61,000 worth of BTC. The attempted bribery was related to a case against a telecommunications company based in China—widely believed to be the Huawei prosecution—and was discovered due to said government employee working as a double agent for the FBI.

According to court documents, Guochun He, also known as “Dong He” and “Jacky He,” and Zheng Wang, also known as “Zen Wang,” allegedly orchestrated a scheme to steal files and other information from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York related to the ongoing federal criminal investigation and prosecution of a global telecommunications company (Company-1) based in the PRC, including by paying approximately $61,000 in Bitcoin bribes to a U.S. government employee who the defendants believed had been recruited to work for the PRC, but who in fact was a double agent working on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The FBI explains that it believes that this attempt is just a part of a wider intelligence operation conducted by the PRC. Within the crypto community, the news sparked some curiosity and led to the creation of a number of memes due to its use of Bitcoin as the Chinese government famously cracked down on BTC in 2021.

This article originally appeared on The Tokenist

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247wallst.com · by Tim Fries October 26, 2022 8:01 pm

13. Could America Win a New World War?

What a provocative essay from Tom Mahnken.

In my opinion, two words: national will.

Excerpts:

The more one outlines a conflict between China, Russia, and the United States and its allies, the more it starts to resemble World War II. Analysts don’t even need to look into the future to see the similarities; there’s much about the present day that resembles the international order in 1939. Two authoritarian powers—China and Russia—have formed a loose alliance based on shared goals of redrawing the political map, just as Germany, Japan, and Italy did in the 1930s. Russia is trying to conquer land in Europe, and its violent quest risks spiraling outward, bringing other parts of the continent into combat. China’s increasing belligerence toward Taiwan means that conquest could also return to Asia. The United States and its allies must plan for how to simultaneously win wars in Asia and Europe, as unpalatable as the prospect may seem.

As they do so, they can study the Allied victory in World War II. At first, this comparison may not be encouraging. The ingredients of American success included the mobilization of U.S. science, technology, and industry as well as the development of new ways of war, and measured by this yardstick, there is much to be done. When it comes to mobilizing industry in support of national security, it is China that most closely resembles the United States in 1940. But the United States has vast reserves of untapped energy in both its defense sector and in the economy more broadly. It can regain the industrial upper hand. And the U.S. armed forces are staffed by dedicated and intelligent officers and soldiers—they have the skills to solve pressing operational challenges.

There is also one advantage the United States has from World War II that it never forfeited: its alliances. Unlike China or Russia, the United States has close ties with many of the world’s strongest militaries. The United States is also interlinked with most of the world’s vibrant economies. Washington needs to collaborate more closely with its partners on everything from defense research to operational planning. It needs to work with them to increase their reserves of munitions and weapons. But the United States has done all this before. There is no reason why it can’t do so again.

Could America Win a New World War?

What It Would Take to Defeat Both China and Russia

By Thomas G. Mahnken

October 27, 2022

Foreign Affairs · by Thomas G. Mahnken · October 27, 2022

When it comes to international relations, 2022 has been an exceptionally dangerous year. During the first two months, Russia massed thousands of troops along Ukraine’s borders. At the end of the second one, Moscow sent them marching into Ukraine. China, meanwhile, has grown increasingly belligerent toward Washington, particularly over Taiwan. After U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei in August, Beijing carried out a furious set of military exercises designed to show how it would blockade and attack the island. Washington, in turn, has explored how it can more quickly arm and support the Taiwanese government.

The United States is aware that China and Russia pose a significant threat to the global order. In its recent National Security Strategy, the White House wrote that “the PRC and Russia are increasingly aligned with each other,” and the Biden administration dedicated multiple pages to explaining how the United States can constrain both countries going forward. Washington knows that the conflict in Ukraine is likely to be protracted, thanks to the ability of Kyiv and Moscow to keep fighting and the irreconcilability of their aims, and could escalate in ways that bring the United States more directly into the war (a fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear saber rattling makes readily apparent). Washington also knows that Chinese leader Xi Jinping, emboldened by his appointment at the 20th National Party Congress in October to an unprecedented third term, could try and seize Taiwan as the war in Ukraine rages on. The United States, then, could conceivably be drawn into simultaneous conflicts with China and Russia.

