Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"All mistakes teach us something, so there are, in reality, no mistakes."

- Nikki Giovanni

"Once you realize that you can do something, it would be difficult to live with yourself if you didn’t do it."

- James Baldwin

“It is a journey.

No one is ahead of you or behind you.

You are not more advanced or less enlightened.

You are exactly where you need to be. It’s not a contest…

It’s life. We are all teachers and we are all students.”

-Unknown

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 24 (Putin's War)

2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (24.10.22) CDS comments on key events

3. Hospitals, banks, schools, petrol pumps – what happens when the electricity is cut off?

4. Rishi Sunak: A quick guide to the UK’s next prime minister

5. U.S. charges Chinese nationals with schemes to steal info, punish critics and recruit spies

6. Russia’s Ukraine Disaster Exposes China’s Military Weakness

7. China Will Fight A Taiwan War On Its Own Terms

8. 3 lessons Taiwan should take from Ukraine’s air war

9. Russia's dirty bomb threat presents new test for US spy agencies

10. Here's what a 'dirty bomb' is and how it fits into Russia's invasion of Ukraine

11. Local Opinion: Changes to military are too radical

12. An Officer Dissents On 'Woke Military' - The American Conservative

13. USOs Across the Country Are Mysteriously Shutting Down

14. Xi needs to talk modestly and carry a bigger (reform) stick

15. U.S.-Saudi Relations Buckle, Driven by Animosity Between Biden and Mohammed bin Salman

16. Mercenary chief vented to Putin over Ukraine war bungling

17. UK’s First Non-white Premier as Onetime Colony’s Offspring Produce New Leaders

18. Three Inquiries, but No Answers to Who Blew Holes in Nord Stream Pipelines

19. Most in US want more action on climate change: AP-NORC poll

20. Globalization Isn’t Dead

21. Ex-UK pilots recruited by China were actually spies for UK: Report

22. AI Tops Proposed Tech Amendments for the 2023 NDAA

23. Democracy Needs a New Sales Pitch

24. Sun Tzu’s advice to Putin

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 24 (Putin's War)

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-24

Key Takeaways

The Kremlin intensified its information operation to accuse Ukraine of preparing to conduct a false-flag attack using a dirty bomb for a second day in a row.
Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Chief Major General Kyrylo Budanov stated on October 24 that the impact of Russian terrorist strikes against critical Ukrainian infrastructure is waning.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of four Ukrainian oblasts on September 30 ignited a schism within the Kremlin, which will likely intensify as Ukraine liberates more territories according to Budanov.
Prigozhin continues to accrue power and is setting up a military structure parallel to the Russian Armed Forces, which may come to pose a threat to Putin’s rule – at least within the information space.
Russian forces are likely preparing to defend Kherson City and are not fully withdrawing from upper Kherson Oblast despite previous confirmed reports of some Russian elements withdrawing from upper Kherson Oblast.
The Ukrainian General Staff confirmed that Ukrainian forces captured Karmazynivka, Miasozharivka, and Nevske in Luhansk Oblast and Novosadove in Donetsk Oblast.
Kursk Oblast Govenor Roman Starovoit announced the completion of the construction of two reinforced defense lines on the border with Ukraine on October 23 — likely an act of security theater designed to target a domestic Russian audience since there is no danger whatsoever of a Ukrainian mechanized invasion of Russia.
Wagner Group financer Yevgeny Prigozhin acknowledged the slow pace of Wagner Group ground operations around Bakhmut as Russian forces continued to lose ground near the city.
Ukrainian forces continued targeting Russian force concentrations near the Zaporizhia Oblast front line on October 23–24 and struck a Russian force and equipment concentration in the vicinity of Enerhodar on October 22.
Hurried Russian mobilization efforts to fix personnel shortages on the front lines have cannibalized the Russian force-generation staff and diminished Russia’s ability to effectively train and deploy new personnel and to staff domestic industries.
Occupation administration officials have taken down communications systems in Kherson City in an attempt to limit civilian reporting on Russian positions to Ukrainian forces ahead of anticipated Ukrainian advances.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 24

Oct 24, 2022 - Press ISW

understandingwar.org

Kateryna Stepanenko, George Barros, Grace Mappes, Angela Howard, and Fredrick W. Kagan

October 24, 8:30 PM ET

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

The Kremlin intensified its information operation to accuse Ukraine of preparing to conduct a false-flag attack using a dirty bomb for a second day in a row on October 24. Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov separately called his counterparts from the United Kingdom and United States about the “situation connected with Ukraine’s possible use of a dirty bomb” (a conventional explosive laced with radioactive material that is not a nuclear weapon) on October 24.[1] Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made similar calls with his counterparts from the United Stated, United Kingdom, France, and Turkey on October 23.[2] The Chief of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Protection Forces, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, gave a lengthy briefing accusing Ukraine of planning a dirty bomb false-flag provocation to accuse Russia of detonating a low-yield nuclear weapon in Ukraine on October 24.[3] Russian military bloggers are amplifying this information operation.[4] ISW assesses the Kremlin is unlikely to be preparing an imminent false-flag dirty bomb attack.[5]

Russian forces conducted air, missile, and drone strikes against targets in Ukraine at a markedly slower tempo than in previous days. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on October 24 that Russian forces conducted 2 missile and 28 air strikes, and Ukrainian forces shot down 16 Shahed-136 drones on October 23.[6] The slower tempo of Russian air, missile, and drone strikes possibly reflects decreasing missile and drone stockpiles and the strikes’ limited effectiveness of accomplishing Russian strategic military goals.

Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Chief, Major General Kyrylo Budanov, stated on October 24 that the impact of Russian terrorist strikes against critical Ukrainian infrastructure is waning as Russian forces further deplete their limited arsenal of cruise missiles.[7] Budanov stated that Russian forces have stopped targeting Ukraine’s military infrastructure, instead aiming for civilian infrastructure to incite panic and fear in Ukrainians. Budanov noted, however, that Russian forces will fail as Ukrainians are better adapted to strategic bombing than at the beginning of the war. Budanov claimed that Russian forces have used most of their cruise missile arsenal and only have 13 percent of their pre-war Iskander, 43 percent of Kaliber, and 45 percent of Kh-101 and Kh-555 pre-war stockpiles left, supporting ISW’s prior reports on dwindling Russian precision-guided munition stockpiles.[8] Budanov noted that Russian cruise missiles lack precision, as a missile likely intended to hit the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) building in Kyiv missed its target by 800 meters. Budanov stated that Russia’s dwindling supply of cruise missiles is forcing the Russian military to rely on Iranian drones but that Iranian suppliers only send 300 drones per shipment and that the drones take a long time to manufacture. Budanov stated that Ukrainian air defenses shoot down 70 percent of all Shahed-136 drones, including 222 of the 330 Russia has used so far. It is impossible to assess the degree to which ongoing unrest and growing strikes in Iran might interfere with Tehran’s ability to manufacture and ship drones to Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of four Ukrainian oblasts on September 30 ignited a schism within the Kremlin, which will likely intensify as Ukraine liberates more territories, according to Budanov. Budanov stated that Kremlin elites largely did not support Putin’s decision to annex Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk Oblasts prior to securing those territories, prompting many officials to contact their Western counterparts to express their disinterest in continuing the war in Ukraine.[9] Budanov claimed that some Kremlin officials began advocating for negotiations with Ukraine to their Western counterparts while the Russian military-political command plotted missile strikes to scare Ukrainians into negotiations. Budanov‘s statement is consistent with the influx of Western reports about direct criticism of Putin within the Kremlin less than a week after the annexation announcement around October 6.[10] Wagner Group–affiliated Telegram channels also noted the emergence of the pro-war and pro-negotiations factions within the Kremlin within the same timeframe.[11] Wagner Group financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin has been consistently referencing the factionalization within the Kremlin since, even explicitly stating that he is part of the “war until victory” faction.[12] These observations raise the possibility that hints from insiders of a Kremlin readiness to engage in serious negotiations may not reflect Putin’s own views or any decisions he has taken but may instead be part of efforts by those who have lost the internal argument with him to persuade the West and Ukraine to offer concessions in hopes of bringing him around to their point of view.

Prigozhin continues to accrue power and is setting up a military structure parallel to the Russian Armed Forces, which may come to pose a threat to Putin’s rule — at least within the information space. Russian milbloggers reported that Prigozhin is sponsoring the formation of a Wagner-based volunteer battalion recruited by a Russian war criminal and former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer Igor Girkin.[13] Girkin is an avid critic of the Russian higher military command and a prominent figure among the Russian ultra-nationalists who participated in the annexation of Crimea or the illegal Russian seizures of Ukrainian territory in Donbas in 2014. Milbloggers noted that the structure of the Russian Armed Forces has long prevented Girkin from forming his own volunteer battalion due to lack of supplies and other bureaucratic restrictions, while Prigozhin has the luxury to operate Wagner forces without the direct supervision of the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD). Milbloggers also noted that the Prigozhin-Girkin collaboration is likely making a large nationalist constituency accessible to Prigozhin in support of his maximalist goals for the war in Ukraine.[14]

Prigozhin holds a uniquely advantageous position within the Russian state structure and information space that allows him to expand his constituency in Russia more readily than the disgraced Russian higher military command. Prigozhin can freely promote himself and his forces while criticizing Kremlin officials or the Russian Armed Force without fear of pushback.[15] Putin depends on Wagner forces in Bakhmut and is likely attempting to appease Prigozhin despite the fact that Prigozhin is undermining the conventional Russian military. Prigozhin, for example, sarcastically stated in an interview that he is constructing the “Wagner Line” in an effort to make Russian Armed Forces that “hide behind Wagner’s backs” feel safe.[16] Prigozhin also frequently levies his critiques of the Russian military in interviews with Russian online publications and among Wagner-affiliated Telegram channels, which allow him to reach and interact with audiences inaccessible to the Russian MoD, which is restricted in its public statements and means of communication. Prigozhin also benefits from holding no formal position of responsibility. He is not in command of any axis in Ukraine nor in charge of any major bureaucratic effort. He can critique those who are in positions of authority freely without fear that anyone can point to something he was specifically responsible for that he failed to achieve.

Prigozhin has seemingly distanced himself from a fellow strongman, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, after their joint critiques of the Russian higher military command on October 1 drew much attention.[17] This rhetorical shift may indicate that Kadyrov is losing influence and standing and may fear losing his control over the Republic of Chechnya amid the Chechen public’s growing disapproval of his demands in support of Putin’s war.[18]

Racism and bigotry continue to plague the Russian Armed Forces, increasing the likelihood of ethnic conflicts. Russian social media footage showed a Russian officer beating a Muslim soldier for attempting to pray at a certain time.[19] While Russian milbloggers denied the authenticity of the footage, previous instances of violence along religious or ethnic lines, such as the shooting on a Belgorod Oblast training ground on October 15, indicate that such problems will intensify throughout time.[20] Racial and religious tensions may also help explain Kadyrov’s relative quieting and Prigozhin’s apparent separation from him.

Russian forces are likely preparing to defend Kherson City and are not fully withdrawing from upper Kherson Oblast despite previous confirmed reports of some Russian elements withdrawing from upper Kherson.[21] Budanov stated on October 24 that Russian forces are not retreating from Kherson City but are instead preparing the city for urban combat.[22] This report is consistent with indicators that ISW has observed in late October.[23] Recent reporting about Russian military operations in Kherson have not always distinguished clearly enough between activities in Kherson City and those in western Kherson Oblast generally. Russian forces have begun a partial withdrawal from northwestern Kherson Oblast even while preparing to defend Kherson City. They have not launched into a full withdrawal from the city or the oblast as of this report.

The Russian position in upper Kherson Oblast is, nevertheless, likely untenable; and Ukrainian forces will likely capture upper Kherson Oblast by the end of 2022. A Russian milblogger stated that Russia’s surrender even of Kherson City is overdue, as an attempt to hold the city will likely result in defeat.[24] This milblogger argued that if Russia’s military command decides to wage the war in Ukraine to a successful end, then the surrender of Kherson City is “nothing terrible” in the long run. The Russian military likely has not prepared the information space for a military defeat in Kherson Oblast as of October 24. A Russian milblogger wrote that his Russian military contacts in Kherson Oblast do not want to nor plan to retreat.[25] Russian media has not discussed the possibility of a major military loss in Kherson Oblast besides promoting information operations about a Ukrainian false-flag attack against the Kakhova Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP) Dam.[26]

Ukrainian intelligence reported that Russian forces have not yet laid enough explosives to fully destroy the HPP Dam as of October 24.[27] Budanov observed that the Russians have prepared parts of the dam for limited explosions that would not unleash the full force of the reservoir’s waters. The Russians may seek to damage the top portion of the dam, including the road that runs across it, to prevent the Ukrainians from following after retreating Russian forces if and when the Russians abandon the western bank of the Dnipro River.

Key Takeaways

The Kremlin intensified its information operation to accuse Ukraine of preparing to conduct a false-flag attack using a dirty bomb for a second day in a row.
Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Chief Major General Kyrylo Budanov stated on October 24 that the impact of Russian terrorist strikes against critical Ukrainian infrastructure is waning.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of four Ukrainian oblasts on September 30 ignited a schism within the Kremlin, which will likely intensify as Ukraine liberates more territories according to Budanov.
Prigozhin continues to accrue power and is setting up a military structure parallel to the Russian Armed Forces, which may come to pose a threat to Putin’s rule – at least within the information space.
Russian forces are likely preparing to defend Kherson City and are not fully withdrawing from upper Kherson Oblast despite previous confirmed reports of some Russian elements withdrawing from upper Kherson Oblast.
The Ukrainian General Staff confirmed that Ukrainian forces captured Karmazynivka, Miasozharivka, and Nevske in Luhansk Oblast and Novosadove in Donetsk Oblast.
Kursk Oblast Govenor Roman Starovoit announced the completion of the construction of two reinforced defense lines on the border with Ukraine on October 23 — likely an act of security theater designed to target a domestic Russian audience since there is no danger whatsoever of a Ukrainian mechanized invasion of Russia.
Wagner Group financer Yevgeny Prigozhin acknowledged the slow pace of Wagner Group ground operations around Bakhmut as Russian forces continued to lose ground near the city.
Ukrainian forces continued targeting Russian force concentrations near the Zaporizhia Oblast front line on October 23–24 and struck a Russian force and equipment concentration in the vicinity of Enerhodar on October 22.
Hurried Russian mobilization efforts to fix personnel shortages on the front lines have cannibalized the Russian force-generation staff and diminished Russia’s ability to effectively train and deploy new personnel and to staff domestic industries.
Occupation administration officials have taken down communications systems in Kherson City in an attempt to limit civilian reporting on Russian positions to Ukrainian forces ahead of anticipated Ukrainian advances.

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

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

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

Eastern Ukraine: (Oskil River-Kreminna Line)

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations in the direction of Kreminna and Svatove on October 23 and 24. The Russian Ministry of Defense and multiple Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian attack in the direction of Chervonopopivka (6km northwest of Kreminna) on October 24.[28] A Russian milblogger reported that Ukrainian forces attempted an offensive in Bilohorivka, Luhansk Oblast on October 24.[29] One milblogger reported that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks in eastern Kharkiv Oblast near Pershotravneve, Orlyanka, and Berestove (all west of the Svatove) on October 24.[30] A Russian milblogger wrote that Russian forces stopped a similar Ukrainian breakthrough attempt in intensive battles near Kreminna on October 23.[31] A Russian source reported that Ukrainian forces conducted reconnaissance-in-force along the Raihorodka-Kovalivka line on October 23.[32]

Russian sources reported that Ukrainian forces continued striking objects in Luhansk Oblast with M142 HIMARS rocket artillery on October 23 and 24. Russian proxy officials in Luhansk Oblast reported that Ukrainian forces fired several HIMARS rounds at Novoaidar, Zorynsk, Rubizhne, Popasna, Starobilsk, and Svatove on October 23–24.[33]

The Ukrainian General Staff confirmed that Ukrainian forces liberated Karmazynivka, Miasozharivka, and Nevske in Luhansk Oblast and Novosadove in Donetsk Oblast on October 24.[34] Russian and Ukrainian sources reported that Ukrainian forces captured Nevske and its surrounding settlements on October 10.[35]

Kursk Oblast Governor Roman Starovoit announced the completion of the construction of two reinforced defense lines on the border with Ukraine on October 23 — likely an act of security theater designed to target a domestic Russian audience. Starovoit reported that the Russian Ministry of Defense and the regional Kursk Oblast border guard department built two defense lines and plan to complete a third line by November 5.[36] Creating such defensive lines does not serve a practical military purpose and, if confirmed, would be a waste of Russian resources. Ukrainian forces in Sumy Oblast do not pose and never have posed a military threat to Kursk Oblast.

The Ukrainian General Staff reported Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks in northern Kharkiv Oblast along the Kharkiv-Belgorod Oblast border near Zemlyanky and Chuhunivka on October 24.[37]

Southern Ukraine: (Kherson Oblast)

Russian forces are likely attempting to establish fallback positions closer to the Dnipro River and are reportedly setting conditions to defend Kherson City. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces are continuing to mine bridges and crossings on retreat routes in unspecified locations in Mykolaiv and Kherson Oblast.[38] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command added that Russian forces are maintaining their defensive positions amid the evacuation of civilian-occupation institutions and management staff.[39] Russian milbloggers also claimed that Russian forces are creating territorial defense units with Kherson City residents, but these units are unlikely to be an effective defensive force.[40] The Ukrainian General Staff added that Russian security forces released most inmates from Kherson City’s prison and that Russian forces may use these men for the defense of Kherson City.[41]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued to conduct counteroffensive operations in northwestern Kherson Oblast between October 23 and 24. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces suppressed Ukrainian counterattacks on Bruskinske, Pyatikhatky, and Tryfonivka in northern Kherson Oblast on October 24.[42] Proxy officials and Russian milbloggers also claimed that Russian forces captured a Ukrainian sabotage group during the attack.[43] Deputy Head of Kherson Oblast Occupation Administration Kirill Stremousov claimed that Russian forces have repelled a Ukrainian attack in the Andriivka area east of the Inhulets River.[44] A Russian source also claimed that Ukrainian forces attempted to gain a foothold north of Ishchenka, a settlement just east of Davydiv Brid.[45] Ukrainian military officials stated that Russian forces continued to shell and launch airstrikes in northwestern Kherson Oblast along the line of contact.[46]

Ukrainian forces continued their interdiction campaign in central and northern Kherson Oblast on October 23 and 24. Geolocated footage showed the aftermath of Ukrainian strikes on an electric machine-building plant in Nova Kakhovka — a strike Russian sources used to accuse Ukrainian forces of hitting the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant 4km northwest of the electric machine-building plant.[47] Other geolocated footage reportedly showed the aftermath of a Ukrainian strike on an area of Russian manpower concentration in Kairy, about 27km northeast of Nova Kakhovka.[48] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that a Ukrainian strike on a Russian manpower concentration point in Nova Kakhovka on an unspecified date wounded about 150 Russian servicemen and destroyed six unspecified pieces of military equipment.[49] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command added that Ukrainian forces destroyed four ammunition depots in Pervomaisk and Beryslav raions.[50]

Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

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

Wagner Group financer Yevgeny Prigozhin acknowledged the slow pace of Wagner Group ground operations around Bakhmut on October 23 as Russian forces continued to lose ground near the city. Prigozhin stated that Wagner forces advance only 100-200m per day and made the absurd claim that this slow pace is normal for modern warfare.[51] The pace of recent Ukrainian counteroffensives, particularly in Kharkiv Oblast in the days after Ukrainian forces recaptured Balakliya, contradicts Prigozhin’s excuses. Russian forces lost territory near Bakhmut on October 24. Geolocated footage posted on October 24 indicates that Ukrainian forces recaptured a concrete factory on the eastern outskirts of Bakhmut, 2.5km east of Bakhmut’s city center.[52]

Russian forces continued ground attacks in Donetsk Oblast on October 23 and 24. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian ground attacks on Bakhmut, northeast of Bakhmut near Spirne, Soledar, Bakhmutske, and south of Bakhmut near Klyshchiivka, Ivanhrad, Ozaryanivka, and Odradivka on October 23 and 24.[53] Russian sources claimed that Russian and Wagner Group forces made unspecified advances near Ivanhrad, Ozaryanivka, Odradrivka, and Optyne on October 23 and 24.[54] A Russian source reported ongoing fighting in the southeastern outskirts of Soledar on October 23.[55] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian ground attacks on Avdiivka, west of Avdiivka near Pervomaiske, southwest of Avdiivka near Marinka, and Nevelske on October 23 and 24. [56] Geolocated footage shows that Russian forces have made marginal advances southwest of Avdiivka towards Pisky and Mariinka.[57] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted an unsuccessful counterattack near Novomykhailivka in western Donetsk Oblast on October 23.[58] The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian ground attacks in western Donetsk Oblast towards Novomykhailivka, Nikolske, and Slavne on October 23 and Solodke and Volodymyrivka on October 24.[59]

A Lepestok anti-personnel mine lightly wounded prominent Russian war correspondent and WarGonzo frontman Semyon Pegov near the front line in Vodyane, Donetsk Oblast after Pegov met Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Head Denis Pushilin on October 23.[60] Pegov claimed on October 24 that he stepped on the mine while seeking shelter from a Ukrainian tank.[61] Footage shows DNR “Somalia” battalion personnel evacuating Pegov from the front line with a visible injury to his foot.[62]

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

Russian forces continued routine indirect fire west of Hulyaipole and in Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts on October 23 and 24. Ukrainian sources reported that Russian forces fired on Zaporizhzhia City, Mykolaiv City, Nikopol, and Marhanets on October 23 and 24 with S-300 missiles and MLRS.[63] Ukraine’s Operational Command South reported that Russian forces struck civilian infrastructure in the Inhulka and Shevchenko hromadas of Bashtanka Raion, Mykolaiv Oblast with S-300 missiles.[64]

Ukrainian forces continued targeting Russian force concentrations near the Zaporizhia Oblast front line. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on October 23 that that Ukrainian strikes against Russian force positions in unspecified areas of Zaporizhia Oblast destroyed five unspecified pieces of military equipment and weapons and injured approximately 100 personnel.[65] Ukrainian Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov stated on October 24 that the hospital in Russian-controlled Tokmak is filled with wounded Russian military personnel and stated the strikes killed an unspecified large number of Russian forces.[66]

Ukrainian forces struck a Russian force and equipment concentration in the vicinity of Enerhodar on October 22. The Ukrainian General Staff confirmed the strike on October 23, reporting that Ukrainian forces destroyed four D-30 howitzers and three trucks with ammunition, killed up to 50 Russian military personnel, and wounded up to 40 personnel.[67] Geolocated footage confirmed that the strikes hit the Alisa hotel roughly 6km southeast of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) nuclear reactor area.[68] Ukrainian Enerhodar Mayor Dmytro Orlov stated that Ukrainian forces struck the hotel on October 23 and that Russian occupiers and collaborators used the hotel.[69] Zaporizhia Oblast occupation official Vladimir Rogov claimed that Russian state nuclear energy agency Rosatom personnel use the hotel.[70] The Ukrainian General Staff stated on October 24 that occupation authorities are pressuring ZNPP personnel to sign contracts with Rosatom and are rotating out Russian personnel.[71]

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

The hurried mobilization and deployment of Russian men to fill personnel shortages on the front lines in Ukraine appears to have cannibalized the Russian force-generation system and created a further impediment to effective training and deployment efforts. The Ukrainian General Staff stated on October 24 that Russian commanders have deployed such a quantity of officers and non-commissioned officers that there is a shortage of instructor-teaching staff at training centers.[72] Rank-and-file soldiers reportedly fill in for professionals in many instances.[73] These trainer replacements likely lack the experience and background to provide a level of training sufficient to prepare inexperienced newly mobilized Russian soldiers. ISW previously assessed Russia’s net training capacity has likely decreased since February 24, since the Kremlin deployed training elements to participate in combat in Ukraine and these training elements reportedly took causalities.[74] Several Russian sources further report ineffectively short durations of training prior to the deployment of mobilized Russians.[75] One Russian source reported on October 23 that a soldier from Lipetsk trained for one day prior to deployment to the front lines in Kreminna.[76] Another Russian source reported on October 23 that a soldier from Yekaterinburg with no combat experience deployed without preparation less than two weeks after his mobilization.[77] Such recruits are extremely unlikely to contribute significantly to Russian combat power. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on October 23 that there are Russian friendly-fire instances due to poor training.[78] Any attempts to deploy more experienced recruits would require either greater training time or additional strain on the Russian domestic military personnel system.

