Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners


Quotes of the Day:



 "Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely." 
- Auguste Rodin

“The phrase "freedom of action" is among the most pernicious of all strategic cliches, because it is used more often than any other, and no one feels obliged to define its actual meaning. … Again, unfortunately, we are dealing with jargon, which, as usual , bears only a faint resemblance to well defined, specific concepts.” 
- Carl von Clausewitz, 1827, from “Two Letters on Strategy,” ed. and trans. by Peter Paret and Daniel Moran, 32 and 37. 

"COIN is neither a concept nor can it be a strategy. Instead, it is simply an acronymic descriptor of a basket of diverse activities intended to counter an insurgency. COIN cannot be debated intelligently as a general and generic project any more than can war and its warfare." 
- Colin S. Gray



1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 23 (Putin's War)

2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (23.10.22) CDS comments on key events

3. China's Xi is more powerful than ever. What does it mean for the world?

4. World faces tension with China under Xi Jinping's third term

5. White House denies talk of national security review of Elon Musk ventures

6. Russia Says Ukraine Will Attack Using a Radioactive 'Dirty Bomb'

7. Chinese Economy Has a Fatal Flaw: Real Estate

8. The New US National Security Strategy: Four Takeaways for Asia Policy

9. How Cold War II Could Turn Into World War III

10. The great chips war

11. Misreading Xi and the rise of Li

12. Xi cements his power at Chinese Communist Party congress – but he is still exposed on the economy

13. Biden’s National Security Strategy Is Undone by Fantasy

14. American Aid to Ukraine Pays for Itself

15. Despite Iran Providing Arms to Russia, U.S. Still Considering Sanctions Relief for Iran

16. Biden's energy policy is empowering the West's enemies

17. Special Operations NCOs Named White House Fellows

18. Winter in Europe

19. Startup Finding Special Ops Customers for Jetpack

20. PEDs and Push-Ups: The Problem with Modern SOF Training

21. Special Operations News Update - October 24, 2022





1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 23 (Putin's War)


Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-23


Key inflections in ongoing military operations on October 23:

  • Russian authorities likely cut internet access in Kherson City on October 22 to limit local reporting of Russian evacuations to the east bank of the Dnipro River.[9] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian ground attacks in northwestern Kherson Oblast.[10]
  • Ukrainian and Russian sources reported fighting near Siversk, Soledar, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Marinka in eastern Ukraine.[11] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian ground attacks in western Donetsk Oblast.[12]
  • Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations in the direction of Kreminna and Svatove.[13]
  • Russian forces struck Zaporizhzhia City, Mykolaiv City, and other areas in Mykolaiv Oblast with Shahed 136 drones and S-300 missiles.[14] Ukrainian sources reported that Russian forces targeted Nikopol and Marhanets with multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) strikes.[15]
  • A spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force Command claimed that Ukrainian forces have shot down a total of 273 Iranian-provided Shahed-136 drones since Russia began using them in Ukraine on September 13.[16]
  • A Ukrainian government source reported that Iranian instructors in Belarus (in addition to previously reported instructors in Crimea) aided Russian forces in the coordination of previous Shahed-136 drone strikes against Kyiv Oblast and northern and western oblasts in Ukraine.[17]
  • Russian outlets continued to set conditions to blame Ukraine for the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant, which Russian forces will likely destroy to slow advancing Ukrainian forces[18][19]
  • Russian sources widely discussed the construction of defensive positions in Kursk Oblast.[20]
  • A Ukrainian source reported that Russian authorities in Krasnodar Krai have “indefinitely” extended the “vacations” (meaning forced abductions as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign) of children from Enerhodar, Zaporizhia Oblast.[21]
  • Russian sources reported that private businesses are offering to train mobilized men on privately owned military and medical equipment in exchange for money.[22] Another Russian fighter aircraft crashed into a two-story building in Novo-Lenino, Irkutsk Oblast.[23]



RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 23

Oct 23, 2022 - Press ISW


understandingwar.org

By Mason Clark

October 23, 5:30pm 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.

ISW is publishing an abbreviated campaign update today, October 23. This report focuses on Russian Defense Minister Shoigu's several calls with his western counterparts and preposterous claims that Ukraine is preparing a false-flag “dirty bomb” attack against Russia, likely to pressure Ukraine into concessions and intimidate NATO. On the battlefield, Ukrainian forces conducted further offensive operations in northeastern Ukraine, and Russian forces continued to set conditions for a withdrawal from Kherson. Those developments are summarized briefly and will be covered in more detail tomorrow.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu likely sought to slow or suspend Western military aid to Ukraine and possibly weaken the NATO alliance in scare-mongering calls with several NATO defense ministers on October 23. Shoigu separately called his counterparts from France, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States on October 23, claiming that Ukraine is preparing to conduct a false-flag attack using a dirty bomb (a conventional explosive laced with radioactive material that is not a nuclear weapon) to accuse Russia of using weapons of mass destruction.[1] Russian state media amplified this false and ridiculous claim.[2] Russian Ministry of Defense reports on the calls contain slight differences; they state that Shoigu discussed a claimed “steady tendency towards further, uncontrolled escalation” in Ukraine in the call with his French counterpart; discussed the “situation in Ukraine” and made false claims that Ukraine is preparing to use a dirty bomb in his calls with the United Kingdom, France, and Turkey; and simply discussed the situation in Ukraine without reference to a dirty bomb in his conversation with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Shoigu last spoke with Secretary Austin on October 21. Representatives from the United States, United Kingdom, and Ukraine categorically denied and condemned Shoigu’s false allegations, and US Secretary Austin called his UK counterpart, Ben Wallace, following the calls with Shoigu.[3] France and Turkey have not issued formal statements as of this writing.

The Kremlin is unlikely to be preparing an imminent false-flag dirty bomb attack. Shoigu’s claims further a longstanding Russian information campaign. The Kremlin has repeatedly claimed that Western states will help Ukraine conduct a false-flag WMD attack since the earliest stages of its invasion of Ukraine in February. The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed it had information the US was “preparing provocations to accuse the Russian Armed Forces of using chemical, biological, or tactical nuclear weapons” in April.[4] Putin claimed in his pre-invasion speech on February 24 that Ukraine was preparing for a nuclear attack against Russia, and Russian state disinformation outlets repeatedly claimed Western states were supporting Ukraine’s development of nuclear weapons and planning false-flag attacks.[5]

Shoigu’s claims likely do not portend Russian preparations to use non-strategic nuclear weapons in Ukraine either. ISW previously stated on September 30 that “ISW cannot forecast the point at which Putin would decide to use nuclear weapons. Such a decision would be inherently personal, but Putin’s stated red lines for nuclear weapon use have already been crossed in this war several times over without any Russian nuclear escalation.”[6] Russia does not “need,” under formal Russian nuclear doctrine, a further event to justify nuclear weapons use.[7] Ukraine is not apparently on the verge of tripping some new Russian redline, on the other hand, that might cause Putin to use non-strategic nuclear weapons against it at this time. Shoigu’s comments are thus unlikely to presage a nuclear terror attack against one or more major Ukrainian population centers or critical infrastructure in hopes of shocking Ukraine into surrender or the West into cutting off aid to Ukraine. Such attacks would be highly unlikely to force Ukraine or the West to surrender, as Ukraine’s government and people have repeatedly demonstrated their will to continue fighting, and the West would find it very challenging simply to surrender in the face of such horrific acts because of the precedent such surrender would set.

Shoigu’s calls—and Russian state media’s amplification of false dirty bomb threats—are therefore likely intended to intimidate Western states into cutting or limiting support for Ukraine as Russia faces continued military setbacks and the likely loss of western Kherson by the end of the year. ISW has assessed since May that Putin seeks to force Ukraine to accept his terms and deter continued Western support for Ukraine through nuclear brinksmanship.[8] The recipients of Shoigu’s calls are also notable. The Kremlin has repeatedly framed the United States and the United Kingdom as Ukraine’s primary backers and the enablers of what it claims are aggressive policies toward Russia, while France and Turkey have (to varying degrees) framed themselves as mediators in the conflict. Shoigu’s round of calls was likely further Russian saber-rattling to intimidate Ukraine’s Western supporters and possibly widen fissures within the NATO alliance, not condition setting for imminent nuclear use.

Key inflections in ongoing military operations on October 23:

  • Russian authorities likely cut internet access in Kherson City on October 22 to limit local reporting of Russian evacuations to the east bank of the Dnipro River.[9] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian ground attacks in northwestern Kherson Oblast.[10]
  • Ukrainian and Russian sources reported fighting near Siversk, Soledar, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Marinka in eastern Ukraine.[11] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian ground attacks in western Donetsk Oblast.[12]
  • Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations in the direction of Kreminna and Svatove.[13]
  • Russian forces struck Zaporizhzhia City, Mykolaiv City, and other areas in Mykolaiv Oblast with Shahed 136 drones and S-300 missiles.[14] Ukrainian sources reported that Russian forces targeted Nikopol and Marhanets with multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) strikes.[15]
  • A spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force Command claimed that Ukrainian forces have shot down a total of 273 Iranian-provided Shahed-136 drones since Russia began using them in Ukraine on September 13.[16]
  • A Ukrainian government source reported that Iranian instructors in Belarus (in addition to previously reported instructors in Crimea) aided Russian forces in the coordination of previous Shahed-136 drone strikes against Kyiv Oblast and northern and western oblasts in Ukraine.[17]
  • Russian outlets continued to set conditions to blame Ukraine for the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant, which Russian forces will likely destroy to slow advancing Ukrainian forces[18][19]
  • Russian sources widely discussed the construction of defensive positions in Kursk Oblast.[20]
  • A Ukrainian source reported that Russian authorities in Krasnodar Krai have “indefinitely” extended the “vacations” (meaning forced abductions as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign) of children from Enerhodar, Zaporizhia Oblast.[21]
  • Russian sources reported that private businesses are offering to train mobilized men on privately owned military and medical equipment in exchange for money.[22] Another Russian fighter aircraft crashed into a two-story building in Novo-Lenino, Irkutsk Oblast.[23]





[2] https://ria dot ru/20221023/provokatsiya-1825967691.html; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/68219; https://t.me/rt_special/1916.

[7] https://rusemb dot org dot uk/press/2029#:~:text=25.,with%20the%20Collective%20Security%20Treaty; https://globalsecurityreview.com/nuclear-de-escalation-russias-deterrenc....

[9] https://twitter.com/netblocks/status/1583869885171761153https://twitter.com/netblocks/status/1584215908733837312https://sprotyv dot mod.gov.ua/2022/10/23/blokuyut-zvyazok-v-khersoni/

[17] https://sprotyv dot mod.gov.ua/2022/10/23/v-bilorusi-pomicheni-iranski-instruktory/

understandingwar.org


2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (23.10.22) CDS comments on key events


CDS Daily brief (23.10.22) CDS comments on key events

 

Humanitarian aspect:

As of the morning of October 23, 2022, more than 1,250 Ukrainian children are victims of full- scale armed aggression by the Russian Federation, Prosecutor General's Office reports. The official number of children who died and were wounded during the Russian aggression is 430, and more than 820 children, respectively. However, the data is not conclusive since data collection continues in the areas of active hostilities, temporarily occupied areas, and liberated territories.

 

On the night of October 23, the enemy attacked southern Ukraine with kamikaze drones. Ukrainian Air defense forces destroyed 11 enemy drones over the Mykolayiv Oblast, three more Shahed-136s were shot down by other units of the Defense Forces in the south of Ukraine. Two more that managed to break through from the south were destroyed by anti-aircraft gunners in the east and north of Ukraine.

 

At night, the Russians attacked Zaporizhzhia with kamikaze drones. One of them damaged a public building. The enemy hit a village in the Zaporizhzhia Oblast with three rockets. Private houses and educational institution were damaged. No victims were preliminary reported.

 

The movement of evacuation buses to Zaporizhzhia has been resumed from Hulyaipole, which is constantly under enemy fire, as reported by Hulyaipole urban territorial community on Facebook. Hulyaipole is one of the cities that is constantly under fire. There is not a single undamaged house left in the city. There is also no gas, electricity, or water in the city.

 

In Kirovohrad Oblast, at night, fragments of an enemy rocket shot down in Onufriivka damaged several houses.

 

In the morning, the occupiers hit Nikopol of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast with anti-aircraft guns. The number of injured as a result of the morning shelling has increased to 6 people. Two of the victims were driving in a car when a Russian shell exploded nearby. Due to the shelling, houses, a kindergarten, and several private enterprises were damaged, said the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Military Administration, Valentyn Reznichenko.

 

At night, the Russians shelled Mykolaiv with rockets. One of them hit a 5-story residential building and damaged a nearby 10-story [apartmet] building. The heating line, a children's playground, and several parked cars were also damaged. Preliminary, three wounded civilians were reported. Bashtanskyi, Mykolaivskyi, and Pervomayskyi districts of the Mykolayiv Oblast were also hit. Critical infrastructure facilities were damaged.

 

In Donetsk Oblast, on October 22, 2 civilians were killed by enemy shelling: in Klishchiivka and Torske. In addition, law enforcement officers found the bodies of 4 civilians who died during the occupation: 2 in Dibrova and 2 in Ozerne. Another 9 people were injured yesterday.


In Bakhmut, Donetsk region, a hospital building was damaged as a result of artillery shelling, the head of the Donetsk Military Administration reported. According to him, no one was hurt. But the building is partially destroyed: the roof and walls are damaged, and windows are broken.

 

In Kharkiv Oblast, during the past day, the enemy shelled Vovchansk, Chuguyiv, and Kupyansk (1 wounded) districts. In Vovchansk, as a result of shelling, a fire broke out in two private houses and at an industrial facility.

 

In the cities of Lutsk and Kovel in Volyn Oblast (northwest of Ukraine), the water supply has already been restored after yesterday's rocket attacks by the Russians. Electricity supply was also restored in Khmelnytsk Oblast after a massive rocket attack on October 22. Work is also underway to restore the energy supply to Rivne and Cherkasy Oblasts.

 

Stabilization blackouts have been introduced in Kyiv. According to DTEK Kyiv Electric Networks, every effort is being made to ensure that the outages last no more than four hours. However, in some cases, due to the scale of damage to the power supply system, the blackouts may be prolonged.

 

Occupied territories:

Russians took 12 children with disabilities from the Oleshky orphanage in the Kherson Oblast to Crimea. In total, there were 82 children in the institution, 40 of whom are palliative, said Andriy Yermak, Head of the President's Office. "What will happen next with the children is still unknown. There should be a tough legal response for such actions - this is the genocide of Ukrainians. We are doing everything to make the Russians answer," he said.

 

At the same time, Russians are holding children from [occupied] Enerhodar (Zaporizhzhia Oblast) hostage in the Krasnodar Territory of Russia, the Ukrainian mayor of Enerhodar said. According to Dmytro Orlov, parents who sent their children to Russia for “recovery” began to receive alarming messages. “The occupiers confronted them with the fact that the children were ‘delayed to rest in Russia for an indefinite period’, ordered them to hand over warm clothes, and ‘reassured’ that the children would go to school there,” he reported.

 

On the air of the national news telethon, mayor Dmytro Orlov said, that the temporarily occupied Energodar is on the verge of a humanitarian disaster. There are no prospects for the start of the heating season in the city. Orlov reminded that Energodar has a centralized heating system and it comes from the TPP, which has been inactive since the spring due to military operations, and from the ZNPP, which is in shutdown mode. The mayor also noted that the employees of the nuclear plant are being forced to sign contracts with a fake management company created by Russia, and the passes of nuclear workers are being blocked, which may have negative consequences for the plant's operation.

 

Head of the Luhansk Oblast Military Administration, Serhiy Haidai said that Russian occupiers cut off electricity in the north of Luhansk Oblast. He stressed that this is how the invaders force local residents to leave their homes. At the same time, lists of those wishing to move into someone


else's house are already being collected in Severodonetsk. "Administration" offers apartments with all conditions.


Operational situation

(please note that this part of the report is mainly on the previous day's (October 22) developments)

 

It is the 242nd 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. 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.

 

The enemy is shelling the positions of Ukrainian troops along the contact line and conducting aerial reconnaissance. Last day, the Russian occupiers again resorted to massive shelling of Ukraine's critical infrastructure, violating the norms of international humanitarian law, laws, and customs of war. Ukrainian Defense Forces shot down more than half of the cruise missiles and attack UAVs. In total, over the past day, the enemy has launched 32 missile and 25 air strikes and fired more than 80 MLRS rounds. Energy and critical infrastructure facilities in Volyn, Rivne, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi, Kirovohrad, Cherkasy, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa, and Mykolaiv Oblasts were hit by enemy attacks.

 

Near the state border, the enemy shelled Gudove, Khodyne in Chernihiv Oblast and Seredyna Buda, Vovkivka, and Yunakivka in Sumy Oblast with mortars and barrel artillery.

 

Ukrainian Defense Forces aircraft carried out 17 strikes during the past day. The impact on 15 areas of enemy weapons and military equipment concentration and two positions of anti-aircraft missile systems was confirmed. Ukrainian air defense units shot down one Ka-52 helicopter and 3 Orlan UAVs.

 

Over the past day, Ukrainian military personnel of the missile forces and artillery hit three enemy command and control points, six areas of concentration of manpower, weapons and military equipment, an ammunition depot, and five other important targets, including one radar.

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 enemy shelled the positions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces with mortars, barrel and rocket artillery in the areas of Kolodyazne, Kotlyarivka, and Kyslivka.

 

Kramatorsk direction

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

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

 

The enemy fired at Stelmakhivka, Zarichne, and Terny with tanks, mortars, barrel and jet artillery. The Ukrainian Defense Forces repelled the enemy's attack on Bilohorivka.

 

Ukrainian troops continued to attack in the direction of Kreminna and Svatove and were stopped in the Kuzymivka area near the N26 highway. Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Novovodyane, Chervonopivka, and Terny.

 

Russian troops do not have equipped defensive positions along the route P66 Svatove - Kreminna, despite previous statements from Russian sources.

 

On October 22, Russian troops carried out unsuccessful counterattacks intending to return the lost territories near Ternova, Bilohorivka, Zolotarivka, and in the direction of Lyman.

 

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 from tanks and artillery the positions of the Defense Forces in the areas of Andriivka, Bakhmutske, Bakhmut, Vesele, Zelenopillia, Klyshchiivka, Mayorsk, Kurdyumivka, Ozaryanivka, Opytne, Soledar, Yakovlivka, Avdiivka, Vremivka, Velyka Novosilka, Vuhledar, Novobakhmutivka, and Neskuchne.

 

During the previous few days, the enemy company of the separate assault battalion ("Somali" illegal armed formation), two reinforced separate reconnaissance battalion platoons ("Sparta" illegal armed formation) of the 1st Army Corps, the BTG of the 1st separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st Army Corps, tried to advance from Donetsk Airport (DAP) in the direction of Vodyane and Opytne, having the immediate task of taking control of the road between Opytne and DAP, and to take control of Vodyane and Opytne in the future.

 

Starting from the evening of October 18, the enemy tried to dislodge the advanced units of Ukrainian Defense Forces from their frontiers with a series of attacks from the Spartak area, positions north of DAP, and the northern outskirts of the Pisky village. In the course of these attacks, the "Somali" separate assault battalion was able to advance halfway from Pisky to Vodyane (to the fork of the road to Opytne and Vodyane) but was stopped by the Ukrainian fire from positions near Vodyane. Separate reconnaissance battalion "Sparta" did not reach the road, was stopped further south and had to assist the units of the 1st separate motorized rifle brigade, which was counterattacked at night by Ukrainian Defence Forces units from positions near Opytne village.