But despite Washington’s professed focus on both Beijing and Moscow, U.S. defense planning is not commensurate with the challenge at hand. In 2015, the Department of Defense abandoned its long-standing policy of being prepared to fight and win two major wars in favor of focusing on acquiring the means to fight and win just one. This policy shift, which has remained in place ever since, shows. Large quantities of the United States’ military equipment are aging, with many aircraft, ships, and tanks that date back to the Reagan administration’s defense buildup in the 1980s. The country also has limited supplies of important equipment and munitions, so much so that it has had to draw a large portion of its own stocks down to support Ukraine. These problems would prove particularly vexing in simultaneous conflicts. If the United States found itself in a two-war situation in eastern Europe and the Pacific, the commitment would likely be lengthy in both cases. China’s expanding interests and global footprint suggest that a war with Beijing would not be confined neatly to Taiwan and the western Pacific but instead stretch across multiple theaters, from the Indian Ocean to the United States itself. (China might launch cyberattacks, or even missile strikes, on the U.S. mainland in an attempt to blunt U.S. military power.) The United States needs to create deep munitions reserves, stockpile high-quality gear, and come up with creative battlefield techniques if it hopes to win such fights.

Washington should get started now. U.S. policymakers must begin working to expand and deepen the United States’ defense industrial base. They need to develop new joint operational concepts: ways of employing the armed forces to solve pressing military problems, such as how to sustain forces in the face of increasingly capable Chinese military capabilities and defend U.S. space and cyber networks from attack. They should think seriously about the strategic contours of a war in multiple theaters, including where they would focus most of the United States’ military attention, and when. And Washington can do a better job of coordinating and planning with U.S. allies, who will be indispensable—and quite possibly decisive—to the successful outcome of a worldwide military conflict.

REBUILDING THE ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY

In some ways, the United States and its allies will have an advantage in any simultaneous war in Asia and Europe. The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that modern precision weapons are highly effective, and most of these weapons are made by the United States. When it comes to quality, Western systems and munitions remain the best in class.

But the United States must supply both its own armed forces with these weapons and those of its allies and friends. Unfortunately, U.S. weapons stockpiles are limited, as is its industrial base. It will likely take years to replenish many of the munitions that the United States has provided to Ukraine. This should not come as a surprise. In 2018, the congressionally mandated National Defense Strategy Commission warned that the United States didn’t possess enough munitions to prevail in a high-intensity conflict, and it argued that the country needed to expand production. The report also found that Washington would need to modernize its defense manufacturing in order to create munitions and other weaponry at a faster pace. For example, the United States has not produced Stinger antiaircraft missiles in 18 years, and restarting production will take time and money. So far, the United States has given Ukraine over 1,400 of these munitions.

The Department of Defense also must look beyond Ukraine. Russia’s ongoing war offers a valuable set of data, but if China initiated a military operation to take Taiwan, forcing the United States and its allies to respond, the conflict would likely take place mostly at sea and have very different requirements. It would demand lots of long-range weapons and antiship missiles, and right now, the United States has meager supplies of both. There are, for instance, fewer Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles-Extended Range (JASSM-ER) and Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles (LRASM) in storage than there are on the Ukrainian battlefield.

The United States clearly needs to increase its defense manufacturing capacity and speed. In the short term, that involves adding shifts to existing factories. With more time, it involves expanding factories and opening new production lines. To do both, Congress will have to now allocate more money to increase manufacturing.

A war across multiple regions could break out in any number of ways and proceed in a messy fashion.

But to keep U.S. stockpiles from falling too low, the country will need to do more than make ad hoc investments. Congress should also pass legislation that establishes minimum supply levels for munitions, with money automatically allocated for topping off stockpiles as the United States and its friends draw them down. Creating such a system would do much more than just guarantee consistent munitions supplies. To innovate, the United States also needs new firms that can complement existing manufacturers, and having near-guaranteed demand will give venture capitalists and entrepreneurs new incentives to invest in the defense industry.