The effort to fill personnel shortages on the front continues to cause personnel shortages in domestic Russian industries, as ISW has previously reported.[79] A Russian Telegram channel posted on October 21 that Moscow authorities may significantly decrease metro train service due to the mass mobilization of machinists.[80] Meduza reported on October 24 that the mobilization of bus drivers in Voronezh has exacerbated public transportation issues in the city. The Office of the Mayor of Voronezh claimed mobilization called up only 3% of the city’s bus drivers but conceded that the drivers’ absence resulted in the removal of some buses from their lines.[81]

Russian resistance to mobilization continues. A Russian source reported on October 22 that Russian authorities detained a woman in Krasnoyarsk Krai who picketed with a placard bearing “no to a country without men.”[82] A Russian channel reported on October 21 that authorities brought criminal cases against two Bashkiria residents for committing arson attacks on military registration and enlistment offices on September 26 and October 8.[83] An independent Russian news source reported on October 23 that Russian authorities returned many striking mobilized soldiers from Bryansk Oblast to the oblast and moved 30 to military units in Klintsky, Bryansk Oblast.[84] ISW reported on October 12 that over 100 conscripts from Bryansk Oblast refused to deploy to Ukraine from their base at the Belgorod Soloti training ground.[85] Several Russian and Ukrainian sources reported on October 22, 23, and 24 that mobilized Russian soldiers continue to flee their posts or refuse to fight following deployment to Ukraine.[86] The Russian military continues to mobilize Russian men in violation of Russian recruitment policies. An Orenburg man legally entitled to mobilization deferment due to being the parent of three children was mobilized anyway and died, reportedly at a training ground on October 16.[87]

Russian authorities maintain efforts to downplay continuing mobilization efforts in contradiction with Moscow Mayor Sobyanin’s public statements about the completion of “partial mobilization.” The Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine reported on October 24 that Russian authorities forbade Russian mass media to cover mobilization roundups.[88] A Russian Telegram channel reported on October 21 that the Avito advertising service blocked advertisements for legal assistance for mobilized soldiers.[89]

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

Russian and occupation administration officials continued preparations of occupied areas for anticipated Ukrainian offensives on October 23 and 24. The Ukraine Resistance Center and video footage posted to social media depicting Russian forces blocking telecommunications signals and dismantling relevant equipment in Kherson City in an effort to prevent residents from sharing information about Russian troops with Ukrainian forces.[90] Social media reports indicate that Kherson City lost internet connection on or prior to October 23.[91]

Occupation authorities also continued the removal of civilians from western Kherson Oblast. Kherson Occupation Administration Deputy Head Kirill Stremousov claimed on October 24 that civilians forced to leave Kherson City and other areas of Kherson Oblast west of the Dnipro are eligible to receive a one-time payment of 100,000 rubles (1,632 USD) and a certificate to support the purchase of housing elsewhere.[92] The Kherson Oblast occupation administration stated on October 24 that men who do not evacuate to the east bank of the Dnipro will have the “opportunity” to join Kherson City militias in preventing Ukrainian advances.[93] A Russian occupation official announced the closure of the entrances to Kherson City and western Kherson Oblast until further notice.[94] Enerhodar Mayor Dmitry Orlov reported on October 23 that Russian officials have begun notifying Ukrainian parents of unspecified regions whose children are on forced “vacations” in Krasnodar Krai to send clothing and other supplies for their children as the vacation extends indefinitely.[95]

Ukrainian resistance to Russian occupation continues in Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblast. Geolocated footage posted to social media on October 23 shows a car bomb exploding in Kherson City and injuring two civilians.[96] Several sources further reported that an explosive device in an infrastructure pole outside of a pre-trial detention center exploded in Kherson City and killed one civilian on October 23.[97] A DNR official labeled the attack a failed attempt by Ukrainian special services to assassinate the head of the pre-trial detention center.[98] Russian and Ukrainian news sources have reported that Ukrainian citizens in Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblast are refusing to accept rubles as currency, potentially contributing to the disruption of Russian evacuation procedures in western Kherson Oblast.[99] The Ukraine Resistance Center reported on October 24 that even Russian soldiers are exchanging their rubles for hryvnia, likely obligated to do so in order to make purchases.[100] Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov stated on October 23 that that actual exchange rate between rubles and hryvnia is 5:1 in Kherson Oblast.[101]

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

[3] https://telegra dot ph/Brifing-po-ugrozam-radiacionnoj-bezopasnosti-nachalnika-vojsk-radiacionnoj-himicheskoj-i-biologicheskoj-zashchity-VS-RF-general--10-24; https://t.me/mod_russia/21147; https://t.me/mod_russia/21148; https://t.me/mod_russia/21149; https://t.me/mod_russia/21150; https://t.me/mod_russia/21151; https://t.me/mod_russia/21152 ;https://t.me/sashakots/36807

[7] https://www dot pravda.com.ua/articles/2022/10/24/7373160/

[9] https://www dot pravda.com.ua/articles/2022/10/24/7373160/

[22] https://www dot pravda.com dot ua/articles/2022/10/24/7373160/

[27] Budanov stated that Russian forces partially mined the dam in April 2022 but those mines are not sufficient to destroy the dam. https://www dot pravda.com.ua/articles/2022/10/24/7373160/

[36] https://www.interfax dot ru/russia/869095; https://t.me/gubernator_46/1826

[43]

[59] https://t.me/mod_russia/21119; ttps://t.me/mod_russia/21144

[74] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/274980681481684; https://www.objectiv dot tv/objectively/2022/03/17/voennye-pokazali-video-likvidirovannoj-pod-harkovom-batalonno-takticheskoj-gruppy/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlJDitMo83Q; https://gur dot gov.ua/content/voennosluzhashchye-54-tsentra-podhotovky-razvedyvatelnykh-podrazdelenyi.html

[76] https://notes.citeam.org/mobilization-oct-22-23; https%20://zona.media/chronicle/242#50658

[81] https://meduza dot io/news/2022/10/24/v-voronezhe-stal-rezhe-hodit-obschestvennyy-transport-v-merii-zayavili-chto-eto-svyazano-v-chisle-prochego-s-mobilizatsiey

[86] . https://t.me/ostorozhno_novosti/12108; https://notes.citeam.org/mobiliz... https://gur.gov dot ua/content/zaekhaly-my-tut-p-zdets-nachalos-tam-slomaly-tam-ukraly-mahazyn-razghrabyly.html ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD1cjcWCvbg; https://t.me/luhanskaVTSA/...

[88] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/v-stolytsi-rf-prodovzhuietsia-chastkova-mobilizatsiia-mistsevym-zmi-zaboronyly-vysvitliuvaty-tsiu-temu.html

[90] https://sprotyv dot mod.gov.ua/2022/10/23/blokuyut-zvyazok-v-khersoni/; https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1584475781014908929

[99] https://sprotyv.mod.gov(dot)ua/2022/10/24/meshkanczi-tymchasovo-okupovanyh-terytorij-ignoruyut-rosijski-rubli/; https://t.me/readovkanews/45126; https://t.me/hueviyherson/27822; https://www.facebook.com/sergey.khlan/posts/pfbid02oGDem4vrDLUGzs52BK9WDDuBpeYJ8FF4F7sTDxLJsRnCh4Co6eFrztuyg7q5yoVdl

[100] https://sprotyv.mod.gov(dot)ua/2022/10/24/meshkanczi-tymchasovo-okupovanyh-terytorij-ignoruyut-rosijski-rubli/

understandingwar.org

2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (24.10.22) CDS comments on key events

CDS Daily brief (24.10.22) CDS comments on key events

Humanitarian aspect:

The capital of Kyiv and seven other Oblasts of Ukraine had temporary power outages introduced today. They are necessary to repair the equipment damaged due to Russian shelling, Ukrenergo's press service said. Blackouts were introduced in Kharkiv, Poltava, and Sumy Oblasts. At the same time, the widest restrictions were applied in Kyiv and Kyiv, Chernihiv, Cherkasy, and Zhytomyr Oblasts.

During the day of October 23, the Russian occupation forces shelled 5 regions of Ukraine, namely Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Mykolayiv, and Kherson. 6 people were killed and 5 injured during the past day in Donetsk Oblast. The other four oblasts reported no victims.

The unemployment rate in Ukraine will reach 30% by the end of 2022, First Vice Prime Minister

- Minister of Economy Yuliya Svyridenko said. According to her, one of the current challenges for the government is solving unemployment problems. She added that the government directs all its efforts to support small businesses.

During the occupation of Kyiv Oblast in March 2022, the Russian forces illegally deported at least 147 local residents to the territory of Belarus and the Russian Federation, Oleksiy Kuleba, head of the Kyiv Oblast Military Administration, said.

Occupied territories:

The Russian occupation forces only create the illusion that they are leaving Kherson, but in fact, they are bringing new military units there and preparing to fight for the occupied Oblast center, Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, said. He stated that the so-called evacuation of the civilian population is a part of the information campaign to show that they care about people. Russian media reported that the men not leaving Kherson are offered to join "territorial defense" voluntarily. It should be noted, however, that it's next to impossible to leave Kherson for the territory controlled by the Ukrainian government.

According to the legally elected Mayor of Melitopol Ivan Fedorov, the Russian occupying authorities did not return to their parents the children who were taken from captured Enerhodar to "summer camps" in Russia and occupied Crimea, leaving them there for an "indefinite period." Children from the temporarily occupied Enerhodar were already supposed to return from the summer camps, but the Russians contacted their parents and asked them to give the children winter clothing. In other words, the children are not returning yet.

After the de-occupation of Crimea, Ukrainian courts will punish officials who facilitated the occupation, violators of human rights, and those who committed war crimes, the permanent representative of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea Tamila Tasheva said. She stressed that most people living on the peninsula's territory are not involved in Russia's mass and war crimes; therefore, they have no reason to be afraid of Ukraine's return.

Operational situation

It is the 243rd day of the strategic air-ground offensive operation of the Russian Armed Forces against Ukraine (in the official terminology of the Russian Federation – "operation to defend Donbas"). The enemy tries to maintain control over the temporarily captured territories and improve its tactical position. It concentrates its efforts on disrupting the counteroffensive actions of the Ukrainian troops and, at the same time, does not give up attempts to conduct the offensive in the Bakhmut and Avdiivka directions.

The Russian Federation continues to train a part of the mobilized servicemen at combined military training grounds and training units for specialists in certain professions.

The Russian military shells the positions of the Ukrainian troops along the entire contact line and conducts aerial reconnaissance. In violation of the norms of international humanitarian law, the laws and customs of war, the Russian forces launched missile and air strikes on the infrastructure during the past day. In total, over the past day, the Russian forces have launched 2 missile and 28 air strikes and fired 65 MLRS rounds. Civilian infrastructure objects in Bakhmut, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, and Novotavrycheske of Zaporizhzhia Oblast were hit by Russian attacks. In addition, the Russian forces shelled the border villages of Hryhorivka, Krasne, Ohirtseve, Starytsya, Petro- Ivanivka, Fiholivka, Khatnye, Chervona Zorya, and Chuhunivka of Kharkiv Oblast with tanks, mortars, barrel and rocket artillery.

During October, mobilization resources are being inspected on the territory of the Republic of Belarus. Special groups have been formed at local executive authorities to check and verify information on potential conscripts. Information on the type of professional activity of the men of conscription age, their registered military specialties, and their marital status is being clarified. The threat of missile and air strikes against critical infrastructure of Ukraine from the territory of the Republic of Belarus persists, including the use of attack UAVs.

The aviation of the Ukrainian Defense Forces made 11 strikes over the past day. Impact on 11 enemy strongholds and weapons and military equipment concentration areas are confirmed. In addition, Ukrainian air defense units shot down 12 "Shahed-136" UAVs.

Over the past day, Ukraine's missile forces and artillery hit 4 enemy command and control posts, 5 areas of manpower, weapons and equipment concentration, 4 ammunition depots, an air defense complex, an area of artillery firing positions, and other important targets.

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

Kharkiv direction

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

• Deployed enemy BTGs: 26th, 153rd, and 197th tank regiments, 245th motorized rifle regiment of the 47th tank division, 6th and 239th tank regiments, 228th motorized rifle regiment of the 90th tank division, 1st motorized rifle regiment, 1st tank regiment of the 2nd motorized rifle

division, 25th and 138th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 6th Combined Arms Army, 27th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st Tank Army, 275th and 280th motorized rifle regiments, 11th tank regiment of the 18th motorized rifle division of the 11 Army Corps, 7th motorized rifle regiment of the 11th Army Corps, 80th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 14th Army Corps, 2nd and 45th separate SOF brigades of the Airborne Forces, 1st Army Corps of so-called DPR, PMCs.

Over the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian Defense Forces repelled Russian attacks in the areas around Zemlianka and Chuhunivka in Kharkiv Oblast, Soledar, Bakhmut, Andriivka, Klishchiivka, Novomykhailivka, Maryinka, Nevelske, Pervomaiske and Avdiivka in Donetsk Oblast.

Kramatorsk direction

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

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

The Russian military fired tanks, mortars, barrel and jet artillery at Berestove, Grekivka, Zarichne, Kovalivka, Makiivka, Yampolivka, Kamianka, and Bilohorivka.

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 Russian military shelled the areas around Bakhmutske, Bakhmut, Bilohorivka, Vesele, Zelenopillia, Klishchiivka, Kurdyumivka, New York, Ozaryanivka, Opytne, Soledar, Spirne, Yakovlivka, Avdiivka, Opytne, Vodyane, Nevelske, Krasnohorivka, Kostyantynivka, Pervomaiske, Novomykhailivka, Maryinka, Prechystivka, Novopil, Novosilka, and Zaliznychne.

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 Russian forces shelled the positions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces in the areas of Velyka Novosilka, Vremivka, Vuhledar, Hulyaipole, Zaliznychne, Malynivka, Mykilske, Olhivske, Pavlivka and Shevchenko with barrel and jet artillery.

The artillery fire directly hit the infrastructure of Nikopol and Illinka of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. The destruction of three enemy BM-21 "Grad" MLRS and the evacuation of about seventy wounded enemy servicemen in the area around Mykhailivka in Zaporizhzhya Oblast on October 22 was confirmed.

In the city of Enerhodar, the Russian occupying forces rotated personnel at the nuclear power plant. Facts of continued physical and moral pressure on the Zaporizhzhya NPP employees to force them to sign contracts with the Rosatom corporation are recorded. The Russian occupation authorities do not allow the power plant employees to move to the territory controlled by the Ukrainian authorities.

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 Russian military shelled the areas around villages near the contact line. In particular, Shevchenkove, Ternovi Pody, Myrne, Novohryhorivka, Kvitneve, Kyselivka, Blahodativka, Novopoltavka, Bilohirka, Davydiv Brid and Tryfonivka were shelled.

Azov-Black Sea Maritime Operational Area:

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

The Russian naval group at sea is comprised of 11 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 use at sea. Three amphibious ships of project 775 are among the ships at sea. According to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian MOD, the Russian Kalibr missiles stocks currently make up about 43% of the pre-war stocks of the Russian Federation.

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

Russian aviation continues to fly from the Crimean airfields of Belbek and Hvardiyske over the northwestern part of the Black Sea. Over the past day, 13 Su-27, Su-30, and Su-24 aircraft from Belbek and Saki airfields were involved.

Spans destroyed by an explosion and fire earlier this month are being dismantled on the Kerch Strait Bridge connecting the occupied Crimea with the territory of Russia. Heavy equipment working on the damaged area can be seen from the Kerch coast. According to the Russian- controlled administration of Kerch, work on the Kerch bridge continues around the clock. Russian Deputy Prime Minister, the "curator" of the occupied Crimea, Marat Husnullin, said earlier that trucks weighing up to 40 tons were allowed to pass through the bridge. However, the Russian authorities recommend that trucks go from Crimea to Russia through the occupied territories of Kherson Oblast.

"The Grain initiative." 6 ships left the ports of Greater Odesa with 227,000 tons of agricultural products for the countries of Africa, Asia, and Europe. Among them is the bulk carrier MBC DAISY, which has 14,000 tons of wheat for Algeria on board. Since the departure of the first ship with Ukrainian food, 8.8 million tons of agricultural products have been exported. A total of 386 ships with food for the countries of Asia, Europe, and Africa left Ukrainian ports.

Because Russia is delaying inspections of ships entering and leaving Ukrainian seaports, the queue in the Sea of Marmara has already exceeded 170 ships. Due to the obstacles created by Russia, Ukraine under-exported about 3 million tons of food. Currently, Ukrainian ports are forced to work at 25-30% of their capacity because Russia is blocking ship inspections.

Russian operational losses from 24.02 to 25.10

Personnel - almost 67,940 people (+470);

Tanks 2,590 (+6

Armored combat vehicles – 5,295 (+11);

Artillery systems – 1,673 (+6);

Multiple rocket launchers (MLRS) - 375 (+1); Anti-aircraft warfare systems - 189 (0); Vehicles and fuel tanks – 4,044 (+5); Aircraft - 270 (0);

Helicopters – 245 (0);

UAV operational and tactical level – 1,370 (+9); Intercepted cruise missiles - 350 (0);

Boats / ships - 16 (0).

Ukraine, general news

The latest poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology held on October 21-23 shows that 86% of Ukrainians believe it necessary to continue the armed resistance, even if Russia doesn't stop shelling Ukrainian cities. 71% fully agree, and 15% sooner agree than disagree. At the same time, only 10% of respondents answered that it is necessary to proceed to negotiations to stop the shelling as soon as possible, even if it is necessary to make concessions to the Russian Federation.

The Ukrainian Commission on Journalistic Ethics (CJEU) is withdrawing from the Alliance of Independent Press Councils of Europe, it said in a statement. The reason is that the Russian Public Panel on Press Complaints is still a member of the Alliance. In April of this year, when the full- scale war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine was already underway, the CJEU proposed to remove the Russian Public Panel from the Alliance. The ground was the demand was its inactivity in the face of many years of lies, manipulations, and inciting hatred in the Russian media regarding Ukraine. On October 21, in a general meeting, the members of the Alliance considered the complaint of the CJEU. Still, after a secret vote, it became clear that there were not enough signatures to exclude the Russian Public Panel.

65% of Ukrainians do not believe that Russia can use nuclear weapons against Ukraine (18% are confident that it won't), a survey of the sociological group "Rating" conducted on October 8-9 showed. On the other hand, 2% of respondents said that Russia would definitely launch a nuclear strike, and 24% believed it might go for it.

Former member of the Ukrainian parliament and President of Motor Sich JSK Bohuslayev, suspected of supplying helicopter engines to the Russian Federation at the time of the full-scale war, was arrested by the court for 2 months (until December 20).

International diplomatic aspect

After communicating with the Russian Minister of Defence, the US, UK, and France governments issued the Joint Statement, which "made clear that we all reject Russia's transparently false

allegations that Ukraine is preparing to use a dirty bomb on its own territory. The world would see through any attempt to use this allegation as a pretext for escalation. We further reject any pretext for escalation by Russia".

"Will you state categorically that Russia will not use nuclear weapons in Ukraine or engage in other provocative actions, such as exploding a dirty bomb, or blowing up a dam?" Steve Rosenberg, BBC Russia Editor, asked Russia's top spy. Sergei Naryshkin, head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, infamous for his trembling voice and confusing behavior during Russia's National Security meeting on the eve of the all-out invasion, replied as if he didn't get the question: "We are, of course, very concerned about Western rhetoric about the possibility of using nuclear weapons." Instead, he picked up narrative Russian propaganda machinery started to spin a day ago about Kyiv's plans to use "a dirty bomb."

The head of Russia's nuclear, chemical, and biological forces held a briefing to provide the "evidence" supporting the accusation of Kyiv of evil intentions. The most potent argument was that "Ukraine has a motive for using a "dirty bomb," as well as the scientific, technical and industrial potential to create it." "As a result of the dirty bomb provocation, Ukraine expects to intimidate the local population, increase the flow of refugees across Europe and expose the Russian Federation as a nuclear terrorist," pointed out a Russian general. He believes that Ukrainians want to "launch a powerful anti-Russian campaign in the world aimed at undermining confidence in Moscow." Given Russia's diplomatic and political isolation, he didn't specify what confidence in Moscow he was talking about. Russia enjoyed the company of Belarus, North Korea, Nicaragua, and Syria, who voted against the UN General Assembly on the "Territorial integrity of Ukraine: defending the principles of the Charter of the United Nations," while the rest of the world sided with Ukraine.

Moreover, he alleged Ukraine and the West were setting up media provocation as "they [the West] did" in Syria. He repeated Russian propaganda that the Syrian White Helmets "staged" a gas attack on themselves, showing as a proof photo of Syrians filming a movie based on actual events. The General showed a map of a possible contamination area, which turned out to be the same map Russian propaganda distributed in August. Then, Moscow accused Ukraine of a planned false flag operation at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, a Ukrainian power plant that Russians illegally seized and has been handling recklessly since.

In an unprecedented move, Russian state propaganda outlet RT (former Russia Today) has suspended and condemned one of its top presenters, Anton Krasovsky. Krasovsky smilingly suggested drowning Ukrainian children in a river or shoving them into huts and burn. Russian media has not gone too far from the Rwandan "Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines" that had been instigating genocide.

Olga Dukhnich, a Ukrainian social psychologist, nailed it: "Speech in Russia is divorced from reality and equally from values. It is not about what one should do but who one should pretend to be. It does not mean anything other than indicating the speaker's place in the hierarchy and the

speaker's loyalty to power. But the rules of loyalty are not always clear to the speaker. Because what Solovyov [one of the top propagandists] is allowed to say, Krasovsky is not allowed to say."

"We want the Ukrainian people to decide at a certain point, peace, the moment, and the terms of peace," the French President said at a peace conference in Rome. "To stay neutral would mean accepting the world order of the strongest, and I don't agree with this," outlined Emmanuel Macron. Romania's defense minister resigned for suggesting Ukraine's only chance for peace would be talking to Russia. His words contradict the official stance of the Romanian government and what became a whole European position.

Russia, relevant news

The Russian aluminum producer UC Rusal has decided to issue bonds worth 6 billion yuan: the term of the issue is 2.5 years. Calculations for the payment of coupons and repayment of the issue will be made in yuan; according to the issuer's decision and investors' requests, cashless payments in rubles at the official rate of the Bank of Russia are possible.

Russian publication "Mediazona" tried to estimate the number of mobilized servicemen in Russia based on the number of weddings that have increased sharply after the start of the mobilization (a person who is mobilized does not have to wait for 1 month for an official ceremony). The publication cites the example of Buryatia, where 83 weddings were registered between September 1 and 21, and after the announcement of mobilization, 662 were registered. Data were collected from 75 regions of the Russian Federation, which indicate that 31 thousand weddings of mobilized people were held. Mediazona's estimate shows that at least 431,000 people were mobilized in these regions by mid-October.

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. Hospitals, banks, schools, petrol pumps – what happens when the electricity is cut off?

Think about the possible effects of "Unrestricted Warfare." Can we survive without electricity? How quickly will society break down? Will our adversaries be able to exploit our weakness and te rpaidly rising insability? Can a society which is optimized for convenience rapidly shift to self sufficiency when most of its citizens have no idea how to be self-sufficient?