 

As of the evening of October 21, the enemy did not complete the assigned task, except for its left flank by reaching the line along the DAP-Opytne road and consolidating there. Units of the 1st separate motorized rifle brigade were forced to retreat even beyond their starting line. The enemy managed to stabilize the situation in the area of Spartak village only by introducing reserves into the battle (separate special battalions "Storm" and "Pyatnashka", both of them - illegal armed formations).

 

Over the past 24 hours, units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces repelled the enemy attacks in the areas of Bakhmut, Bakhmutske, Ivanhrad, Maryinka, Soledar, Ozaryanivka, and Odradivka.

 

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 shelled the areas of Dorozhnyanka and Orihiv. In the battles, 5 enemy units of weapons and military equipment were destroyed and about 100 enemy servicemen were wounded.

 

Tavriysk direction

-   Vasylivka – Stanislav section: approximate length of the battle line – 296 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 42, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 7 km;

-  Deployed BTGs: 114th, 143rd, and 394th motorized rifle regiments, 218th tank regiment of the 127th motorized rifle division, 57th and 60th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 5th Combined Arms Army, 37th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 36th Combined Arms Army, 429th motorized rifle regiment of the 19th motorized rifle division, 33rd and 255th motorized rifle regiments of the 20th motorized rifle division, 34th and 205th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 49th Combined Arms Army, 70th, 71st and 291st motorized rifle regiments of the 42nd motorized rifle division, 10th, 16th, 346th separate SOF brigades, 239th air assault regiment of the 76th Air assault division, 217th and 331st parachute airborne regiments of the 98th airborne division, 108 air assault regiment, 171st separate airborne assault battalion of the 7th Air assault division, 11th and 83rd separate airborne assault brigade, 4th military base of the 58 Combined Arms Army, 7 military base 49 Combined Arms Army, 224th, 237th and 126th separate coastal defence brigades, 127th separate ranger brigade, 1st and 3rd Army Corps, PMCs.

 

The enemy shelled the military and civilian infrastructure of more than 20 towns and villages near the contact line, including Bezimenne, Biloghirka, Davydiv Brid, Novohryhorivka, Novoukrainka, Partyzanske, Pravdyne, and Chervona Dolyna.

 

The enemy's troops left the village of Charivne, which means Ukrainian Defense Forces units breakthrough through the enemy's battalion defense area in the area of Chkalove village. The Ukrainian Defense Forces are advancing toward Beryslav. The Russian troops' tactical group along the Ishchenko - Borozenske - Nova Kamianka - southern outskirts of Dudchany is under threat of encirclement.

 

The destruction of the enemy's personnel and equipment in Nova Kakhovka was confirmed: as a result of the destruction of the enemy concentration [by Ukrainian troops], 6 units of weapons and military equipment were destroyed and up to 150 servicemen were wounded.

 

Russian officers and medics evacuated from Beryslav. Russian troops are evacuating patients from the Kakhovka Hospital on the east bank of the Dnipro River to free up hospital beds for wounded that might occur as a result of the withdrawal across the river. Some Russian units are preparing Kherson for urban battles, while other military personnel continues to flee the city through the crossing that operates in the area of the Antonivsky Bridge. On October 22, Russian forces completed the construction of a barge bridge next to the damaged bridge, which will


become a critical crossing point for Russian forces. A large part of the Kherson population also left the city.

 

Russian forces are preparing to destroy the dam at the Kakhovka hydroelectric plant, flood, and widen the Dnipro River to delay any Ukrainian advance.

 

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.

 

Due to the stormy conditions, the number of the Russian naval group at sea was reduced to 6 ships and boats. They are located along the southwestern coast of Crimea. The number of Kalibr missile carriers is constantly changing, but at least 16 Kalibr missiles are always ready for salvo.

 

In the Sea of Azov waters, enemy patrol ships and boats are on the approach 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, 10 enemy aircraft from Belbek and Saki airfields were deployed.

 

The enemy continues shelling Ukraine and its coastal areas. On the morning of October 23, the enemy used kamikaze drones en masse. 14 "Shahed-136" kamikaze drones were shot down over Mykolaiv.

 

"Grain initiative". On October 23, the bulk carrier PANGEO, the sixth UN chartered ship (World Food Program (WFP), left the port of Chornomorsk. It has 40,000 tons of wheat for Yemen on board. Also, as part of the implementation of the "Grain Initiative", 6 ships with 124.3 thousand tons of agricultural products left the ports of Odesa, Chornomorsk, and "Pivdenny" for the countries of Asia and Europe.

 

As previously reported, Russia is deliberately delaying the full implementation of the Grain Initiative. Because of this, the ports have been operating at only 25-30% capacity in recent days. In general, since August 1, 380 ships have exported 8.5 million tons of agricultural products to the countries of Africa, Asia, and Europe from the ports of Great Odesa.

 

About 50,000 dolphins died in the Black Sea because of the war. According to Ivan Rusev, Doctor of Biological Sciences, many warships are maneuvering in the southwestern part of the Black Sea, including submarines, which sometimes approached the coastline. It is because of the use of sonar by ships that dolphins die. On the coast of Ukraine, Bulgaria, and Romania, 2,500 carcasses of mammals were found, but according to international studies, only 5% of the dead dolphins are washed ashore.


Russian operational losses from 24.02 to 23.10

Personnel - almost 67,470 people (+400);

Tanks - 2,584 (+5);

Armored combat vehicles – 5,284 (+18);

Artillery systems – 1,667 (+14);

Multiple rocket launchers (MLRS) - 374 (+1); Anti-aircraft warfare systems - 189 (0); Vehicles and fuel tanks – 4,039 (+18); Aircraft - 270 (0);

Helicopters – 245 (+2);

UAV operational and tactical level – 1,361 (+20); Intercepted cruise missiles - 350 (+21);

Boats / ships - 16 (0).


 

Ukraine, general news

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a conversation with the Director of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, and assured that Ukraine will do everything necessary for a dignified passage of the current IMF monitoring program and the fastest possible transition to the new one. On October 12, Zelenskyy called on the international community to create a new format of financial support for Ukraine, similar to the one created in Ramstein for defense assistance. He also noted that he discussed with the IMF head the need to create a permanent working group that would deal with issues of financial support to Ukraine and work promptly at the levels of international donors and countries participating in this assistance. Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund Kristalina Georgieva said that the IMF supports such an initiative.

 

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba called for a worldwide ban on the RT propaganda channel after one of its leaders suggested brutally killing Ukrainian children on the air.

 

As a result of drone and missile attacks, almost 40% of Ukraine's energy infrastructure was damaged, reaching billions of dollars, the head of the Ministry of Energy, Herman Galushchenko, said. "I have to tell you that it is... at least half of the thermal generation capacity, even more," he said, outlining the extent of the damage. However, according to the head of the Ministry of Energy, there is a way out of the crisis. One of the options is to import electricity, and some traders have already started negotiations with suppliers.

 

Ukraine has lost 90% of wind energy, Galushchenko reminded. The main part of green energy was located in the south of Ukraine, where most of the territory is now occupied. Because of this, 90% of wind power plants and 45-50% of solar power plants have been decommissioned, he said in an interview with "We - Ukraine". "We had a strategy that provided that in 2030 the share of "green" energy in Ukraine would be at least 25%. I believe that after our victory, taking into account the damage caused by Russia, we will probably revise it and increase the percentage," he said.


International diplomatic aspect

Russians keep their veto power in the UN Security Council and are angry about any reform of the body. At the same time, the very legitimacy of Russia's sitting in the chair of a permanent member of the UN Security Council is doubtful. "According to the documents, it is still not the Russian Federation, but… the Soviet Union that is a permanent member of the Security Council (namely, this status gives the right to veto). However, in 1991, in an attempt to secure Russia's nuclear and military capabilities, the UNSC decided to turn a blind eye to the organization's violation of its charter and allow Russia to sit at the table — which, however, has not yet made its membership legal," stated the Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the UN in New York. The Soviet Union was one of the founders of the UN. At the same time, none of the UN members voted for the Russian Federation's membership in general and its permanent seat at the UN Security Council, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Moreover, the UN Charter doesn't envisage any "succession" of the permanent member's seat at all.

 

It is worth noting that the Soviet Union was expelled from the League of Nations, a predecessor of the UN, following the pact with Germany and aggression against Finland. The Ribbentrop Molotov Pact was about dividing Europe between the Nazi and communist allies, triggering the bloodiest conflict in Europe.

 

In 2014 Russia illegally annexed Crimea, which was the first illegal, forceful annexation of territory since the end of the Second World War. In 2022 Russia launched the largest military conflict on the European continent since the Second World War.

 

Iranian foreign ministry strongly condemned a call by France, Germany, and the UK for the UN's investigation of the Iranian origin of drones that Russia used to hit Ukrainian civilian and critical infrastructure. President Ebrahim Raisi denied it [playing the fool], saying that all the concerns were based on Iran's enemies who "do not want us to grow ... to conquer markets". He hinted that many countries are interested in buying Iranian weapons because they are better. "Let the enemy get angry and die of anger," he concluded.

 

There is a role of the Mullah regime in this as well in what UN Resident Coordinator in Ukraine Denise Brown described as "The sheer depth of the humanitarian catastrophe [in Ukraine] is staggering." Denise Brown has warned that more than 40 percent of the Ukrainian population (some 18 million) is now in need of emergency aid due to Russia's war of aggression. She added that according to UNICEF, "some 5.7 million school children have been affected" since Russia's all-out invasion, including some 3.6 million school children who have had their educational facilities closed. There have been over 630 verified attacks on healthcare. Fourteen million fled their homes, including 6.2 million internally displaced and nearly 7.7 million refugees.

 

Russia, relevant news

At the Perm gunpowder plant, which produces shells for the MLRS, there was a fire followed by detonation. At least two employees were killed and others were injured. The plant worked in three shifts to meet the needs of the Russian army.


In Irkutsk, a military plane Su-30 crashed on a two-story civilian house. Civilian casualties have not yet been reported. A strong fire broke out at the crash site. The Ministry of Emergency Situations reported that the plane crashed during a test flight. Russian media report that the crew of the SU-30 died. It is the second Russian military aircraft downed in the residential neighborhood due to technical issues. First (six days before) was Su-34 which fell on a residential high-rise building in Yeysk. Then 15 people died.


 

Centre for Defence Strategies (CDS) is a Ukrainian security think tank. We operate since 2020

We publish this brief daily. If you would like to subscribe, please send us an email at cds.dailybrief@gmail.com

Please note, that we subscribe only verified persons and can decline or cancel the subscription at our own discretion

We are an independent, non-government, non-partisan, and non-profit organisation. More at www.defence.org.ua

Our Twitter (in English) - https://twitter.com/defence_centre

 

Our Facebook (in Ukrainian) - https://www.facebook.com/cds.UA


Our brief is for information only and we verify our information to the best possible extent


3. China's Xi is more powerful than ever. What does it mean for the world?


Excerpts:

Xi steps into his next era in power facing a significantly different landscape to his previous two terms. The relationship between China and the West has changed dramatically with US-China relations cratering over a trade and tech war, frictions over Taiwan, Covid-19, Beijing’s human rights record and its refusal to condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Xi’s work report, a five-yearly action plan delivered during the congress, pointed to “drastic changes” on the international landscape, including “external attempts to blackmail, contain, blockade, and exert maximum pressure” on China – terms often used by Chinese diplomats to decry US actions.
...
Speaking in a televised address on Sunday after announcing his new leadership team – the party’s Politburo Standing Committee – Xi pledged that China’s door to the world would “only get wider” and the country’s development would itself “create more opportunities for the world.”
“China cannot develop in isolation from the world, and the world also needs China for its development,” he said.
But China today is more physically closed off than it’s been in decades. Xi continues to back a costly zero-Covid policy that keeps borders heavily restricted and regularly sends its cities into lockdown – dragging down China’s economic growth.
Xi’s pledge also seems to have done little to assure investors. On Monday, the Hong Kong stock market — where many of China’s biggest companies are listed — had its worst day since the 2008 global financial crisis. Alibaba and Tencent, China’s two leading tech giants, both plummeted more than 11%, wiping out a combined $54 billion in their market caps.



China's Xi is more powerful than ever. What does it mean for the world? | CNN

CNN · by Simone McCarthy,Nectar Gan · October 24, 2022


Chinese leader Xi Jinping waves after his speech at the announcement of the Communist Party's new top leadership committee in Beijing, China October 23, 2022.

Tingshu Wang/Reuters

Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Sign up here.

Hong Kong CNN —

It was a crowning moment for Xi Jinping when he stepped onto a red-carpet stage on Sunday to begin his norm-shattering third term as China’s supreme leader.

Xi, 69, has emerged from the ruling Communist Party’s five-yearly congress with more power than ever, stacking his party’s top tiers with longtime proteges and staunch allies.

That loyal inner circle has not only strengthened Xi’s hold on power – but also tightened his grip over China’s future. To an extent unseen in decades, the country’s trajectory is shaped by the vision and ambition of one man, with minimal room for discord or recalibration at the party’s apex of power.

In the eyes of Xi, China is closer than ever to achieving its dream of “national rejuvenation” and reclaiming its rightful place in the world. But the path ahead is also beset with “high winds, choppy waters, or even dangerous storms” – a dark warning Xi made at both the start and the end of the week-long congress.

The growing challenges have stemmed from “a grim and complex international situation,” with “external attempts to suppress and contain China” threatening to “escalate at any time,” according to Xi’s work report to the congress.

Observers say Xi’s answer to that darkening outlook is to intensify the fierce defense of China’s national interests and security against all perceived threats.

“Xi is likely to tightly control and be involved in all major foreign policy decisions. His packing of the top Chinese leadership with loyalists will allow him to better control and exert influence,” said Bonny Lin, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) China Power Project.

What he decides to do – and how he goes about doing it – will have a profound impact on the world.

China and the West

Xi steps into his next era in power facing a significantly different landscape to his previous two terms. The relationship between China and the West has changed dramatically with US-China relations cratering over a trade and tech war, frictions over Taiwan, Covid-19, Beijing’s human rights record and its refusal to condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Xi’s work report, a five-yearly action plan delivered during the congress, pointed to “drastic changes” on the international landscape, including “external attempts to blackmail, contain, blockade, and exert maximum pressure” on China – terms often used by Chinese diplomats to decry US actions.


The new Politburo Standing Committee members assemble in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Tingshu Wang/Reuters

“It is clear that Xi sees China having entered a period primarily of struggle in the international arena rather than a period of opportunity,” said Andrew Small, author of “No Limits: The Inside Story of China’s War with the West.”

An expectation that ties will deteriorate further “is resulting in a China that is far more openly engaged in systemic rivalry with the West – greater assertiveness, more overtly ideologically hostile positions, more efforts to build counter-coalitions of its own, and a bigger push to shore up China’s position in the developing world,” he said.

These pressures are also likely to impact Beijing’s close relationship with Moscow. While China has sought to appear as a neutral actor in the war in Ukraine, it has refused to condemn Russia’s invasion and instead blamed the West for the conflict – a dynamic that also may be unlikely to change.

“(Xi) already seems to have written off many of the costs that result from (that relationship) for China’s relations with the West, and Europe in particular,” Small said.

Threat posed to Taiwan

At the opening of the congress on October 16, Xi won the loudest and longest ovation from the nearly 2,300 handpicked delegates inside Beijing’s Great Hall of the People when he vowed to “reunify” the mainland with Taiwan – a self-governing democracy Beijing claims as its own, despite having never controlled it.

China would “strive for peaceful reunification,” Xi said, before giving a grim warning that Beijing would “never promise to renounce the use of force.”

“The wheels of history are rolling on towards China’s reunification and the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Complete reunification of our country must be realized,” Xi told the congress to thundering applause.

Under Xi, Beijing has ramped up military pressure on Taiwan, sending warplanes and conducting military drills near the island. Following China’s tacit support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, concerns have only grown over Beijing’s plans for Taiwan.


Chinese warplanes conduct exercises close to Taiwan in August 2022.

Li Bingyu/AP

Lin at CSIS said Xi’s work report does not reveal any major change in Beijing’s policy toward Taiwan, but the leadership reshuffle in the Chinese military could provide clues about his “desire to make more ‘progress’ on unification with the island.”

He Weidong, former commander of the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command, which oversees the Taiwan Strait, was unexpectedly promoted to vice chairman of the Central Military Commission – despite having never served on the body before.

“This suggests Xi is taking very seriously the possibility of a military crisis or conflict and wants to ensure that the PLA is ready,” Lin said. “I do not believe Xi is set on using significant force against Taiwan, but he is taking steps to prepare to do so.”

Xi’s work report also outlined an ambition for China to become more adept at deploying its military forces on a regular basis, and in diversified ways, to enable it to “win local wars.”

“Xi evidently wants the PLA to be capable of winning a war to seize control of Taiwan if he chooses to do that, whether or not his calculations are that this is actually a risk worth taking. That is always the top priority,” said Small, who is also a senior transatlantic fellow with the German Marshall Fund think tank.

Small pointed to a number of risk junctures for an escalation in the Taiwan Strait in the coming years, including the island’s next presidential election in 2024.

“The fact remains, though, that the PLA has not been seriously battle tested in decades, and one of the issues in the period ahead will be whether they can effectively prepare themselves for this,” he said.

The economy

Speaking in a televised address on Sunday after announcing his new leadership team – the party’s Politburo Standing Committee – Xi pledged that China’s door to the world would “only get wider” and the country’s development would itself “create more opportunities for the world.”

“China cannot develop in isolation from the world, and the world also needs China for its development,” he said.

But China today is more physically closed off than it’s been in decades. Xi continues to back a costly zero-Covid policy that keeps borders heavily restricted and regularly sends its cities into lockdown – dragging down China’s economic growth.

Xi’s pledge also seems to have done little to assure investors. On Monday, the Hong Kong stock market — where many of China’s biggest companies are listed — had its worst day since the 2008 global financial crisis. Alibaba and Tencent, China’s two leading tech giants, both plummeted more than 11%, wiping out a combined $54 billion in their market caps.

The stakes are high for how the world’s second-largest economy navigates these challenges, especially at a moment where the risk of global economic recession looms.

Xi’s apparent interest in integrating domestic and international security could “translate to policies like sanctions against foreign companies, (and) more red tape when there is foreign investment in Chinese technology companies,” according to Victor Shih, an expert on elite Chinese politics at the University of California San Diego.

And while Xi has said that furthering China’s “international standing and influence,” including by backing global development, is among his main objectives for the next five years, Beijing may no longer be able to rely on the same level of economic engagement to do so in a more divided world.

CNN · by Simone McCarthy,Nectar Gan · October 24, 2022


4. World faces tension with China under Xi Jinping's third term


Summary of the "major" issues:


Politics
Economy
Technology
Security
Foreign Relations
COVID-19
Climate

World faces tension with China under Xi Jinping's third term

AP · by JOE McDONALD · October 24, 2022

BEIJING (AP) — The world faces the prospect of more tension with China over trade, security and human rights after Xi Jinping, the country’s most powerful leader in decades, awarded himself another term as leader of the ruling Communist Party.