Of course, the United States cannot rapidly expand all parts of its defense industrial base; it does not have unlimited resources and financing. That means the country will need to think creatively about how it can use the manufacturing it does have to best bolster its forces. The U.S. Navy, for instance, cannot easily hasten the production of aircraft carriers, yet it can think about how to expand these ships’ effectiveness by equipping them with better aircraft. The U.S. Air Force, for its part, will not always be able to rapidly scale up aircraft manufacturing. But it can multiply the effectiveness of its most advanced fighters and bombers by matching them with increasingly capable, low-cost, and easier-to-make unmanned systems that can sense and strike enemy planes while protecting their manned counterparts. By pairing manned systems with unmanned ones, the United States can multiply the effectiveness of the U.S. air fleet, preventing it from being stretched thin in a future conflict.

Finally, the United States should work with its allies to increase their military production and the size of their weapons and munitions stockpiles. Washington will need to be able to backstop its partners, but as the war in Ukraine clearly illustrates, it is good if frontline states have enough munitions to fight without the United States drawing down its own stocks. Some U.S. allies, such as Australia, are making considerable investments to build up their own munitions industry, while others, such as Japan, face considerable barriers to doing so. (Japan’s constitution, for instance, severely restricts the size and scope of its military.) They will need to do more if the West is going to create a munitions base robust enough for an era of protracted warfare.

STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT

Weapons and munitions are just one part of war. To win a conflict against both China and Russia, Washington also needs to come up with new fighting techniques. As the 2018 National Defense Strategy Commission put it, “The United States needs more than just new capabilities; it urgently requires new operational concepts that expand U.S. options and constrain those of China, Russia, and other actors.”

Washington has not ignored this call. In response to the 2018 report, the Department of Defense produced a “Joint Warfighting Concept” to shape future doctrine and establish funding priorities. Much of this report is classified, but progress has been patchy. It is unclear whether the department’s document—or the process that produced it—has influenced the size and shape of the U.S. armed forces or the composition of the defense budget. Moreover, efforts by the U.S. armed services to solve pressing operational challenges have come under attack from traditionalists. The Marine Corps’ new Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations doctrine and Marine Littoral Regiment, for example, would devote Marine forces to complementing the navy in countering the Chinese fleet in the western Pacific. But it would divest the Marine Corps of some of its tanks and reduce its complement of artillery, something that traditionalists—steeped in 20 years of warfare in the Middle East—bemoan.

To improve how it fights, the Department of Defense needs a vigorous contest of ideas spurred, supervised, and supported by its senior leadership. The Pentagon needs to develop new concepts to project and sustain forces against an enemy’s precision strike systems, to resupply forces under fire, and to protect critical bases of operations at home and abroad against attack. The United States also needs to collaborate with its partners on new approaches to deterrence. The Biden administration, for instance, should make good on what it calls for in the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness: working with its allies to harness the power of unmanned systems to detect, and therefore deter, acts of aggression.

As it develops new combat techniques, the United States also needs to think seriously about strategy more broadly—specifically how to structure the military and construct its operations. This will likely require breaking from the military designs of recent decades. Today’s theater command structure, for example, is an artifact of the 1990s and the following decade. It features a series of six geographic fiefdoms presided over by powerful geographic combatant commanders. This structure made sense when the United States was mostly interested in discrete, local conflicts with Iran or North Korea, for example, and terrorist organizations like insurgents in Somalia. But the threats the United States faces today do not conform to carefully drawn geographic boundaries, nor do the strategies needed to counter them. A war with China could easily spill from east Asia into the Indian Ocean, which connects China with its sources of energy in the Middle East, and even to the Persian Gulf and Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, which hosts a Chinese base. In such a war, it might be better to have a command structure that’s not so geographically constrained.