Hospitals, banks, schools, petrol pumps – what happens when the electricity is cut off?

thenationalnews.com · by Paul Sullivan

In ancient times, energy wars often involved scorched-earth efforts and siege warfare. Back then, the primary energy sources were grain, meat and other food for people and livestock. Sometimes wind energy was used to mill the grain. Solar power was used to ignite fires. Wood and charcoal were used for cooking, heating, or making weapons and other implements.

Energy systems were often internal to or near villages, towns and cities. Creating a siege for a small town or city was easy. An enemy surrounded the area long enough that stores were worn down, and those under siege gave up or died.

As trading networks became more distant, attacking armies realised that one of the most effective ways to reach their targets was through sea and land traffic over trading routes.

The remains of a cluster missile on a sunflower field in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine on October 2. EPA

Today, the world is seeing new forms of regional and globalised siege warfare. Huge amounts of wheat, sunflower oil and fertilisers used to be exported from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Many of these exports were closed off at the critical ports on the Black Sea until a deal between Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, the UN, and others allowed them through.

Grain and other food prices skyrocketed worldwide, and many significant importers of wheat, such as Egypt, got foreign exchange and debt shocks and had to turn to other grain sources. The food siege shock from the Russia-Ukraine war rocketed worldwide. It increased food insecurity in Indonesia, Lebanon, Mongolia, Syria and several sub-Saharan African countries. Grain such as corn is used to feed animals to be eaten. When corn prices go up, meat prices follow. The poor of the world use much more of their income for food than others. They were shocked and hurt the most.

The use of energy now is far more complex and globalised than during ancient times. It is one reason why electricity-generating stations in Ukraine are being targeted, as winter approaches.

Wheat loaded onto trucks during harvest near a village in the Omsk region, Russia, on September 8. Reuters

Electricity is used for lighting, heating, cooking and other household activities, as well as hospital and school use. Without electricity, many banking systems can seize up. Check clearing and payroll systems can stop. One cannot go to an ATM and get money with no electricity.

Without electricity, petrol pumps don’t work. Oil and gas pipelines need it for their pumping and pressure stations. Modern communications systems depend on it, and not just to charge cell phones. Emergency systems often do not work without it. Government services too break down without electricity. The police, fire and other first responders are disabled without it. The treatment and transport of water can become dysfunctional in its absence.

In case of even a limited nuclear war, much of the food and fertiliser that may have been exported from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus could end up being poisoned with radiation

Hospitals will lose lighting, sanitation, heating and more. Think of newborns in incubators and you get the picture. A country’s health could decline rapidly. It is more challenging to fix and cure those injured from war when there is no energy. Schools will have to shut down due to a lack of lighting. Education could stagnate.

What happens when oil and gas are cut off and refineries are damaged or taken over? That one seems a bit more obvious to most than the effects of siege electricity warfare. How does one get around without petrol and diesel? Also, how do the electricity stations work when the oil, gas and coal cannot get to them?

The Russian seizure of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has more ominous overtones. Moscow has, in recent weeks, threatened nuclear strikes in areas it has annexed in eastern Ukraine. But with shells falling close to the site in Zaporizhzhia, visiting experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency worry about a lack of political commitment by any power “to exercise restraint”.

Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is seen from 20 kilometres away, in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, on October 17. AP

A nuclear disaster, or a limited nuclear war – if it comes to that – could cost millions of lives. If this happens, the Mena region's economic, military and political fallout will be incalculable, particularly as much of the food and fertiliser that may have been exported from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus could end up being poisoned with radiation.

A significant amount of electricity in Ukraine comes from nuclear power. The rest is mostly from gas, oil and coal, with small but increasing amounts coming from renewables such as solar and wind.

Hydropower is also an essential source. When the Russians took over Crimea, they also took over a large number of offshore oil fields. With the recent annexations, they took away 15 per cent of the GDP of the country and significant coal and gas fields. Much of Ukraine’s coal, after all, is found in the east. They also took control of essential hydropower facilities as well as rivers sending water to other hydropower facilities.

By taking over agricultural machines, crops, livestock and more, and with the destruction of fields and logistical networks for food and other agricultural goods, Moscow has essentially co-opted energy resources, facilities and energy logistical networks.

Which is probably more devastating in the context of the war than the drones and missile strikes that have rained on Ukraine's cities over the past week.

These may be tactics to win battles, but the political and strategic fallout can last much longer. Winning a war also means winning strategically.

And this applies to all countries that use such tactics. It is worth asking if the past siege wars in the Mena region, including in Iraq, brought peace and security? The answer is a resounding no. The same will hold for this nightmare in Ukraine, particularly with nuclear threat thrown into the mix.

Published: October 25, 2022, 4:00 AM

thenationalnews.com · by Paul Sullivan

4. Rishi Sunak: A quick guide to the UK’s next prime minister

Rishi Sunak: A quick guide to the UK’s next prime minister

BBC · by Menu

Published
21 hours ago

About sharing

He's won after running for the second time this year

He lost to Liz Truss in September, but she resigned six weeks later. In the latest leadership contest, Mr Sunak racked up the support of his fellow MPs early, and fast. He crossed the 100 nominations he needed long before the deadline - including from MPs that had previously backed Truss or Boris Johnson.

He 'predicted' financial problems under Truss

He clashed with the former PM during the previous leadership race, claiming her plan to borrow money during an inflation crisis was a "fairytale" that would plunge the economy into chaos.

He is the son of immigrants

His parents came to the UK from east Africa and are both of Indian origin. Mr Sunak was born in Southampton in 1980, where his father was a GP and his mother ran a pharmacy. He is now set to be the first British Asian prime minister.

He's only been an MP for seven years

Mr Sunak was first elected as an MP in 2015 - for Richmond in north Yorkshire - but rose quickly, and was made finance minister - or chancellor - in February 2020 under Boris Johnson.

He was in charge of Covid support cash

As Mr Johnson's chancellor, Mr Sunak was behind the financial aid during lockdowns - including furlough payments and the "Eat Out to Help Out" scheme for restaurants.

He's thought to be one of the richest MPs

His wife is Akshata Murthy, the daughter of Indian billionaire Narayana Murthy. Mr Sunak himself has worked for investment bank Goldman Sachs and at two hedge funds. The Sunday Times Rich List estimates the couple's fortune to be worth about £730m.

He faced controversy over his wife's tax arrangements

Over the summer, it emerged Akshata Murthy paid no UK tax on big earnings abroad - which is legal. Mr Sunak defended his wife saying, "to smear my wife to get at me is awful" - but eventually she agreed to start paying extra taxes. We also found out he temporarily had a US green card, allowing him to live permanently in America while he was the UK's chancellor.

He campaigned for Brexit and deregulation

"Free ports" are one of his long-time favourite ideas: areas near ports or airports where goods can be imported and exported without paying taxes, to encourage trade.

He really wanted to be... a Jedi

In 2016, he told a group of schoolchildren that he originally wanted to be a Jedi Knight when he grew up. His favourite Star Wars film is The Empire Strikes Back.

U.S. charges Chinese nationals with schemes to steal info, punish critics and recruit spies

CBS News · by Melissa Quinn, Robert Legare

Washington — The Justice Department on Monday unsealed charges in three separate cases accusing more than a dozen defendants, most of them Chinese officials, of participating in schemes to repatriate critics of the Chinese government, obtain secret information about a U.S. investigation into a Chinese telecom firm and recruit spies to act as agents of the Chinese regime in the U.S.

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the charges alongside FBI Director Chris Wray and top Justice Department officials. Ten of the 13 individuals charged in the cases are Chinese officials, Wray said.

"As these cases demonstrate, the government of China sought to interfere with the rights and freedoms of individuals in the United States and to undermine our judicial system that protects those rights. They did not succeed," Garland said.

"Beijing may think our adherence to the rule of law is a weakness, but they're wrong," Wray said. "Our democratic and legal processes arm us with weapons that China does not have."

In one of the cases, two Chinese intelligence officers were accused of attempting to obstruct the criminal investigation into a Chinese telecommunications company, with charging documents saying the pair worked with a double agent who fed them information at the direction of the FBI. The two defendants, Guochun He and Zheng Wang, remain at large. Guochun He has also been charged with money laundering based on bribes made to the double agent.

The scheme, which allegedly began in 2019, involved He and Wang directing the U.S. law enforcement official to steal confidential information about the criminal case against the global telecommunications company, including files from the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn. In exchange, the double agent received bribes worth $61,000 in bitcoin.

The affidavit filed in support of the charges does not name the company, but references a press release issued by the Justice Department in February 2020. The department unveiled charges against Huawei, a China-based company that is one of the world's largest suppliers of network equipment used by phone and internet companies, that same month. The telecom giant and its subsidiaries were accused of orchestrating what the Justice Department said was a decades-long scheme to steal trade secrets from U.S. tech companies.

Attorney General Merrick Garland announces charges against Chinese nationals at the Justice Department on Oct. 24, 2022. JONATHAN ERNST / REUTERS

The charging documents unsealed Monday detail the relationship He and Wang allegedly cultivated with the unnamed law enforcement official beginning in February 2017, during which the agent, acting under the direction of the FBI, provided "purportedly sensitive information" about the Justice Department's case against the telecom company.

The two repeatedly sought information about the Chinese firm beginning in January 2019, when charges were first announced against the company, "in an effort to interfere with the prosecution and the ongoing investigation," federal prosecutors allege.

The indictment cites messages and phone calls between the two Chinese nationals and the U.S. government employee, including a Feb. 4, 2019, phone call during which Wang "expressed interest" in obtaining non-public information about the U.S. government's investigation into the company.

In August 2021, the double agent wrote to He asking for directions about what information he wanted gathered from American law enforcement. He, the Chinese intelligence officer, allegedly responded that he wanted information about the telecommunications company "and all about the trade talk, attitude, analysis, potential measures, targets, offers…are helpful," adding "specific cases of sanction aim to China enterprises are also good."

Then, in the fall of 2021, the double agent falsely told He and Wang that the official was meeting with the team of government lawyers preparing for the trial against Huawei. In one exchange, according to court documents, He asked the U.S. government employee whether federal prosecutors would "put forward a plea" and whether there was a witness list to share.

The indictment also cites an interaction between the double agent and the Chinese officers in October 2021, during which the agent sent a single page from a purported internal strategy memo from federal prosecutors that appeared to be classified as "SECRET." The memo discussed a plan to charge and arrest two Huawei employees living in China. One of the defendants, He, replied the document was "exactly what I am waiting for," according to court filings, and then paid the undercover operative roughly $41,000 in bitcoin for stealing the memorandum.

The agent also asked He and Wang for feedback about the document marked "SECRET," and He said that the Chinese telecommunications company "didn't give me specifically feedback now yet, but they are obviously interested in it, and my boss and they need further information." He also told the double agent that the company, believed to be Huawei, "obviously will be interested" in the undercover operative stealing another part of the strategy memo.

Communications between the double agent and He lasted until Oct. 20, 2022, during which time the individuals discussed a reward for the work.

In another case, prosecutors in New Jersey charged four individuals, including three Chinese intelligence officers, for unsuccessfully trying to recruit a former federal law enforcement officer and state homeland security official to act in the U.S. as an agent of China.

Charging documents unsealed Monday allege that from 2008 through at least 2018, Wang Lin and three co-defendants used an affiliation with a Chinese academic institution as cover to identify, target and direct individuals in the U.S. to act on China's behalf, including trying to pressure the individual to stop a planned protest against China in the U.S. and other allegedly "clandestine" activities."

The third case announced by Garland involves seven individuals allegedly working on behalf of the Chinese government who were charged with engaging in a multi-year campaign to force a U.S. resident to return to China. Two of the seven people charged were arrested last week, though the remaining five remain at large.

"The PRC has a history of targeting political dissidents and critics of the government who have sought relief and refuge in other countries," Garland said, referring to the People's Republic of China.

The attorney general said the campaign included harassment, threats, surveillance and intimidation aimed at coercing the individual to return to China. Those involved also allegedly harassed the victim's family members.

CBS News · by Melissa Quinn, Robert Legare

6. Russia’s Ukraine Disaster Exposes China’s Military Weakness

Excerpts:

Still, it would be a mistake to think that the Ukraine war will convince China never to attempt a takeover of Taiwan, or that it will prevent China from using force to pursue its territorial claims in the South China Sea, India, or anywhere else. Indeed, a year before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Chinese authorities issued a new accelerated timeline to the PLA to accomplish key modernization goals at a far more urgent pace. This was reiterated by Xi in his keynote speech at the 20th Party Congress in October 2022 when he called for a “quicker elevation of the PLA to world-class standards” and the need to achieve key unspecified military development goals by 2027 instead of an earlier timeline of 2035.

This suggests that PLA leaders are facing a worrying conundrum over the next few years. The lessons of the Russian war against Ukraine shows that China militarily needs much more time to strengthen and revamp its war-fighting establishment to address the glaring weaknesses and gaps highlighted on the Ukrainian battlefield. Politically though, Beijing is becoming increasingly anxious that its goal of reunification with Taiwan is at growing risk because deepening ties between Taiwan and the U.S. and its allies. The PLA may find itself being called into action well before it is combat-ready.

Russia’s Ukraine Disaster Exposes China’s Military Weakness

Beijing knows its own military has much in common with Moscow's ineffective force.

By Tai Ming Cheung, a professor at the School and director of the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC)

Foreign Policy · by Tai Ming Cheung · October 24, 2022

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has stirred fears that China could similarly move on Taiwan. By this logic, shared among foreign and security policy thinkers across the American mainstream, Putin’s floundering conquest of the eastern European nation on NATO’s doorstep shattered international norms and expanded the policy menu for the world’s other leading irredentist strongman, Xi Jinping.

But this line of argument has a fundamental flaw. In Beijing, the conflict in Europe serves not as a green-light for China’s military campaign against Taiwan, but as an invaluable opportunity for Chinese war planners to learn about their own battlefield vulnerabilities at someone else’s expense. Beijing is not in a state of reckless escalation or suicidal. To the contrary, Chinese military planners view their own military capabilities with marked caution, and eight months into the war in Ukraine Russia’s serial failures have amounted to a drawn-out approximation of what a rash or poorly prepared Chinese campaign in Taiwan might look like. From a strictly military perspective, the Ukraine crisis has very likely pushed the timeline for Chinese attack against Taiwan backwards, not forwards.

China’s decades-long military relationship with Russia helps to explain why Chinese leaders see the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait with so much circumspection. Russia and China have an extensive if volatile history of close military cooperation—the Chinese Communist Party based the organization of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on the Soviet model and has imported a significant amount of high-end weaponry from Moscow. When Chinese leaders see Russia’s tens of thousands of dead or wounded troops over the course of its sputtering campaign in Ukraine, its loss of several thousand fighting vehicles, its inability to achieve battlefield objectives that once seemed easily attainable, and the end of its military’s ability to inspire any real fear, they are glimpsing a potential catastrophe that has alarming implications for their own security. Chinese leaders fear that if they were to go to war against Taiwan and fail to take the island, this would lead to the downfall of the Communist Party.

Economically, China has long leaned westward, towards the rich countries of the democratic world whose demand for Chinese goods and resources fueled decades of high-paced economic growth and brought hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. But militarily, China has been under an arms embargo from those exact trading partners ever since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown—there is simply too much moral, political, and legal hazard for top weapons exporters like the United States, France, or the U.K. to enter into business with Beijing. Russia is the only global defense industrial power that is willing to work with Beijing.

In 1989, after the Tiananmen Square crackdown turned China into one of the world’s more isolated regimes, the Chinese government appealed to the collapsing Soviet Union for help with its defense sector, reestablishing a relationship that had ruptured with the Sino-Soviet split in 1960. In the first five years of the resumption of the Chinese-Russian arms trade, China mostly wanted completed weapons systems—full aircraft, ships, artillery pieces, and other materiel that could be put to immediate use because of rising tensions in the Taiwan Strait. Starting in the mid 1990s, the focus changed, as China realized it had a greater need for specific components and subsystems that could be slotted into the increasing number of platforms that the Chinese now built and designed themselves.

China also sought to produce Russian systems within its own defense factories. The rising superpower was an attractive destination for Russian weapons experts who wanted to escape their post-Soviet homeland’s myriad crises, and hundreds of the country’s defense scientists and engineers were recruited into China in the 1990s.

In 1995, Moscow and Beijing signed a license agreement for the assembly and eventual manufacturing of Russia’s advanced Su-27 fighter aircraft by the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation. Later, Russia accused China of using the agreement as an opportunity to swipe the design of the Su-27, which the Chinese relabelled as the J-11.

Credible evidence of widespread Chinese theft of Russian military technology was not enough though to scuttle the dependent defense relationship between the two countries—a sign of how durable the ties between their military-industrial complexes have turned out to be, as well as evidence of how few other options for high-level arms cooperation both believe they have.

The relationship thrived into the new millennium. China was the world’s leading arms importer between 2003 and 2007 with a global share of 12 percent of total global purchases, second-largest between 2009 and 2013 with a 4.8 percent share, and sixth-largest from 2014 to 2018 with a 4.2 percent share, according to estimates from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The overwhelming majority of these imports came from Russia. The PLA even had a specific front company, the China Poly Group Corporation, responsible for Russian arms procurement.

The SIPRI-reported decline of China’s share of the world arms import market over the first two decades of the 21st Century reflects the new-found ability of the Chinese defense industry to meet the PLA’s requirements. This revival of the military industrial complex has accelerated under Xi Jinping’s rule, who has prioritized indigenous defense innovation and self-sufficiency.

Still, the PLA generals in charge of the country’s armaments system see no contradiction between foreign defense cooperation and home-grown weapons development. In 2012, Lieutenant General Li Andong, the director of the PLA General Armament Department, wrote an article in Chinese Military Industry News urging a ramp-up in Chinese defense research while also instructing the country to “grasp opportunities and actively carry out international cooperation.” Russia was the prime focus of this foreign “cooperation,” as it continues to be. The ties only seemed to deepen: There would be “no forbidden areas” of collaboration between Russia and China according to Xi and Putin’s fateful declaration at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, a euphemism for, among other things, an expansion of existing and new joint development of military technology.

Over the past decade, the ties between the two countries have taken on a broader strategic character, as Chinese thinkers began to view superpower competition with the US as both an inevitability and the primary existential national security challenge. In 2011, analysts affiliated with the PLA Academy of Military Sciences argued that “the United States does not want to see big powers like China and Russia to grow stronger,” showing how Chinese official thinking linked the strategic horizons of both countries.

Moscow’s military failures in Ukraine raise many awkward issues from a Chinese perspective, especially if the two neighbors really are destined to be erstwhile allies in a long-term struggle with the United States. Russia’s air force has been conspicuously absent over Ukraine, and its high-end ground weaponry has been either unimpressive or completely irrelevant on the battlefield—the Russian military has gained what little ground it could only by obliterating entire cities using long-range firepower, a low-tech and high-brutality means of breaking an opponent who has gained a potentially decisive battlefield edge from the American weaponry it has received. The Ukrainians have been able to reverse much of Russia’s meager territorial gains during an ongoing series of counter-offenses that began in early September, with even experienced Russian combat units proving unable to hold out against a smaller western-equipped force.

The command-and-control structure of the PLA, with an over-dependence on inexperienced junior and mid-ranking officers because of a structural deficit of non-commissioned officers, is modeled on that of a Russian military whose leadership has proven stunningly poor in recent months. Perhaps most worryingly from a Chinese perspective, the army that is currently bogged down in Ukraine is far more battle-tested than China’s, with recent experience in Chechnya, Syria, Georgia, and a range of other contexts. In contrast, out of the top 100 officers in the Chinese military, only one of them was at junior officer level during the country’s disastrous 1979 invasion into Vietnam, which is the last major land war China has fought.

A Russian military that’s been fighting somewhere on earth for most of the past 30 years has shown a notable inability to carry out complex joint operations in Ukraine—the invasion began with Ukrainian National Guard units holding off a botched Russian special forces landing in Hostomel, an air installation outside of Kiev. China has been ramping up military drills in recent years, in part to create the impression that the PLA actually can coordinate an unified air, land, and sea command for an invasion of Taiwan. But most exercises would not qualify as joint (requiring interoperability among services) and would more likely be combined maneuvers (services operating next to each other with occasional coordination).

In Beijing, military planners are likely wondering if the PLA could perform any better than its Russian counterpart against what is in some respects an even harder target than Ukraine—a mountainous and heavily protected island wielding a larger and more advanced arsenal of American and European aircraft and air-defense systems, naval systems, and ground forces. China will have to project its troops over considerable distance into Taiwan by sea and by air, a formidable and complex undertaking the Russians have not faced in Ukraine. With Taiwan, the U.S., and much of the world are carefully watching China’s every military move in and around the vicinity of the Taiwan Strait, so the critical element of strategic surprise essential for a successful invasion will be hard to attain.

Russia’s Ukraine adventure should be inspiring caution among the PLA’s professional war-fighting cadre. They have seen their closest military ally gamble everything on an elective war of territorial conquest only to end up weaker, less feared, and more isolated than they were before the invasion.

Still, it would be a mistake to think that the Ukraine war will convince China never to attempt a takeover of Taiwan, or that it will prevent China from using force to pursue its territorial claims in the South China Sea, India, or anywhere else. Indeed, a year before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Chinese authorities issued a new accelerated timeline to the PLA to accomplish key modernization goals at a far more urgent pace. This was reiterated by Xi in his keynote speech at the 20th Party Congress in October 2022 when he called for a “quicker elevation of the PLA to world-class standards” and the need to achieve key unspecified military development goals by 2027 instead of an earlier timeline of 2035.

This suggests that PLA leaders are facing a worrying conundrum over the next few years. The lessons of the Russian war against Ukraine shows that China militarily needs much more time to strengthen and revamp its war-fighting establishment to address the glaring weaknesses and gaps highlighted on the Ukrainian battlefield. Politically though, Beijing is becoming increasingly anxious that its goal of reunification with Taiwan is at growing risk because deepening ties between Taiwan and the U.S. and its allies. The PLA may find itself being called into action well before it is combat-ready.

Foreign Policy · by Tai Ming Cheung · October 24, 2022

7. China Will Fight A Taiwan War On Its Own Terms

Excerpt:

Yet, a critique of Beijing’s Taiwan policy and ideology has become a necessary step. Reducing the future of Taiwan to great-power competition makes it harder to see that Beijing’s Taiwan policy is an ideologically fixated assertion of party power that is disconnected from reality and points China towards potential catastrophe. China is certainly not the first great power to set itself on such a path and there are no easy options for the international community in response, but a clear focus on Beijing’s agency must be the starting point.

China Will Fight A Taiwan War On Its Own Terms

19fortyfive.com · by Mark Harrison · October 23, 2022

Last Sunday, the head of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, addressed the party’s 20th national congress in Beijing. In dense jargon, Xi spoke for two hours on the party’s achievements and its challenges in building the ‘new China’. He said, ‘We have fully and faithfully applied the new development philosophy on all fronts, focused on promoting high-quality development, and worked to create a new pattern of development.’

Image: Creative Commons.

He described a China in crisis at the start of his term as chairman in 2012, with ‘misguided patterns of thinking such as money worship, hedonism, egocentricity and historical nihilism’ and in which ‘systems for safeguarding national security were inadequate’. And he talked about how the party has addressed these issues: ‘We have adopted the Five-Sphere Integrated Plan and the Four-Pronged Comprehensive Strategy as well as the general principle of pursuing progress while ensuring stability, and we have worked to both pursue development and safeguard security.’

Xi’s speech at the congress functioned as the most fundamental assertion of power in China’s party-state system. Its stupefying and arcane phraseology, or tifa (提法), all referencing earlier phraseology going back through the history of the party, constructs a closed, deterministic cosmology, informed by a version of Marxist theory, in which history moves ineluctably forward through the resolution of contradictions guided in theory and in practice by the party. Xi’s speech was a representation of the party-state’s system for the realisation of socialism and China’s ‘great rejuvenation’, and, in the party’s terms, advancing human civilisation to eclipse the liberal capitalist democratic world era represented by the United States.