Xi has tightened control at home and is trying to use China’s economic heft to increase its influence abroad. Washington accused Beijing this month of trying to undermine U.S. alliances, global security and economic rules. Activists say Xi’s government wants to deflect criticism of abuses by changing the U.N.’s definition of human rights.

Xi says “the world system is broken and China has answers,” said William Callahan of the London School of Economics. “More and more, Xi Jinping is talking about the Chinese style as a universal model of the world order, which goes back to a Cold War kind of conflict.”

At a Communist Party congress that wrapped up Saturday, Xi gave no sign of plans to change the severe “zero-COVID” strategy that has frustrated China’s public and disrupted business and trade. He called for more self-reliance in technology, faster military development and protection of Beijing’s “core interests” abroad. He announced no changes in policies that have strained relations with Washington and Asian neighbors.

Technology

ADVERTISEMENT

On Sunday, Xi was awarded a third five-year term as party leader in a break with tradition that called for him to step down after 10 years. The party named a seven-member ruling Standing Committee of Xi and his allies, which gives him a free hand to carry out his plans.

POLITICS: Xi calls for the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” based on reviving the Communist Party’s role as the economic, social and cultural leader in a throwback to what he sees as a golden age after the 1949 revolution. “Xi’s embrace of Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy should put to rest any wishful thinking that Xi’s China might peacefully liberalize its politics and economy,” Kevin Rudd, president of the Asia Society and a former Australian prime minister, wrote in Foreign Affairs. Xi’s government has jailed dissidents, stepped up internet censorship and crushed a pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. Its “social credit” initiative tracks the public and punishes infractions from fraud to littering. “Zero COVID,” which tracks individuals using smartphone apps and has confined tens of millions to their homes, “is indicative of how Xi Jinping wants Chinese society to work,” said Callahan. “It is to be under constant surveillance and control,” he said. “It has become much more authoritarian and at times totalitarian.”

ADVERTISEMENT

ECONOMY: By 2035, the Communist Party wants economic output per person to match a “medium-level developed country,” Xi said in a report to the congress. That suggests doubling output from 2020 levels, according to Larry Hu and Yuxiao Zhang of Macquarie, an Australian financial services group. Meanwhile, however, the ruling party is building up subsidy-devouring state industry and tightening control over entrepreneurs who generate wealth and jobs. That prompts warnings that economic growth that sank to 2.2% over a year earlier in the first half of 2022 will suffer. The economy faces challenges from tension with Washington, curbs on China’s access to Western technology, an aging population and a slump in its vast real estate industry. “If top leaders take the target seriously, they might have to adopt a more pro-growth policy stance,” Hu and Zhang said in a report. Analysts are watching for details after the party’s Central Economic Work Conference in early December.

ADVERTISEMENT

TECHNOLOGY: Xi promised to “build China’s self-reliance and strength in science and technology.” He gave no details, but earlier efforts to reduce reliance on the West and Japan by creating Chinese sources of renewable energy, electric vehicle, computer and other technologies have prompted complaints that Beijing violates its free-trade commitments by shielding its companies from competition. American officials worry Chinese competition might erode U.S. industrial leadership. China faces growing limits on access to Western technology, especially from the United States, which warns it might be used to make weapons. China is building its own chip industry, but analysts say it is generations behind global leaders. Beijing doesn’t appear to be trying to isolate China but wants to reduce strategic unease by catching up with other countries, said Alicia Garcia Herrero of Natixis, a French investment bank. She said that will involve increased state-led investment. “That is going to create some tension,” she said.

ADVERTISEMENT

SECURITY: Xi says “external and internal security” are the “bedrock of national rejuvenation.” In a speech that used the word security 26 times, he said Beijing will “work faster” to modernize the party’s military wing, the People’s Liberation Army, and “enhance the military’s strategic capabilities.” China already has the world’s second-highest military spending after the United States and is trying to extend its reach by developing ballistic missiles, submarines and other technologies. Xi refused to renounce the use of force to unite Taiwan with the mainland. Xi also called for improved security for supplies of energy, food and industrial goods. The party also sees “ideological security” as a priority, which is leading to more internet censorship.

ADVERTISEMENT

FOREIGN RELATIONS: Beijing increasingly uses its economic muscle as the biggest trading partner for all of its neighbors as leverage in politics and security. China blocked imports of Australian wine, meat and other goods after its government called for an investigation into the origins of COVID-19. Beijing tried unsuccessfully to persuade 10 Pacific island governments to sign a security pact this year, but is making inroads with some. Police officers from the Solomon Islands are being trained in China. Beijing wants a “China-centered security system,” said Callahan. “Beijing wants to be a world leader, and part of that, according to Beijing, is to be a leader in the hard politics of global security.” Chinese diplomats, in a trend dubbed “wolf warrior diplomacy,” are more confrontational and sometimes violent. This month, Chinese diplomats in Manchester, England, beat a protester after dragging him onto the grounds of their consulate. Diplomats have “carried forward the fighting spirit,” said a deputy foreign minister, Ma Zhaoxu. He said the diplomatic corps will “improve its fighting skills and always stand at the forefront of safeguarding national interests and national dignity.”

COVID-19: Xi gave no indication China’s “zero-COVID” strategy might ease despite public frustration with its costs. While other countries have eased travel curbs, China is sticking to a strategy that has kept infection rates low but shut down major cities. The party newspaper People’s Daily tried to dispel expectations of a relaxation once the congress ended. The strategy “must be sustained,” it argued. Public health experts say more of the elderly need to be vaccinated before the ruling party can relax the COVID-19 restrictions. That might take months. Forecasters say that means it might be the end of 2023 before controls might ease.

CLIMATE: Xi promised a “proactive and steady” approach to reducing climate-changing carbon emissions, but at the same time the ruling party is increasing coal production to avert a repeat of last year’s power shortages and blackouts. A Cabinet official said coal output will rise to 4.6 billion tons in 2025. That would be 12% more than 2021. Xi said in a 2020 speech to the United Nations that China’s emissions should peak in 2030 but didn’t say at what level. China already emits more carbon than the United States and other developed economies combined, according to Rhodium Group. China is building more coal-fired power plants, which activists warn might cause higher emissions. Meanwhile, Beijing suspended a climate dialogue with Washington in August in retaliation for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to rival Taiwan.

AP · by JOE McDONALD · October 24, 2022


5. White House denies talk of national security review of Elon Musk ventures





White House denies talk of national security review of Elon Musk ventures

Report cites concerns over foreign investors funding Twitter takeover and increasingly strategic role in Ukraine of Starlink


The Guardian · by Dan Milmo · October 21, 2022

US officials are considering whether to subject some of Elon Musk’s business ventures to national security reviews, including his proposed acquisition of Twitter and his satellite internet company Starlink, according to a report.

Bloomberg wrote on Friday that Biden administration officials were concerned by the Tesla chief executive’s plan to buy Twitter in a deal part-funded by non-US investors and his recent threat to pull the plug on the Starlink service to Ukraine, as well as the publication of a series of tweets containing proposals over the Ukraine conflict favourable to the Putin regime.

The report said US officials were concerned by Musk’s plans to buy Twitter with the financial support of non-US investors, including: the Saudi Arabian investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud; Qatar Holding, which is part of the Qatar Investment Authority; and Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, whose holding company is registered in the Cayman Islands. At the time, the financial support of Musk’s co-investors was worth about $7bn.

The White House however, denied talk of a security review. The national security spokesperson, Adrienne Watson, said: “We don’t know of any such discussions.”

Musk is working to complete a proposed $44bn acquisition of Twitter ahead of a court-imposed deadline of 28 October, after which he faces the threat of legal action from the social media platform to force him to close the deal.

Bloomberg wrote that one avenue available to the Biden administration to investigate Musk’s ventures was the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United State (CFIUS), which can review business deals and recommend that the president suspend or block a transaction.

In response, Elon Musk flagged a tweet on Friday that cited the Bloomberg report and said it would be “hysterical if the government stopped Elon from over-paying for Twitter”. Musk responded with a laughing emoji and the 100 emoji, indicating support for the post.

It would be hysterical if the government stopped Elon from over paying for Twitter
— Nik “The Carny” Lentz (@NikLentz) October 21, 2022

It is not clear on what basis Starlink, part of Musk’s Space X rocket business, would be scrutinised by the committee.

On Saturday, Elon Musk announced SpaceX would continue to pay for Starlink’s internet service in Ukraine, a day after suggesting he could not keep funding the project, which he said was losing about $20m a month. Starlink, which operates via a constellation of 3,000 small satellites in low-Earth orbit, has become a key communications link for the Ukrainian army in its fight to repel the Russian invasion. There are now about 25,000 Starlink ground terminals in Ukraine, according to Musk.

Musk alarmed the government in Kyiv this month when he published a Twitter poll on the future of the country, with options including formalising Russia’s annexation of Crimea. In response, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, tweeted: “Which @elonmusk do you like more?” and offered two responses: the Musk who supports Ukraine, or who supports Russia.

Sign up to Business Today

Free daily newsletter

Get set for the working day – we'll point you to the all the business news and analysis you need every morning

Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

The US Treasury said: “CFIUS is committed to taking all necessary actions within its authority to safeguard U.S. national security. Consistent with law and practice, CFIUS does not publicly comment on transactions that it may or may not be reviewing.”

Howard Fischer, a partner at New York law firm Moses & Singer, said he did not expect a CFIUS investigation to hamper the Twitter deal.

“I am sceptical that CFIUS review is going to be employed to stop or significantly pause the deal,” he said. “Musk would argue that he is being punished for his speech, not the presence of foreign investors in the deal, especially given the relatively smaller size of that reported foreign investment.”

Elon Musk has been contacted for commented.

The Guardian · by Dan Milmo · October 21, 2022


6. Russia Says Ukraine Will Attack Using a Radioactive 'Dirty Bomb'


Russia seems to be setting the conditions for a false flag operation.


Recognize the strategy, understand it, EXPOSE it, and attack it.



Russia Says Ukraine Will Attack Using a Radioactive 'Dirty Bomb'

19fortyfive.com · by Jack Buckby · October 23, 2022

Why Does Russia Want the World to Believe Ukraine Is Planning to Use A “Dirty Bomb”? – In a series of phone calls with NATO defense secretaries on Sunday, Russian Defense Secretary Sergey Shoigu claimed that Ukraine is planning to use a radioactive dirty bomb and then blame the attack on Moscow. It follows months of threats to deploy tactical nuclear weapons by Moscow in response to a perceived threat to Russia.

Russian President Putin. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Shoigu claimed without evidence that Russia believes Ukraine plans to detonate a dirty bomb and point the finger at Russia, potentially triggering increased military aid for Ukraine.

The claims were echoed by Russian news agency RIA Novosti, which wrote that the purpose of Ukraine’s alleged plot was to “accuse Russia of using weapons of mass destruction in the Ukrainian theatre of operations and thereby launch a powerful anti-Russian campaign in the world aimed at undermining confidence in Moscow.”

“The calculation of the organizers of the provocation is that if it is successfully implemented, most countries will react extremely harshly to the ‘nuclear incident’ in Ukraine,” the news agency also wrote on Telegram.

What Is A Dirty Bomb?

dirty bomb refers to a kind of bomb that uses a combination of different explosives. In this instance, Russia appears to be referring to a kind of explosive that uses radioactive pellets or powder.

Importantly, a dirty bomb is not the same as a nuclear bomb. A nuclear bomb creates an enormous energy release and an atomic mushroom cloud. A one-megaton atomic bomb can create a blast that puts 180 tons of pressure on walls and buildings within a 6km radius.

A dirty bomb, on the other hand, does not create such a huge blast. Instead, the radioactive material within the explosives creates a dust or smoke cloud that can contaminate large areas.

UK Casts Doubt On Claims

British Secretary of Defense Ben Wallace cast doubt on Russia’s claims this weekend, suggesting that Russia was establishing a pretense to escalate the conflict.

“The defence secretary refuted these claims and cautioned that such allegations should not be used as a pretext for greater escalation,” the Ministry of Defense said in a statement on Saturday.

The comment followed talks between the United Kingdom and Russia, and the statement appears to reflect the position of other NATO allies who believe that Russia remains the aggressor in the conflict.

Shoigu Holds Another Call With Austin

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu held a second phone call with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Sunday, the third such call since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and only days after the last call.

Shoigu held calls with several world leaders over the matter, revealing Russia’s intention to ensure that as many world leaders as possible are aware of their dirty bomb narrative. The Russian official reportedly provided no details or evidence for the claims, and readouts of the call revealed that Shoigu said that the situation in Ukraine is getting worse.

Why Now?

Why the Kremlin is making these claims now is up in the air. It’s possible that Russia does have intelligence to suggest Ukraine is considering a false flag attack as an option, but if it were true it raises some serious questions.

Specifically, it raises the question of why Ukraine would risk endangering lives and causing a global conflict when the West is already providing enormous quantities of weapons, ammunition, and other supplies to assist in the fight against Russia. Ukraine has the West’s support and won’t lose it anytime soon. The use of a dirty bomb not only risks that support from the West but endangers Ukrainian civilians. To be frank, it makes no sense at all.

Perhaps, then, Russia is going to these lengths to ensure as many world leaders as possible know that they believe this is the case or to ensure that those world leaders know Russia wants them to believe that they believe this is the case.

Whether the West believes Moscow or not doesn’t necessarily matter – a pretext has been established and if Russia does choose to deploy a dirty bomb, the Kremlin will simply blame Ukraine and move on.

Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.

19fortyfive.com · by Jack Buckby · October 23, 2022



7. Chinese Economy Has a Fatal Flaw: Real Estate


Excerpts:

The consequences for Asia are gloomy. The slowdown of the Chinese economy means its imports may further weaken, which is problematic for commodity exporters. With weaker domestic demand for property construction, China is importing less iron ore and other inputs for construction.
The demise of China’s real estate sector, pushed by developer defaults and mortgage boycotts, is a major risk for the Chinese economy. Over time, its collapse might prove an even bigger shock than Beijing’s current zero-COVID policies.


Chinese Economy Has a Fatal Flaw: Real Estate

19fortyfive.com · by Alicia Garcia-Herrero · October 23, 2022

Chinese real estate developers are desperate to recover from the prolonged lockdowns driven by China’s zero-COVID-19 policy. But the slowdown in home sales is also related to the collapse of household confidence in the country’s real estate market.

The mortgage boycott in China is a direct consequence of the bankruptcies of an increasing number of developers. In 2021, real estate giant Evergrande left behind 1.3 million incomplete housing units for which Chinese households had already used their savings to make large down payments.

Some Chinese households have stopped servicing their mortgages for homes that remain incomplete. According to public data, the average delay in home completions has reached 14 months. Luckily, only a fraction of these cases triggered mortgage payment boycotts.

The problem may spread to other developers, supply chains, banks and local governments as land sales plummeted by 35 per cent in August. Defaulted developers will suffer the most as their unfinished projects are behind almost all mortgage boycott cases, including Evergrande, SUNAC and Greenland. Homebuyers have lost confidence in the completion of new real estate projects and are refraining from buying new properties.

A China yuan note is seen in this illustration photo May 31, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo

Housing prices are falling in more than half of China’s cities. New home sales are also plummeting, dropping 23 per cent year-on-year as of August. A drop in pre-sales is important because they account for 86 per cent of Chinese developers’ funding.

Chinese developers are excessively dependent on household financing by international standards. That is a direct consequence of the ‘three red lines’ enforced by Chinese regulators in 2020, prohibiting banks from extending additional lending to developers.

As housing units are left unsold, developers prefer not to invest in new projects. This has a chain effect on related sectors such as construction materials, household appliances and furniture. Fixed asset investment in the real estate sector accounts for one-third of China’s total fixed asset investment, directly affecting growth. The weaker demand for other related sectors also adds to the impact of the real estate demise on GDP growth.

The situation is bad news for financial stability, particularly for banks. Banks are less exposed to developers than mortgages, as banks are not allowed to be heavily exposed to developers. Mortgages account for 11 per cent of banks’ assets, well above their 4.5 per cent of direct exposure to real estate developers. That is why mortgage boycotts — especially if they are extended — are a bigger problem for the asset quality and solvency of banks.

Chinese regulators are preparing for the likely worsening of the asset quality of banks by creating bailout funds. But the financial resources deployed to these rescue funds come from the largest and most creditworthy banking institutions, which points to potential contagion from bad borrowers to good lenders. Policy banks are coming to the rescue with 200 billion RMB ($US28 billion) in loans to ensure that developers can finalise pending projects. The goal is to avoid more mortgage boycotts.

This goal might be achieved if enough resources are put on the table. The much harder goal to achieve is to restore household confidence. With endless mobility restrictions and regulatory changes, households would prefer to save on financial assets rather than invest in real estate that will not appreciate. A survey by the People’s Bank of China in the second quarter of 2022 showed that only 16.2 per cent of households expect an increase in house prices.

A coin and a banknote of China’s yuan are seen in this illustration picture taken February 24, 2022. REUTERS/Florence Lo/Illustration

Since there is little demand for housing, the People’s Bank of China’s efforts to lower mortgage rates might fail to achieve their goal. To increase demand, a growing number of local governments are easing macroprudential regulations, such as reducing down payments. Yet housing sales decreased even further in September.

Only a herculean effort by policymakers can restore the confidence of homebuyers. Such action could mean financing developers with a blanket guarantee — creating a huge moral hazard. Another option would be to have state-owned developers take over the assets of private developers, which equates to nationalising a sector that has remained largely in private hands. Any quick fix to China’s real estate woes may create an unintended moral hazard problem.

Barring a bailout scenario, there are four important implications for China and Asia. The most general is the increase in systemic risk with a downward effect on China’s low growth rate. Real estate investment will act as a major drag on the Chinese economy in 2022 and 2023, detracting at least 1 per cent of growth from an increasingly low potential growth rate of around 4–5 per cent.

The only way to soothe the impact of the necessary correction of this huge sector is to find other engines of growth with the help of innovation and the development of the service industry. The lifting of zero-COVID-19 policies is also essential to achieving this goal. The Chinese real estate sector will also be increasingly state-dominated, which does not bode well for the role of the private sector in China’s economic model.

Chinese President Xi Jinping. Image Credit: CCP.

The consequences for Asia are gloomy. The slowdown of the Chinese economy means its imports may further weaken, which is problematic for commodity exporters. With weaker domestic demand for property construction, China is importing less iron ore and other inputs for construction.

The demise of China’s real estate sector, pushed by developer defaults and mortgage boycotts, is a major risk for the Chinese economy. Over time, its collapse might prove an even bigger shock than Beijing’s current zero-COVID policies.

Alicia Garcia-Herrero is a Senior Research Fellow at the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel and Adjunct Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. This first appeared in East Asia Forum.

19fortyfive.com · by Alicia Garcia-Herrero · October 23, 2022


8. The New US National Security Strategy: Four Takeaways for Asia Policy


The "four:"


Prioritizing China and Russia

Support for Critical Industrial Bases
Clarifying the US Position on Taiwan
Emphasizing the Distinction between China’s Government and the Chinese People





The New US National Security Strategy: Four Takeaways for Asia Policy - Foreign Policy Research Institute

fpri.org · by Ryan Neuhard

Editor’s Note

This is the second in a series on the Biden administration’s National Security Strategy. The first essay examines President Joe Biden’s grand strategy.