ORDER OF OPERATIONS

That said, as defense strategists game out simultaneous conflicts with China and Russia, they will need to figure out how to prioritize U.S. military action based on the relative threats in Asia and Europe, the geography of the theaters, and the allies Washington has in each region. This isn’t a simple business. A war across multiple regions could break out in any number of ways and proceed in a messy fashion. Xi, seeing the United States preoccupied with Europe, might decide it’s time to move against Taiwan, something he believes is necessary to “rejuvenate” China. Such an attack could take many forms, from a blockade to a missile campaign to a full-fledged amphibious invasion. If things go well for Beijing, the United States might face the need to assist the Taiwanese in resisting Chinese occupation. But even if things go well for Washington, and a Chinese missile campaign or amphibious invasion ends in failure, Beijing would likely fight on. The United States, Taiwan, and their friends would then face a protracted conflict that could spread to other theaters. Moscow, meanwhile, could decide that with the United States bogged down in the western Pacific, it could get away with invading more of Europe.

Planning for such a conflagration would require careful sequencing. In World War II, the United States emphasized one theater of conflict over the other at different moments, depending on which was more urgent and where it was most needed. At the outset, the United States followed a Europe-first strategy focused on beating Nazi Germany because it posed the gravest threat to the United States and its allies. Today, however, it would need to initially focus on Asia. Although the war in Ukraine has necessitated great U.S. support, it has exposed the limits of Russian military power as well as the effectiveness of concerted NATO action. As it stretches on, the war will continue to diminish Russia’s conventional military in ways that Moscow cannot quickly repair. NATO, meanwhile, will grow more capable, particularly with the additions of Sweden and Finland. The United States would still have a key role to play in the European side of the war, particularly in maintaining nuclear and other forms of deterrence. Ideally, Washington’s capacities would stop Russia from attacking a NATO country. But the United States’ European allies would be able to take the lead in many areas, such as supplying ground forces. They would not need U.S. aid and direction for every element of combat.

The situation in the western Pacific is different. China has a stronger military than does Russia, and it poses a graver danger to the prevailing regional order. The United States has capable local allies in Australia, Japan, and South Korea, but there is no NATO equivalent. There are many capabilities that only the United States can bring to the table, including nuclear deterrence; key naval, air, and space capabilities; as well as vital logistical support such as munitions. Washington would need to work with Taiwan, and potentially others, to help Taipei resist Chinese attacks and to augment Taiwanese military power. Such an effort would involve forces operating out of U.S. territory, such as Guam, as well as from the territory of allies such as Japan. It would require that the United States protect its territory and allies in the western Pacific and beyond, including the continental United States, as well as its computer networks and satellites. Such a campaign might last months.

This type of war would be frightening, in no small part because it would occur under the shadow of the Chinese, Russian, and U.S. nuclear arsenals. These three powers would have to communicate redlines to one another—for example, attacks on U.S. and allied territory—to avoid the use of weapons of mass destruction. These redlines would likely constrain each state’s military operations. In doing so, the war might simmer on for longer, but it would likely cause less damage. But the presence of nuclear arsenals would also significantly raise the stakes of escalation. It’s not impossible that the war could produce the world’s first nuclear attacks since 1945.

RUN IT BACK

The more one outlines a conflict between China, Russia, and the United States and its allies, the more it starts to resemble World War II. Analysts don’t even need to look into the future to see the similarities; there’s much about the present day that resembles the international order in 1939. Two authoritarian powers—China and Russia—have formed a loose alliance based on shared goals of redrawing the political map, just as Germany, Japan, and Italy did in the 1930s. Russia is trying to conquer land in Europe, and its violent quest risks spiraling outward, bringing other parts of the continent into combat. China’s increasing belligerence toward Taiwan means that conquest could also return to Asia. The United States and its allies must plan for how to simultaneously win wars in Asia and Europe, as unpalatable as the prospect may seem.

As they do so, they can study the Allied victory in World War II. At first, this comparison may not be encouraging. The ingredients of American success included the mobilization of U.S. science, technology, and industry as well as the development of new ways of war, and measured by this yardstick, there is much to be done. When it comes to mobilizing industry in support of national security, it is China that most closely resembles the United States in 1940. But the United States has vast reserves of untapped energy in both its defense sector and in the economy more broadly. It can regain the industrial upper hand. And the U.S. armed forces are staffed by dedicated and intelligent officers and soldiers—they have the skills to solve pressing operational challenges.