On Taiwan, Xi accordingly built on established formulations that appeared in his 2019 speech, in the new Taiwan white paper, and earlier. He said, ‘Resolving the Taiwan question and realising China’s complete reunification is, for the party, a historic mission and an unshakable commitment.’ He said unification is a historical inevitability: ‘The wheels of history are rolling on toward China’s reunification and the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.’ He claimed the party is committed to peaceful unification under the ‘one country, two systems’ model, which provides an intermediate stage before Taiwan is fully absorbed into the party’s vision of China, but the party needs to struggle, potentially with military force, against the separatists and foreign forces that hold back those wheels of history.

PHILIPPINE SEA (Oct. 3, 2021) The U.S. Navy Nimitz-class aircraft carriers USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) and USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) transit the Philippine Sea during a photo exercise with multiple carrier strike groups, Oct. 3, 2021. The integrated at-sea operations brought together more than 15,000 Sailors across six nations, and demonstrates the U.S. Navy’s ability to work closely with its unmatched network of alliances and partnerships in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Michael B. Jarmiolowski) 211003-N-LI114-1208.

The ideological construction of Taiwan by the party justifies and requires escalating threats against Taiwan, but for a military invasion and occupation the party will need to claim that Taiwan’s de facto sovereignty is an existential threat to its revolutionary project. This is flagged by Xi’s use of the phrase ‘all necessary measures’ to achieve unification.

The truth is that Taiwan really is an existential threat to the party’s project. Taiwan has been on its own path of post-imperial development for more than a century, since the end of the Qing dynasty, through Japanese colonial rule, authoritarianism and to democracy. Taiwan’s sovereignty and modernisation have come to represent the party’s failure, both in theory and in practice. Taiwan has been very successful, too—this year its per capita GDP passed Japan’s for the first time and is far higher than that of any province in China.

Like other ideological constructs, such as GDP growth targets, the CCP’s version of Taiwan is not a policy response to Taiwan’s objective reality. As Xi showed in his speech, Beijing brooks no history other than the party’s history, and it has no practical roadmap to achieve unification that addresses objective questions like the future of the Taiwanese military or the security of Taiwan’s place at the centre of global technology supply chains. Instead, Xi offers a set of declarations about Taiwan’s place in the party’s future.

Image: Taiwanese Internet.

Xi’s speech has been subject to forensic analysis, down to counting phrases and terms. A particular focus is looking for a sign in Xi’s word usage or tone of a timeline or deadline for annexing Taiwan. But the practice of parsing the language of Xi’s speeches for such signs can concede to the party the power to control the geopolitical discourse about Taiwan. Rather than directly confronting the reality of annexation under whatever circumstances or timeline—that is, China launching a war against Taiwan and a military occupation that will permanently destabilise the international system—the practice of divining Xi’s intent places analysis within the party’s closed worldview.

Unlike some economic and financial analysis, foreign policy analysis struggles with the issue of how to develop a systematic critique of the Chinese party-state system, its policy choices and its ideology. Foreign policy analysis is by inclination wary of critiques of power, and when it does adopt a stance of critique towards power in the international system, it generally arrives at a view of China as a challenge to the dominance of the US. This can be a fruitful, sometimes righteous line of inquiry, but it attenuates the specifics of China’s system, occludes the people of Taiwan and can locate a critique of Beijing’s Taiwan policy within pro-US politics.

Image: Youth Daily News.

Yet, a critique of Beijing’s Taiwan policy and ideology has become a necessary step. Reducing the future of Taiwan to great-power competition makes it harder to see that Beijing’s Taiwan policy is an ideologically fixated assertion of party power that is disconnected from reality and points China towards potential catastrophe. China is certainly not the first great power to set itself on such a path and there are no easy options for the international community in response, but a clear focus on Beijing’s agency must be the starting point.

Dr. Mark Harrison is a Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Tasmania in the Politics and International Relations Program in the School of Social Sciences. He is also a Founding Fellow of the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University. This first appeared in ASPI’s the Strategist.

19fortyfive.com · by Mark Harrison · October 23, 2022

8. 3 lessons Taiwan should take from Ukraine’s air war

Excerpts:

Each of these key takeaways suggest Taiwan ought to invest in what’s popularly known as a porcupine defense, with an air force built around large numbers of cheap and mobile systems, trained on air denial concepts and tactics, and intertwined in robust international and public-private partnerships to meet potential wartime demands.

While Taipei recently announced a major increase in defense spending for next year, its total defense budget of about $19.4 billion is still only equivalent to about 2.4 percent of its projected gross domestic product. Taiwan’s investment in its own military’s future ought to match the urgency of the issue—fielding next-generation drones and similarly flexible and dispersible systems can deny China a quick win at a reasonable dollar cost.

A readied Taiwanese air force that can deny China a quick victory is the best guarantor of Taiwanese sovereignty, for it ought to cause Beijing to think twice about attempting an invasion in the first place.

3 lessons Taiwan should take from Ukraine’s air war - Breaking Defense

Ukraine’s success against Russia in the skies shows how tactics have changed, in ways Taipei could replicate, write analysts Kelly Grieco and Julia Siegel.

breakingdefense.com · by Lee Ferran · October 24, 2022

A serviceman launches an unmanned reconnaissance aircraft at the position of the Ukrainian forces near eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk,(Petro Zadorozhnyy/AFP via Getty Images)

As cheap, unmanned drones proliferate on both sides of the Ukraine conflict, new air superiority tactics are emerging almost daily. In the op-ed below, the Stimson Center’s Kelly Grieco and the Atlantic Council’s Julia Siegel describe how the new era of aerial warfare could favor a savvy Taiwan, should China decide to invade.

Seven months after Russia’s full-scale invasion, the skies over Ukraine remain contested. Few military pundits saw it coming, predicting the Ukrainians stood little chance of defending their airspace. Moscow, too, believed its larger and more technologically sophisticated aerospace forces would quickly seize air superiority and expected to secure a decisive battlefield victory.

But in war, nothing is easy or inevitable. Rather than experience a quick defeat, Kyiv has stayed in the fight and landed a few hard blows to Moscow’s invading forces. Ukraine’s defense ought to inspire Taiwan to follow a similar path, should it face down a similar threat from Beijing.

The conventional wisdom in Washington now holds that if China chooses to invade Taiwan, it would likely “go big and move fast” in an attempt to conquer the island before the United States and its allies arrive. The underlying assumption is that Taiwan’s military would be unable to halt a Chinese incursion without the United States intervening directly and quickly.

However, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is neither imminent nor inevitable. Indeed, the majority of Chinese experts assess that Xi Jinping believes peaceful unification is still possible. Moreover, Taiwan has the defender’s advantage—it does not need to win outright, it merely needs to deny China a quick victory.

And the key to denying a Chinese victory lays in the air domain: Without the cover of air superiority, China would be unlikely to succeed in the event of an amphibious invasion or enforced blockade of the island.

Ukraine offers many lessons for Taiwan in a potential conflict scenario, and Taipei ought to carefully study Kyiv’s air and space playbook in particular and be cautious in taking the right lessons forward. China and Russia pose inherently different threats, given their distinct geographies, military capabilities, doctrines and strategic interests.

While Ukraine, the second-largest country in Europe, shares a land border with several US allies, Taiwan is not only about 1/17th the size of Ukraine but it is also an island nation. Taipei will need to adapt its approach to reflect its lack of strategic depth and natural barriers to easy resupply, as well as China’s large arsenal of precision long-range strike weapons.

Still, three core takeaways are particularly relevant to Taiwan’s defense.

1. Small air forces can now access and exploit the air and space domains to battlefield advantage.

The democratization of air, space and intelligence capabilities — a result of low-cost and accessible technologies — has lowered barriers of entry into the air and space domains and removed traditional great-power military advantage. With allied help, Ukraine has leveraged commercial satellites in combat despite not owning national space capabilities, using them to successfully strike enemy forces and send encrypted messages back and forth between troops.

Similarly, Ukraine has exploited relatively cheap but still “good enough” combat drones—including the Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2—to locate and destroy expensive Russian military assets. Thousands of commercial drones, some modified to drop munitions, have further hampered Russian ground movements. By employing a mix of commercial and dual-use technologies together with more advanced military systems, Ukraine has managed to close the capability gap.

Taipei ought to take notice and seek to build a largely roboticized air force with precision-strike capabilities for itself. Taiwan has completed long-range flight tests of its domestically-built Ten Yung 2, a combat drone similar to the US MQ-1 Predator and recently announced the purchase of four MA-9B Sea Guardian, the maritime variant of the US MQ-9A Reaper. These nascent efforts are a step in the right direction, but they ought to be rapidly expanded and scaled up to gain an asymmetric advantage. Though Taiwan has traditionally prioritized smaller numbers of exquisite platforms, like F-16 fighters, it should prioritize cheaper, asymmetric capabilities to combat China.

2. The return of mass to air and space operations favors the defender because it is easier to deny air and space superiority than it is to gain it outright.

After many decades of the United States and Western air forces substituting stealth aircraft, space-based information advantages and precision weapons for superior numbers, the relationship between quantity and quality is now moving in the opposite direction. As the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin reputedly quipped, “quantity has a quality all its own,” and that’s becoming true in the modern aerial battlefield.

The advantage now lies with cheap mass. Operating a mix of Cold War era, Soviet-made mobile surface-to-air missile systems, anti-aircraft artillery and thousands of shoulder-fired man-portable air defense systems, including American-supplied Stingers, Ukraine has managed to deny air superiority to the Russians. Employing so-called shoot-and-scoot tactics, Ukrainian defenders have made it difficult for Russians to find and destroy them.

This combination of mobility and layered mass, from high to low altitudes, has allowed Ukraine to survive Russia’s air and missile strikes and keep the airspace contested. Without air superiority, Russia’s ground offensive cannot succeed — after all, an attacker must concentrate and move to achieve its goals, making it extremely vulnerable to air attacks.

Taking a page from Ukraine’s playbook, Taiwan ought to develop concepts and capabilities for employing sufficiently large numbers of smaller, cheaper, uncrewed systems in a distributed way to increase both the costs and uncertainty associated with Chinese military aggression.

If China chose to invade Taiwan, Chinese aircraft and missiles would attempt to target and overwhelm military command and control systems at the outset, so as to leave the island in a blind fight. If Taiwan employs a distributed defense, however, enough Taiwanese systems would likely survive the initial onslaught and then be able to challenge Chinese forces attempting to cross the Taiwan Strait. This force posture would thus give Taiwan a more credible deterrent by denial.

3. Robust international and cross-sector partnerships can be a “force multiplier” in countering an adversary’s relative military advantages in air and space capabilities.

Ukraine has exploited a strong web of commercial partnerships and international coalition support to military advantage. Russian cyber efforts have had limited success, at least in part because of the breadth and depth of Kyiv’s network of supporters. For example, after observing a Russian military intelligence operation in progress, Microsoft worked with Ukrainian cyber defenders and US government partners to stop the attack.

In the space domain, Ukraine has shown that access to satellite service matters more than ownership of the satellite itself. Public-private partnerships will likely become even more central to warfighting as scalable dual-use technologies increasingly shape the battlefield.

Taiwan is well-placed to exploit this trend, given its strong information and telecommunications, semiconductor and advanced manufacturing industries. These robust commercial and international networks will be critical for Taiwan’s ability to generate mass and sustain capacity should it find itself in a prolonged war of attrition with China. While Taiwan’s island geography makes resupply more challenging, partnership networks can be leveraged for stockpiling critical supplies and putting redundant infrastructure in place during peacetime.

Each of these key takeaways suggest Taiwan ought to invest in what’s popularly known as a porcupine defense, with an air force built around large numbers of cheap and mobile systems, trained on air denial concepts and tactics, and intertwined in robust international and public-private partnerships to meet potential wartime demands.

While Taipei recently announced a major increase in defense spending for next year, its total defense budget of about $19.4 billion is still only equivalent to about 2.4 percent of its projected gross domestic product. Taiwan’s investment in its own military’s future ought to match the urgency of the issue—fielding next-generation drones and similarly flexible and dispersible systems can deny China a quick win at a reasonable dollar cost.

A readied Taiwanese air force that can deny China a quick victory is the best guarantor of Taiwanese sovereignty, for it ought to cause Beijing to think twice about attempting an invasion in the first place.

Kelly A. Grieco is a senior fellow with the Stimson Center’s Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program. Julia Siegel is an assistant director in the Forward Defense practice of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. This article is based on Grieco and Siegel’s overview article for the Atlantic Council’s “Airpower After Ukraine” series, which advances key themes of the Ukraine air war and implications for future air and space forces.

breakingdefense.com · by Lee Ferran · October 24, 2022

9. Russia's dirty bomb threat presents new test for US spy agencies

Excerpts:

Kirby echoed Stoltenberg’s concern about Russia’s record of making allegations that anticipate “things that they were planning to do,” but he cautioned against assuming that the dirty bomb allegations will prove to be the latest example of such a tactic.

“We continue to see nothing in the way of preparations by the Russian side for the use of nuclear weapons and nothing with respect to the potential use for a dirty bomb,” Kirby said. “We are watching this as best we can. We are monitoring this as closely as we can.”

Russia's dirty bomb threat presents new test for US spy agencies

by Joel Gehrke, Foreign Affairs Reporter | October 24, 2022 06:42 PM

Washington Examiner · October 24, 2022

Western intelligence agencies could struggle to detect Russia's potential preparations for a nuclear “dirty bomb attack" in Ukraine, President Joe Biden’s team has acknowledged.

“We'll watch this as best we can,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters. “If an actor wanted to do a dirty bomb attack, you know, a lot of our ability to detect [it] would be determined by a range of factors. ... There's an awful lot that goes into how you can best monitor something like that.”

Russian military officials stoked global anxiety about a potential nuclear attack in Ukraine by accusing Ukrainian officials of plotting to orchestrate a dirty bomb incident. The “absurd” allegation, as a Western official characterize it, ignited a round of speculation about Moscow’s plans. The threat presents a new test for the U.S. and British intelligence agencies that predicted the Russian invasion in February and now are being relied upon to sound the alarm if Russian President Vladimir Putin decides to use nuclear weapons.

PENTAGON SAYS NO UKRAINIAN DIRTY BOMB OR INDICATION OF LOOMING RUSSIAN NUCLEAR WEAPON USE

“We have to believe U.S. intel; they have been right about Russian moves,” a senior European official told the Washington Examiner. “[U.S. officials] were absolutely well informed also about the beginning of the war. The U.S. and the [United Kingdom] were the only ones who knew exactly when Russians are ready, when they would start to move their diplomatic representations away in time. All the rest, they didn’t move [their ambassadors] because they were self-assured. They just didn’t know their assessment was wrong.”

Russian officials could obscure their intentions by shortening "the length of time that the perpetrator was going to prepare for, or the communications that would [be] involved” in planning it, Kirby said.

“All I can assure you is that we are taking it seriously and we are monitoring as best we can,” he added.

The question arises as Russia is set to conduct its annual strategic nuclear exercises.

“Normally, these exercises are used for testing out their procedures and equipment up to the level of the [intercontinental ballistic] missiles,” a second senior European official told the Washington Examiner.

Those missiles, known as ICBMs, are designed to carry nuclear warheads for the longest-range strikes — the sort that raised the specter of mutually assured destruction during the Cold War. A dirty bomb uses "conventional explosives to expand and scatter and to release agents which can cause more widespread and long-standing injuries beyond just the explosive blasts,” as Kirby defined it. The clear differences between those kinds of operations don’t eliminate the opportunity for Russia to take advantage of the drills to make implicit threats.

“They will use this exercise for messaging in the context of this war in Ukraine,” the second senior European official said. “Of course, for the general public, it's very difficult to understand the difference of strategic [nuclear weapons] versus tactical or even just dirty nuclear material. Most likely ... the Western intelligence [agencies] can distinguish the activities that are related to the strategic forces exercise and any potential something awful happening in Ukraine.”

Western leaders have acknowledged their concerns that Moscow is setting the stage to conduct such an attack and then blame Kyiv.

“What makes us concerned is that this is part of a pattern we have seen before from Russia — in Syria but also at the start of the war or just before the war started in February,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told Politico. “And that is that Russia is accusing others [of] doing what they intend to do themselves.”

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu aired the allegation in a series of phone calls with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and other Western officials, and the claim has been amplified by Russian military officials and diplomats.

“The purpose of the provocation is to accuse Russia of using weapons of mass destruction in the Ukrainian theater of operations, thus launching a major anti-Russian campaign around the world aimed at undermining trust towards Moscow,” Russian Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov said Monday, per state media.

The internal logic of that accusation is analogous to the charges that the Kremlin leveled in February, prior to the campaign to overthrow Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government. In February, Kremlin officials denied any intention of launching a full-scale war in Ukraine even as they positioned Russian forces to launch the attack, and then Putin claimed that the assault was necessary to protect Russian-speaking Ukrainians from the central government. In March, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed to have found bioweapon laboratories in eastern Ukraine.

“It studied possibilities of spreading particularly dangerous infections through migratory birds,” Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzia told the U.N. Security Council on March 11. “Besides, there were experiments to study spreading of dangerous infectious diseases by ectoparasites — fleas and lice.”

Kirby echoed Stoltenberg’s concern about Russia’s record of making allegations that anticipate “things that they were planning to do,” but he cautioned against assuming that the dirty bomb allegations will prove to be the latest example of such a tactic.

“We continue to see nothing in the way of preparations by the Russian side for the use of nuclear weapons and nothing with respect to the potential use for a dirty bomb,” Kirby said. “We are watching this as best we can. We are monitoring this as closely as we can.”

Washington Examiner · October 24, 2022

10. Here's what a 'dirty bomb' is and how it fits into Russia's invasion of Ukraine

Excerpts:

“In this dirty bomb claim, the Russians seem to be struggling to control the narrative about what is happening inside of Ukraine,” Posard told Task & Purpose. “In all fairness to Russia, they really don’t have a whole lot of material to work with given how poorly their military has performed so far. Nonetheless, I would have expected a bit more sophistication in how Russia rolls out their falsehoods.”

But given how often Russian government officials and propagandists have claimed that Ukraine or its allies in the West would launch a radiological or nuclear attack, it is likely that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his advisers are preparing the Russian population for an eventual nuclear attack on Ukraine, said Olga Lautman, an expert on Russia and Ukraine at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, DC.

The Ukrainians are taking the threat of such an attack seriously and government officials have begun distributing iodine tablets to Ukrainian civilians over the last month, Lautman said.

“Putin has nothing to lose,” Lautman told Task & Purpose.”If it were up to him solely, he would have done this a long time ago because he’s in it at all costs. He’s not interested in any negotiations. Failure is not an option for Putin – he’s too old to fail at this stage. If he goes, everybody goes around him.”

Here's what a 'dirty bomb' is and how it fits into Russia's invasion of Ukraine

Russia is accusing Ukraine of planning to detonate a “dirty bomb.” Here's what that means and why it matters.

BY JEFF SCHOGOL | PUBLISHED OCT 24, 2022 1:41 PM

taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol · October 24, 2022

Russia is signaling that it could drastically escalate its invasion of Ukraine by accusing the Ukrainians of planning to use a “dirty bomb” to contaminate swaths of territory with radiation, according to Russian state media.

It is unclear why Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu called his Western counterparts over the weekend to accuse Ukraine of planning a dirty bomb attack, but it is apparent that not a single U.S. government official believes Shoigu’s claims.

In a phone call with Shoigu on Sunday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “rejected any pretext for Russian escalation,” according to a brief description of the conversation provided by the Pentagon’s top spokesman Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder.

So far, the Defense Department has not seen any indications that Russia is planning to use chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons against Ukraine, a senior military official told reporters on Monday.

Subscribe to Task & Purpose Today. Get the latest military news, entertainment, and gear in your inbox daily.

The term “dirty bomb” is used to describe a weapon that uses conventional explosives to disperse radioactive material over a broad area, said Alex Wellerstein an expert on the history of nuclear weapons with Stevens Institute of Technology, a private research university in New Jersey. The lethality of such weapons depends on the type of radioactive material and how far it is spread.

“For people to get immediately sick or die from the exposure would require the substance being spread to have a pretty short half-life” — defined as the time a substance takes to lose half of its radioactivity — “which would also make it quite difficult to handle and use and would reduce the contamination potential (because it would decay much faster),” Wellerstein said. “So most dirty bomb scenarios imagined are for substances with somewhat longer half-lives that would be good contaminators, in that they would pose a chronic health risk, cause fear, and require a lot of resources spent to decontaminate.”

That means the effects of a dirty bomb would more likely include an uptick in cancer rates over time rather than killing or sickening a lot of people quickly, he said.

“The attraction of a dirty bomb, presumably, is that it would create fear, perhaps fear beyond what is strictly rational given the actual hazards,” Wellerstein said.

An explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) technician conducts radiological search procedures at a training bunker onboard Naval Base Point Loma as part of training administered through EOD Training and Evaluation Unit One. (Lt. Kara Handley/U.S. Navy)

Indeed, dirty bombs are not necessarily an effective way to spread radiation. One problem with the concept of such a weapon is that the wider it spreads radioactive material, the thinner the contamination will be, said former Army Capt. Dan Kaszeta, who served as an advisor to the White House on chemical, biological, and radiological weapons from 1996 to 2002.

“You end up with a spread of radioactivity that is above background, but often only of a regulatory or perhaps an environmental health concern, not an acute ‘this level of radiation is going to cause sickness’ problem,” Kaszeta told Task & Purpose. “All lethality from a ‘dirty bomb’ will come from the conventional explosion not the radiation.”

While dirty bombs may not be as lethal as they sound, U.S. government officials became extremely concerned about terrorists launching exploding radiological weapons inside the United States following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Jose Padilla, an American arrested in 2002 and later convicted of supporting Al Qaeda, was initially accused of planning to carry out a dirty bomb attack, but those charges were ultimately dropped.

Also in 2002, then-Delaware Sen. Joe Biden said that the psychological and economic consequences of a dirty bomb attack on Washington, D.C., would be far more serious than the damage and casualties caused by the bomb itself.

“If a dirty bomb were to be detonated in the center of Washington, or if a highly radioactive can of powder were emptied from a rooftop, it could kill dozens,” Biden said during a March 6, 2002 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. “It would not be the catastrophic event that many think, but it would have a catastrophic psychological impact on the nation and, even worse, it would contaminate a city that would probably result in evacuations and great difficulty in convincing the American public that it could be reinhabited, even though the increased cause or risk of cancer and/or other negative health effects would be relatively minimal.”

FILE – This photo taken from video provided by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Saturday, Feb. 19, 2022, shows a Russian Iskander-K missile launched during a military exercise at a training ground in Russia. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service /Associated Press)

As things stand currently, it does not appear that Shoigu’s claims about Ukraine’s alleged dirty bomb plot suggest that Russia is planning to carry out a false flag operation by detonating a dirty bomb and blaming it on the Ukrainians, said Mason Clark, a senior analyst and Russa team lead at the Institute for the Study of War think tank in Washington, D.C.

“We think this is mostly intended to slow or suspend western military aid and possibly weaken NATO through scaremongering,” Clark told Task & Purpose. “Our thinking behind this is that Shoigu’s claims yesterday further a longstanding Russian information campaign. The Kremlin has repeatedly claimed that various western states will assist Ukraine in some form of false flag weapons of mass destruction attack – either chemical or dirty bomb or others – since the earliest days of the war. We’ve seen the Russian ministry of defense previously claim back in April that the U.S. was preparing provocations using a dirty bomb and other sorts of weapons. So, this explicit statement is not necessarily new in that sense.”

Clark also said it is unlikely that Shoigu’s accusations could be the pretext for a Russian nuclear attack on Ukraine because Russia’s military doctrine already allows for its forces to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and it does not appear that the Ukrainians are on the verge of crossing a Russian “red line” that would prompt a nuclear attack.