Bottom Line

  • The new National Security Strategy (NSS) explicitly prioritizes China and the Indo-Pacific region, highlights industrial policy as a key national security instrument, clarifies the US position on Taiwan, and emphasizes a distinction between China’s government and the Chinese people.
  • The NSS resolves several elements of US policy that had generated confusion and establishes some useful guidance on how the different instruments of US foreign policy can complement one another. This is a relatively good strategic framework.
  • Perhaps the biggest weakness is that it took two years to release. Earlier publication may have helped avoid some issues of strategic incoherence and would have provided clearer signaling to both US adversaries and US allies and partners.

Background

On October 10, 2022, the US government published a new National Security Strategy (NSS). The White House issues the unclassified NSS to define the overall strategic priorities and guidelines for all US government agencies and to serve as a foundation for agency-specific strategic documents, like the classified National Defense Strategy (NDS) and the not-yet updated National Military Strategy (NMS).

The NSS must cover a comprehensive range of topics and as a result there is a lot of nuanced information packed into the document. Analysts will be dissecting each section and drawing many conclusions in the coming days and weeks. However, here are at least four key points that stand out:

Prioritizing China and Russia

When triaging the challenges posed by other nations, the NSS explicitly prioritizes China, then Russia, followed by all others. In the section that defines the strategy by region, the Indo-Pacific is addressed first, followed immediately by Europe, then all other regions. For example, the NSS states:

… this strategy recognizes that the PRC presents America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge. Although the Indo-Pacific is where its outcomes will be most acutely shaped, there are significant global dimensions to this challenge. Russia poses an immediate and ongoing threat to the regional security order in Europe and it is a source of disruption and instability globally but it lacks the across the spectrum capabilities of the PRC. We also recognize that other smaller autocratic powers are also acting in aggressive and destabilizing ways. … (p.11)
Our defense strategy must sustain and strengthen deterrence, with the PRC as our pacing challenge. (p.22)
Russia and the PRC pose different challenges. Russia poses an immediate threat to the free and open international system, recklessly flouting the basic laws of the international order today, as its brutal war of aggression against Ukraine has shown. The PRC, by contrast, is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to advance that objective. (p. 8)

This mirrors the updated National Defense Strategy which emphasizes the same prioritization. That is important both for the sake of informing how government agencies should divide their focus and resources when forced to choose, and for the sake of reassuring any allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific who may harbor doubts about US commitment and staying power.

The continued emphasis on the Indo-Pacific and on China throughout the NSS (and NDS) appears to be a signal that—while the US government will continue mobilizing support to Europe in response to the war in Ukraine and to other critical regions around the world—the US government will not allow other crises to derail the strategic prioritization of the Indo-Pacific and competition with China.

Support for Critical Industrial Bases

The NSS emphasizes investments in both the defense industrial base and several strategically significant civilian industrial bases. Key passages include:

… the United States is pursuing a modern industrial and innovation strategy. We are identifying and investing in key areas where private industry, on its own, has not mobilized to protect our core economic and national security interests, including bolstering our national resilience. We are securing our critical infrastructure, advancing foundational cybersecurity for critical sectors from pipelines to water, and working with the private sector to improve security defenses in technology products. We are securing our supply chains, including through new forms of public-private collaboration, and using public procurement in critical markets to stimulate demand for innovation. (p. 14)
The war in Ukraine highlights the criticality of a vibrant Defense Industrial Base for the United States and its allies and partners. It must not only be capable of rapidly manufacturing proven capabilities needed to defend against adversary aggression, but also empowered to innovate and creatively design solutions as battlefield conditions evolve. As emerging technologies transform warfare and pose novel threats to the United States and our allies and partners, we are investing in a range of advanced technologies including applications in the cyber and space domains, missile defeat capabilities, trusted artificial intelligence, and quantum systems, while deploying new capabilities to the battlefield in a timely manner. Incorporating allies and partners at every stage of defense planning is crucial to meaningful collaboration. We also seek to remove barriers to deeper collaboration with allies and partners, to include issues related to joint capability development and production to safeguard our shared military-technological edge. (p. 21)

This places industrial policy among other more traditional national security tools (e.g., military, intelligence, diplomatic, economic, and development policies), which is a departure from past editions of the National Security Strategy. During the past two years, we have already seen elements of this approach implemented through a series of executive orders (e.g., EO 14017) and congressional legislation (e.g., the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021Inflation Reduction Act of 2022CHIPS and Science Act of 2022). This suggests that trends like “friend-shoring” sensitive supply chains and mobilizing large government-directed investments in strategically important industries (e.g., semiconductors, artificial intelligence, critical infrastructure) will likely continue. FPRI’s Eurasia Director, Chris Miller, provides an in-depth assessment of the ongoing semiconductor competition in his recent book, Chip War, for those interested in more information.

Clarifying the US Position on Taiwan

The NSS clarified the US position on Taiwan in more explicit terms than prior editions of the NSS:

We have an abiding interest in maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, which is critical to regional and global security and prosperity and a matter of international concern and attention. We oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side, and do not support Taiwan independence. We remain committed to our one China policy, which is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the Three Joint Communiques, and the Six Assurances. And we will uphold our commitments under the Taiwan Relations Act to support Taiwan’s self-defense and to maintain our capacity to resist any resort to force or coercion against Taiwan. (p. 24)

In effect, the NSS states that the United States (1) opposes any unilateral change to the status quo, (2) does not support Taiwan independence, (3) opposes any use of force or coercion by China, (4) will support Taiwan’s self-defense, and (5) will maintain the US capacity to resist any use of force or coercion by China against Taiwan (i.e., maintain the military posture required to successfully defeat a Chinese military operation if called upon by the President to do so).

This is far more explicit language than we’ve seen in previous editions of the National Security Strategy. It also helps resolve the confusion that some observers have expressed when trying to interpret statements by the president and various agency press secretaries. The clarification should help deter conflict in the Taiwan Strait, which is likely the potential flashpoint in the Indo-Pacific with both the highest probability of large-scale conflict and the highest potential cost if conflict occurs.

Emphasizing the Distinction between China’s Government and the Chinese People

The NSS notably takes a moment to emphasize the distinction between Chinese people versus China’s government and ruling party:

While we have profound differences with the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Government, those differences are between governments and systems – not between our people. Ties of family and friendship continue to connect the American and the Chinese people. We deeply respect their achievements, their history, and their culture. Racism and hate have no place in a nation built by generations of immigrants to fulfill the promise of opportunity for all. And we intend to work together to solve issues that matter most to the people of both countries. (p. 25)

This is significant both from a values standpoint and from a strategic standpoint. In terms of values, it is obviously important to remember that China is an authoritarian country and ordinary Chinese people both in China and abroad have essentially no opportunity to influence the actions taken by China’s leaders. As such, the US government and public should strive to avoid penalizing Chinese people for offenses committed by China’s government and ruling party. This has policy relevance at a time when concerns about violence against Asian populations in the United States is on the rise and US government agencies have an opportunity to help address that problem.

From a strategic perspective, the distinction is important because the Chinese Communist Party’s strategy for competing with the United States includes relying on ethnic-nationalism and distorting the competition into a competition between peoples rather than a competition between systems, values, and strategic visions. China’s leadership recognizes that they will lose support and face isolation if this becomes a competition that pits China’s authoritarianism and coercive foreign policy against the more popular vision championed by the United States and likeminded countries for a rules-based order that is free, open, prosperous, and secure.

Caveat

For those closely following US foreign policy, much of the NSS is unsurprising. As is often the case, this edition of the NSS largely serves as confirmation of the strategic trends that have been apparent for the past couple years (and, in many respects, the past couple presidential administrations). However, as this article points out, there are a few subtle changes and those changes may have meaningful strategic implications.

Ryan Neuhard

Ryan Neuhard is the Deputy Director of the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI). His research focuses on security issues related to military, economic, and technology developments in the Indo-Pacific region.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a non-partisan organization that seeks to publish well-argued, policy-oriented articles on American foreign policy and national security priorities.

fpri.org · by Ryan Neuhard



9. How Cold War II Could Turn Into World War III


Graphics at the link below.


Excerpts:


To understand the full significance of this move, you need to read Chris Miller’s brilliant new history of the microprocessor, Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology. Last week, I interviewed Miller, and asked him if this might be a repeat of the mistake the US made with Japan between 1939 and 1941, when economic sanctions so boxed in the imperial government that in the end there seemed no better option than to gamble on surprise attack.
Miller thought this was the wrong analogy, because US sanctions against China today are more targeted than those against Japan. I am not so sure. Cutting China off from high-end chips today seems a lot like cutting Japan off from oil in 1941. And it is an especially hazardous move when more than 90% of the production of those chips takes place in Taiwan, an island that China claims as its own.
“Taiwan is China’s Taiwan,” President Xi Jinping declared at the 20th Chinese Communist Party Congress last Tuesday. “Resolving the Taiwan question is a matter for the Chinese, a matter that must be resolved by the Chinese. We will continue to strive for peaceful reunification with the greatest sincerity and the utmost effort, but we will never promise to renounce the use of force, and we reserve the option of taking all measures necessary.”
The spectacle of Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, being humiliatingly and publicly removed from the closing ceremony of the party congress on Saturday was a chilling one. The intent was clear: to signal to the world that China now has, for the first time since 1976, a leader as powerful and as ruthless as Mao Zedong. What did Xi say so coldly as Hu seemed to remonstrate? “You’re out, Tom,” from The Godfather came to mind. (And why did Michael Corleone drop Tom Hagen? Because he was not a “wartime consigliere.”)
Empires fall. Two weeks ago, I optimistically suggested that I would live to see the fall of the empires of the Chinese Communists, the Russian fascists and the Iranian theocrats. But we must not make the mistake of assuming that the US is an indestructible empire, for there is no such thing. The Biden administration would not be the first Democratic administration elected on a progressive domestic program that stumbled into a major war: Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Johnson — they all did it. The record is: won two, tied one, lost one.
The city of Washington once ruled over an empire that stretched from North America across both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans — and beyond. I was in the nation’s capital last weekend for the International Monetary Fund meetings and saw abundant evidence that the empire still rules. The restaurants were crowded with the representatives of poorer countries — the “global South” as they sometimes call themselves — whose principal goal was debt renegotiation, not tourism. The governors of lesser central banks sat on panels; the mighty Fed chair, Jerome Powell, absented himself.
Yet can one imagine the White House as a future Palazzo Ducale, our Capitol like the Roman Capitol, a ruin where some future historian will one day “sit musing”?
The answer is: All too easily, if we pursue Cold War II to the extent of stumbling into World War III.




How Cold War II Could Turn Into World War III

History shows that nothing causes fiscal and monetary instability quite like multiple big, long conflicts.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-10-23/cold-war-2-with-china-and-russia-is-becoming-ww3-niall-ferguson?srnd=opinion&sref=hhjZtX76


ByNiall Ferguson

October 23, 2022 at 12:00 AM EDT


A large proportion of the world’s top tourist destinations are the remains of dead empires. A week of sightseeing with my younger children in Italy reminded me of this. The city of Rome was the capital of an empire that at its height stretched from Britannia to Babylonia. The city of Venice once ruled a realm that extended across what are now Albania, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Montenegro and Slovenia.

To walk among the monuments of the most Serene City and the Eternal City is at once inspiring and melancholy. Like Edward Gibbon, “I sat musing amid the ruins of the Capitol” — but musing about the decline and fall of other empires.

More from

Bloomberg

Opinion

China’s New Leadership Hints at Slower Future for Commodities

Biden Hasn’t Helped the Economy. He’s Made it Worse.

California Poised to Overtake Germany as World’s No. 4 Economy

Will Jerome Powell Be Like Volcker or Burns?

My grandparents and parents witnessed the decline and fall of the British Empire, but not before it had helped polish off the more ephemeral empires of Mussolini, Hitler and Hirohito. I experienced the decline and fall of the Soviet empire built by Lenin and Stalin. There are those who subscribe to the delusion that the age of empires is over. But all history is the history of empires.

The world today is dominated by two empires: the US, which originated in the British colonization of North America, and the ethnic-Han-dominated Middle Kingdom we call the People’s Republic of China. But a number of former empires continue to play disproportionate roles in world politics: The Russian empire limps on in the guise of the Russian Federation; the Persian empire is now the Islamic Republic of Iran; one might say the Holy Roman Empire has been reincarnated in the form of the European Union, at once extensive, German-centered and weak.

It is not civilizations that clash, but empires. Indeed, it is often border clashes that define their extents. As a schoolboy, I was taught the world wars as if they had been contests between European nation states. Only later did I see that they were struggles between empires. That was why they were global and not just European conflicts.

More recently, I saw that the term “world war” was a kind of optical illusion. What my paternal grandfather’s Victory Medal called “The Great War for Civilisation, 1914-1919” was really many conflicts: Austria’s against Serbia; Germany’s against Russia and its ally France; Britain’s to preserve Belgian neutrality (the one my grandad fought in); Britain’s and France’s to acquire Germany’s overseas colonies and to partition the Ottoman Empire between themselves.

My mother’s father served in the Royal Air Force in Burma and India between 1942 and 1945, returning home via the ruins of Germany. His was Britain’s imperial war to prevent its vast Asian empire from being taken over by the Japanese. But there were many other wars: Japan’s against China; Germany’s with the Soviet Union against the rest of Europe; then Germany’s with much of Europe against the Soviet Union; America’s war against all the Axis powers.

And after the world wars came the Cold War. We think of this as a struggle between two empires that pretended not to be empires: the US and the Soviet Union. But its conflict zones were largely defined by the process of decolonization, as the European empires disintegrated.

Like the world wars, the Cold War was an agglomeration of conflicts. What happened in Vietnam had little to do with what happened in the Middle East or southern Africa, aside from the fact that both superpowers had dogs in each fight — dogs that they armed and financed, enlarging and prolonging local conflicts by turning them into proxy wars.

These great conflicts were the dominant phenomena of the 20th century, transforming economic, social and political life almost everywhere. But in recent times, their importance has somewhat faded in most minds. It would not be too much to say that during the interwar era of 1991 to 2018 — in other words, the period between Cold War I and Cold War II — many economists and policymakers lost interest in war.

Because the wars of the interwar era were relatively small (Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq), more closely resembling colonial policing operations, we forgot that war is history’s most consistent driver of inflation, debt defaults — even famines.

Large-scale war is simultaneously destructive of productive capacity, disruptive of trade, and destabilizing of fiscal and monetary policies. Compare global battle deaths from interstate conflict with international inflation data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. You will see that behind the era of economic stability known as the Great Moderation, there was period of declining conflict that lasted from the early 1970s until the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. The coming of peace, like monetary policy, acted with lag.


The events of this year have reminded us of what is at stake in cases of great-power conflict. The war in Ukraine qualifies because Russia is still clearly a great enough power that it would probably have achieved its annexationist aims by now had it not been for large-scale financial, military and technological assistance to Ukraine from the US, the European Union and other associated states. This is a big war, measured by both casualties and costs.

There are honorable exceptions to the modern economists’ neglect of war. For example, in a nice 2008 paper on “Macroeconomic Crises since 1870,” Robert Barro and José Ursúa pointed out that of the 70 consumption and output disasters they identified for OECD countries in the modern period, one-third (23) were war-related.

new paper I have co-authored with Martin Kornejew, Paul Schmelzing and Moritz Schularick, which draws on four centuries of data, shows that central bank balance sheets have been as much affected by geopolitical crises as by financial crises. The large quantities of government bonds held by central banks today are not exceptional by the standards of the 18th and 20th centuries. (The years 1815-1914 saw few really big, expensive wars.)

Economists tend to treat wars as “exogenous shocks,” generally omitting them from their models. From the historian’s standpoint, however, war is not exogenous, but the endogenous prime mover of the historical process — “the father of all things,” as Heraclitus said.

Two general points are especially worthy of notice. First, wars have played a very noticeable role in the history of inflation expectations. Thanks to the excellent historical work of the Bank of England, we can trace the history of UK inflation expectations all the way back to the late 17th century. The peaks in short-run expectations nearly all align with wars (generally years when they weren’t going well): 1709 (the Spanish War of Succession); 1757 (the Seven Years’ War); 1800 (Napoleonic Wars); 1917 (World War I); 1940 (World War II). The upward move in 1975 is the exception. (See here for the chart.)

Second, wars have often been responsible for discontinuities in the history of interest rates. As Schmelzing has argued, there has been a long-term “supra-secular” decline in nominal and real interest rates, dating back to the period after the Black Death of the 14th century (probably the greatest pandemic in history). The major breaks in the downward trend were nearly all associated with wars, particularly those that destroyed capital stock and generated monetary financing of debt.

An unusual feature of the recent past is that in 2020 a pandemic had the fiscal and monetary consequences of a world war. This was unprecedented. No previous pandemic, including the much more devastating 1918-19 influenza, had elicited comparable responses from finance ministries and central banks.

Because most (not all) countries followed the US in offsetting the supply-shock caused by lockdowns and spontaneous behavioral changes with generous transfers and significant monetary expansion, the first pandemic year was associated with extraordinarily large deficits and monetary growth rates — comparable in their size with those of the world wars.

Regrettably, major policy errors were committed in the second plague year of 2021. The newly elected Joe Biden administration embarked on an overambitious and supposedly “transformative” fiscal stimulus, while the Federal Reserve retained its accommodative stance, even as the rapid rollout of vaccines permitted a gradual return to normal social and economic behavior. Like those who thought the pandemic would last forever, those who argued that inflation would be “transitory,” as it was after World War II, turned out to be wrong. Those who saw a better analogy with the Fed’s “great mistake” of the late 1960s have been vindicated by the persistence of inflation.

Most accounts of the Great Inflation of the 1970s tend to underestimate the role that war played. Obviously, the 1973 Yom Kippur War played a significant part in driving up inflation in 1974 because of the oil embargo imposed by the Arab members of OPEC on the US and other countries supporting Israel.

But it is worth remembering that the August 1968 monetary policy mistake (cutting rates by 25 basis points, despite the fact that inflation was creeping up) coincided with the peak of US intervention in the Vietnam war, a conflict that played as big a part as President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” policies in widening the US fiscal deficit — tiny though it was by modern standards — and ultimately breaking the dollar’s peg to gold in 1971. In 2022, a war played an analogous role in pouring kerosene on the inflationary fire. Food and energy prices were driven up the outbreak of the war in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and the EU.

It goes without saying that the return of great-power conflict has made the life of policymakers difficult, just as it did in 1973. I recently heard it said that the 2020s are not likely to be as inflationary as the 1970s because labor is less organized, so the risk of a wage-price spiral is lower. But I would draw your attention to a number of important differences that make our contemporary circumstances more worrisome than the situation in the 1970s.

Monetary growth rates were significantly higher between the second quarter of 2020 and that of 2021 than at any point in the 1970s. Year over year, they remained in double digits even after velocity, the rate at which money changes hands, had recovered.

Productivity growth is lower today in nearly all OECD countries than it was 50 years ago. Demographic trends are worse today, with a significantly higher ratio of dependents to the working-age population. Fiscal positions are worse today, with much larger amounts of government debt and projected deficits relative to GDP, not least in the US.

Financial markets are more complex today and therefore more fragile. There were no such things as liability-driven investments for pension funds in the 1970s. The onset of Covid in March 2020 exposed fragility in the US Treasury market not dissimilar to what we saw in the UK gilts market at the end of last month.

Then we had pollution; now we have climate change. Our political stability looks even worse than it seemed at the time of Watergate. In a recent poll, Americans were asked: “Do you think the nation’s democracy is in danger of collapse, or don’t you think so?” — 69% of Republicans and 69% of Democrats answered in the affirmative.