There is also one advantage the United States has from World War II that it never forfeited: its alliances. Unlike China or Russia, the United States has close ties with many of the world’s strongest militaries. The United States is also interlinked with most of the world’s vibrant economies. Washington needs to collaborate more closely with its partners on everything from defense research to operational planning. It needs to work with them to increase their reserves of munitions and weapons. But the United States has done all this before. There is no reason why it can’t do so again.

• THOMAS G. MAHNKEN is President and CEO of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and a Senior Research Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. From 2006 to 2009, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning.

Foreign Affairs · by Thomas G. Mahnken · October 27, 2022

​14. Yes, The U.S. Military Is Weak

Ouch. An appropriate essay to follow Tom Mahnken's Foreign Affairs essay

Yes, The U.S. Military Is Weak

19fortyfive.com · by Dakota Wood · October 26, 2022

Is Report of U.S. Military Weaknesses Silly and Dangerous or Spot-On and Alarming?: According to Politico, an anonymous defense official claims Pentagon leaders are “none too pleased” that The Heritage Foundation’s latest Index of U.S. Military Strength has characterized American hard power as “weak.” The unnamed source also said that Heritage’s scoring is “silly and dangerous,” in part because it is “based on the outdated requirement that the military be able to fight two wars simultaneously,” a metric changed by the Obama administration and maintained by both the Trump and Biden teams.

F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in What Is Called Beast Mode. Image Credit: Lockheed Martin.

Perhaps one can forgive someone in the Pentagon for taking offense when an outsider says their baby is ugly but, if it is true, prideful umbrage does not overrule the fact of the matter. When it comes to assessing our military, it’s size, readiness, and capabilities that counts. The Pentagon should care far more about its ability to protect U.S. interests than its self-esteem.

The Index draws its information from the Pentagon’s own reports, testimony to Congress, statements from senior officials, acquisition data, and other publicly available information relevant to understanding the state of America’s military. The military assessment section of the 2023 Index includes nearly 700 footnotes supporting our conclusions. Here is a sample of the many facts bearing upon the matter:

The U.S. has found itself at war every 15 to 20 years since its founding. This is unlikely to change anytime soon.

During the Cold War, the U.S. military competed against a single massive opponent (the Soviet Union) on a global scale, while still managing to handle crises in various parts of the world. Today, the U.S. faces four opponents—China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea—yet has little more than half the force it did just three decades ago.

In every major conflict since World War II, the Army has committed 21 brigade-equivalents of ground force, the Marine Corps roughly 15 battalions, and the Air Force around 600 fighter/attack aircraft. Numerous studies have concurred with these historical realities and recommended a force twice this size to secure U.S. interests. Today the Army has 31 brigades, the Marine Corps 22 battalions, and the Air Force approximately 626 combat-coded fighters available for use.

During the Cold War, the Navy maintained a fleet approaching 600 ships and kept 100 at sea. Today’s Navy has fewer than 300 ships, yet keeps the same number deployed. Fleet size will soon shrink to 280 ships.

During the Cold War, fighter pilots averaged over 300 hours of flying each year. Today, Air Force pilots average fewer than 120 hours, roughly a single flight each week.

The Army operates with brigades, yet focuses its training at the company-level, perhaps assuming that things will all come together in combat.

For nearly 20 years following 9/11, the U.S. military conducted operations that consumed platforms, munitions, and equipment purchased to fight the Soviet Union. Sadly, these assets have not been replaced at similar rates. As a result, the military is stuck with aged platforms and diminished inventories. America’s support to Ukraine has exacerbated the problem, as the Pentagon digs deep into existing inventories of weapons and munitions to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia. Inventories are nearing war-reserve levels, and it will take years to replenish them.

Though some new equipment is slowly being fielded, the force continues to shrink. A military barely able to handle one war is ill-equipped to do more. Should the U.S. be called to defend NATO partners in Europe, it will not be able to support Israel, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, or anyone else, anywhere else.

Far from deterring competitors, this situation will embolden them, increasing risk at the worst possible time.