Russia’s most recent claims about Ukraine plotting to detonate a dirty bomb also show how ineffective Russian information operations have been, said Marek Posard, an expert on disinformation with the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization.

“In this dirty bomb claim, the Russians seem to be struggling to control the narrative about what is happening inside of Ukraine,” Posard told Task & Purpose. “In all fairness to Russia, they really don’t have a whole lot of material to work with given how poorly their military has performed so far. Nonetheless, I would have expected a bit more sophistication in how Russia rolls out their falsehoods.”

But given how often Russian government officials and propagandists have claimed that Ukraine or its allies in the West would launch a radiological or nuclear attack, it is likely that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his advisers are preparing the Russian population for an eventual nuclear attack on Ukraine, said Olga Lautman, an expert on Russia and Ukraine at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, DC.

The Ukrainians are taking the threat of such an attack seriously and government officials have begun distributing iodine tablets to Ukrainian civilians over the last month, Lautman said.

“Putin has nothing to lose,” Lautman told Task & Purpose.”If it were up to him solely, he would have done this a long time ago because he’s in it at all costs. He’s not interested in any negotiations. Failure is not an option for Putin – he’s too old to fail at this stage. If he goes, everybody goes around him.”

The latest on Task & Purpose

Listen to Air Force fighter pilots intercept a ‘renegade’ plane intruding on Biden’s airspace
An Army M1 Abrams tank dubbed ‘A Horse With No Name’ is riding through Poland
Army Reserve major releases amateur porn video as part of political campaign
Has the Army finally found a replacement for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle?
Sgt. Maj. of the Army to leaders: Stop using behavioral health as a universal band-aid for problems

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

taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol · October 24, 2022

11. Local Opinion: Changes to military are too radical

Local Opinion: Changes to military are too radical

tucson.com · by Robert Lenhard Special to the Arizona Daily Star

alert editor's pick

TUCSON OPINION

Robert Lenhard Special to the Arizona Daily Star

The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

I recently conversed with my son and grandson about my grandson’s college plans.

My son graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University 25 years ago. At graduation many of his classmates were commissioned in the Air Force or the Navy as second lieutenants. They have gone on to have successful careers as pilots in our military.

I served as a commissioned officer in the Army during the Vietnam War. Because of that fact and because of the many ERAU graduates with whom my son remains in contact, I thought my grandson might be a candidate for an appointment to the Air Force Academy or the Naval Academy. He is a 4.0 student who is an athlete and works part-time after school when possible. I have no doubt one of our elected senators or Congress persons would consider him to be an acceptable candidate for an appointment.

Then, after discussing the above points, my son told me that he has discussed this matter with some of his former classmates. Some of them have already retired and others are considering doing so very soon. When I queried him about these discussions, every one of them said regrettably that the military has changed so radically. They would not recommend military service until circumstances changed radically for the better.

Problems began to arise under Barack Obama and became more significant under President Joe Biden. Every one of them spoke very favorably about Donald Trump. The problems seem to involve being required to sit through mandatory indoctrination programs, often with roots in the Marxist tenets of critical race theory.

Frequently, senior leaders delegate their command responsibilities to private Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion instructors. Last year, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told the House Armed Services Committee that CRT was not taught. Even though he repeated that CRT was not being taught in the military, there are numerous military personnel who have disputed his denials. Just last year a senior officer in the U. S. Space Force, Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier, was removed from his command position for publicly describing the role of CRT used to indoctrinate service members at his post.

Additionally, without exception everyone expressed a great deal of consternation about how our military forces were withdrawn from Afghanistan last year. Everyone felt that the withdrawal of our forces and some civilian personnel was an utter debacle. They were upset that Biden expressed such satisfaction that the withdrawal was completed so well.

These kinds of issues, as well as numerous others, have caused my grandson to decide that he will not pursue a military education. While I was disappointed, I must confess that I would not want to be subjected to these kinds of problems promulgated by our current Commander-in-Chief.

Robert Lenhard is a grandfather who served in the U. S. Army during the Vietnam War. His grandson could be a candidate for an appointment to a military academy. He lives in Tucson.

12. An Officer Dissents On 'Woke Military' - The American Conservative

Whether you believe in the "woke military" or not (I do not), I commend conservative Rod Dreher for publishing a critique of his views. I also commend the author of the critique for presenting a well balanced response. They are doing what we should all do, allow both sides of an issue to be exposed to our critical thinking.

Note also there is an important discussion of the various "tribes" within the special operations community embedded in this critique.

Note also the critique of military retirees (and those who are "one degree removed from experience") weighing in on this issue.

This is a very insightful paragraph and shows us how we should examine all reports: does the striking together of various "facts" really describe the actual narrative or the narrative that supports an author's agenda?

Much of the woke stuff that exists comes down to this: we want any American to be able to serve *and not feel like an interloper while doing so.* I'm certainly not going to pretend that the balance is always right or that some units or commands don't sometimes get it quite wrong in one direction or the other. But the overall narrative one finds in your posts on this just isn't accurate. It's like if someone were regularly posting stories of serious crimes in New Orleans and presenting New Orleans as a crime-ridden hellhole where you can scarcely walk down the street without getting assaulted or robbed. Even if the stories themselves are true or at least contain an element of truth, the overall narrative would be false.

An Officer Dissents On 'Woke Military' - The American Conservative

The American Conservative · by Rod Dreher · October 25, 2022

Y'all know I get my back up at the woke-ification of the US military, e.g.:

Maj. Gen. Leah Lauderback spoke on how the LIT is working to change policy, change minds, and create opportunities for LGBTQ+ members of the military during an interview with @airandspace. #PrideMonth2022 https://t.co/VGZrEB05WA

— United States Space Force (@SpaceForceDoD) June 1, 2022

A dissenting reader writes, and has given me permission to post:

I've read you with interest since your BeliefNet days. I've always appreciated your insights even if I disagreed, and broadly shared you outlook and sensibilities pretty closely. But I have to write to give you a perspective you perhaps have gotten little of, because on one topic I've been ever more perplexed at what you're describing: the seemingly wokening U.S. military.

I'm an active-duty military officer who's served at home and across the world in division-level headquarters and higher, with special operations teams, and in the Pentagon. I'm not important or a policymaker, but am close enough to see what the world looks like from the top of the military hierarchy, and have been able to see what the military has been like over the past several years from the top, middle, and bottom.

And, well, the woke-ization of the military you've been describing more and more just doesn't exist.

Certain facts you build on do--there are trans servicemembers, for example. The sort of language about pronouns or DEI that's found elsewhere in American culture can be found in the DoD as well. But the overall narrative is just...off.

I want to be clear, this isn't about me disagreeing with you, thinking the changes you describe are good or neutral rather than bad. I simply don't see the sort of large transformation you seem to at all. And forgive me for saying, but if the military were undergoing a woke revolution, I would know about it.

Like I said, you can find trans people, DEI language, etc in the military. Especially in an open democracy like ours, any cultural trend is going to be reflected in the armed forces. But in the military all of those trends are light years behind corporate America, state & local governments, and American culture broadly. The overall description your recent writing on this provides just doesn't match what actually exists here.

From your posts, here's what it seems to me is going on:

First, the nature of your writing and outlook leads to you getting a lot of emails and comments with examples of wokeism in the military, creating a sense of approaching avalanche, a cultural torrent engulfing the institution. Outliers and anecdotes become a compelling narrative.

Second, you seem to hear from a fair number of retired service members or those with a one-degree-removed experience of the current military, whose own impressions are themselves based largely on what they hear from conservative media. They in turn interpret outlier or decontextualized events through the lens of what they "know." Even current active-duty members can be prone to this, when it comes to other parts of the military they're not familiar with. A soldier at Fort Hood might hear about an advisory concerning pronoun use and generdere language at the Air Force Academy, for example--he has no more knowledge of the situation at the Air Force Academy than anyone else who read about it online, but if he talks about it it sounds like his complaint is coming from an insider.

Third, situations and incidents get simply misinterpreted. What sparked me to write was your recent post here: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/diversity-is-our-strength-they-lied/. When you say "The Pentagon is talking about recruiting and promoting for characteristics other than the ability to fight wars," that's just...flatly inaccurate. If you look again at the Military Times story you quote from, it's closer to the exact opposite: the Special Operations community promoting for a certain subset of skills that are less relevant now than they were means a LESS capable force that's LESS able to successfully handle the parts of special operations that are less kinetic. Look at these quotes again:

"Part of that might look like more of a focus on the civil affairs and psychological operations parts of SOCOM, the organizations that do more of the “hearts and minds” work before a conflict gets to the point where operators are going after high-value targets in the middle of the night.

-"When someone has taken time out of the deployment churn to further their education or take a position outside the prescribed pipeline, “it just, it doesn’t compute somehow in these [selection and promotion] boards."

It's saying that in the last 20 years the door-kicking, nighttime raid aspect of special ops has been prioritized, to the point that people whose careers paths don't fit that mold aren't promoted nearly as often...but that we need to change that to successfully complete the sorts of hearts-and-minds, foreign civil and military-to-military engagement that's also a critical parts of special operations. Exactly the sorts of mission sets we tended to fail horribly at in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The line about being okay if the initial results don't go smoothly means, in context, being all right with the inevitable friction as this shift in internal cultural emphasis takes place (and again, the key cultural shift is between prioritization of different traditional special ops roles). The trans/DEI stuff was just a colorful aside to the main point.

But if I may say so, you saw the trans/DEI stuff and couldn't take in anything else. You (mis) interpreted the entire story through that lens, as if SOCOM were mandating a quota of trans SEALs. And it caused you to miss the story itself. This is an example of a military command becoming MORE capable by identifying gaps in its proficiency and addressing them.

The U.S. military has a mixed record in Iraq and Afghanistan, to put it mildly. This story is about a course correction to that, which in other circumstances you'd be among the first to approve.

There's a fourth apparent cause to how your coverage of this issue has become exaggerated, which is that (and I apologize for putting it bluntly) you seem to fall for stories that either didn't happen or didn't happen the way they're presented. I recall some time ago you published an account from a reservist JAG Corps Major who'd posted on Facebook a picture of a Jan 6 guy in the Capitol with a Confederate flag with a comment that could be interpreted as supportive (I don't know the Major's intention, but his comment certainly could be interpreted that way). You published his account of not just being reprimanded but being told by a superior he was being surveilled. To anyone familiar with the military in general and the Army JAG Corps in particular, much of his story rang false. His description of the severity and rarity of his punishment was misleading, and his account otherwise got pretty fantastical. If you're not familiar with the military and don't run the story by people who are (and who aren't emotionally invested in the narrative at stake), a wildly implausible story can seem plausible.

The U.S. military has struggled quite a bit with strategy and the highest "why" questions...why are we fighting here, why are we fighting the way we're fighting, etc. But the military is very, very good at tactical engagement, and that's still the case. Not long ago you linked a Chinese recruiting ad to show how China is still focused on martial virtue unlike our woke military. Some time ago you did the same thing with a Russian recruiting ad. Recent events in Ukraine should show how wildly unreliable a country's own recruiting ads are as measures of anything except advertising skill. In fact, look up the battle of Kasham in 2018, when a small US force in Syria absolutely annihilated a larger Russian Wagner Group force with relative ease. I don't mean to be overconfident here--I'm very familiar with risks and capability gaps we face as well--but it's impossible to deny that the U.S. military is incomparably superior to the Russian at any battlefield metric, no matter how un-woke and manly the latter might present itself as.

Much of the woke stuff that exists comes down to this: we want any American to be able to serve *and not feel like an interloper while doing so.* I'm certainly not going to pretend that the balance is always right or that some units or commands don't sometimes get it quite wrong in one direction or the other. But the overall narrative one finds in your posts on this just isn't accurate. It's like if someone were regularly posting stories of serious crimes in New Orleans and presenting New Orleans as a crime-ridden hellhole where you can scarcely walk down the street without getting assaulted or robbed. Even if the stories themselves are true or at least contain an element of truth, the overall narrative would be false.

If I can say one more thing, on a different but related topic, of our warmongering in Russia: I promise you everyone is aware of the nuclear risks. Vice leaves virtue with no good options, and Russia's actions leave us with none likewise. We can either leave Ukraine to its fate and allow the entire post-WWII settlement in international law to be cast aside and return to a world where wars of conquest are accepted, or risk further escalation. It's worth remembering that in 2014, with Crimea, we already tried option 1 and leaned on Ukraine to de-escalate and not provoke a wider war, and it clearly didn't work out as we'd hoped. Obviously reasonable minds can differ on this, and we might be wrong in our approach now, but no one is blase to the risks or blind to the situation. Everyone is honestly doing their best here. And to be honest, I'm kind of amazed that someone like you would encourage people to watch Tucker Carlson for the truth on this issue in particular, after the pretty scandalous way he hyped up the biolabs chimera, for all that on domestic politics Carlson had been an insightful voice.

Subscribe Today

Get weekly emails in your inbox

I genuinely appreciate this constructive criticism, and will take it to heart going forward. Reader, thank you.

If y'all have anything to say about this topic and can't post it below, email me at rod -- at -- amconmag -- dot -- com, and I'll post the better letters I receive. Advance warning: I'm deluged with mail, so it you want to make sure I see it, put "WOKE MILITARY" in the subject line.

The American Conservative · by Rod Dreher · October 25, 2022

13. USOs Across the Country Are Mysteriously Shutting Down

Excerpts:

"This is a challenging environment for nonprofit fundraising, and the USO is not immune to that trend," a former employee of the nonprofit told Military.com on the condition of anonymity to speak about their former employer. "However, I am disappointed to see low foot traffic cited as primary causes for these closures.

"In my personal and professional experience, USO centers and programs on smaller bases may report lower 'numbers served' but [they] have the greatest need for wellness programming, accessible activities, and fellowship," the former employee added. "Often, this is where USO programs can be the most impactful."

USOs Across the Country Are Mysteriously Shutting Down

military.com · by Drew F. Lawrence · October 24, 2022

The United Service Organizations building at Fort Lee, Virginia, closed its doors indefinitely last week, one of several permanent and abrupt closures of USO facilities across the country.

Fort Lee's public affairs office issued a release Wednesday criticizing the nonprofit for its "no-notice shuttering," while noting that a range of other USO locations had closed suddenly.

The USO has been a staple of military culture since its founding in 1941. The nonprofit operates centers at military installations and airports to support service members and their families while they travel on assignments around the world, including unstaffed locations in war zones too dangerous for USO employees.

In response to Fort Lee and local media, USO officials have pointed to a general reprioritization of resources, citing low foot traffic at recently closed locations in several cases. At least three of the closures came during the same week, included at airports in Ohio and Florida, despite increases in program spending and end-of-year net assets for the USO organization-wide, according to organization tax filings.

"The USO continually evaluates how it can best serve the needs of our service members and their families," Daniel Drummond, director of communications and social media for the nonprofit organization, told Fort Lee's public affairs in an email last week. "We have determined several of our locations have very low traffic and have decided to redeploy those resources elsewhere in the U.S. and around the world to better serve our military."

After publication, the USO sent a copy of the same comment from Drummond to Military.com.

"This is a challenging environment for nonprofit fundraising, and the USO is not immune to that trend," a former employee of the nonprofit told Military.com on the condition of anonymity to speak about their former employer. "However, I am disappointed to see low foot traffic cited as primary causes for these closures.

"In my personal and professional experience, USO centers and programs on smaller bases may report lower 'numbers served' but [they] have the greatest need for wellness programming, accessible activities, and fellowship," the former employee added. "Often, this is where USO programs can be the most impactful."

As the Global War on Terror fades and military rotations to eastern Europe in support of NATO allies watching Russia's renewed invasion into Ukraine from the sidelines have increased, the USO has made a noticeable shift in rhetoric in its support for those troops.

A page on the organization's website titled "USO On The Frontlines" was launched this spring and features a number of initiatives that suggest support and resources for service members deploying to Europe.

The closures also come amid changes and improvements to some organization locations, with the USO opening its first-ever "gaming center" for service members at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, in February, according to a USO press release.

Local news outlets have also reported on closures. The Dayton Daily News reported that the USO at Dayton International Airport closed last week due to a reevaluation of resources. CBS47 out of Jacksonville reported last week that the USO in that city's international airport closed too, quoting a volunteer who said that he was not notified of the closure until days before the shuttering.

KVIA, an ABC affiliate out of El Paso, Texas, reported in August that the USO was also planning on closing its doors in that city's international airport, with USO Regional President Gary Cole pointing to a 75% decrease in foot traffic and a reprioritization of resources to USO locations at Fort Bliss -- an enormous Army post in the city.

The Dayton Daily News cited USO center program manager Erik Oberg in an email to volunteers saying that the closures did not have to do with the economy.

"It is not being driven by the current economic environment," he wrote, according to the publication. "We would be making these reductions even in a better economy."

The USO reported a 17% increase in total end-of-year net revenue between 2020 and 2021, with last year's total surpassing $100 million, according to publicly available financial statements. The organization's fundraising also increased by 13% year-over-year, a continuation of a trend of five years of continued growth.

Meanwhile, how much the organization spent on program services, a category of expenses that ostensibly funds day-to-day operations and projects, has remained largely unchanged compared to the total expenses it has reported each year since 2017.

"Fort Lee recognizes and appreciates the USO's incredible support to our soldiers over the years," Maj. Gen. Mark T. Simerly, the Fort Lee commanding general, told Military.com in a statement via email regarding his installation's USO closure; that facility had opened more than 10 years ago. "The USO is always welcome on Fort Lee, and I sincerely hope our troops will again be able to benefit from greater USO services here in the future."

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to include reference to receiving comment from the USO.

-- Drew F. Lawrence can be reached at drew.lawrence@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @df_lawrence.

Related: USO

military.com · by Drew F. Lawrence · October 24, 2022

14. Xi needs to talk modestly and carry a bigger (reform) stick

Excerpts:

But there have been important accomplishments over the past decade too. The military’s organisation and services have been radically restructured, the vestiges of abject poverty eradicated, high-level corruption rooted out, a new foreign investment law and deeper intellectual property protections instituted and ecological consciousness placed at the forefront of national development.

No Chinese leader since Mao has amassed as much power as Xi. At the 20th Party Congress, after amending the constitution in 2018, he was confirmed to a norm-bending third term in office and proceeded to run the Politburo Standing Committee table with his loyalists. Earlier, at the 19th Congress, he was declared the ‘core’ of the Party’s all-important Central Committee, his ‘thought’ enshrined in the Constitution and the four leading small groups chaired by him were elevated to the level of party commissions.

For this relentless centralisation of power to have real meaning, then, it must manifest in the bold transformations that President Xi has pledged to his party and people. As his 20th Party Congress resolution notes, ‘empty talk will do nothing for [the] country and only solid work will make it flourish’.

Xi needs to talk modestly and carry a bigger (reform) stick

eastasiaforum.org · by Sourabh Gupta

Xi needs to talk modestly and carry a bigger (reform) stick | East Asia Forum

Economics, Politics and Public Policy in East Asia and the Pacific

25 October 2022

Author: Sourabh Gupta, ICAS

Almost five years to the day that he inaugurated a ‘new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics’, General Secretary Xi Jinping returned to the Great Hall of the People to renew his ‘common prosperity’-based agenda of modernisation and national rejuvenation.

In his Report to the 20th National Party Congress, Xi acknowledged the darkening geopolitical clouds on the horizon — the ‘black swans’, unpredictable dangerous events and ‘grey rhinos’, foreseeable but unaddressed dangers. There was no reference this time to global ‘peace and development [being] irreversible trends’ or to ‘countries … becoming increasingly interconnected and interdependent’, as was the case during his 19th Party Congress address.

China would stay vigilant in the face of ‘external attempts to blackmail, contain, blockade and exert maximum pressure’, he observed. But it would not be deflected from the path of development and from realising its second Centenary Goal of socialist modernisation, which includes modernising the national defence forces by 2035 and becoming a great modern socialist country by mid-century.

The conceptual elegance of Xi’s policy design, the judiciousness of the planning horizons and the timeliness of the transition from high-speed growth to higher-quality growth cannot be faulted. China stands at the trough of its U-shaped ‘Kuznets curve’ from an income inequality standpoint.

But it bears remembering that no East Asian state has worked its way up the ‘Kuznets curve’ — which models the relationship between economic development and inequality — without becoming a multi-party democracy of some sort.

If Xi’s ‘common prosperity’ philosophy of economic expansion-based opportunity, inclusion and rebalancing is successful in delivering an olive-shaped income distribution structure over the next two decades, it could leave a mark on China’s social market economy that is as influential as Deng’s ‘four modernizations’ of the late-1970s.

Where Xi has fallen woefully short is in policy implementation. Risk-averse stability preservation — masked by triumphal nationalist posturing — that has stymied the country’s progress and provoked the West, has been prioritised over concerted follow-through.

In his Report at the 19th Party Congress in 2017, Xi vowed to pivot from the fixed asset, overinvestment-based growth model and ‘leverage the fundamental role of consumption in promoting economic growth’. Three years on, even before the pandemic set in, the household share of consumption had barely eked its way to 40 per cent of GDP, a full 20 points below the global average.

Fifteen years after former premier Wen Jiabao labelled China’s economic problems as ‘unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable’, the economy remains almost as unbalanced despite the halving of credit growth since 2017 by shrinking the shadow banking sector.

At the 19th Party Congress, Xi intoned that ‘housing is for living in, not for speculation’. In the three years thereafter, China’s housing market ran up one of its largest increases in residential floor space construction starts. Today, economic slowdown, excessive leverage and the US dollar-heavy borrowing structure of property developers have left them unable to refinance their debt and additionally vulnerable to the dollar’s appreciation.

More pointedly, the sedate pace of financial services sector policy liberalisation has meant that property, rather than equities or mutual funds, continues to disproportionately remain the primary store of value for Chinese households. Private retirement savings plans are a mere blip on China’s pension assets.

At the 19th Party Congress, Xi pledged to ‘forge friendship and partnership with its neighbours’ and ‘hold high the banner of peace [and] development’. In his ten years in office, President Xi has failed to stitch up even a mere fisheries agreement with a neighbouring country — let alone resolve a land or maritime boundary dispute.

Every Chinese leader since the founding of the People’s Republic has, in his first decade in office, crafted either the principles of settlement or settled outright a sovereignty-linked dispute — that is, until Xi. In far more trying domestic and geopolitical circumstances, former chairman Mao Zedong authored some of China’s more creative land boundary settlements, including the transfer of undisputed sovereign territory as part of a larger package deal with Myanmar.

At the same time, many of President Xi’s aggressively pursued first-term policies have come back to haunt him. These range from the ill-advised collective punishment of Uyghur Muslims to the ‘influence operations’ and talent recruitment programs overseas. His dash to telescope his middle-income nation’s rise to techno-nationalist superpowerdom during his time in office, by means fair or foul, has invoked retaliation in the form of heavy-handed export controls and acquisition denials.

But there have been important accomplishments over the past decade too. The military’s organisation and services have been radically restructured, the vestiges of abject poverty eradicated, high-level corruption rooted out, a new foreign investment law and deeper intellectual property protections instituted and ecological consciousness placed at the forefront of national development.

No Chinese leader since Mao has amassed as much power as Xi. At the 20th Party Congress, after amending the constitution in 2018, he was confirmed to a norm-bending third term in office and proceeded to run the Politburo Standing Committee table with his loyalists. Earlier, at the 19th Congress, he was declared the ‘core’ of the Party’s all-important Central Committee, his ‘thought’ enshrined in the Constitution and the four leading small groups chaired by him were elevated to the level of party commissions.

For this relentless centralisation of power to have real meaning, then, it must manifest in the bold transformations that President Xi has pledged to his party and people. As his 20th Party Congress resolution notes, ‘empty talk will do nothing for [the] country and only solid work will make it flourish’.

Sourabh Gupta is senior fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies in Washington, DC.