The war in Ukraine is lasting much longer than the war of 1973 (approaching eight months compared with 19 days). So far, there is no sign of détente in Cold War II — quite the opposite, in fact — so there is a non-trivial risk that we could soon witness a confrontation between the US and China over Taiwan.

Finally, although media attention currently focuses on the women’s protests sweeping Iranian cities, they coincide with the failure of the attempt to revive the Iran nuclear deal. The Tehran regime will likely speed up its effort to acquire a nuclear weapon, increasing the probability of war in the region, as no Israeli government will countenance a nuclear-armed Iran.

We may get lucky. We may get away with just re-running the 1970s — though judging by recent events in the UK, we may do it at a rather higher speed: from the inflationary Barber budget (1972) to the Winter of Discontent (1978-9) in a matter of weeks rather than years. (When a head of lettuce has a longer shelf-life than a prime minister, British politics has entered the realm of Monty Python, the best of 1970s comedy.)

Yet there is a much worse scenario, in which we get something closer to the 1940s, with regional conflicts coalescing into something like World War III — albeit with smaller armies, many unmanned weapons systems, and far more powerful and accurate bombs.

What makes me worry more about this scenario is the Biden-Harris administration’s new National Security Strategy, belatedly published last week. “We do not seek conflict or a new Cold War,” write the authors, presumably led by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. They then proceed to delineate an unmistakable cold war strategy. As they say, “the post-Cold War era is definitively over and a competition is underway between the major powers to shape what comes next.” In other words, Cold War II has begun, in all but name.

Strip away the woke stuff about “climate change … the greatest and potentially existential [problem] for all nations” and “the needs of the most marginalized, including the LGBTQI+ community,” and you are left with a significant amount of President Donald Trump’s NSS from five years ago, which was all about “great power competition.” In fact, the word “competition” appears 44 times in the new NSS, compared with just 25 in the 2017 edition.

See if you can spot the difference. “China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity. They are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence.” That’s 2017.

“Russia poses an immediate threat to the free and open international system, recklessly flouting the basic laws of the international order today, as its brutal war of aggression against Ukraine has shown. The PRC, by contrast, is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to advance that objective. … Russia and the PRC … seek to remake the international order to create a world conducive to their highly personalized and repressive type of autocracy.” That’s 2022.

“We will work with our partners to contest China’s unfair trade and economic practices and restrict its acquisition of sensitive technologies.” 2017.

“We must ensure strategic competitors cannot exploit foundational American and allied technologies, know-how, or data to undermine American and allied security.” 2022.

Biden’s plan for Russia might be described cynically as fighting to the last Ukrainian, but to what end? Ostensibly the US is determined to “support Ukraine in its fight for its freedom,” but the real goal is “to degrade Russia’s ability to wage future wars of aggression.” That is why the administration has made almost no effort to broker a cease-fire, much less peace. The White House seems to want this war to keep going, though I suspect that will change after the mid-term elections.

Given that China is clearly the administration’s higher priority, it is not immediately apparent what purpose is served by a protracted war in Eastern Europe. But a recent speech by Sullivan provided the answer.

“On export controls” against China, he said, “we have to revisit the longstanding premise of maintaining ‘relative’ advantages over competitors in certain key technologies. We previously maintained a ‘sliding scale’ approach that said we need to stay only a couple of generations ahead. That is not the strategic environment we are in today. Given the foundational nature of certain technologies, such as advanced logic and memory chips, we must maintain as large of a lead as possible.”

And here’s the key point. Sanctions on Russia, Sullivan declared, have “demonstrated that technology export controls can be more than just a preventative tool … they can be a new strategic asset in the U.S. and allied toolkit.” In other words, the US-led economic war against Russia is like a demo for China’s benefit: This is what we can do to you, too.

The remarkable thing is that the US has not waited for China to invade Taiwan to go ahead and do it. New restrictions just imposed by the US limit the transfer of advanced graphics processor units to China. (These are chips used in AI applications in data centers.) Washington has also limited the use of US chips and expertise in Chinese supercomputers, and China’s imports of chipmaking technology.

The aim is to impair Beijing’s ability to deploy artificial intelligence by driving up the cost of computing in China, whether for companies or the government. In short, the Biden administration aims to halt technological progress in China — rather in the way Trisolarans try to stunt Earth’s technological progress in Liu Cixin’s science-fiction novel The Three-Body Problem.

As Edward Luce noted in the Financial Times, “The new restrictions are not confined to the export of high-end US semiconductor chips. They extend to any advanced chips made with US equipment. This incorporates almost every non-Chinese high-end exporter, whether based in Taiwan, South Korea or the Netherlands. The ban also extends to ‘US persons,’ which includes green card holders as well as US citizens.”

The most extraordinary thing about these measures is how little comment they have elicited in the media. Trump did nothing so radical. As Luce put it: “A superpower declared war on a great power and nobody noticed.”

To understand the full significance of this move, you need to read Chris Miller’s brilliant new history of the microprocessor, Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology. Last week, I interviewed Miller, and asked him if this might be a repeat of the mistake the US made with Japan between 1939 and 1941, when economic sanctions so boxed in the imperial government that in the end there seemed no better option than to gamble on surprise attack.

Miller thought this was the wrong analogy, because US sanctions against China today are more targeted than those against Japan. I am not so sure. Cutting China off from high-end chips today seems a lot like cutting Japan off from oil in 1941. And it is an especially hazardous move when more than 90% of the production of those chips takes place in Taiwan, an island that China claims as its own.

“Taiwan is China’s Taiwan,” President Xi Jinping declared at the 20th Chinese Communist Party Congress last Tuesday. “Resolving the Taiwan question is a matter for the Chinese, a matter that must be resolved by the Chinese. We will continue to strive for peaceful reunification with the greatest sincerity and the utmost effort, but we will never promise to renounce the use of force, and we reserve the option of taking all measures necessary.”

The spectacle of Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, being humiliatingly and publicly removed from the closing ceremony of the party congress on Saturday was a chilling one. The intent was clear: to signal to the world that China now has, for the first time since 1976, a leader as powerful and as ruthless as Mao Zedong. What did Xi say so coldly as Hu seemed to remonstrate? “You’re out, Tom,” from The Godfather came to mind. (And why did Michael Corleone drop Tom Hagen? Because he was not a “wartime consigliere.”)

Empires fall. Two weeks ago, I optimistically suggested that I would live to see the fall of the empires of the Chinese Communists, the Russian fascists and the Iranian theocrats. But we must not make the mistake of assuming that the US is an indestructible empire, for there is no such thing. The Biden administration would not be the first Democratic administration elected on a progressive domestic program that stumbled into a major war: Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Johnson — they all did it. The record is: won two, tied one, lost one.

The city of Washington once ruled over an empire that stretched from North America across both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans — and beyond. I was in the nation’s capital last weekend for the International Monetary Fund meetings and saw abundant evidence that the empire still rules. The restaurants were crowded with the representatives of poorer countries — the “global South” as they sometimes call themselves — whose principal goal was debt renegotiation, not tourism. The governors of lesser central banks sat on panels; the mighty Fed chair, Jerome Powell, absented himself.

Yet can one imagine the White House as a future Palazzo Ducale, our Capitol like the Roman Capitol, a ruin where some future historian will one day “sit musing”?

The answer is: All too easily, if we pursue Cold War II to the extent of stumbling into World War III.

More From This Writer at Bloomberg Opinion:

Want more Bloomberg Opinion? Terminal readers head to OPIN <GO>. Web readers   click here .

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:

Niall Ferguson at nferguson23@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:

Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.net


10. The great chips war


Excerpts:

The new chips war eliminates any remaining doubt that we are witnessing a broader Sino-American decoupling. That development will have far-reaching implications—only some of them foreseeable—for the rest of the global economy.
Ukraine is already repairing and restarting the power stations that have been hit by Russian missile barrages since the invasion began in February. But it will be much more difficult for China to overcome the loss of key technologies. As frightening as Russia’s 20th-century-style war is, the real sources of power in the 21st century do not lie in territorial conquest. The most powerful countries will be those that master the economic, technological and diplomatic domains.


The great chips war | The Strategist

aspistrategist.org.au · by Carl Bildt · October 23, 2022


In addition to dealing with the fallout from open warfare in eastern Europe, the world is witnessing the start of a full-scale economic war between the United States and China over technology. This conflict will be highly consequential and it is escalating rapidly. Earlier this month, the US Commerce Department introduced severe new restrictions on the sale of advanced semiconductors and other US high-tech goods to China. While Russia has used missiles to try to cripple Ukraine’s energy and heating infrastructure, the US is now using export restrictions to curtail China’s military, intelligence and security services.

In late August, US President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS Act, which includes subsidies and other measures to bolster America’s domestic semiconductor industry. Semiconductors are, and will remain, at the heart of the 21st-century economy. Without microchips, our smartphones would be dumb phones, our cars wouldn’t move, our communications networks wouldn’t function, any form of automation would be unthinkable, and the new era of artificial intelligence that we are entering would remain the stuff of sci-fi novels. Controlling the design, fabrication and value chains that produce these increasingly important components of our lives is thus of the utmost importance. The new chip war is a war for control of the future.

The semiconductor value chain is hyper-globalised, but the US and its closest allies control all the key nodes. Chip design is heavily concentrated in America, production would not be possible without advanced equipment from Europe, and fabrication of the most advanced chips—including those that are critical for AI—is located exclusively in East Asia. The most important player by far is Taiwan, but South Korea is also in the picture.

In its own pursuit of technological supremacy, China has become increasingly reliant on these chips, and its government has been at pains to boost domestic production and achieve ‘self-sufficiency’. In recent years, China has invested massively to build up its own semiconductor design and manufacturing capabilities. But while there has been some progress, it remains years behind the US, and, crucially, the most advanced chips are still beyond China’s reach.

It has now been two years since the US banned all sales of advanced chips to the Chinese telecom giant Huawei, which was China’s global technology flagship at the time. The results have been dramatic. After losing 80% of its global market share for smartphones, Huawei was left with no choice but to sell off its smartphone unit, Honor, and reorient its corporate mission. With its latest move, the US is now aiming to do to all of China what it did to Huawei.

This dramatic escalation of the technology war is bound to have equally dramatic economic and political consequences, some of which will be evident immediately and some of which will take some time to materialise. China most likely has stocked up on chips and is already working to create sophisticated new networks to circumvent the sanctions. (After Huawei spun it off in late 2020, Honor quickly staged a comeback, selling phones that use chips from the US multinational Qualcomm.)

Still, the new sanctions are so broad that, over time, they will almost certainly strike a heavy blow not only to China’s high-tech sector but also to many other parts of its economy. Any European company that exports to China now must be doubly sure that its products contain no US-connected chips. And, owing to the global nature of the value chain, many chips from Taiwan or South Korea also will be off-limits.

The official aim of the US policy is to keep advanced chips out of the Chinese military’s hands. But the real effect will be to curtail China’s development in the sectors that will be critical to national power in the decades ahead. China will certainly respond with even stronger efforts to develop its own capabilities. But even under the best circumstances, and despite all the resources it will throw at the problem, any additional efforts will take time to bear fruit, especially now that US restrictions are depriving China of inputs that it needs to achieve self-sufficiency.

The new chips war eliminates any remaining doubt that we are witnessing a broader Sino-American decoupling. That development will have far-reaching implications—only some of them foreseeable—for the rest of the global economy.

Ukraine is already repairing and restarting the power stations that have been hit by Russian missile barrages since the invasion began in February. But it will be much more difficult for China to overcome the loss of key technologies. As frightening as Russia’s 20th-century-style war is, the real sources of power in the 21st century do not lie in territorial conquest. The most powerful countries will be those that master the economic, technological and diplomatic domains.

Carl Bildt is a former prime minister and foreign minister of Sweden. This article is presented in partnership with Project Syndicate © 2022. Image: Josep Lago/AFP/Getty Images.

aspistrategist.org.au · by Carl Bildt · October 23, 2022



11. Misreading Xi and the rise of Li


Excerpts:


But Xi’s core agenda, repeated in the work report, is to make China a moderately prosperous economy by 2035. To do so, China needs and he must achieve a gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of between 4% and 5% per annum.
Li has demonstrated that he has the energy and executive capability to get things done. A Brookings Institution study reports that in 2018-19 he mobilized Shanghai’s capabilities and workforce in tandem with Elon Musk to build a Tesla factory capable of making 500,000 electric cars annually.
The first Chinese-made Tesla 3 rolls off the line at the Shanghai Gigafactory, while employees of the new facility look on. Creedit: Ti Gong, Shine.com.
Amazingly, It took only ten months for this joint venture to advance from construction to full operation.
The sweeping change in China’s leadership denotes an inflection point. Deng Xiaoping’s 1979 reforms eventually moved nearly 700 million Chinese from countryside to city, replacing the rural economy of traditional China with a smokestack economy dominated by state-owned enterprises.
China’s state sector, in turn, became a political power base in its own right. Xi concluded that he needed a new broom to sweep aside the obstacles to a digitized industrial economy. With Li’s appointment as his de facto deputy, Xi’s well on his way.



Misreading Xi and the rise of Li


Li Qiang’s appointment shows China is still on a private-led high-tech path and not at all reverting to Maoism​

asiatimes.com · by Uwe Parpart · October 24, 2022

The professional China commentariat and its echo chamber in the Western media were blindsided by the appointment of Shanghai party head Li Qiang as the country’s premier, the number two position to Xi Jinping.

Li is a tech-savvy supporter of high-tech entrepreneurship who believes that China’s future lies in the digital economy. Xi, the Western press insisted with near unanimity, had reverted to Maoism.

Precisely the opposite of what the commentariat expected seems to have happened and the Western press is scrambling to explain the anomaly. Here’s a sampling of Western press comment:


“Xi Jinping promotes loyal Shanghai chief” (Reuters)

“Xi Jinping promotes loyal Shanghai chief to upper echelons of power” (Financial Times)

“A loyal aide in Shanghai takes a leading role in Beijing” (New York Times)

“Xi loyalist likely to be China’s next premier” (Barron’s)

“Promotion of Shanghai chief puts loyalty over everything” (Bloomberg)


Bloomberg tried to explain why it failed to foresee Li’s rise saying, “When Li’s initial lighter-touch approach to China’s strict Covid Zero strategy was breached by the more transmissible omicron variant earlier this year, [his] ascent was cast into doubt.”

That loyalty was a factor in Li’s appointment is obvious. Political leaders, Chinese or Western, do not normally appoint deputies who are known for disloyalty.

The “loyalty” explanation is no explanation at all. A better explanation is that the Anglo-American political establishment has misread Xi from beginning to end.

Li’s appointment should be a wake-up call. The ubiquitous ideological blinders and preconceptions in the foreign policy establishment are the cause of a chronic misreading of China, leading to concomitant political reactions with dangerous implications and consequences.

Xi Jinping and his new de facto deputy Li Qiang in a file photo. Image: NDTV / Screengrab

In fact, Li’s appointment as premier-designate was foreseeable as well as foreseen. Asia Times wrote as much on October 21, forecasting that Xi would opt for retiring four out of the seven Politburo Standing Committee members, including not only Premier Li Keqiang, but also the widely touted premiership candidate Wang Yang, and would not miss the opportunity to install a new, younger and different cast of leaders.


Li is the Shanghai party chief. Few if any previous Shanghai leaders have failed to advance to the Standing Committee, Xi included. That his advance to the number two position nonetheless came as a surprise to most Western analysts merely proves how much so many have misread Xi in particular and Chinese governance in general.

Li studied business administration and holds an MBA degree from Hong Kong Polytechnic University, a top-tier Asian business and technology school funded by Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing. He has supported technological entrepreneurship as the leading edge of China’s development.

Among other things, Li was one of Jack Ma’s most visible supporters in the China Communist Party leadership. He brought Elon Musk’s Tesla to Shanghai. His appointment affirms the leadership’s support for private-led high-tech industry.

Accelerated technological innovation and STEM talent development were keywords in Xi’s work report. What Western analysts (and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken) picked out instead was the reiteration of China’s longstanding policy with respect to Taiwan.

Li was chosen for his track record of economic and financial innovation in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, for bringing in major foreign investment (up by 32% in 2021 despite Covid) and for the policy papers on economic development he wrote for Xi as his assistant in Zhejiang.


So, then, what should be made of Xi’s alleged neo-Maoist, leftist and anti-capitalist emphasis on “common prosperity?”

Throughout his career, Xi has shown himself to be a master of the most characteristic maneuver in Chinese imperial governance: Feint in one direction in order to disarm prospective opponents, while preparing to move in another.

The elements in the Party who opposed Xi in 2012 remain his antagonists, the supporters of a Fortress China that shares the poverty rather than creates the wealth. His first move in power after 2012 was to crush the group around Bo Xilai centered in Chongqing and part of China’s northeastern rust bowl, and to unleash China’s private sector.

Xi’s ‘common prosperity’ is more about internal politics than ideology. Photo: AFP

During the past two years, Xi adopted the rhetoric of income redistribution under the watchword “common prosperity,” and cracked down on China’s consumer Internet sector. In classic Chinese style, he adopted the rhetoric of the Communist Party elements he most opposed, only to move decisively in the opposite direction.

Ideologically blinded Western analysts and officials consistently miss the point. China’s state is the least ideological, most ruthlessly pragmatic entity in the world. To the extent its leaders succeed, they do so by achieving prosperity and security by whatever means necessary to meet their objectives.

Xi knows that China’s state-owned industry is too sclerotic and corrupt to lead the transition to a digital economy and that the Chinese state needs private entrepreneurs to take the lead. But he also knows that entrenched political interests linked to the state sector will not just grumble at the sudden ascendance of entrepreneurs but also make determined political moves.

“[Li] has a much closer relationship with Xi compared to [Premier] Li Keqiang. … Xi is likely going to give him much more room and power to manage the economy,” Deng Yuwen, a former deputy editor of the Study Times, the official newspaper of the Central Party School, told the South China Morning Post.

To stay in power, Xi or any other Chinese leader must placate the old guard and defuse popular envy of the newly rich while allowing entrepreneurs to lead economic transformation.

But Xi’s core agenda, repeated in the work report, is to make China a moderately prosperous economy by 2035. To do so, China needs and he must achieve a gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of between 4% and 5% per annum.

Li has demonstrated that he has the energy and executive capability to get things done. A Brookings Institution study reports that in 2018-19 he mobilized Shanghai’s capabilities and workforce in tandem with Elon Musk to build a Tesla factory capable of making 500,000 electric cars annually.

The first Chinese-made Tesla 3 rolls off the line at the Shanghai Gigafactory, while employees of the new facility look on. Creedit: Ti Gong, Shine.com.

Amazingly, It took only ten months for this joint venture to advance from construction to full operation.

The sweeping change in China’s leadership denotes an inflection point. Deng Xiaoping’s 1979 reforms eventually moved nearly 700 million Chinese from countryside to city, replacing the rural economy of traditional China with a smokestack economy dominated by state-owned enterprises.

China’s state sector, in turn, became a political power base in its own right. Xi concluded that he needed a new broom to sweep aside the obstacles to a digitized industrial economy. With Li’s appointment as his de facto deputy, Xi’s well on his way.

asiatimes.com · by Uwe Parpart · October 24, 2022


12. Xi cements his power at Chinese Communist Party congress – but he is still exposed on the economy



Excerpts:


Finally, there is one important respect in which Xi is exposed. This is in his management of the economy.