In its current state, how can our military be assessed as anything other than weak?

Four U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancers assigned to the 9th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron, deployed from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, arrive Feb. 6, 2017, at Andersen AFB, Guam.

Honestly assessing U.S. military power is not “dangerous.” What is dangerous is to be weak and to not let the American people know it. Even more dangerous: a Pentagon in denial of the threats it faces and its own vulnerabilities.

Dakota Wood is a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense and editor of the annual “Index of U.S. Military Strength.”

19fortyfive.com · by Dakota Wood · October 26, 2022

15. Why Is Wanting Peace in Ukraine a Scary Political Idea?

I think this quote may be appropriate. This may be what peace becomes for the Ukrainian people.

"War is the second worst activity of mankind, the worst being acquiescence in slavery."

- Wm. F. Buckley Jr. 

Why Is Wanting Peace in Ukraine a Scary Political Idea?

19fortyfive.com · by Harrison Kass · October 26, 2022

I wrote yesterday to commend the Congressional Progressive Caucus for its letter calling for the pursuit of a diplomatic solution to the Russo-Ukraine War. Mainstream Democrats eviscerated the move, labeling it a letter Vladimir Putin would be happy to sign. Still, it was encouraging to see at least some Democrats urging an alternative to war.

The hope was misplaced, it seems. The CPC actually withdrew their letter yesterday, about 24 hours after its release. There is a lot to unpack here, but we will start with the CPC’s lack of political courage.

If you are going to issue a letter proposing to solve the most contentious issue in geopolitics, you should expect some resistance – and you should be ready to withstand that resistance. And if you are not willing to propose reasonable solutions outside of the mainstream consensus, and you are not ready to face resistance, you probably shouldn’t be serving in an office of consequence. You certainly should not be influencing U.S. foreign policy.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the CPC’s chairwoman, apologized for the release of the letter, calling it a “distraction.”

A distraction?

Proposing a diplomatic solution to a war into which the U.S. has already invested $65 billion – with another $50 billion soon to follow – seems more like a basic act of statecraft than a distraction.

Jayapal also apologized for bad timing, as the release of the letter became conflated with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s recent statement that Republicans will stop the flow of aid to Ukraine if the GOP wins back the House majority.

“The proximity of these statements created the unfortunate appearance that Democrats, who have strongly and unanimously supported and voted for every package of military, strategic, and economic assistance to the Ukrainian people, are somehow aligned with Republicans who seek to pull the plug on American support for President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian forces,” Jayapal said.

Of course, there are less drastic ways to keep your own policy stance from getting mixed in with someone else’s. For example, Jayapal’s apology, a simple statement explaining the difference between McCarthy’s statement and the CPC letter, would have done enough to differentiate between the two. This could have been issued while leaving the letter in play. Or, the CPC could just cater to a high denominator, rather than assume the public is incapable of drawing a distinction between McCarthy’s statement and the CPC letter. And frankly, the CPC should take a closer look at the merits of McCarthy’s statement – that there should be a limit to the amount of aid the U.S. sends Ukraine – rather than the source of the statement (a MAGA toad). The CPC should consider whether sending $115 billion to Ukraine this year helps U.S. interests generally – or more specifically, whether that $115 billion helps the CPC’s constituents, who elected progressives on the promise of expanding social safety nets.

The merits of the pro-diplomacy argument, in my opinion, further emphasize the CPC’s spinelessness. The CPC raised a valuable point. Whether you agree with it or not, direct diplomacy with Russia is a viable strategic option that the U.S. should be discussing. Diplomacy is a fundamental tool of strategy and statecraft, and to cut it out of consideration is bizarre. The CPC was simply trying to include what should never have been excluded. Diplomacy is an option. And in this case, where one belligerent possesses the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, I’d argue diplomacy is the best option.

Harrison Kass is the Senior Defense Editor at 19FortyFive. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, he joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. He lives in Oregon and listens to Dokken. Follow him on Twitter @harrison_kass.

19fortyfive.com · by Harrison Kass · October 26, 2022

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De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com