View more posts by Sourabh Gupta Print This Post

eastasiaforum.org · by Sourabh Gupta

15. U.S.-Saudi Relations Buckle, Driven by Animosity Between Biden and Mohammed bin Salman

Excerpts:

The White House is wary of blowing up the relationship, which could jeopardize sensitive security operations. Mr. Sullivan said the president would consult with members of both parties—some of whom are vowing dramatic action—about how to respond to Saudi Arabia, including potential changes to U.S. security assistance, when Congress reconvenes after the midterm elections next month.

“The president isn’t going to act precipitously,” Mr. Sullivan told CNN.

The Saudis know they cannot replace the U.S. as a security partner overnight. Shortly after the meeting in Vienna, Saudi officials met with think tanks and lower-level U.S. officials to make their case. They said Washington has underestimated how much Saudi Arabia has helped Ukraine and they were surprised by the American reaction to the OPEC+ decision, meeting attendees said.

One drastic option on the table: Saudi officials have said privately that the kingdom could sell the U.S. Treasury bonds it holds if Congress were to pass anti-OPEC legislation, according to people familiar with the matter. Saudi holdings of U.S. Treasurys increased to $119.2 billion in June from $114.7 billion in May, according to U.S. Treasury data. Saudi Arabia is the 16th largest holder of U.S. Treasurys, according to federal data.

“It’s hard to imagine either side saying ‘All right, let’s put this back together,’ ” said Mr. Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations.

U.S.-Saudi Relations Buckle, Driven by Animosity Between Biden and Mohammed bin Salman

Lack of personal trust accelerates a yearslong split driven by geopolitical and economic forces

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-saudi-relations-biden-mbs-animosity-11666623661?mod=hp_lead_pos5&utm_campaign=dfn-ebb&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sailthru&SToverlay=2002c2d9-c344-4bbb-8610-e5794efcfa7d

By Stephen KalinFollow

, Summer SaidFollow

and Dion NissenbaumFollow

Oct. 24, 2022 11:08 am ET

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia—An unwritten pact binding the U.S. and Saudi Arabia has survived 15 presidents and seven kings through an Arab oil embargo, two Persian Gulf wars and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Now, it is fracturing under two leaders who don’t like or trust each other.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s 37-year-old day-to-day ruler, mocks President Biden in private, making fun of the 79-year-old’s gaffes and questioning his mental acuity, according to people inside the Saudi government. He has told advisers he hasn’t been impressed with Mr. Biden since his days as vice president, and much preferred former President Donald Trump, the people said.

Mr. Biden said on the campaign trail in 2020 that he saw “very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia.” He refused to talk to Prince Mohammed for over a year, and when they finally did meet in Jeddah in July, Saudi officials present felt that Mr. Biden didn’t want to be there, and was uninterested in the policy discussions, the people said. U.S. officials said Mr. Biden devoted significant time and energy in the meetings.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

How should President Biden approach the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia? Join the conversation below.

Geopolitical and economic forces have been driving wedges into the relationship between America and Saudi Arabia for years. But the enmity between Mr. Biden and Prince Mohammed has deepened the tension, and it is likely to get only messier.

“Rarely has the chain of broken expectations and perceived insults and humiliations been greater than they are now,” said Aaron David Miller, a veteran U.S. diplomat in the Middle East now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “There’s almost no trust and absolutely no mutual respect.”

The decision by Saudi-led OPEC+ to cut oil production—raising crude prices at a time of high inflation just before an American election and despite U.S. pleas to hold off—has cemented both leaders’ resolve to reconsider a strategic relationship that has underpinned the global economy and Middle East geopolitics for almost 80 years, with once-unthinkable retaliatory measures now on the table. The White House has said Mr. Biden wants to review whether the Saudi relationship is serving U.S. national security interests, on top of an administration reassessment last year. Saudi officials say it may now be time for them to reassess the U.S. relationship, too.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the West’s response have exacerbated tensions, since the production cut propped up oil prices that help fund President Vladimir Putin’s war effort and undermined U.S.-led sanctions on Moscow.

In the Biden administration’s view, the Ukraine war is a decisive historical moment that requires countries to choose a side, with the OPEC+ cut putting the Saudis closer to the Russians. The Saudis see an opportunity to assert their own interests in a world where the U.S. isn’t the undisputed superpower, saying they can support Ukraine and work with Russia in OPEC+ at the same time.

Saudi officials say they are frustrated the relationship is still viewed through the narrow lens of oil and security. Riyadh has framed the recent OPEC+ decision as vital to its core national interests, a technical decision that they say was needed to prevent a precipitous drop in crude prices. Prince Mohammed now sees high oil prices as perhaps his last shot to use the kingdom’s natural resources to modernize the Saudi economy and build a post-oil future.

The King Abdullah Financial District station of the Riyadh Metro, part of a big investment effort in the Saudi capital.

PHOTO: FAYEZ NURELDINE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Saudi Arabia plans to highlight that effort this week in Riyadh, with its Future Investment Initiative conference. Organizers said they didn’t invite U.S. officials, who have previously attended at the cabinet level, after the Biden administration weighed withdrawing from participating.

“Our economic agenda is critical to our survival. It’s not just about energy and defense,” the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, said in an interview. “It may have been 50 years ago but that certainly is not the case today.”

Prince Faisal denied that Prince Mohammed had privately derided Mr. Biden or told aides he was unimpressed by him and favored Mr. Trump.

“These allegations made by anonymous sources are entirely false,” said Prince Faisal. “The kingdom’s leaders have always held the utmost respect for U.S. presidents, based on the kingdom’s belief in the importance of having a relationship based on mutual respect.”

U.S. officials said Mr. Biden has pushed the relationship beyond oil by working to deepen ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel, two countries that drew closer under Mr. Trump and are aligned in their view of Iran as the region’s biggest threat. Though Israel and Saudi Arabia have no formal diplomatic relations, they have been secretly expanding their security cooperation with White House help.

Adrienne Watson, spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, said Mr. Biden “has engaged with leaders from across the region” to establish “a more stable and integrated Middle East.”

The path ahead is likely to be rocky. At risk for Washington are counterterrorism operations, efforts to contain Iran and Israel’s deeper integration into the region. For the Saudis, a breakdown with the U.S. would jeopardize its national security and ambitious economic reforms. Mutual trade and investment worth hundreds of billions of dollars are also on the line.

The next big test comes in early December, when three events with major significance for global energy markets are set to collide: another OPEC+ meeting and plans by the European Union for an embargo of Russian oil and by the Group of Seven wealthy nations to cap the price of Russian crude.

The Saudis have signaled that they could raise oil production in December if the market loses Russian oil because of the EU embargo or the G-7 price cap, according to people inside the Saudi government. U.S. officials, skeptical that Riyadh would or could do that, say this will be a key litmus test for where the kingdom stands: with Ukraine and its Western backers or with Russia.

An oil-processing plant in Saudi Arabia, which recently agreed with other energy states to curb production.

PHOTO: FAYEZ NURELDINE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Mr. Biden and Prince Mohammed tried to build a personal rapport during the president’s trip to Jeddah in July, where they fist-bumped ahead of a three-hour meeting. But the president angered the royal by immediately raising human-rights allegations, people close to the talks said, including the 2018 death of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist based in Washington who was killed and dismembered by a team of Saudi agents inside the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate.

The killing of Mr. Khashoggi, who was a Washington Post columnist, remains the most important flashpoint between the two men. Among Mr. Biden’s first acts as president was releasing an American intelligence report concluding that the crown prince had ordered the operation to capture or kill Mr. Khashoggi, an allegation the Saudi government denies.

The disagreement reflects Prince Mohammed’s sense that it is unacceptable to keep raising the killing and Mr. Biden’s sense that U.S. values demand it not be glossed over, said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

“The American bet is that the Saudis need the United States and will come around, and the Saudi bet is the opposite,” Mr. Alterman said. The White House has ignored the personal nature of U.S.-Saudi ties, he added, either because it can’t figure out how to deal with Prince Mohammed or it doesn’t want to.

In the past, Saudi kings and American presidents were able to smooth out turbulent periods with strong personal relations. In 2005, just a few years after 15 Saudis participated in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush had hosted Crown Prince Abdullah at his Texas ranch, where the two men were photographed holding hands.

In the early 1970s, the Saudis partially nationalized American oil interests in the kingdom and launched an oil embargo that ushered in crippling inflation. Yet President Richard Nixon met King Faisal and toasted his wisdom during a state dinner in Jeddah in 1974.

President Richard Nixon during a 1974 visit to Jeddah. President George W. Bush greets Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, in 2005.

GETTY IMAGES; ASSOCIATED PRESS

“When you’re dealing with a country that’s basically run by five people, it has to be on a personal level,” said Steven Cook, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based think tank.

Since the 1940s, Washington’s relationship with this insular dynastic monarchy grew around an implicit understanding that the U.S. would ensure Saudi Arabia’s territorial integrity and the Muslim kingdom would keep oil flowing to a global economy dominated by America.

Those calculations have changed over time. The Saudis once sold the U.S. over 2 million barrels of oil every day, but that’s fallen to less than 500,000 barrels a day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The U.S. grew to become the world’s biggest oil producer, and China is now the biggest buyer of Saudi oil, followed by India.

After decades of war, Washington has sought to reduce entanglements in the Middle East to focus on a rising China and resurgent Russia. The main American initiative in the region—the Obama-era nuclear-containment deal with Iran—has also strained relations with Saudi Arabia, which opposes lifting sanctions unless Tehran also reins in its support for regional militias and the proliferation of ballistic missiles that threaten Riyadh. The Saudis were irked by the Obama administration negotiating with their archenemy about vital national security issues without consulting them.

“Oil-for-security is dead,” said Ayham Kamel, head of Middle East and North Africa at political-risk advisory firm Eurasia Group. “The two sides seem to be having a problem accepting that that old deal is over, with Riyadh focused on security and Washington focused on oil.”

When Mr. Biden was elected, Prince Mohammed huddled with advisers at a seaside palace to complete a plan to woo the new president, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Saudis delivered a few concessions on a topic Mr. Biden had campaigned on—human rights—including the eventual release of Loujain al-Hathloul, a prominent women’s-rights campaigner who says she was tortured in detention, and two Saudi-American prisoners. And they quickly patched up a feud with neighboring Qatar after leading an economic boycott against it which Mr. Trump had initially supported.

Prince Mohammed has told advisers he much preferred Donald Trump to President Biden, according to people familiar with the matter.

PHOTO: EVAN VUCCI/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Mr. Biden’s response shocked Prince Mohammed, the people said. In his first weeks in office, the president froze Saudi arms sales, reversed a last-minute Trump administration decision to label Yemen’s Houthi rebels a foreign terrorist organization, and published the intelligence report on Mr. Khashoggi’s killing which Mr. Trump had previously dismissed.

For the Biden administration, these steps were a necessary correction. To the Saudis, Mr. Biden’s early moves were a slap in the face.

“The interactions with the Biden administration were so bad for the first two years that one visit was insufficient to propel Saudi to walk away from” its oil alliance with Moscow, said David Schenker, a senior State Department official under the Trump administration and now a fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank.

In a relationship that has historically been steered by presidents and kings themselves, the White House handed the Saudi file to Brett McGurk of the National Security Council and Amos Hochstein at the State Department, who, despite extensive diplomatic experience, carry little of the clout or policy mandate of officials who handled the relationship in previous administrations.

The pair communicated mainly with two of Prince Mohammed’s brothers: Prince Abdulaziz, the oil minister, and Prince Khalid bin Salman, who was recently elevated to defense minister. The two Americans lobbied hard inside the administration for engagement with the Saudis, and when the Saudis bucked the U.S. on oil production over the summer, Mr. Hochstein sent Prince Abdulaziz a note suggesting he felt betrayed, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

Prince Khalid bin Salman looks on during a meeting at the Pentagon in 2019. Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's energy minister, center, speaks in Vienna earlier this year.

EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK; BLOOMBERG NEWS

The White House is wary of blowing up the relationship, which could jeopardize sensitive security operations. Mr. Sullivan said the president would consult with members of both parties—some of whom are vowing dramatic action—about how to respond to Saudi Arabia, including potential changes to U.S. security assistance, when Congress reconvenes after the midterm elections next month.

“The president isn’t going to act precipitously,” Mr. Sullivan told CNN.

The Saudis know they cannot replace the U.S. as a security partner overnight. Shortly after the meeting in Vienna, Saudi officials met with think tanks and lower-level U.S. officials to make their case. They said Washington has underestimated how much Saudi Arabia has helped Ukraine and they were surprised by the American reaction to the OPEC+ decision, meeting attendees said.

One drastic option on the table: Saudi officials have said privately that the kingdom could sell the U.S. Treasury bonds it holds if Congress were to pass anti-OPEC legislation, according to people familiar with the matter. Saudi holdings of U.S. Treasurys increased to $119.2 billion in June from $114.7 billion in May, according to U.S. Treasury data. Saudi Arabia is the 16th largest holder of U.S. Treasurys, according to federal data.

“It’s hard to imagine either side saying ‘All right, let’s put this back together,’ ” said Mr. Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Benoit Faucon, Nancy A. Youssef and Michael Amon contributed to this article.

Write to Stephen Kalin at stephen.kalin@wsj.com, Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com and Dion Nissenbaum at dion.nissenbaum@wsj.com

Appeared in the October 25, 2022, print edition as 'Animosity Strains U.S.-Saudi Ties'.

16. Mercenary chief vented to Putin over Ukraine war bungling

I am reminded of Erik Prince's proposal to Trump to allow contractors to take over the war in Afghanistan because the US military was bungling it.

Here’s the blueprint for Erik Prince’s $5 billion plan to privatize the Afghanistan war

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/09/05/heres-the-blueprint-for-erik-princes-5-billion-plan-to-privatize-the-afghanistan-war/

Mercenary chief vented to Putin over Ukraine war bungling

Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the Russian tycoon behind the mercenary group Wagner, personally told Putin that his military chiefs are mismanaging the war, U.S. officials said

By Ellen Nakashima, John Hudson and Paul Sonne

Updated October 25, 2022 at 3:22 a.m. EDT|Published October 25, 2022 at 2:00 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Ellen Nakashima · October 25, 2022

The confidant who vented to Russian President Vladimir Putin recently about his military’s handling of the war in Ukraine was Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the founder of a Russian mercenary group that is playing a critical role for Moscow on the battlefield in Ukraine, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

Prigozhin’s criticisms echoed what he has been saying publicly for weeks, the officials said, speaking anonymously to discuss sensitive intelligence. But the revelation that he felt comfortable sharing such a harsh rebuke of the Russian military effort with Putin in a private setting shows how his influence is rising as Moscow’s war falters. It also highlights the shaky standing of the Russian defense establishment’s formal leadership, which has come under fire from Prigozhin and others after months of battlefield errors and losses.

The Washington Post previously reported that a Russian insider confronted Putin personally to spotlight mismanagement of the war effort but did not name that individual. The Post reported that the exchange was considered significant enough to include in the daily intelligence briefing provided to President Biden.

Prigozhin’s frustration with the Russian defense ministry and his growing tension with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu are also the subject of a separate U.S. intelligence report that has been circulating among officials in Washington, according to people who have read the file.

For years, Prigozhin operated in the shadows of Russian power, denying links to Russia’s notorious Wagner mercenary group and the St. Petersburg internet troll factory that U.S. authorities said he financed to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. He helped advance the Kremlin’s foreign aims outside formal structures, and earned the nickname “Putin’s chef” owing to his ownership of a St. Petersburg restaurant Putin once frequented and a catering company boasting lucrative Russian state and city contracts.

But in recent weeks, Prigozhin has stepped into the open in a dramatic debut in Russian public life, admitting his leadership of Wagner for the first time and publicly assailing the Russian military leadership for its mistakes.

“That’s the political public position that he has been striking: I am Yevgeniy Prigozhin. I’m here to tell you the truth, and I’ll get the job done,” said a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity and speaking generally about Prigozhin, not about the intelligence regarding his interactions with Putin.

According to the U.S. intelligence report that has been circulating in Washington, Prigozhin has expressed his view that the Russian defense ministry relies too much on Wagner and is not giving the mercenary group sufficient money and resources to fulfill its mission in the conflict, the people who read the report said.

U.S. intelligence officials believe that Prigozhin staged a recent video on social media depicting Wagner soldiers complaining about a lack of basic food and provisions as a means of pressuring the Kremlin to boost funding to his mercenary group.

“Prigozhin’s decision to confront Putin is only the latest sign of his dissatisfaction,” said a person who read the report.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the interaction between Prigozhin and Putin. Prigozhin didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment sent through his catering firm.

Since the war started, Prigozhin has used Defense Minister Shoigu and top uniformed generals as his foils, positioning himself as a no-holds-barred leader able to show results on the battlefield in Ukraine.

His paramilitary group — staffed by battle-hardened veterans accused of human rights violations who operate outside the formal Russian military structure — has been waging an offensive to take Bakhmut, a city in the Donetsk region held by Ukrainian forces. Some analysts see it as an attempt to show that his soldiers can make progress even while the rest of the Russian military is on the back foot.

The result is an apparent revival of his status in Putin’s inner circle, which reportedly had been jeopardized before the war by squabbling with top Russian officials.

“He has been really rising all these last months,” said Marlene Laruelle, director of the Institute for European, Russia and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University. “The war gave him the possibility of accessing Putin more than ever before.”

With figures such as Prigozhin and Kremlin-appointed Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov publicly voicing criticism of the Russian military, “the shadow aspect of the Russian state is becoming more and more visible,” Laruelle said.

The interaction between Putin and Prigozhin has been followed by a more ruthless Russian approach to the war.

After the Russian military’s repeated setbacks, which involved losing more than 3,000 square miles of territory, Putin for the first time chose an overall commander to lead the Ukraine war effort. The appointment this month filled a leadership void that military analysts had cited as one reason Moscow had been struggling with the command and control of its forces.

Prigozhin hailed Putin’s choice in a statement released by his catering company on the Russian social media site VK, calling Sergey Surovikin, the new general in charge, a “legendary character” born to serve the Motherland and “the most competent commander” in the Russian military. Surovikin earned the nickname “General Armageddon” in Syria after the Russian military became known for its indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets.

In Ukraine, Russia has also recently pivoted to harsher tactics impacting civilians, particularly after the humiliating bombing in early October of the Crimean Bridge linking Russia to Crimea. Moscow has landed missiles in the center of Kyiv for the first time in months and taken aim at Ukrainian energy infrastructure with a limited supply of precision-guided munitions to cause blackouts. And it has begun to use Iranian combat drones to hit critical infrastructure and terrorize civilians.

Hard-liners, including those who support Prigozhin, had long been urging the Kremlin to use more scorched-earth tactics against urban centers, regardless of their impact on Ukraine’s civilian population. Putin’s latest moves have played to them.

“He thinks he still can win, which is why he’s throwing everything he can at the situation,” said Fiona Hill, a former senior White House official handling Russian and Eurasian affairs. “We’re in that period now where he’s trying to push us into his version of the endgame. The guy thinks he can pull it off.”

Earlier this month, Prigozhin said in a statement posted to social media that the Russian military’s top brass was out of touch with the situation on the ground in Ukraine. “I think that we should send all these bastards barefoot to the front with machine guns,” he said.

It’s unclear if Prigozhin is primarily focused on wresting more influence within the Russian defense establishment or if he harbors greater political ambitions for himself or those close to him.

With public criticism of Putin still taboo, Shoigu has borne the brunt of frustration over the conflict and in recent months has been “sidelined within the Russian leadership, with operational commanders briefing President Putin directly on the course of the war,” according to an assessment by Britain’s defense ministry in August.

The ministry said Shoigu is struggling to overcome his reputation as “lacking substantive military experience, as he spent most of his career in the construction sector and the Ministry of Emergency Situations.”

Prigozhin, meanwhile, is presenting himself as a more extreme, unvarnished alternative.

A video that began circulating on Russian social media in September showed Prigozhin recruiting potential fighters at a Russian prison. Prigozhin later responded to criticism of his prisoner recruitment efforts in a statement released on VK by his catering firm.

“Those who do not want mercenaries or prisoners to fight … who do not like this topic, send your children to the front,” Prigozhin said. “It’s either them or your children, decide for yourself.” About a week later, Putin ordered a mobilization of what the Russian defense ministry said would be 300,000 reservists to replenish depleted forces. The move sent hundreds of thousands of eligible men fleeing Russia to avoid being called to battle.

Before the war began to go badly for the Russian military, “it wasn’t propitious” for critics to seize the spotlight. But “people like Prigozhin now see a chance to grab for the brass ring,” said Hill, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center on the United States and Europe. “This really shows the system is under stress, when people start pushing themselves forward like this.”

Prigozhin has risen far above his humble roots as a hot dog vendor in Putin’s home city of Leningrad. He spent nine years in prison for robbery and other crimes, then co-founded casinos and a floating restaurant, where he personally served Putin, then Russia’s new president, as well as President George W. Bush. He then opened a catering business that won contracts with the Russian government. After years of denials, he only recently publicly admitted he founded Wagner in May 2014 to support Russian-backed separatists in their effort to seize control of the Donbas region of Ukraine.

The U.S. Treasury Department imposed new sanctions on Prigozhin in March due to the Wagner Group’s involvement in the war. Prior to that, he was already sanctioned and indicted by the United States for financing the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll factory that U.S. intelligence agencies said was part of a Kremlin effort to interfere in the 2016 election. The United States has said the group has sought to spread “false narratives online” seeking to undermine governments in the U.S., Asia, Europe and elsewhere.

His years in prison and hardscrabble beginnings likely built resentment against the political elites and those who enjoyed privilege after the Soviet Union’s collapse, Laruelle said.

The war has aided his ambition. “He wants political recognition,” she said. “Money is not enough. I think he really cares about having an official status.”

The increasingly prominent public role of figures such as Prigozhin and Kadyrov in the war effort is irritating some Russian officials, who see them as rogue actors who play by their own rules. “To have leaders like Prigozhin and Kadyrov — they [the establishment] can’t live with this any more,” one Russian official said in an interview. “This is not Russia. It’s a criminal brotherhood based on the principles of the Middle Ages.”

Greg Miller, Robyn Dixon, Mary Ilyushina and Catherine Belton contributed to this report.

The Washington Post · by Ellen Nakashima · October 25, 2022

17. UK’s First Non-white Premier as Onetime Colony’s Offspring Produce New Leaders

Some irony, I suppose. (or an enlightened UK polity?)

He will have challenges no doubt.

Excerpts:

Both the green card and tax became personal embarrassments earlier this year, as did a £3,500 suit he wore at a leadership meeting along with his £500 Prada shoes on a construction site. He talked on television about how many types of bread his family enjoyed when many voters could not even afford one loaf, and he was building a large swimming pool in the garden of his elegant north Yorkshire country house when the plight of the poor was spreading across the country.

It looks as if he has learned from those mistakes. But he has critics among MPs and a larger proportion in the party membership, not least because he arguably triggered the mass cabinet resignations that led to Johnson’s downfall in July when he quit as chancellor of the exchequer.

His right-wing credentials are also not as firm as some on the right would like, prompting a slanted Daily Telegraph headline last night that described him rather unfairly as “A man riddled with contradictions trying to shed his ‘slippery’ image.”

The article said that “not everyone knows what he truly stands for” on issues such as Brexit, which he supported, and the free market, which he moved away from with state intervention and increased corporation tax as a result of the covid pandemic.

On policy, Sunak is strong on the economy and financial markets because of his professional background and his experience as chancellor under Johnson. He will continue with the abandonment of Truss’s policies that was started by Jeremy Hunt, who became chancellor a week ago and is expected to stay in the job. Sunak believes in low taxes and has said he would reduce the bottom rate of income tax from 20 percent to 16 percent, but only when prudent without fueling inflation, perhaps in seven years’ time.