His “zero covid” policy has weighed heavily with its nationwide shutdowns. This has contributed to a stuttering economy to the point where GDP growth is faltering for the first time in decades.


The World Bank has cut its forecast for 2022 GDP growth to just 2.8%, from a previous forecast of 5.5%. GDP growth in 2021 was 8.1%.


With a collapsing real estate sector weighing on a stretched banking system, the economy is Xi’s vulnerability. Getting the numbers from his comrades to endorse himself and his underlings in leadership roles is one thing; shifting the economy back on track is quite another.



Xi cements his power at Chinese Communist Party congress – but he is still exposed on the economy

theconversation.com · by Tony Walker

Xi Jinping’s clean sweep in elevating trusted allies to the commanding heights of the Chinese Communist Party is a political outcome that has implications beyond China’s borders.

Xi sits virtually unchallenged, for the time being, at the apex of a political organisation that oversees a country with the world’s second largest economy, a rapidly modernising military and, perhaps most importantly, global ambitions to match its growing economic and military strength.

In a ritual that would not have been out of place in a traditional Peking opera, the 69-year-old Xi led his new team of seven members of the ruling Standing Committee of the Politburo (SCP) onto the stage in front of the world’s media.

All of those who are to serve on China’s ruling body are Xi loyalists. All six have worked with him over many years.


Most significant is Li Qiang, the Shanghai party secretary. He will replace Premier Li Keqiang, who is being bundled into retirement.

The new SCP reflects the further ascendancy of a harder line Xi faction in the Chinese leadership and a setback for the party’s liberalising wing.

This is a seminal moment in China political history with unpredictable consequences.

Xi in charge

No-one observing deliberations of the 20th National Party Congress could be left in doubt that China under Xi will continue to assert itself forcefully in what he calls “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”.

At present, momentous changes of a like not seen in a century are accelerating across the world [in] a significant shift in the international power balance presenting China with strategic opportunities.

This was hardly a subtle reference to Chinese perceptions of a superpower rival beset with challenges at home and abroad against a background of a disrupted global environment. The Ukraine crisis is merely one example of a global order that is fragmenting.

In a “work report” delivered every five years at the most important political gathering on China’s calendar, it would be surprising if a Chinese leader did not avail himself of the opportunity to assert his country’s global ambitions.


Xi Jinping has unveiled the new Politburo Standing Committee - all Xi loyalists. Kydpl Koyodo/AP/AAP

However, Xi’s assertiveness – in contrast to his predecessors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao – is unsettling for China’s regional neighbours, including Australia, and for a US-led western alliance more generally.

The Chinese thrust into the western Pacific in a region long-regarded as free of big power tensions is one example.

China’s aggressive push into the South China Sea, sometimes referred to in propaganda as a “Chinese lake”, is another.

Still another is Beijing’s sabre-rattling towards Taiwan.

Since Xi’s tenure may last well into the 2030’s, Taiwan will remain his most pressing unresolved issue for the foreseeable future. As years pass, pressure for some sort of resolution, whether by force or otherwise, will increase.

Xi’s words will not have eased concerns about China’s intentions.

The wheels of history are rolling on towards China’s reunification […] Complete reunification of our country must be realised, and it can, without doubt, be realised.

Economic woes still loom large

In all of this, the critical question is whether Xi will become a more abrasive global figure unbound by restrictions on his tenure, and surrounded in the leadership by allies who are unlikely to challenge him?

Are there risks that his reach on issues like Taiwan will exceed his grasp?

The short answer is we don’t yet know. But Xi will likely have been further emboldened by his continued rise.

Xi is also a relentless aggregator of power. Since his elevation in 2007 to the Standing Committee of the Politburo, he has moved relentlessly.

In the decade since he was confirmed in 2012 as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party he has, step by step, consolidated power.

This all comes with the important caveat that behind the scenes in an opaque Chinese system, politicking can be brutal. Power struggles, sometimes violent, have scarred Chinese Communist Party history since its founding in Shanghai in 1921.

Xi would not need reminding that what the Communist Party giveth, it can also taketh away.

His own family’ experience is a case in point. Xi’s father Xi Zhongxun, a member of the first generation, with Mao Zedong, of Communist leaders, was purged in 1962. He was accused of being a member of a rightist clique.

Xi Jinping tasted the bitterness of that experience. He was shipped off to Shaanxi province, south-west of Beijing, in the early 1960s, where he spent six years in the countryside.

Xi senior was rehabilitated after the Cultural Revolution. Xi junior completed a degree in chemical engineering at Tsinghua University, one of China’s premier universities, before making his way up party ranks with various provincial assignments.

History will not be absent from Xi’s calculations, nor will he overlook the historical significance of the National Party Congress just concluded in Beijing.


But will China’s ‘COVID zero’ policy come back to haunt Xi economically? Alex Pavevski/EPA/AAP

In the annals of Communist Party history, the 2022 NPC will likely be regarded as a landmark event. The anointing of Xi as party leader, effectively for life, or at least until his age catches up with him, has echoes in the dominance of Mao Zedong, and to a lesser degree Deng Xiaoping.

Both were described as “paramount” leaders, even though Deng chose not to burden himself with the full panoply of titles that would have been available to him. Apart from his honorary presidency of the Chinese Bridge Association, he served in the powerful position of chairman of the Central Military Commission.

In Xi’s case, he is general secretary of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, chair of the Central Military Commission, and president. This is a “full-house” of leadership positions.

If there is an historical reference point for the 20th NPC, it is the 11th National Party Congress of 1982. This event crowned Deng protégé Hu Yaobang as general secretary of the Communist Party.

What is different this time is that whereas Hu was an economic liberaliser committed to Deng’s mantra of “reform and opening”, Xi Jinping has shown himself to be less of a reformer and more of a consolidator. He has sought to rein in entrepreneurial impulses unleashed under his predecessors in the interests of stabilising China and fighting corruption. This has been in pursuit of his “common prosperity” policy aimed at narrowing a yawning rich-poor gap.

Finally, there is one important respect in which Xi is exposed. This is in his management of the economy.

His “zero covid” policy has weighed heavily with its nationwide shutdowns. This has contributed to a stuttering economy to the point where GDP growth is faltering for the first time in decades.

The World Bank has cut its forecast for 2022 GDP growth to just 2.8%, from a previous forecast of 5.5%. GDP growth in 2021 was 8.1%.

With a collapsing real estate sector weighing on a stretched banking system, the economy is Xi’s vulnerability. Getting the numbers from his comrades to endorse himself and his underlings in leadership roles is one thing; shifting the economy back on track is quite another.

theconversation.com · by Tony Walker



13. Biden’s National Security Strategy Is Undone by Fantasy



From the author of the 2017 NSS.


Key points:


The strategy is right that the next 10 years will be decisive, noting that we are at an “inflection point” when the choices made will set America on a course that “determines our competitive position long into the future.” Precisely because “our window of opportunity may be closing,” we need to be more realistic.
Even as the Ukraine crisis has demonstrated the devastating consequences of phasing out natural gas, oil and nuclear power when wind and solar can’t replace them, the strategy seems blind to reality. It insists on a “transition away from fossil fuels,” not acknowledging that natural gas itself is a transition fuel and that the U.S. has the capability to produce and export more of it.
The Biden strategy will create dependencies on China analogous to the coercive power that Russia recently held over Germany’s energy supply. And this applies to global development too, since it stresses zero-carbon climate policies that harm poor countries. As Senegal’s energy minister remarked last year, imposing restrictions on lending for oil and gas development is like “removing the ladder and asking us to jump or fly.”
At the just-concluded Chinese Communist Party Congress, Xi Jinping has shown determination to drive what he sees as an “irreversible historical process” in which China becomes the “new choice” for humanity. Now isn’t the time to be ambivalent in that competition.



Biden’s National Security Strategy Is Undone by Fantasy

It acknowledges the threat from China, then makes wholly unrealistic pledges of cooperation.

By Nadia Schadlow

Oct. 23, 2022 4:31 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-strategy-is-undone-by-fantasy-national-security-china-climate-change-threat-beijing-white-house-ccp-11666549038?mod=opinion_lead_pos5


The Biden administration’s National Security Strategy, released last week, deserves credit for correctly identifying China as the U.S.’s most “consequential geopolitical challenge.” But by calling climate the “existential” threat to the U.S. and encouraging cooperation with Beijing on the issue, the strategy document creates a dangerous contradiction. The focus on climate will make it harder to meet the threat from China and diminish the chances that the U.S. will succeed in sustainably reducing carbon emissions.

China has benefited from the openness of the international economy even as Beijing “frequently uses its economic power to coerce countries” while limiting access to its own markets, the strategy points out. The document reaffirms the link between economic strength and national security, recognizing that the U.S. needs to produce goods, tie trade policies to the well-being of the American people, and retain its competitive edge across key technologies. It also affirms that a successful U.S. approach to China will require the help of allies and partners, since the U.S. and its allies make up about 65% of global gross domestic product.

But the document also offers aspirational language about how the U.S. and China must “coexist peacefully and share in and contribute to human progress together.” The problem is, the two countries view human progress and the political and economic underpinnings of that progress differently.

For the U.S., progress is rooted in individual liberty, democratic governance and the rule of law. It is hard to reconcile how this squares with China’s intent, which even the Biden document describes as a desire to “reshape the international order” to advance its authoritarian objectives.

The document wants to portray the U.S. as reasonable but in the process it fails to describe the world as it is. A rosy perspective is baked into the language, along with hopes that the U.S. can work with China on nearly everything: “climate, pandemic threats, nonproliferation, countering illicit and illegal narcotics, the global food crisis, and macroeconomic issues.” Contrast these lofty ambitions with China’s construction of coal plants, refusal to allow investigations into the origin of Covid, aiding and abetting of North Korea’s nuclear program, and inaction on transnational criminal organizations that traffic fentanyl into the U.S. Through major energy purchases China continues to support Russia’s war in Ukraine, which is leading to a global food crisis.

Despite these realities, the document pleads that no country “should withhold progress on existential transnational issues like the climate crisis because of bilateral differences.” American interests thus get reduced to tactical inconveniences.

Competition with China over technology appears in the Biden document only as an afterthought. The strategy fails to call for selective disentanglement or decoupling from China, even as it alludes to China’s determination to separate key parts of its economy from ours while fostering dependencies that give Beijing coercive power. Unless these imperatives are called out directly, it will be hard—if not impossible—to build the domestic political coalitions to take tough decisions.


The strategy is right that the next 10 years will be decisive, noting that we are at an “inflection point” when the choices made will set America on a course that “determines our competitive position long into the future.” Precisely because “our window of opportunity may be closing,” we need to be more realistic.

Even as the Ukraine crisis has demonstrated the devastating consequences of phasing out natural gas, oil and nuclear power when wind and solar can’t replace them, the strategy seems blind to reality. It insists on a “transition away from fossil fuels,” not acknowledging that natural gas itself is a transition fuel and that the U.S. has the capability to produce and export more of it.

The Biden strategy will create dependencies on China analogous to the coercive power that Russia recently held over Germany’s energy supply. And this applies to global development too, since it stresses zero-carbon climate policies that harm poor countries. As Senegal’s energy minister remarked last year, imposing restrictions on lending for oil and gas development is like “removing the ladder and asking us to jump or fly.”

At the just-concluded Chinese Communist Party Congress, Xi Jinping has shown determination to drive what he sees as an “irreversible historical process” in which China becomes the “new choice” for humanity. Now isn’t the time to be ambivalent in that competition.

Ms. Schadlow is a fellow at the Hudson Institute and Hoover Institution. She served as deputy national security adviser for strategy, 2017-18.


14. American Aid to Ukraine Pays for Itself


Excerpt:


Aside from protecting a democracy from invasion by a totalitarian neighbor, here are dollars and cents reasons for helping Ukraine. They start with the West’s inglorious response to the outbreak of World War II, which shows that containment pays. It counsels moving fast to help Ukraine block Russia.


American Aid to Ukraine Pays for Itself

https://www.nysun.com/article/american-aid-to-ukraine-pays-for-itself

Aside from protecting a democracy from invasion by a totalitarian neighbor, there are dollars and cents reasons for helping Ukraine. They include American exports of armaments and energy.


The landfall facility of the Nord Stream 1 Baltic Sea pipeline at Lubmin, Germany, on July 21, 2022. AP/Markus Schreiber, file


JAMES BROOKE

Friday, October 21, 2022

01:17:49 pm






Some Republicans are asking what the American taxpayer gets for blocking Russia in eastern Ukraine. The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, is predicting, in an interview with Punchbowl News, that “people are going to be sitting in a recession — and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine.”

The portion of polled Republicans who think Washington is giving “too much” aid to Ukraine, according to Pew Research, jumped to 32 percent last month from 9 percent in May. Voting has started in the midterm elections. Polls indicate that Republicans could win back the House of Representatives.

Aside from protecting a democracy from invasion by a totalitarian neighbor, here are dollars and cents reasons for helping Ukraine. They start with the West’s inglorious response to the outbreak of World War II, which shows that containment pays. It counsels moving fast to help Ukraine block Russia.

We’ve already seen that aid from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is radically reducing the chances of having to fight later on to defend five NATO members: Poland, Slovakia, and the Baltic nations. In speeches last year, President Putin indicated that his goal is to restore the borders of the Russian Empire.

A political theorist sometimes called “Putin’s Rasputin,” Aleksandr Dugin, has called for a Moscow-centered empire stretching from Vladivostok to Dublin. Mr. Putin’s expansionism has prompted a doubling of NATO countries pledging to increase their defense spending to 2 percent of GDP.

This year, 11 new countries made the pledge, including three heavyweights — Germany, Italy, and Spain. Of the NATO 30, only America and nine other countries met that level. Mr. Putin achieved what every American President since Jimmy Carter could not — getting Europeans to pay more for their defense.

Mr. Putin’s war shocked Scandinavia. Norway is detecting Russian drones near offshore oil platforms. Finland and Sweden are abandoning long-cherished neutrality and joining NATO. Finns are well aware that until 1917, Finland was a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire.

Thanks to Putin, the Baltic Sea is about to become a NATO sea. According to the latest Ukraine Defense Ministry numbers, Russia has lost in Ukraine some 243 helicopters, 269 fixed-wing aircraft, 1,311 drones, 2,018 artillery pieces, 2,569 tanks, 4,005 fuel and supply trucks, and 5,255 armored personnel carriers.

Plus, Russia has lost 66,650 soldiers and officers — almost five times the number lost by the Soviets during a decade in Afghanistan. All this has been pushed off Eurasia’s chessboard, greatly easing Russia’s military threat to NATO’s eastern wing. Post war, America and NATO will not have to spend heavily to face Russia. 

Even if Mr. Putin, now 70 and in political trouble, gets his mojo back, it will take years to rebuild his army. Plans are underway for rebuilding Ukraine after Russia’s devastation. Unlike the 1948-1951 Marshall Plan for Western Europe, this would not be funded primarily by American taxpayers.

Instead, legal work is underway to create a Western-supervised rebuilding plan funded by $350 billion in Russian government accounts frozen in America, Britain, Switzerland, and the European Union. GE, Bechtel, and other American corporations are expected to go to the head of the line for rebuilding Ukraine’s power plants, highways, bridges, and airports.

America, the world’s largest arms exporter, will gain market share from Russia, the world’s second largest arms exporter. For the countries of the former Warsaw pact, today’s war is completing a 30-year process of replacing Soviet-era weapons with NATO standard weapons. 

Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic are sending their Soviet-made tanks, jets, and artillery pieces east to Ukraine. They are being replaced by NATO equipment, largely Made in the USA. Elsewhere, the poor performance of Russian equipment is expected to cut Russian weapons exports.

It is a little-known fact that between 2014 and 2021, American military officers quietly visited Ukraine’s front line to study Russian tactics and weaponry. Now, the Pentagon is learning daily about the weak points and strong points of Russian strategy and equipment — without one American life lost.

During the first half of this year, America became the world’s largest exporter of liquified natural gas. For years, Chancellor Merkel politely brushed off American proposals to build LNG landing terminals on Germany’s Baltic seacoast. German officials quietly insinuated that Texas politicians were trying to peddle their wares. 

Instead, Chancellor Merkel moved ahead with the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines. Germany’s dependence on Russian pipeline gas rose last year to 55 percent of its imports. Few people were rude enough to note that the two Russia-Germany pipelines made landfall in the Baltic constituency that Ms. Merkel represented between 1990 and 2021, Vorpommern-Rügen – Vorpommern-Greifswald I.

Since the war broke out, Chancellor Scholz has ordered construction of five LNG landing terminals up and down Germany’s sea coast. Temporary, floating versions of these terminals are to be working by December. One lasting legacy of today’s war is expected to be a sharp reduction of EU dependence on imports of Russian gas. 

The United States now has more than 140 LNG processing plants and ports. The EU will become a big market for gas from the red states of Texas and Louisiana. Republicans who focus on votes today will remember that Americans of Eastern European origin were key pillars of Richard Nixon’s “silent majority.”



JAMES BROOKE

Mr. Brooke has traveled to about 100 countries reporting for The New York Times, Bloomberg, and Voice of America. He reported from Russia for eight years and from Ukraine for six years, coming home one year ago.





15. Despite Iran Providing Arms to Russia, U.S. Still Considering Sanctions Relief for Iran





Despite Iran Providing Arms to Russia, U.S. Still Considering Sanctions Relief for Iran

fdd.org · October 21, 2022

Latest Developments

Russia conducted strikes against targets across Ukraine over the past week using drones acquired from Iran. These Iranian drones — including the Shahed-136, the Shahed-131, and the Mohajer-6 — have enhanced Russia’s ability to conduct strikes against the Ukrainian military, critical infrastructure, and civilian targets. Despite the U.S. and EU’s imposition of sanctions on Iran for transferring the drones, Kyiv’s allies in London, Paris, Berlin, and Washington have not rescinded their offer of other sanctions relief to Iran as part of a revived nuclear deal. They have also refrained from snapping back prior UN sanctions on Iran that would restore the UN arms embargo and maintain key missile restrictions indefinitely.

Expert Analysis

“The acquisition of Iranian drones helps Russia fill critical shortfalls in its surveillance and long-range strike capabilities. These drones will allow Russia to continue its illegal war and kill more Ukrainians who are attempting to defend their homeland. Washington and like-minded allies should provide Ukraine with additional air defenses as well as long-range strike weapons so that Ukraine can target drone launch sites.” – Ryan Brobst, Research Analyst at FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power

“Washington, London, Paris, and Berlin need to make clear that a new Iran deal that would subsidize attacks on Ukraine by lifting sanctions is off the table. Britain, France, and Germany have the power to restore the UN arms embargo on Iran at any moment simply by completing the snapback of prior UN sanctions.” – Richard Goldberg, FDD Senior Advisor

Capabilities of Russian-Operated Iranian Drones

Iran has provided Russia with the Shahed-136 and its smaller cousin, the Shahed-131, which are loitering munitions — a type of drone capable of flying above its targets for long periods of time before diving down, armed with a warhead that destroys the drone and the target. According to Yuriy Ignat, spokesman for Ukraine’s Air Force Command, the Shahed-136 has a range of 1,000 km, which would allow Russia to strike anywhere in Ukraine. On October 11, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky cited Ukrainian intelligence as saying that Moscow hopes to buy 2,400 more Shahed-136s.

The Mohajer-6 conducts reconnaissance and increases the Russian military’s ability to find and target Ukrainian forces on the battlefield, compensating for prior losses of Russian surveillance. This is a significant threat to Ukrainian forces and could disrupt further offensive operations.

Snapback of UN Sanctions

Under UN Security Council Resolution 2231, the international arms embargo on Iran expired in 2020. Key restrictions on missile technology expire next year. A nuclear deal that would maintain UNSCR 2231’s expiration dates would provide international legitimacy to Iran’s drone transfers. To restore the arms embargo and maintain the missile embargo indefinitely, any JCPOA participant has the right under UNSCR 2231 to snap back prior UN Security Council resolutions if Iran is in significant non-performance of its JCPOA commitments. Iran’s continued nuclear development most certainly meets that legal threshold.

Related Analysis

Iranian drones could make Russia’s military more lethal in Ukraine,” by John Hardie, Ryan Brobst, and Behnam Ben Taleblu

Iranian Shahed-136 Drones Increase Russian Strike Capacity and Lethality in Ukraine,” by John Hardie and Ryan Brobst

fdd.org · October 21, 2022




16. Biden's energy policy is empowering the West's enemies


Excerpts:


For the Biden administration, the deal was a “key priority” precisely because it was a deal with, and to the benefit of, Iranian equity. The public framing of the deal underscores this point. The White House described the deal as furthering the agenda of “regional integration,” a euphemism for stabilizing and investing in Iranian regional holdings, which lies at the heart of the Obama doctrine of realigning U.S. interests with Iran.
And how is the deal being sold? Advocates say it is important to help secure Europe’s energy needs as it looks for alternatives to Russian energy. Leaving aside the fact that the numbers don't add up, the argument here is that forcing Israel to relinquish resource-rich waters, under threat of attack, to an Iranian terror satrapy, in order to solidify French and other European investments in a de facto partnership with Hezbollah, is preferable to unleashing American energy production and export.


Biden's energy policy is empowering the West's enemies

Washington Examiner · by Tony Badran · October 21, 2022

The story of how the Biden administration crippled American energy production is well known, as are the disastrous consequences of those actions. Yet those same energy policies have also played a critical, albeit much less known, role in advancing the president’s foreign policy.

As soon as he was elected, President Joe Biden declared that the climate ideology of the Left would dominate his administration. His advisers and officials condescendingly dismissed concerns about jobs and inflation as complaints coming from a part of the political spectrum, and from parts of America, they considered irrelevant. They immediately began canceling and suffocating vast swaths of U.S. energy infrastructure, contributing to energy shortages and hyperinflation that threaten to destroy American prosperity for years if not decades.

That same approach to energy policy has also focused, from Day One as well, on elevating America’s traditional enemies and undermining our traditional allies.

And now, citing the very global energy shortages that its policies created, the Biden administration has said it has to turn to the fossil fuel industries of America’s rivals and enemies, including Russia, Venezuela, and Iran, to supply us and our allies.

In spring 2021, the Biden administration waived congressional sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline at the behest of Germany, which said it needed Russian natural gas to keep the lights on. Those waivers became politically impossible to sustain after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, but at the same time, expectations were sky-high that another Iran deal was about to be announced. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced that buying oil from Iran was “on the table.” Now that the Iran deal again appears to be politically tricky because of the regime’s massacres of protesters, multiple outlets are reporting that the United States is considering easing energy sanctions on the Venezuelan regime.

This is merely the flip side of the same policy, which doesn’t just boost hostile actors but a global bloc. Venezuela is Iran’s closest ally in Latin America, and the two work together to evade U.S. sanctions and keep their oil flowing to markets, including through ship-to-ship transfers of crude and condensates and helping Venezuela to convert its heavy crude. In June, Iran and Venezuela signed a 20-year strategic partnership during President Nicolas Maduro’s visit to Tehran. The agreement includes cooperation on oil and petrochemicals. Iran has also sent three Iranian-built tankers to Venezuela, which, in 2020, had been left with only one. Since 2020, Iran also has supplied Caracas with gasoline and equipment for repairing its run-down refineries.

In the Mediterranean, the Biden administration has managed to strong-arm a pliant lame-duck government in Israel, weeks before a general election, to forfeit its claim to an entire piece of territory that had been claimed by Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon — the justification being, of course, that nothing is more critical than immediately starting fossil fuel production. In late August, Biden called the Israeli caretaker prime minister and told him in no uncertain terms that concluding the deal was of great importance to the U.S. and that it should be done within weeks. A White House official would call it a “key priority” of the administration. At Lebanon’s demand, the deal Washington forced on Israel even included giving up a small section outside the disputed area, entirely within Israel’s waters, that makes up part of a hydrocarbon prospect. Hezbollah demanded Lebanon retain full ownership of the entire prospect, with compensation for the section inside Israel’s waters to come from French energy giant TotalEnergies.

The role of France and TotalEnergies, actors that were notoriously hostile to the Trump administration’s policy in the region, is worth mentioning. In 2018, the head of TotalEnergies desperately tried to dissuade then-President Donald Trump from withdrawing from former President Barack Obama’s disastrous Iran deal. The French company had signed a deal the year before to develop Iran’s South Pars field with an initial investment of $1 billion. It had to withdraw when sanctions were reimposed.

Now France is the actor most invested in cheerleading and explicitly amplifying the administration’s policy with Iran and Venezuela, as well as the excuses about self-made shortages that justify that policy. In June, shortly after Iran and Venezuela signed their agreement, French officials said that Iranian and Venezuelan oil need to be brought to market. Of course, the French have been pushing for the successful conclusion of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action talks with Iran in order for sanctions to be lifted and for Iran’s doors to be open for France’s TotalEnergies.

France’s eagerness to develop Iran’s fields intersects with, and reinforces, French interests in the Islamic Republic’s regional holdings. In addition to a major, albeit since delayed , deal signed with Iraq last year, TotalEnergies signed in 2018 two exploration and production agreements with the Lebanese government to drill offshore Lebanon. TotalEnergies executives were just in Beirut to work out exploration after Team Biden pressured the Israelis to make a deal. Revealingly, in 2019, TotalEnergies's chief executive commented that investing in Israel was “too complex” and the stakes there not big enough to warrant the risks. However, that calculation never dissuaded TotalEnergies from entering Lebanon: a terror pseudo-state run by the long arm of Iran, in the form of its proxy Hezbollah.

While the decadelong maritime boundary dispute between Israel and Lebanon did not affect Israel’s ability to develop and draw investment into its energy industry, eventually turning Israel into an exporter of natural gas, investors long shied away from Hezbollah-run Lebanon. The Obama administration sought to impose a settlement, but the effort went nowhere until the Biden administration successfully strong-armed the Israelis. To no one’s surprise, French President Emmanuel Macron intervened strongly with Israel to get the deal done, adding to American pressure.

For the Biden administration, the deal was a “key priority” precisely because it was a deal with, and to the benefit of, Iranian equity. The public framing of the deal underscores this point. The White House described the deal as furthering the agenda of “regional integration,” a euphemism for stabilizing and investing in Iranian regional holdings, which lies at the heart of the Obama doctrine of realigning U.S. interests with Iran.

And how is the deal being sold? Advocates say it is important to help secure Europe’s energy needs as it looks for alternatives to Russian energy. Leaving aside the fact that the numbers don't add up, the argument here is that forcing Israel to relinquish resource-rich waters, under threat of attack, to an Iranian terror satrapy, in order to solidify French and other European investments in a de facto partnership with Hezbollah, is preferable to unleashing American energy production and export.

Tony Badran is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where he focuses on Lebanon, Hezbollah, Syria, and the geopolitics of the Levant.

Washington Examiner · by Tony Badran · October 21, 2022




17. Special Operations NCOs Named White House Fellows



Special Operations NCOs Named White House Fellows

ausa.org · October 19, 2022

A special operations NCO who has deployed 15 times and a former Army Ranger have been appointed to the 2022–2023 class of White House Fellows, a highly competitive program for leaders who are committed to public service.

Founded in 1964, the White House Fellows program offers “exceptional young leaders first-hand experience working at the highest levels of the Federal government,” the White House said in its announcement.

Fellows spend a year working with senior White House staff, cabinet secretaries and other top government officials. They are chosen based on evidence-backed criteria, including professional accomplishments, leadership skills and commitment to public service.

In addition to the two soldiers, three other members of the 2022–2023 class of White House Fellows have served in the U.S. military, one in the Marine Corps and two in the Navy.

There are 15 people in the class.

From the Army, former Ranger Samuel Ayres will work with the White House Domestic Policy Council.

Ayres, who is from Denver, served as an NCO in the 75th Ranger Regiment, deploying multiple times to Afghanistan. Before enlisting in the Army, he was a foreign policy researcher and writer.

He earned his law degree from Yale Law School after completing his Army service.

After his White House fellowship, Ayres will clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, according to the White House.

Sgt. Maj. Joshua Woehr, of Clearwater, Florida, is placed at the Office of the First Lady Joining Forces Initiative.

Woehr has served for more than 20 years as a Green Beret and Ranger, deploying more than 15 times, according to the White House. He recently returned from Iraq, where he led the integration of next-generation technology onto the battlefield, the White House said.

A father of six, Woehr is passionate about serving military families. In 2014, he and his wife founded the Rick Herrema Foundation, establishing “Rick’s Place” at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Rick’s Place is a 50-acre campus that provides a place of community and activity to thousands of military family members every year, according to the White House.

Applications for the 2023–2024 fellowship program will be accepted starting Nov. 1.

For more information, click here.

ausa.org · October 19, 2022



18. Winter in Europe


Excerpts:

As a result, after decades of debate over European sovereignty, the invasion of Ukraine has simultaneously strengthened trans-Atlantic and European unity. There is a newfound awareness both that U.S. support and leadership is crucial for European defense but also that Europeans should enhance their capacity for collective action. In this regard, the European Union and NATO have worked well together in coordinating their response, while further measures like increased military spending and expanding Europe’s defense industrial base could simultaneously strengthen both institutions. Varma noted that Finland and Sweden joining NATO while Denmark joined the European Union’s common defense further demonstrated the compatibility of these two approaches. On China as well, Franke argued that the war has “pushed Germany and Europe a little more toward the U.S. position” by demonstrating that “authoritarian states are really bad bedfellows.” With France in particular continuing to push for European sovereignty, there was now a unique opportunity for Washington to engage constructively without “belittling” these efforts or being “vexed” by them.
Looking toward the next few months, observers are confident that Europe will muddle through. The hardships are real, but so are the political convictions with which people will face them. This means that, with wise leadership, the continent can still emerge stronger and more unified from this crisis.


Winter in Europe - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Nicholas Danforth · October 24, 2022

Editor’s note: War on the Rocks recently published an 8-part Warcast series for members about the impact the war in Ukraine has had on European politics and Europe’s economy. The series, “Winter in Europe”, is available for members. To listen to the entire series, please consider joining our membership program. We have new members-only content coming soon, beginning in November with “The Russia Contingency with Michael Kofman,” a bi-weekly podcast about the Russian military.

Europe is facing a hard winter, but support for Ukraine remains strong. Russia’s war has highlighted many of the challenges the continent already confronted, from internal divisions within the European Union to a deep dependence on Russian energy. It has added newfound urgency to the search for solutions, even as these new solutions create trade-offs of their own. To date, European leaders have moved quickly to blunt the worst of the energy crisis, but have yet to fully allay their citizens’ concerns. They have also been forced to rapidly rethink their military posture, creating new opportunities for America to help strengthen the continent’s defense.

This, at least, was the consensus of the experts who joined our members-only Winter in Europe Warcast series. With many in Washington wondering how European solidarity will fare over the coming months, we brought together a number of observers on the continent to evaluate the recent political and economic developments, and tell us what they mean for the future of the war in Ukraine. In these conversations, they conveyed their belief that Europe’s political solidarity would survive the winter even if individual governments struggled to master rising energy prices. Moreover, they described a growing convergence in security thinking between Eastern and Western Europe, as well as between Europe and America. The result, they suggested, is that enhanced E.U. defense and stronger trans-Atlantic cooperation are now more compatible than ever.

Become a Member

High energy prices, according to Ian Lesser, are “issue number one, right across Europe,” but of course “not all countries are in the same boat.” They differ not only in how directly dependent they are on Russian gas and oil, but also on how their governments have responded and, crucially, how their voters approach the issue politically. With consumers paying “extraordinary prices” “ten or twelve times” what they were a year ago, “the verdict is still out on whether Europe can get its act together to have a more coherent policy.”

In the United Kingdom, for example, David Lawrence warned of “a winter of discontent, where there were energy outages, where pensioners freeze to death in their homes.” But he argued that if this happened, the public would blame their politicians, not the war. Britain’s polices toward Ukraine “don’t have any bearing on the energy issue.” The link, he explained “doesn’t make sense” and “that’s not where public sentiment is at.” Both major political parties remain supportive of Ukraine, and across the country there is “a lot of pride” in Britain’s stance on the war.

In Germany, by contrast, fears over winter energy shortages were coupled with greater concerns that this could create “solidarity fatigue” when it came to Ukraine. Ulrike Franke explained that the current government, a coalition of Social Democrats, Greens, and Free Democrats, is trying to help people pay their bills while creating incentives to reduce energy consumption. It has made a conscious choice to prioritize households over industry, even if that leads to long-term debt and decreases industrial production. One result of the crisis has been a “return of the state.” Government is “much more involved in the economy” and one energy producer has already been “more or less nationalized.”

The French government, aided by the country’s nuclear power plants, has sought to preserve a “fiscal shield” that will protect citizens from higher energy prices while also “communicating in a relatively transparent manner” to prepare voters for the coming winter. This, according to Tara Varma, has helped ensure that solidarity for Ukraine “is not fading.” It remains front and center in the media, reflecting a strong sense of support among the public.

Italy, in turn, as “one of the biggest importers of Russian gas” was among “the most exposed countries” on the energy side. But according to Federico Santi, the government “moved relatively quickly to diversify” and has successfully reduced Russian gas imports to roughly a third of what they were before the war. While a majority of Italian voters support Ukraine, “that proportion is lower than you see elsewhere,” with a substantial chunk of the electorate convinced “Italy shouldn’t be involved and is paying the price for someone else war.” Despite this, Santi argued, Italy’s new government “has been careful to toe the E.U. and NATO line very closely” and is unlikely to change course.

Paradoxically, the current crisis has created a “more visceral” awareness about the dangerous dependency created by energy deals with authoritarian states while also pressuring European governments to seek out new deals at all costs. In the current “scramble for energy,” explained Erika Solomon, European leaders are “flying all around the world trying to secure contracts” even if it means visiting repressive leaders like Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliev. Policymakers “are now seeing the true price of Russian gas” but this is offset by their current panic. The result is a willingness to do whatever is necessary to get through the winter and then deal with the political and climate repercussions down the road.

Energy has also been one issue driving tensions between former Soviet or Warsaw Pact countries in Eastern Europe and the rest of the continent. The current crisis, in Solomon’s words, has led to “a little bit of an ‘I told you so’” particularly from Poland but also from the Baltic states. As a result, they now feel empowered to push traditional European leaders like France and Germany to do more, essentially telling them: “we saw this coming and you didn’t and now we want you to send weapons and you need to step up and do more of that.”

From a Ukrainian perspective, European military assistance “is felt and appreciated.” But, according to former diplomat Yevgeniya Gaber “we started getting this assistance quite late” and “the pace of the supplies” has sometimes been slower than it could be. Thus gratitude for Europe’s support is offset by the fact that “had we got the same assistance before, we would have less casualties and less victims.”

As for concerns about solidarity fatigue, Gaber noted that “Russia is even weaponizing winter” in its propaganda by telling people they will not have electricity in the coming months. Will it work? “In former Warsaw Pact countries there is an understanding that there is a price to be paid” for defending the continent “and there is no problem with that.” In the rest of Europe, she hoped, policymakers would realize that the true choice was between “paying pennies now or paying more later after more Russian aggression.”

Indeed, across Europe, leaders and voters alike are rethinking their approach to military defense more broadly. As Franke described, Germany’s Zeitenwende, or “turning of time,” has meant that there is a perception that “we are entering new territory, things have changed, we can’t go back to before and we need to react to this.” Where once there was a sense that “we shouldn’t even be talking about” defense policy, now “people are realizing not everything related to the military is bad.”

As a result, after decades of debate over European sovereignty, the invasion of Ukraine has simultaneously strengthened trans-Atlantic and European unity. There is a newfound awareness both that U.S. support and leadership is crucial for European defense but also that Europeans should enhance their capacity for collective action. In this regard, the European Union and NATO have worked well together in coordinating their response, while further measures like increased military spending and expanding Europe’s defense industrial base could simultaneously strengthen both institutions. Varma noted that Finland and Sweden joining NATO while Denmark joined the European Union’s common defense further demonstrated the compatibility of these two approaches. On China as well, Franke argued that the war has “pushed Germany and Europe a little more toward the U.S. position” by demonstrating that “authoritarian states are really bad bedfellows.” With France in particular continuing to push for European sovereignty, there was now a unique opportunity for Washington to engage constructively without “belittling” these efforts or being “vexed” by them.

Looking toward the next few months, observers are confident that Europe will muddle through. The hardships are real, but so are the political convictions with which people will face them. This means that, with wise leadership, the continent can still emerge stronger and more unified from this crisis.

Become a Member

Nicholas Danforth is an editor at War on the Rocks. He is also a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP). He is the author of The Remaking of Republican Turkey: Memory and Modernity since the Fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Nicholas Danforth · October 24, 2022



19. Startup Finding Special Ops Customers for Jetpack




Startup Finding Special Ops Customers for Jetpack

nationaldefensemagazine.org · by Stew Magnuson

10/21/2022



Stew Magnuson photo

ABOARD THE HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH — Attendees being ferried to a security conference held aboard one of the United Kingdom’s two aircraft carriers in September were greeted by two men dressed in fatigues flying jetpacks.


One was Gravity Industries Founder and Chief Test Pilot Richard Browning, who took off from the HMS Queen Elizabeth’s temporary loading dock and flew around the starboard side of the ferry. A specialist with a pistol mounted on his shoulder took the port side. Hundreds of smartphones recorded the surprise demonstration.


There is a fun side of the jetpack business and a serious side, Browning said in an interview after the demonstration, on the sidelines of the Atlantic Future Forum.


“The serious side is maritime assault, search and rescue and special operations mobility,” he said.


The company has collaborated with six special operations customers for the suits so far, although he declined to name them. It also supplements its income flying the machines for entertainment purposes. He recently appeared in Monaco at a yacht show where he flew around in a dinner jacket.


“It’s not an everyday occurrence to be flying off an aircraft carrier in the shadow of New York and the Statue of Liberty.”


The jetpack concept is not new. NASA developed one for astronauts and the first to fly was in 1961. Browning started tinkering on a modern version in his garage in Surrey, United Kingdom, in 2016 and a year later, had a working prototype and funding from a venture capitalist.


Gravity is applying advanced technologies such as 3D printing to shave pounds off the system. The suit is currently 75 pounds and provides about 1,000 horsepower.


It runs on jet aviation fuel, diesel or kerosene, which gives a 170-pound pilot about five minutes in the air. That’s enough time to make a surprise boarding on a ship, or go ship-to-shore depending on the distance, Browning said.


It could be constructed larger for longer flying times, but for the military market, the company wants to make the whole system fit into one case, he said.


The mock pistol mounted on the shoulder could be fired as a special operator is boarding to provide cover, although the accuracy wouldn’t be great, Browning said. When flying, both hands are needed to steer.