UK’s First Non-white Premier as Onetime Colony’s Offspring Produce New Leaders

Britain hopes he is the strong ethical and efficient leader it needs

asiasentinel.com · by Asia Sentinel

By: John Elliott

“Let’s see what an intelligent, young, multi-cultural, economics-fluent leader can do for us,” said a source who is in his 40s, when it was clear that Rishi Sunak, 42, would become Britain’s third prime minister this year, the youngest for decades, and the first non-white occupant of 10 Downing Street.

Of Indian descent with a Punjabi family that emigrated first to Kenya and then the UK, Sunak is also the first Hindu prime minister – and the first to have worked for Goldman Sachs and have an MBA.

The news that he had won was officially announced at 2 pm London time yesterday – 6.30 pm in India where it added to the celebrations as colored lights were lit and firecrackers noisily let off across the country to mark the big annual festival of Diwali. As happened when Kamala Harris became America’s vice president, Sunak’s rise is seen as proof of India’s growing importance internationally.

Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, tweeted “Warmest congratulations @RishiSunak!” and looked forward to strengthening India- UK relations.

Sunak became party leader last night and this morning he has met formally with King Charles III, who is inviting him to form a government as prime minister. He will then go to 10 Downing Street, one door away from No 11 where he lived as Chancellor of the Exchequer for just over two years till he resigned in July, and will begin to appoint his cabinet.

Urgent issues

Sunak has a massive list of urgent issues to tackle and has pledged “there will be integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level of the government I lead.”

Financial and economic problems include a fiscal gap of some £40 billion, an approaching recession and a cost-of-living crisis with inflation of around 10 percent, the highest for 40 years. That stems from Brexit and the Ukraine war’s rising energy costs, escalated by the right-wing economic agenda of Liz Truss, the outgoing prime minister. The national health service is failing to cope with demand and the public sector is facing shortages and a spate of wage-related strikes led by railway workers that could escalate into a confrontation between the government and trade unions.

Foreign policy issues include Ukraine where Johnson and Truss (as foreign secretary) led one of the toughest responses to the Russian invasion, plus confrontations with China. Unresolved Brexit problems include legislation challenging trade barriers that threaten stability in Northern Ireland, and there is also the looming question of Scotland’s independence.

All recent prime ministers have failed the “do for us” test mentioned at the top of this article. Both Boris Johnson and David Cameron in different ways failed because they believed too much in their (Eton-educated) leadership gifts, while Theresa May could not handle the cut and thrust of politics and diplomacy. Truss, who defeated Sunak for the prime minister’s job last month, thought she could buck the markets and public opinion with right-wing tax and borrowing dreams that Sunak had correctly warned would cause economic chaos.

Those prime ministers had spent years in politics before entering 10 Downing Street, whereas Sunak only began in 2015 when he became a member of parliament – though he was quickly spotted as a future prime minister by Cameron and others. He is therefore bringing a fresh approach, but he has much to learn about how to get the government machine to deliver on policies, and he also needs to learn how to project himself and his family.

As prime minister, he has to overcome the negative publicity burden of the wealth and privileges that he has enjoyed for years. He and his fashion designer wife Akshata are worth some £730 million, thanks mostly to the wealth of her father, Narayana Murthy, co-founder of Infosys, one of India’s three leading IT companies.

If he had been more adept at politics, Sunak would have in 2015, or soon after, canceled the US green card that he obtained when he worked at Goldman Sachs and as a hedge fund analyst. He would also have canceled his wife’s UK non-domicile status as an Indian citizen which saved her paying taxes totaling as much as £20m.

Personal embarrassments

Both the green card and tax became personal embarrassments earlier this year, as did a £3,500 suit he wore at a leadership meeting along with his £500 Prada shoes on a construction site. He talked on television about how many types of bread his family enjoyed when many voters could not even afford one loaf, and he was building a large swimming pool in the garden of his elegant north Yorkshire country house when the plight of the poor was spreading across the country.

It looks as if he has learned from those mistakes. But he has critics among MPs and a larger proportion in the party membership, not least because he arguably triggered the mass cabinet resignations that led to Johnson’s downfall in July when he quit as chancellor of the exchequer.

His right-wing credentials are also not as firm as some on the right would like, prompting a slanted Daily Telegraph headline last night that described him rather unfairly as “A man riddled with contradictions trying to shed his ‘slippery’ image.”

The article said that “not everyone knows what he truly stands for” on issues such as Brexit, which he supported, and the free market, which he moved away from with state intervention and increased corporation tax as a result of the covid pandemic.

On policy, Sunak is strong on the economy and financial markets because of his professional background and his experience as chancellor under Johnson. He will continue with the abandonment of Truss’s policies that was started by Jeremy Hunt, who became chancellor a week ago and is expected to stay in the job. Sunak believes in low taxes and has said he would reduce the bottom rate of income tax from 20 percent to 16 percent, but only when prudent without fueling inflation, perhaps in seven years’ time.

But he has absolutely no experience in foreign policy, international relations, or national security, nor on vast swaths of domestic policy ranging from the national health service and home care, to the police, and transport.

When he appeared in public debates during his contest with Truss, however, he appeared as a fast-learning and efficient policy manager who was prepared to devise positive answers to problems without resorting to Truss-style popular tax cuts.

The hope now must be that he has not had to make too many promises to would-be cabinet ministers in order to obtain their support for his candidature – he eventually received nominations from 185 MPs. That success prompted his main rival Boris Johnson to withdraw two days ago followed by Penny Mordaunt, current leader of the commons, who gave up just before the 2 pm deadline yesterday.

United cabinet

Sunak has to balance different needs as he tries to form a united cabinet that has talent in the top jobs as well as representing different wings of the party and rewarding friends and allies who supported his bid to become PM.

On climate change, Sunak is likely to follow the trend set by Johnson and a pledge to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, a target Truss might have weakened. He has said he would make the UK energy-independent by 2045 with increased power from offshore wind, rooftop solar, and nuclear sources and improved home insulation – a key detail many politicians forget. It remains to be seen if he lifts the blockage put by Truss on King Charles, a devoted climate change activist, attending the Cop27 summit in Egypt next month.

He could face problems with the Conservative Party’s right wing on strikes and law and order. Suella Braverman, who has been a strident home secretary and backed Sunak, would want an uncompromising tough line if she kept her job. Labor unrest however will not be solved with new laws that could escalate unrest and exacerbate economic problems.

There could also be a clash over a pending India-UK trade deal where Braverman opposed easing access to the UK for Indian students and key workers. Sunak is likely to back easier access because he has said he wants to make it easier for British students to travel and for companies to work together “because it’s not just a one-way relationship, it’s a two-way relationship, and that’s the type of change I want to bring”.

Sunak’s most pressing problem is to unite the party which is riven by personal rivalries and policy differences. That will not be easy, but it is essential if it is to have any chance of winning the next general election due in 2024. There will be calls from opposition parties for an immediate general election, but Sunak can probably ignore them if he can hold the party together to tackle what he described in his 84-second victory statement last night as “a profound economic challenge.”

John Elliott is Asia Sentinel’s South Asia correspondent. He blogs at Riding the Elephant.

asiasentinel.com · by Asia Sentinel

18. Three Inquiries, but No Answers to Who Blew Holes in Nord Stream Pipelines

Sabotage. A key element of unconventional warfare.

Three Inquiries, but No Answers to Who Blew Holes in Nord Stream Pipelines

Denmark, Germany and Sweden are all investigating the ruptured pipeline sites, but they remain tight-lipped over who might have caused the damage and why.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/25/world/europe/nord-stream-pipeline-explosions.html

Give this article

The gas leak at the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline shortly after the explosions on Sept. 26. Credit...Danish Defence, via Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

By Melissa Eddy

Reporting from Berlin

Oct. 25, 2022, 4:44 a.m. ET

After midnight on a Monday in late September, seismographs in Sweden suddenly picked up a violent disturbance that jolted the floor of the Baltic Sea south of the rocky island of Bornholm, a onetime Viking outpost that is a part of Denmark.

Hours later — at 7 p.m. local time — it happened again: a series of underwater explosions farther off the island’s northeastern coast.

The next morning, photographs showed enormous blooms of methane bubbling on the ocean surface above both explosion sites, confirming reports of a severe loss of pressure in Nord Stream 1 and 2, the natural gas lines linking Russia and Germany.

Now, a month after subsea explosions ripped holes in the Nord Stream pipelines, in busy international waters, the leakage has stopped, the first underwater images of the twisted metal and severed openings have been published and three countries have investigations underway.

But beyond acknowledging that explosives were used in acts of deliberate sabotage, investigators have disclosed few details of their findings. Amid rampant speculation about who carried out the explosions — was it the Russians trying to rattle the West, the Americans trying to sever a Russian economic artery or possibly the Ukrainians trying to take revenge on Russia? — what is known remains as cloudy as the images from the floor of the Baltic Sea.

Image

One of four gas leaks at one of the damaged Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea.Credit...Danish Defence, via Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Denmark, Germany and Sweden have launched separate investigations into the leaks — Denmark and Sweden because the explosions occurred in waters that were within their so-called exclusive economic zones, and Germany because that is where the pipelines terminate.

In a letter to the U.N. Security Council from Sept. 29, three days after the incidents, Denmark and Sweden said they believed that “several hundred kilograms” of explosives had been used to damage the pipes, each of which measures more than three-and-a-half feet in diameter and is made from steel reinforced by a weighted concrete coating.

All three countries are refusing to release any more information. The acute geopolitical tensions surrounding the blasts — coming amid the fierce fighting in Ukraine and an economic war between Moscow and the West — has heightened the caution.

“There is a lot of secrecy still going on,” said Jens Wenzel Kristoffersen, a commander in the Danish Navy and a military analyst at the Center for Military Studies at the University of Copenhagen. “The reason is simply because they have to be absolutely sure. When they have results, they have to be based on quite hard-core facts and not just speculation.”

Commander Kristoffersen said he believed it was unlikely that any of the investigators would make an announcement “until they have this smoking-gun evidence.”

Tentative or uncoordinated findings, he added, “could lead to reactions which would not be helpful at this point of time.”

The German government stressed that the complexity of the forensic examination of the damage sites “will almost certainly not allow any short-term, reliable statements to be made about the authorship,” or who carried out the attacks.

The pipelines are owned by Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned natural gas monopoly. (Minority stakes in Nord Stream 1 are held by four other energy companies: Wintershall Dea and E.On, both based in Germany, Gasunie in the Netherlands and Engie in France.)

Russian officials have complained that they have been blocked from investigating the explosion sites. The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, accused the Europeans of conducting the investigation “secretively,” without Moscow’s involvement. “According to statements we are hearing from Germany, from France and from Denmark, this investigation was set up inherently to put the blame on Russia,” Reuters quoted Mr. Peskov as saying.

Editors’ Picks

Geez, Even Fargo Has Gone Upscale

How Do I Find My Personal Style?

The Strange Comfort of Jet Lag

The twin 760-mile-long pipelines, stretching from the northwest coast of Russia to Lubmin, in northeastern Germany, have always been the focus of international tension. The original Nord Stream, completed in 2011 at a cost of more than $12 billion, was criticized as an expensive way for Gazprom to ship gas to Germany while avoiding paying transit fees in Ukraine.

Image

Danish ships monitoring the gas leak in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Denmark in September.Credit...Danish Defence Command/Via Reuters

Years later, the idea of Nord Stream 2, a sibling pipeline that would double the original’s capacity, was condemned by many Central and Eastern European countries, as well as by the United States, which warned that it would permit Moscow to tighten Germany’s reliance on Russian gas. Although the $11 billion pipeline was completed last year, German authorities shelved it just before Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

Although the newer pipeline has never been used, and the original one has not delivered gas since July because of what Gazprom calls technical issues, both were filled with highly pressurized methane to help the pipes withstand water pressure on the floor of the sea. Both Nord Streams are composed of two strands of pipe running along the seafloor. The explosions caused leaks along both strands of Nord Stream 1, but in only one strand of Nord Stream 2. Its other strand remains intact.

Murky images published last week by the Swedish tabloid Expressen pointed to the force of the explosion that hit Nord Stream 1, seeming to show that several segments of pipe were severed from the main pipeline.

Trond Larsen, a submersible drone operator whose images were commissioned by the Swedish newspaper, pointed out that, when the pipes burst, the highly pressurized gas — up to nearly 3,200 pounds per square inch — disturbed the seabed, appearing to bury parts of the damaged pipe.

“I believe we saw the part of the pipe going west still buried in the seafloor, the end of the pipe going east lifted up from the seafloor,” Mr. Larsen said in a telephone interview. He said there was very little debris in the area, perhaps because the rush of gas had pushed it all away, or it had already been removed by the Swedish investigators.

Last week, German investigators also sent a vessel equipped with underwater drones and a diving robot to comb the seafloor in the same area for more evidence of the explosion.

Danish authorities have not yet lifted their restrictions in their economic waters above the explosion site, which were sealed off to shipping traffic as a safety precaution.

The explosions took place in a busy maritime corridor that is frequented by fishing boats, merchant traffic and military vessels from the nations that border the Baltic Sea as well as NATO partners, including the United States.

Since the blasts, patrols have increased in the Baltic and the North Sea, which is home to a vast network of cables and pipelines connecting Norway — Europe’s most important energy exporter since Russia invaded Ukraine — to Britain and the European mainland. Security is also high along a recently opened pipeline, Baltic Pipe, which carries Norwegian gas to Poland, crossing the Nord Stream arteries on the seabed not far from the explosion sites.

Image

Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline in Lubmin, Germany, last month.Credit...Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times

This month, Mr. Putin told an energy conference in Russia that delivering natural gas to Europe through the remaining strand of Nord Stream 2 would be a matter of “just turning on the tap.” His statement echoed those he made last October, as he urged Germans to approve the pipeline.

Days later, Alexei Miller, Gazprom’s chairman, in comments made to Russia’s Channel One television station, floated the idea that it would possibly be faster to rebuild the pipeline than to repair it. At the same time, he acknowledged that any such move would require interest from Germany, as well as resolving regulatory, legal and sanctions issues.

After years of ignoring the protests from their neighbors in Central and Eastern Europe — some of whom share borders with Russia and have a long history of dealing with Moscow — Germany’s leaders have recognized the mistake of letting their country’s powerful economy become overly dependent on Russian gas.

Investments are now focused instead on securing and connecting floating terminals for shipments of liquefied natural gas from the United States and elsewhere. One of the new terminals is to be built off the coast of Lubmin, allowing the onshore pipelines that were previously used to receive Russian gas through Nord Stream to carry L.N.G.

19. Most in US want more action on climate change: AP-NORC poll

If that is the case then the NSS should be popular among the people.

Most in US want more action on climate change: AP-NORC poll

AP · by MATTHEW DALY and NUHA DOLBY · October 25, 2022

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly two-thirds of Americans think the federal government is not doing enough to fight climate change, according to a new poll that shows limited public awareness about a sweeping new law that commits the U.S. to its largest ever investment to combat global warming.

Democrats in Congress approved the Inflation Reduction Act in August, handing President Joe Biden a hard-fought triumph on priorities that his party hopes will bolster prospects for keeping their House and Senate majorities in November’s elections.

Biden and Democratic lawmakers have touted the new law as a milestone achievement leading into the midterm elections, and environmental groups have spent millions to boost the measure in battleground states. Yet the poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that 61% of U.S. adults say they know little to nothing about it.

While the law was widely heralded as the largest investment in climate spending in history, 49% of Americans say it won’t make much of a difference on climate change, 33% say it will help and 14% think it will do more to hurt it.

The measure, which passed without a single Republican vote in either chamber, offers nearly $375 billion in incentives to accelerate expansion of clean energy such as wind and solar power, speeding the transition away from fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas that largely cause climate change.

Joe Biden

Fetterman, Oz meet for highly anticipated Pa. Senate debate

Fla. Gov. DeSantis refuses to commit to serving full term

Jan. 6 trial delayed after Oath Keepers' leader gets COVID

Biden's midterm 'closing argument': Look at the alternative

Combined with spending by states and the private sector, the law could help shrink U.S. carbon emissions by about two-fifths by 2030 and chop emissions from electricity by as much as 80%, advocates say.

Michael Katz, 84, of Temple, New Hampshire, said he thinks Biden has “done an amazing amount of work” as president. “I’m sort of in awe of what he’s done,″ said Katz, a Democrat and retired photographer. Still, asked his opinion of the Inflation Reduction Act, Katz said, “I’m not acquainted with” it.

After learning about the law’s provisions, Katz said he supports increased spending for wind and solar power, along with incentives to purchase electric vehicles.

Katz said he supports even stronger measures — such as restrictions on rebuilding in coastal areas damaged by Hurricane Ian or other storms — but doubts they will ever be approved.

“People want their dreams to come true: to live near the ocean in a big house,″ he said.

Leah Stokes, an environmental policy professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said she was not surprised the climate law is so little known, despite massive media coverage when it was debated in Congress, approved and signed by Biden.

The law was passed during the summer, when people traditionally pay less attention to news, “and it takes time to explain it,″ especially since many of the law’s provisions have not yet kicked in, Stokes said.

Biden and congressional Democrats “delivered in a big way on climate,″ she said, but now must focus on helping the public understand the law and “winning the win.″

Meredith McGroarty, a waitress from Pontiac, Michigan, said she knew little about the new law but supports increased climate action. “I have children I’m leaving behind to this world,″ she said.

McGroarty, 40, a Democrat, urged Biden and other leaders to talk more about the climate law’s “effects on normal, everyday people. Let us know what’s going on a little more.″

Americans are generally more likely to support than oppose many of the government actions on climate change included in the law, the poll shows. That includes incentives for electric vehicles and solar panels, though relatively few say they are inclined to pursue either in the next three years.

About half of Americans think government action that targets companies with restrictions is very important, the poll shows, while about a third say that about restrictions on individuals. A majority of Americans, 62%, say companies’ refusal to reduce energy use is a major problem for efforts to reduce climate change, while just about half say people not willing to reduce their energy use is a major problem.

Slightly more than half also say it’s a major problem that the energy industry is not doing enough to supply power from renewable sources such as wind and solar, and about half say the government is not investing enough in renewable energy.

Overall, 62% of U.S. adults say the government is doing too little to reduce climate change, while 19% say it’s doing too much and 18% think it’s doing the right amount.

Democrats are more likely than others to think the federal government is doing too little on climate: 79% say that, compared to 67% of independents and 39% of Republicans. About three-quarters of Black and Hispanic Americans think there’s too little action, compared to about half of white Americans.

And about three-quarters of adults under 45 think there’s too little action on climate, significantly higher than the roughly half of those older who think that.

Robert Stavins, a professor of energy and economic development at the Harvard Kennedy School, said it makes sense for the government to step in to promote renewable energy on a large scale.

“Individual action is not going to be sufficient in 10 or even 20 years,” he said. “You need government policies to create incentives for industry and individuals to move in a carbon-friendly direction.″

Americans want to own a car, “and they are not going to buy one that’s expensive,″ Stavins said, so government needs to lower costs for electric vehicles and encourage automakers to produce more EVs, including widespread availability of charging stations. Biden has set a goal to install 500,000 charging stations across America as part of the 2021 infrastructure law.

On renewable energy, nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults say offshore wind farms should be expanded, and about 6 in 10 say solar panel farms should be expanded. Biden has moved to expand offshore wind and solar power as president.

Americans are divided on offshore drilling for oil and natural gas. Around a third say such drilling should be expanded, while about as many say it should be reduced; another third say neither.

Republicans were more likely than Democrats to be in favor of expanding offshore drilling, 54% to 20%.

___

The poll of 1,003 adults was conducted Sep. 9-12 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.

AP · by MATTHEW DALY and NUHA DOLBY · October 25, 2022

20. Globalization Isn’t Dead

Excerpts:

Although the partial decoupling of Russia and the West and China and the United States does not amount to deglobalization, it does indicate a shift in the nature of globalization. The global economic order is becoming more multipolar and fragmented in the absence of international leadership. This means that geopolitics will increasingly creep into economic calculations. The interdependencies and vulnerabilities exposed by COVID-19 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have brought economic security concerns to the fore. Countries and companies will increasingly attempt to make themselves more resilient to external shocks and insulate themselves from geoeconomic pressures through a combination of “ally shoring,” “nearshoring,” diversifying supply sources, and stockpiling. It is even possible that cross-border economic activity will splinter into geopolitical spheres of influence, as countries deepen their integration with friends and reduce their reliance on foes.

These forces point away from the aggressive globalization of recent decades, but not toward autarky. The benefits of scale and specialization are too great, and the costs of reversing globalization are too high. The global value chains that produce most modern goods are so complex and spread out that recreating them at a national level is virtually impossible. Western companies will increasingly pull back from China, no doubt, but for the most part they won’t bring production back home, instead shifting it to friendly, lower-wage nations such as Mexico and Vietnam. With few exceptions, reshoring and insourcing would prove excessively costly—and risky. As the shortage of baby formula in the United States demonstrated earlier this year, resilience is best achieved through diversification and spare capacity—not self-reliance.

These shifts in the patterns of global integration may well result in efficiency losses. Politics and geopolitics, after all, increase transaction costs and impede the optimal allocation of resources. But this is a small price to pay to ensure that globalization and its benefits endure. Striking the right balance between efficiency and security will result in a safer, more sustainable economic order.

Globalization Isn’t Dead

The World Is More Fragmented, but Interdependence Still Rules

By Ian Bremmer

October 25, 2022

Foreign Affairs · by Ian Bremmer · October 25, 2022

After two and a half years of a pandemic that has exposed the fragility of global supply chains and eight months of war in Ukraine that has severed economic ties between Russia and the West and disrupted global food and energy markets, the world seems to be at a turning point. Globalization, many claim, is receding. A growing number of analysts now argue that much as World War I and the 1918 influenza pandemic brought an end to the first great era of globalization, the combination of Russia’s war in Ukraine, COVID-19, simmering populism, and geopolitical competition between the United States and China has kicked the second great era of globalization into reverse. “This new cold war marks the end of the era of globalization and integration that has shaped the international system since 1989,” the journalist Fareed Zakaria wrote in mid-October.

Prominent investors and policymakers agree. Larry Fink, the CEO of the asset management firm BlackRock, wrote to shareholders in March that the war in Ukraine had “put an end to the globalization we have experienced over the last three decades.” And at the World Economic Forum in Davos in May, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva warned of a coming “geoeconomic fragmentation.” Countries and companies, she said, are “re-evaluating global supply chains” and undoing decades of integration.

Yet globalization has been pronounced dead many times before: after the global financial crisis in 2008, after the Brexit referendum in 2016 and the election of Donald Trump later that year, and after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. That none of these predictions has come to pass should give analysts pause about predicting deglobalization once more. Rather than the end of economic integration, the world is experiencing a geopolitical recession that has left globalization adrift.

MORE INTERCONNECTED THAN EVER

Those proclaiming the demise of globalization as it was once known are not totally wrong. It is true that the era of “hyperglobalization” that lasted from the 1970s to the 2008 global financial crisis, during which a hegemonic United States drove a top-down process of trade liberalization and global integration, was a unique historical episode. That era is now dead and buried along with globalism, the ideology that propelled it, and unipolarity, the international order that upheld it.

An increasingly inward-looking United States no longer has the political will to serve as architect and guarantor of the world economy. China, meanwhile, is beset with structural economic challenges that limit its ability to promote its own order by means of trade access and investment policy. And no other country or group of countries has the capacity to fill the void.

But that does not mean that globalization is ending. Such an outcome would require the United States to actively turn against economic integration. Bombast aside, that did not happen under Trump, and it is not happening under U.S. President Joe Biden. Rather, the United States has simply stopped leading the drive for ever-greater globalization. This leadership vacuum has resulted in the fraying of the “governance of globalization,” as the former World Bank President Robert Zoellick has put it. But globalization itself is not fraying—it is simply adrift. It is less coordinated, deliberate, and efficient than before but still in most countries’ interest given how much worse the alternatives are.