Gravity recently tested its suits for ship-to-ship fast boarding with Royal Marine commandos off the shores of England to see it if could replace fast-roping on to ships from helicopters, according to the Guardian newspaper.


While some have likened the jet suit to a “real life Iron Man,” Browning said it would be foolish to hover over a position strafing it with gunfire. It’s better to land behind some cover, put the engine on idle, then start shooting from a more protected position.


If the operators want to fly to a more advantageous positions, they can do that. Or take the suit completely off so they can be free to fight.


“It’s not trying to compete with a helicopter … It’s sort of minimalist equipment to make you mobile within a couple of miles radius,” he said.


The company is looking beyond the military market and offers custom-made suits to the general public for 380,000 pounds, plus tax or the opportunity to come to its facility south of Heathrow Airport to experience the flights for a little less than 3,000 pounds.


Browning also envisions a day when there is an international jetpack racing circuit.

Topics: Special OperationsSmall Business


nationaldefensemagazine.org · by Stew Magnuson



20. PEDs and Push-Ups: The Problem with Modern SOF Training



Conclusion:


In summary, use any method that doesn't acutely injure them, give them pneumonia, train them with junk volume or force them to take performance-enhancing drugs to recover. The SOF pipelines are not bad, but complacency kills, so let's strive to make them better.


PEDs and Push-Ups: The Problem with Modern SOF Training

military.com · by 22 Oct 2022 Military.com | By Ray Vawter · October 22, 2022

The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Military.com. If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration.

Joint Special Operations University recently released its "Research Topics for 2023," an annual booklet that challenges researchers to address the complex issues facing the military's special operations forces community. The questions there will spark groundbreaking research for the field of special operations, but I think they missed something.

SOF training, and specifically selection events, is severely flawed. They are causing deaths and making tactical athletes less prepared for the mission. So how can the SOF community remedy this?

On Feb. 4, 2022, seaman and aspiring Navy SEAL Kyle Mullen died only hours after completing Hell Week. During an investigation of the incident, it was reportedly revealed that about 40 members of Mullen's class used performance-enhancing drugs, or PEDs, to increase their likelihood of securing "The Budweiser," also known as the SEAL Trident. PEDs were found in Mullen's belongings after he died.

Mullen was recovering from swimming-induced pulmonary edema that developed during his first attempt at the course when he learned many of his classmates were already using steroids, his mother told The New York Times in August. Mullen, a former Yale football player who had remained clean throughout his sports career, then carried out a plan to buy a car with other SEAL aspirants so they could stock PEDs in it.

News articles have been released every week as information comes out about the situation. In all of these articles, the incident is being looked at as an ethical issue. Were the SEAL candidates in the wrong for using steroids? Are the cadre in the wrong for pushing them too hard? Is the Navy in the wrong for not having a testing protocol for PEDs or for making the selection process so difficult?

All of that is subjective and not within the scope of this article. I think PEDs are only an issue when used in sport, and if anyone is going to use PEDs, it might as well be those in special operations. With that, I think PED science is extremely complex. I'm a master trainer under the International Sports Sciences Association and I don't fully understand it.

PEDs, especially anabolic, androgenic steroids, can lead to heart attacks, strokes and a number of other health problems. To the contrary, PEDs could provide a solution to fatigue, muscle recovery and injury issues present in SOF selection events and training. If the military were to sanction steroid use, it would have to be extremely well supervised and done as safely and intelligently as possible.

Suffering Has Its Cost

Setting the topic of PEDs aside, there may be a way to vastly improve selection events and training pipelines while lowering the risk of muscle loss and injury. The problem with selection events, specifically for the SEALs, is that making the candidate suffer is valued more than eliciting useful training adaptations.

On the surface, this makes sense. SEALs should be tough, but at what cost? Is it worth their health? Sickness is one thing, but what about fractures and tears? If that's acceptable, what about the loss of muscle mass, explosiveness and overall athleticism?

The focus on suffering brings up two main issues: muscle catabolism and a lack of training specificity. Catabolism in the muscle is essentially a response to stress, resulting in the loss of muscle. Anabolism is the opposite, meaning if something is anabolic, it is pro-muscle building. The human body is in a constant tug of war between these two states.

Some of the main contributors to a catabolic state are a lack of sleep, low calorie consumption, low protein intake, stress, cardiovascular exercise and a lack of strength training -- a list that perfectly encapsulates SOF selection events. Thus, extremely capable athletes, like Division I football players from Yale, go to these selection events, only to get stripped of the muscle they have accrued over years of training.

During the selection event, they'll do push-ups and flutter kicks, but they'll lose their explosiveness and strength (to train strength, the athlete should be approaching failure sometime before six repetitions of an exercise and have adequate rest before beginning another set). Operators are more likely to have to push something heavy or pick something up once than they are to do 80 push-ups on a direct-action mission.

I think we can all agree with the basis of this argument: We don't want our special operators in worse shape or injured after they are selected.

The next problem with selection events and SOF pipelines is their lack of specificity to the mission. The principle of specificity, or sport specificity, states that adaptations elicited from training depend on the exercises an athlete does and the volume and intensity at which they do them. If the training of an athlete is not relevant to the sport they compete in, their training will not produce the desired effect.

To put it simply, it would behoove a powerlifter to train the squat, bench and deadlift rather than the power clean, the preacher curl and the 400-meter sprint. A more obvious example is that it would behoove a powerlifter to lift weights instead of playing lacrosse. The latter example is more similar to what's happening at SOF selection events.

No Push-up Contests on the Battlefield

Let's continue using the SEALs as an example. Since the SEALs are primarily a direct-action element, they are going to need to win gunfights and exert their will over their opponents. They need to take damage without becoming injured, make fast cuts on their feet, get their gun up quickly and be explosive in their movement. They have to maintain the ability to conduct long-range insertions via sea or land, so a base level of cardio is necessary.

We'll further examine a few of those adaptations to provide an example of what the operator and tactical athlete should be doing. To take damage and not get injured, it helps a lot if their bodies aren't already destroyed from training. They also need to be mobile and flexible. If they have done their mobility work, yoga or even static stretches, their body is far more likely to weather a highly uncomfortable position without acute injury.

They also need to be exerting strength throughout all planes of movement: sagittal, frontal and transverse (aka rotational). An operator will certainly have to rotate their hips and present their rifle quickly. An operator will not have to engage in a push-up competition with the threat. This may seem harsh, but the muscular endurance in the chest and triceps provided by push-ups does not apply to direct action at all. If they must work muscular endurance, at least focus heavily on their shoulders to enable them to fare better when clearing a structure for an extended amount of time.

Speed and explosivity is another area severely lacking in the rearing of special operators. Muscular endurance, steady-state cardio, isometric holds, and getting wet and sandy don't lend themselves to those attributes. Almost any exercise can be made into an explosive one. Instead of doing 30 air squats, which is a muscular endurance exercise, one could simply make the concentric portion of the movement as explosive as possible to turn it into a plyometric.

To make the exercise even better, the athlete could utilize reactive strength to train their muscles' stretch-shortening cycle and immediately bound into a long jump upon touching the ground from their initial jump. For full body explosiveness and triple extension, they could train the Olympic lifts. If that's seen as too technical, they could perform exercises like the kettlebell clean-and-press for explosiveness, which is safer than the barbell variant. They could even train upper-body explosiveness with plyometric push-ups, banded exercises or compensatory acceleration training.

Operators could be progressively overloading the movements needed to clear a room, manipulate a downed teammate, recover from impacts or get into awkward fighting positions. To provide an analogy, if no linemen ever trained for explosiveness off the line of scrimmage, but they still played football every week, some linemen would still rise to the top and be better than other linemen. Take one team of those elite linemen and give them two years of training squat variations, hinge movements, lunges, power cleans and incline bench presses and then let them play the teams that didn't have that. The difference would be astronomical.

That's the beauty of intelligent and periodized resistance training. It can provide a stimulus the body will not receive by doing the sport itself, and that stimulus will carry over to the sport seamlessly as long as the athlete is still training their skills. Bear in mind, it has to be the correct, sport-specific training. That same analogy does not apply if those linemen are running 5Ks and doing aerobics.

Be Prepared for the Gunfight

I've trained and worked at boxing gyms, Krav Maga gyms, mixed-martial arts gyms and even traditional martial arts gyms. I've trained with operators at the Combat Applications Group and Naval Special Warfare Development Group level on multiple occasions. As surprising as it may sound, I've seen fighters get in the cage and pick those guys apart. In every one of those situations, the MMA fighter won, and in every one of those situations, I would describe the special operator as tougher.

The suffering they did as a part of their journey in special operations directly attests to that. Their pipelines are designed to make them tougher. However, I can also promise you, locked in a cage with only their hands and their feet, the most experienced and properly trained fighter wins, even if that fighter is some spoiled brat who has never done a hard day's work.

The MMA fighter doesn't care that the operator let some waves splash over his face and did some push-ups. At the same time, the fighter was doing explosive floor presses and throwing a medicine ball at the wall. It was way easier, yet he knows his punch feels like getting hit by a tractor-trailer.

Sure, MMA is a sport, but the analogy still stands: A fight is a fight and toughness does matter, but skill and sport-specific conditioning matters far more. In a gunfight, would you rather be tougher and get shot, or more prepared and not get shot?

The U.S. SOF community is the best in the world. I'm not disagreeing with that, but with slight adjustments to its training, it can be even better. Special operators can be tough and trained with a high degree of specificity. We know too much about athletic performance to be training like it's 1962.

The solution to this problem is relatively simple, but it's a bear of a pill to swallow for the special operations community: modify the selection events and pipelines for SOF. The training is taking individuals with extraordinary strength and explosiveness and stripping them of it. They may be making some adaptations regardless of their catabolic state, but if those adaptations are push-ups and sit-ups, they are useless in their field.

Use the principle of sport specificity to train these athletes. I understand that the use of poor training techniques is largely because the candidates need to be miserable. Selection events must maintain their level of difficulty and make people quit, or they lose their effectiveness. SOF should be devoting resources to optimizing their pipelines to have the best possible training while maintaining their difficulty.

There are innumerable ways to make training hard. Use survival, evasion, resistance and escape (SERE) and enhanced interrogation techniques that don't have long-term repercussions. Use a higher volume of good training. Use combatives, so if they get hurt, they'd at least be learning hand-to-hand combat. SOF could even manipulate other variables, like optimizing the candidates' nutrition to the appropriate macronutrients by making them drink their food so they don't get the enjoyment of eating.

In summary, use any method that doesn't acutely injure them, give them pneumonia, train them with junk volume or force them to take performance-enhancing drugs to recover. The SOF pipelines are not bad, but complacency kills, so let's strive to make them better.

Ray Vawter is a national security commentator and contributor for Aethon Enterprises. He is a master trainer, combatives coach and tactical conditioning specialist through the International Sports Sciences Association. He is currently in a military human intelligence pipeline and has a background in CT analysis and graduate studies in intelligence. He can be found on Twitter at @rayvawter.


military.com · by 22 Oct 2022 Military.com | By Ray Vawter · October 22, 2022



​21. Special Operations News Update - October 24, 2022





Special Operations News Update - October 24, 2022 | SOF News

sof.news · by SOF News · October 24, 2022


Curated news, analysis, and commentary about special operations, national security, and conflicts around the world.

Photo / Image: U.S., Norwegian, and Swedish Special Operations Forces drive a combat rubber raiding craft during SUBSOF 2022 in Norway, Aug. 14, 2022. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class William Carlisle)

Do you receive our daily newsletter? If not, you can sign up here and enjoy it five (almost) days a week with your morning coffee (or afternoon tea depending on where in the world you are).

SOF News

Former 18Ds – Still Teaching and Drinking Beer. Two former Special Forces medics are ‘teaching class’ evenings at Charlie Mike’s, an SF hangout just outside of Fort Bragg, NC. “We Didn’t Know Jack – With Beers and Jokes, 2 Retired Green Berets Mentor a New Generation”, Coffee of Die, October 19, 2022.

NSW – Seeking Diversity. The leadership of Naval Special Warfare believes that fostering a culture of diversity and inclusion is a critical factor to current and future success. “The Pursuit of Diversity in Naval Special Warfare”, Navy.mil, October 19, 2022.

Death of SEAL Team Commander Investigation. The United States Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) has provided more details on the death of a U.S. Navy SEAL who died while fast-roping from a 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment Black Hawk helicopter in December 2021. “Army reveals new details on SEAL team commander’s training death”, Navy Times, October 20, 2022.

USASOC and Recruiting Difficulties. The United States Army Special Operations Command is looking to step up its recruiting efforts. It has pinpointed recruitment for more 18Xs (volunteers right off the street for Special Forces training) and more 37X for psychological operations roles. “Army Special Operations Command aims to reverse recruiting woes”, Army Times, October 19, 2022.

Move of GBs and SEALs to Germany Base Questioned. For years U.S. Special Operations Command Europe (SOCEUR) has wanted to send U.S. Army Special Forces and U.S. Navy SEAL units to an Army base in Baumholder, Germany. However, there are some lawmakers in Congress that believe they should move a little closer to the ‘front lines’ – the Baltic States or Poland. The move would place the SOF units in a more rural area more suitable for training. SOCEUR would remain in the Stuttgart area, a fairly congested part of Germany. At one time – 2020, SOCEUR was being programmed to move to Belgium. “Transfer of Green Berets, SEALs to Army base in Germany questioned in House funding bill”, Stares and Stripes, October 20, 2022.

SOF NCOs Selected to Serve in White House. A former Ranger and a Green Beret have been named as White House Fellows. They will work in D.C. working with senior White House staff. “Special Operations NCOs Named White House Fellows”, Association of the United States Army, October 19, 2022.

Recruiting for PSYOP. Another article on the same topic as the paragraph above, but this time on the search for men and women to join PSYOP units. “The Army needs to get better at recruiting PSYOP soldiers, general says”, Task & Purpose, October 20, 2022.


Defense Strategies Institute presents SOF & Worldwide Operations, December 7-8, 2022, Tampa, Florida. The 11th Annual SOF & Worldwide Symposium will convene senior level leaders and decision makers from across the Special Operations Community, regional combatant commands, Department of State, intelligence community, academia, and industry.

Shark RCWS for Naval SOF. Compact boats that go at high speeds help special operations forces conduct their infiltrate, conduct missions, and exfiltrate. On smaller boats, like the 11-m RHIB, crews have difficulty in stabilizing weapons systems to put fire on targets accurately. General Robotics has introduced the Shark Remote Controlled Weapons Station (RCWS) that addresses the need for SOF to operate their weapons on small boats. “General Robotics unveils Shark naval RCWS for Special Operations small boats at Euronaval 2022”, Navy Recognition, October 18, 2022.

SOF and the Importance of Data. A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on U.S. SOF stated that special operations troops could bey hindered by unclear data from their command and control structures. There is a lack of standard terminology and the information is not complete and readily available for those who are deployed. “Unclear Data Could Hinder Special Opps”, FEDWeek, October 20, 2022.

363 ISRW (SOF) Signals Intelligence Program. One of the Air Force units that supports special operations forces is the 363rd Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Wing at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia. Read more about it in a recent Air Force news release. (16th Air Force, Oct 20, 2022).

SOF Training at JBLM. Elements of U.S. Army Special Operations Command will be doing some military training at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in late October and early November. The nights will be filled with the sound of helicopters and airplanes. “Special operations training at JBLM”, Army.mil, October 21, 2022.


Commentary

Diversity in SOF – There is a Downside. Rod Dreher, the senior editor at The American Conservative, has some concerns about USSCOM’s drive for diversity. He says that when you build a military for any reason other than winning wars, you place the safety and liberty at risk. “Diversity Is Our Strength, They Lied”, The American Conservative, October 20, 2022.

Redefining Irregular Warfare. David H. Ucko and Thomas A. Marks set out to ‘interrogate’ the meaning of irregular warfare (IW) and to set out a reworked definition of IW. The proposed definition of IW reflects on the lessons and experiences of the past; yet, it also applies to the new strategic environment. “Redefining Irregular Warfare: Legitimacy, Coercion, and Power”, Modern War Institute a West Point, October 18, 2022.


National Security

Report – U.S. Military Strength. Each year, The Heritage Foundation publishes the Index of U.S. Military Strength which gauges the U.S. military’s ability to perform its missions in today’s world. The 2023 report finds that the U.S. military is at growing risk of not being able to meet the demands of defending America’s vital national interests. The report uses the term ‘weak’ in this task. It further states that the Army is “marginal”, the Navy as “weak”, the Air Force as “very weak”, and the Marine Corps as “strong’. The newly established Space Force gets a ‘weak’ grade. “Executive Summary of the 2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength”, Heritage Foundation, October 18, 2022.

Russia, Africa, and Tweets. An examination has been made of tweets in Africa that pertain to Russia between January and August 2022. Russia continues to target African information spaces to discredit Western nations and grow support for Russia’s involvement in Ukraine. Topics include the blockade on Ukrainian ports by Russian vessels (affecting grain shipments), western sanctions damaging the Russian economy, and punishment of Africa by Western nations due to luke-warm support for Ukraine. “Russian disinformation in Africa: What’s sticking and what’s not”, Brookings Institute, October 17, 2022.

Russia and the Northern Sea Route. Russia is claiming jurisdiction over parts of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) in the Arctic region (map). One aspect of this jurisdiction is a proposal by the Russian legislature to require diplomatic clearance for any foreign warships transiting the straits of the Northern Sea Route. Read more about this topic in “Wrangling Warships; Russia’s Proposed Law on Northern Sea Route Navigation”, Lawfare Blog, October 17, 2022.

China and YouTube. A lot of criticism is directed at China for its policies in Xinjiang province, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia. However, China has been able to get its ‘message’ across as well; sometimes eclipsing the criticism with ‘good news’ stories. “China is using ethic-minority influences to spread its Xinjiang narrative on social media”, The Strategist, Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), October 12, 2022.


Old Salt Coffee is a corporate sponsor of SOF News. The company offers a wide range of coffee flavors to include Green Eyes Coffee, a tribute to those Navy special operations personnel who operate in the night.

Upcoming Events

November 8-9, 2022. Fort Bragg, NC

Modern Warfare Week

Global SOF Foundation

November 17-18, 2022

33rd Annual NDIA SO/LIC Symposium

NDIA

December 7-8, 2022

SOF & Worldwide Operations

Defense Strategies Institute (DSI)

Visit the SOF Book Shop for Books on Special Operations


Reports and Videos

Report – Operation Inherent Resolve – U.S. Ground Force Contributions, RAND Corporation, October 2022, PDF, 268 pages. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA719-1.html

This publication provides a narrative account of four battles within OIR and a review of U.S. ground force contributions to those battles. The report is intended to serve as an operational history and review of warfighting functions as applied to OIR. The report focuses on the concept of by, with, and through – referring U.S. military’s reliance on local partners. The authors detail four battles: the counterattacks on Ramadi and on Fallujah, setting the conditions for Mosul, and the urban fight for Mosul. The report also provides some recommendations.

Video – Indian Army Special Forces Carry Out Combat Free Fall, The Indian Express YouTube, October 21, 2022, 2 minutes. Nice video of a HALO jump.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8DNv3STCxc.

sof.news · by SOF News · October 24, 2022




De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com


V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Personal Email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
Web Site: www.fdd.org
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Subscribe to FDD’s new podcastForeign Podicy
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Company Name | Website
Facebook  Twitter  Pinterest  
basicImage