A look at economic data belies the notion that globalization is reversing. Even as global capital flows relative to GDP have moderated since their peak in the middle of the first decade of this century, cross-border investment has continued to grow and financial market returns have remained highly correlated globally. Worldwide merchandise trade is near all-time highs, having surpassed pre-pandemic projections already this year. Multilateral trade negotiations have stalled, but new trade deals continue to emerge, including the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership between 15 Asia-Pacific nations and the 11-member Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. The number of regional trade agreements in force has grown continuously since the 1990s, more than doubling since 2008.

The world is experiencing a geopolitical recession that has left globalization adrift.

Trade in goods has slowed relative to global output since 2008, but even this shift does not signal deglobalization. To the contrary, the plateauing of the global trade ratio is partly a side effect of economic development—a sign of globalization’s success. Take the example of China, which has seen its ratio of trade to GDP decline by nearly 30 percentage points since 2006 and which, by virtue of its size, has been the biggest contributor to the slowing worldwide trade-to-GDP ratio. As the country has grown richer and its economy more complex—owing to market reforms and integration into global markets—China’s growth model has shifted away from exports and toward domestic consumption and investment. At the same time, domestic demand has shifted away from goods and toward services, which are traditionally less tradable. China has also moved up the value chain, manufacturing fewer cheap consumer goods and more advanced intermediate inputs, and now produces a greater share of the value of its exports domestically. Because of rising incomes, Chinese labor is more expensive as well, making the country a less desirable manufacturing hub and eliminating one of the country’s key competitive advantages. And finally, China has already exploited and exhausted most opportunities for trade liberalization and integration into global value chains, meaning that it has less room to globalize further.

None of these trends constitute disintegration or retrenchment. Rather, they reflect the fact that globalization has diminishing returns, and not just for China. Now that most countries are already relatively well integrated into the global economy, the world as a whole has less to gain from additional globalization. In general, as once closed low-income economies integrate into global markets and grow wealthier and more developed, they become more self-sufficient. China and many other emerging-market countries that globalized in the last half century now produce more of what they consume, consume more of what they produce, and produce more of what they produce. This shows up in the data as a decline in global trade intensity, but it is a sign of progress, not of deglobalization.

What is more, technological advances such as e-commerce, automation, artificial intelligence, robotics, cloud computing, and telework have transformed many labor-intensive production processes into capital- and knowledge-intensive processes. Trade designed to take advantage of labor-cost differentials between countries has consequently declined worldwide—but not because of any conscious turn against globalization.

The growing importance of services and intangibles in the modern economy has also fueled the false impression of deglobalization. Trade in services and intangibles has been accelerating for 15 years and accounts for an increasingly large share of global economic activity. This is especially true of trade in digital services. For instance, computer and communication services now make up around half of all services exports and three percent of global GDP. Intangibles such as research and development, intellectual property rights, branding, design, and software have also grown significantly as a share of total trade, investment, and output. Yet many services and intangibles are not captured by current trade data because of measurement challenges.

All this suggests that traditional measures of globalization are being rendered obsolete as the global economy grows more complex. In reality, however, the world is more interconnected than ever. And interconnection begets interconnection, because the more interconnected nations grow, the harder and costlier it becomes for them to decouple.

DECOUPLED, NOT DIVORCED

To be sure, parts of the world are decoupling, but only some parts and only to some extent. Advanced industrial democracies are forcibly decoupling from Russia in a way that is near-total and likely permanent. Western multinational companies have closed nearly all their businesses in Russia and liquidated their holdings. Russian oligarchs have been sanctioned and their assets have been frozen. Most Russian banks have been banished from SWIFT, the global payments system, and even Russia’s central bank reserves have been seized. The developed world is halting its purchases of Russian energy and blocking Russia’s access to advanced manufactured goods and critical components.

This decoupling will have dire implications for Russia’s economic, military, and geopolitical standing. But Russia is hardly being cut off from the entire world. Although the country accounts for a minuscule share of world GDP, its natural resources are too valuable for it to be cut off entirely from the global economy. China and India have already increased their purchases of Russian oil from a combined 1.7 million barrels per day in June 2021 to nearly 2.8 million barrels per day in June 2022, and at a discount. Developing countries still rely on Russian grain and fertilizer, and many regular and irregular armies continue to use Russian weapons and mercenaries. Much of the world will continue to do business with Russia.

The United States and China, meanwhile, are locked in an intensifying geopolitical competition that has led them to decouple in areas perceived to be of national security importance. These areas encompass an ever-growing number of “strategic” sectors—from dual-use technologies such as semiconductors to renewable energy to social media and other information industries—that are now off-limits for foreign trade and investment.

But this partial decoupling can only go so far because the U.S. and Chinese economies are so interdependent that a full divorce would be ruinous for both countries and for the world. The U.S. and Chinese business communities want to do more, not less, business with each other. Likewise, most other countries—including the United States’ closest allies in Asia and Europe, which are just as wary of China’s rise—have no interest in mutually (and globally) assured economic destruction and are therefore ramping up investment in and exposure to both the U.S. and Chinese economies.

The U.S. and Chinese business communities want to do more, not less, business with each other.

Despite tensions, trade wars, and pandemic disruptions, bilateral trade between the United States and China has continued to grow. Two-way goods trade stood at $657 billion in 2021, up from $557 billion in 2019, and this year’s figure will almost surely surpass the record of $659 billion set in 2018. The United States is still China’s largest goods trading partner and export market, and China is still the United States’ largest goods trading partner, its largest supplier of imported goods, and its third-largest export market.

Investment has also remained strong. Although Western corporations are more worried about the risk of investing in China than they were in the past, they show few signs of backing off. Foreign direct investment into China reached a record high last year, and a recent survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in China found that 83 percent of American manufacturers operating there have no plans to move out. Only three percent intended to “reshore” production to the United States and 60 percent planned to increase their investment in China. U.S. imports of intermediate and final manufactured goods continue to grow faster than U.S. manufacturing output, indicating that no net reshoring has occurred so far.

For its part, Beijing might like to become technologically and economically self-reliant, but China’s economic growth remains dependent on commercial ties with the West. Together, the United States, the European Union, and Japan buy nearly 40 percent of China’s exports—a share that has barely budged in the last decade. Moreover, China lacks the ability to produce cutting-edge semiconductors indigenously, and U.S. export controls and investment restrictions ensure that it will remain unable to produce them for at least the next decade. Given the importance of semiconductors for manufacturing not just consumer goods such as phones, computers, and cars but also most advanced weapons systems, China simply cannot afford to decouple from the United States and its allies.

That is not to say the United States and China are growing closer. The most important geopolitical relationship in the world is still entirely devoid of trust, and the domestic politics of both countries lean increasingly toward antagonism. Bipartisan U.S. hostility toward China, Chinese “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy, the politics of the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and rising tensions over Taiwan have all made the U.S.-Chinese relationship more dangerous and harder to manage. But the relationship is not on the verge of breaking down, because the ties that bind the two countries are becoming more, not less, important.

LEADERLESS WORLD

Although the partial decoupling of Russia and the West and China and the United States does not amount to deglobalization, it does indicate a shift in the nature of globalization. The global economic order is becoming more multipolar and fragmented in the absence of international leadership. This means that geopolitics will increasingly creep into economic calculations. The interdependencies and vulnerabilities exposed by COVID-19 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have brought economic security concerns to the fore. Countries and companies will increasingly attempt to make themselves more resilient to external shocks and insulate themselves from geoeconomic pressures through a combination of “ally shoring,” “nearshoring,” diversifying supply sources, and stockpiling. It is even possible that cross-border economic activity will splinter into geopolitical spheres of influence, as countries deepen their integration with friends and reduce their reliance on foes.

These forces point away from the aggressive globalization of recent decades, but not toward autarky. The benefits of scale and specialization are too great, and the costs of reversing globalization are too high. The global value chains that produce most modern goods are so complex and spread out that recreating them at a national level is virtually impossible. Western companies will increasingly pull back from China, no doubt, but for the most part they won’t bring production back home, instead shifting it to friendly, lower-wage nations such as Mexico and Vietnam. With few exceptions, reshoring and insourcing would prove excessively costly—and risky. As the shortage of baby formula in the United States demonstrated earlier this year, resilience is best achieved through diversification and spare capacity—not self-reliance.

These shifts in the patterns of global integration may well result in efficiency losses. Politics and geopolitics, after all, increase transaction costs and impede the optimal allocation of resources. But this is a small price to pay to ensure that globalization and its benefits endure. Striking the right balance between efficiency and security will result in a safer, more sustainable economic order.

IAN BREMMER is President of Eurasia Group.

Foreign Affairs · by Ian Bremmer · October 25, 2022

21. Ex-UK pilots recruited by China were actually spies for UK: Report

Every ex-pat working overseas for foreign governments will now be suspect.

Ex-UK pilots recruited by China were actually spies for UK: Report

americanmilitarynews.com · by Ryan Morgan · October 24, 2022

Some of the former United Kingdom military pilots who were recruited by China’s military to train Chinese pilots may have actually gone along with the recruitment effort in order to steal secrets from China for the West. These Chinese recruiting and British counter-spying efforts are playing out as China is trying to overtake the U.S. and the West as the dominant global power.

Last week, the U.K.’s Ministry of Defense revealed that China had recruited around 30 former British military pilots since 2019 to train their Chinese counterparts. The Daily Express reported on Sunday, based on unnamed British government sources, that at least some of the former British pilots who were recruited by China actually worked as double agents who used the opportunity to gather sensitive information from the Chinese side.

China has been able to lure in former British pilots with experience flying fighter jets and and helicopters, reportedly offering salaries as high as $270,000. Beyond simply improving the expertise of Chinese pilots, the recruitment effort also risks exposing sensitive Western aerial combat tactics and the physical vulnerabilities of Western aircraft for China. China could use such Western air combat techniques to fly more effectively or to devise ways to counter Western air power.

According to the Daily Express, the British government has struggled to stop this Chinese military recruitment practice. However, rather than impotently accepting that China will continue to lure in experienced former British pilots, the Daily Express’s sources claim the British government asked some of the targets of China’s recruitment efforts to “wear two hats” — one as a trainer for China’s military and the other as a spy for the U.K.

The sources said the former British military pilots were instructed to play it safe as they acted as double agents. As a result, some of the British pilots China recruited had only limited access to sensitive Chinese military information. Other British trainers, however, were more lucky and trained pilots of some of China’s most advanced fighter jets, according to the Daily Express sources.

One source told the Daily Express that the U.K. had “played China at its own game” – and won.

“This was a rather unprecedented situation,” the source added.

While its rare for a government to so openly describe the efforts of alleged intelligence gathering operations, a source for the Daily Express said the pilots who served as double agents had already left China and the operation has concluded.

The alleged British counter-spying operation against China could be real or the revelation to the media could itself be an intelligence community effort against China. Even if no British pilots had actually worked as double agents while training China’s military, the claim that they did steal information from China could sow doubt among the Chinese military about how much they can trust the foreign pilots they recruit.

While these unnamed sources have claimed the U.K. government was able to turn this Chinese recruiting effort to their own advantage, the U.K. government is openly pursuing efforts to prevent and punish former military pilots who do go on to work for China’s military.

Flip

americanmilitarynews.com · by Ryan Morgan · October 24, 2022

22. AI Tops Proposed Tech Amendments for the 2023 NDAA

AI Tops Proposed Tech Amendments for the 2023 NDAA

defenseone.com · by Alexandra Kelley

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Get all our news and commentary in your inbox at 6 a.m. ET.

Policy

One bipartisan proposal would create federal AI data libraries; others would further limit tech exchange with China.

October 24, 2022 11:00 AM ET

By Alexandra Kelley

Staff Correspondent

October 24, 2022 11:00 AM ET

Funding for new and emerging technologies is featured heavily in several Senate amendments proposed for the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, underscoring Capitol Hill’s enthusiasm and technology’s increasing role in modernizing national security.

Among the leading topics present in the slew of the more tech-centric amendments is artificial intelligence. Senators Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Gary Peters, D-MI, submitted Peters’s previously introduced bill, the Advancing American AI Act, for NDAA inclusion. The amendment would establish AI data libraries to better organize federal AI initiatives and foster greater private-sector collaboration.

“With broad, bipartisan support this year’s NDAA increases funding for our national defense, invests in the platforms and infrastructure our military needs, and delivers critical resources for our allies and partners around the globe,” Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said in a press release on the Senate version of the bill. “To ensure our technological superiority, it strengthens our cyber, hypersonic and artificial intelligence capabilities, giving our forces advantages on the battlefields of the future.”

Other prominent amendments requesting AI funding allocations include the establishment of the United States-Israel Artificial Intelligence Center, which would foster bilateral collaboration on the development of several key AI components, including image classification, object detection, data labeling and natural language processing.

Additional oversight and review of the Department of Defense’s investment in AI systems within categories like robotics and automation—along with increased investment in supply chains and manufacturing of AI and other emerging technologies—were also among the top funding proposals submitted by lawmakers.

Restricting access to technological products created in China also stood out as a prominent topic among tech amendments. One amendment calls for greater restrictions on unmanned aircraft systems that are based in or have ties to the Chinese government or other foreign bodies. Another amendment seeks to share technology and other military equipment with Taiwan to further the U.S.’s economic partnership with the island, while the Israel-U.S. AI partnership would prohibit working with any entity that is linked to China.

Fostering semiconductor manufacturing independence—one of the Biden administration’s larger infrastructure goals—also made it into the final steps of the NDAA through a complimentary amendment that aims to strengthen the supply chains of critical goods.

This is another effort to reduce dependence on China’s semiconductor industry amid growing geopolitical tension, as a supporting amendment—and existing provisions within the draft NDAA—call for a prohibition on semiconductors affiliated with Chinese technology corporations.

A large swath of federal funding was also proposed for the Maritime Administration within the Department of Transportation. The amendment comes with provisions requiring investments in information technology systems within U.S. shipbuilding and the implementation of more environmentally-friendly marine technologies across the agency.

23. Democracy Needs a New Sales Pitch

Excerpts:

First, to heal our politics at home and douse the embers of anxiety and resentment that can be easily fanned to engulf our democracies, we must forge a more broadly shared economic condition. This entails closing yawning economic opportunity gaps that feed frustration, encourage nostalgia, and pull back from international collaboration. Part of this objective must be to empower as well as to rebuild the communities that have missed out. Everyone needs a stake if these local and global challenges are to be met, and everyone needs to feel in control of their own future.

It starts locally with national leaders helping to catalyze and support locally owned, operated, and governed economic rejuvenation efforts. Democracy and market economies thrive when more people have more opportunity to contribute and reap the benefits. The project for leaders of Western democracies is to get busy learning how to listen to, respect, connect with, and deliver for the working classes, particularly in the politically potent industrial heartland regions that are hotbeds of resentment and unrest.

...

A robust “ally-shoring” plan is the lead element of this new affirmative foreign policy. One that works to strengthen our Western economies, shore up and expand our alliances, and make a winning offer to “on-the-fence” countries to work and benefit with us versus the corrupting and dependency building development assistance “offers” emanating from China in particular. Ally-shoring also mitigates supply chain dependencies by limiting exposure of critical supply chains, where we do not want to be over-reliant on rogue regimes, open to espionage and piracy, or to have our dependencies used as a tool of political coercion. Today we see clearly how dependencies on Russia’s oil, gas, and grain, and China’s use of everything from personal protective equipment to critical minerals, both threaten consumers and markets.

A new alliance clearly needs to start with democracies around the world that want to work together and strengthen an open and free rules-based world order, as well as our economies, and by extension our political and (when needed) military influence. President Joe Biden has begun to try and jumpstart this type of effort with his series of democracy summits.

...

These two paths—revitalizing our industrial heartlands and ally-shoring—will not solve all our world’s problems, but they are the right place to start. This is the way that our democratic values and institutions must save the day (again). As Blair rightly says, this is a political and economic crossroads for the world order and perhaps especially for those countries who after the end of the Cold War thought that these moments were behind us. We thought that history—at least in that sense—was at an end. But as real and proxy wars rage on, it is clear it is not.

As Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson remind us, both global and domestic democracies are on a “narrow path” and the future is not guaranteed, neither at home nor throughout the world. Which is why we in the West need a new plan.

Democracy Needs a New Sales Pitch

Here’s how to get the world excited about it again.

OCTOBER 23, 2022, 7:00 AM

By John Austin, the director of the Michigan Economic Center, and Elaine Dezenski, senior director and head of the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Foreign Policy · by John Austin, Elaine Dezenski · October 23, 2022

People raise signs behind a U.S. flag at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on March 8, 2020.

People raise signs behind a U.S. flag at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on March 8, 2020. JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images

In a recent address at Ditchley Park, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair described today’s moment as a global inflection point, a time akin to the early post-World War II years or after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when Western nations had to rethink and remake our policies both foreign and domestic.

In Blair’s words: “We need a new plan, a way of looking at the world, to make sense of it and how best to pursue the advancement of its people…Western democracies need a new project that gives direction, inspires hope, and is a credible explanation of the way the world is changing and how we succeed within it.”

He is right. We do need a new plan.

We need to define and enlist allies in a shared global agenda to strengthen our national economies and democracies. To equip ourselves with the economic strength and political will to maintain a democratic rules-based order while checking authoritarian interests. In this new moment of clarity and confrontation, we must demonstrate that our democratic systems deliver more in the form of both political freedoms and economic opportunity than strongman states—states that foster corruption at home, destroy basic rights, build dependency, and employ tools of coercion abroad.

We must also be honest about our own domestic challenges. In the United States, United Kingdom, and across Europe, faltering heartland regions and their alienated, angry, and anxious residents are a prime driver of populist movements, particularly anti-democratic right-wing variants. These support a new nativism and advocate retreat from the international community. They are movements that support the rise of an authoritarian to “fix things.” Meeting these internal threats to our own democracies is a prerequisite for confronting the authoritarian challenge abroad.

Today’s urgent challenge differs from earlier inflection points. This is because yawning economic inequalities within Western democracies are today a primary driver of polarizing populist movements, fueling distrust and seeding instability in our democratic governance systems. The wealthy few reap more, the middle class is hollowing out, and the poor bear the brunt of change, whether from globalization, climate change, or soaring inflation and cost of living.

Particularly dangerous are the economic gaps between residents of thriving global city regions and the increasingly angry, alienated residents of communities left behind by economic change. Arguably the implications of the growing divide were not fully grasped by Tony Blair in the United Kingdom or a succession of U.S. leaders over the last three decades. But the evidence of this divide has been growing for years, from the ailing factory towns of the American Midwest to the hollowed industrial centers of England’s North. Many of those living in regions experiencing relative economic decline responded to these conditions with support for anti-democratic populists, those who threatened to dismantle democratic governments from within.

During the last global inflection point Blair mentions in his Ditchley address—what philosopher and economist Francis Fukuyama billed the “end of history”—the Berlin Wall fell, the Cold War ended, and we saw the rise and opening to the West of both China and Russia (or so we thought). It seemed for an historical moment as if all nations could work together to nurture economic opportunity and freedom across the globe.

Later with the United States and many other nations reeling from the fallout of the Great Recession and the global financial crisis, the election of President Barack Obama was embraced around the world, suggesting renewed hope that the United States under his leadership could join with allies to again constructively to address many emerging challenges. Given the high expectations among many, particularly in Europe, it seemed possible that the time was right to forge new agreements and protocols on how we would work together to solve shared and global challenges around big topics: international security, climate change, terrorism, the stability of the financial and trading systems, health and education, civil and women’s rights, and the free flow of information.

But Obama got politically dragged down at home and found few kindred spirits among leaders abroad, including in Europe. The economic freefall of the working class, combined with the apparent exoneration of the global financial elite, contributed to public resentments and the rise of populist movements threatening democracy in countries of the West. Ultimately, Obama’s foreign policy contributed to our current weaknesses with China, Syria, and other countries, as it looked like a further retreat from U.S. leadership in global system.

A man cleans graffiti from the front of a building after pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong on Sept. 30, 2019. Chris McGrath/Getty Images

Police detain a man during a pro-democracy rally in Moscow on Jan. 31, 2021. ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP via Getty Images

As a result, a rising China ended up dashing Western hopes it would integrate with the West and democratize, as evidence has grown that not only was it not really joining in Western norms and our economic and political order, while economically benefitting from it, but rather had designs on how to supplant them. Finally, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine put an exclamation point on the obliterated Western hopes that it too could be trusted to join the family of nations.

Today it is increasingly clear that we are not going to forge new universal global agreements about how best to “run the world.” The postwar global institutions are being weakened in part by countries that do not want to play by these rules and in part by populists at home. These include Donald Trump, along with Boris Johnson until his recent comeuppance in Britain, Marine Le Pen in France, and now Georgia Meloni in Italy, who all wish to undermine these rules and the influence of the “globalists.”

Today it is increasingly clear that we are not going to forge new universal global agreements about how best to “run the world.”

And we cannot use the old playbooks to win the new competition. In this new pitched battle, containment—the strategy that won the Cold War—is not an option. As Blair points out, unlike prior inflection points, today the “East is on par with the West” in terms of economic clout. China is too big, influential, and a tightly integrated part of the global economy and polity to simply isolate it and wait for the inevitable collapse.

Today’s contest can only be won by strengthening the hand of democracies and free people, strengthening the influence and numbers of those who want to play by an open rules-based and freedom-valuing regime, and enlisting in the struggle and linking arms with countries on the fence between the two systems, by offering a better and more attractive alternative.

Blair offers a similar diagnosis, but his proposed remedies are not up to the ambition of his call for a new “plan” for the West. He looks chiefly to the power of new and emerging technologies to solve a host of global challenges from raising living standards to improving health care to tackling climate change. Technology drives progress, but this is a very “top-down” approach, an expectation that miracle technologies from on high will save us all. We maintain that the work needs to begin from the ground up.

We propose to address the root causes of anti-democratic movements at home and abroad, and a new strategic foundation for democratic strength and unity abroad.

A woman pushes a stroller in front of a boarded-up property in in Redcar, England, on Sept. 29, 2015, follwing the announcement that a steel plant in the town would close causing the loss of 1700 jobs. Ian Forsyth/Getty Images

Street scenes from the historical steel mill town of Braddock, Pennsylvania, once a thriving center of America’s steel industry, on Oct. 13, 2016. Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images

First, to heal our politics at home and douse the embers of anxiety and resentment that can be easily fanned to engulf our democracies, we must forge a more broadly shared economic condition. This entails closing yawning economic opportunity gaps that feed frustration, encourage nostalgia, and pull back from international collaboration. Part of this objective must be to empower as well as to rebuild the communities that have missed out. Everyone needs a stake if these local and global challenges are to be met, and everyone needs to feel in control of their own future.

It starts locally with national leaders helping to catalyze and support locally owned, operated, and governed economic rejuvenation efforts. Democracy and market economies thrive when more people have more opportunity to contribute and reap the benefits. The project for leaders of Western democracies is to get busy learning how to listen to, respect, connect with, and deliver for the working classes, particularly in the politically potent industrial heartland regions that are hotbeds of resentment and unrest.

Closing economic divides is also an urgent international project. As we are learning in our initiative to accelerate economic change in industrial regions, there is a convergence of interest and shared urgency in closing economic gulfs for the political benefits of social and political “peace” and cohesion. We need to take “what works” locally and spread and share effective approaches on a grander scale and with our allies. As international partners, we can learn from and assist each other in how to do this work well.

There are paths to new prosperity among the similarly situated industrial regions of the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe, including manufacturing communities that have lost their economic anchors.

As we have documented, there are paths to new prosperity among the similarly situated industrial regions of the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe, including manufacturing communities that have lost their economic anchors. We have learned that communities that have turned an economic corner build on their identity, who they are, what they make and produce, but take it into the future and diversify. They leverage the assets they have, and fashion and execute their own strategic vision and blueprint for economic change.

Some innovate and seed new businesses in emerging sectors by leveraging universities and research institutions. Others become the most highly trained and best educated communities. Some embrace a globalized world and build out export industries, fashion new international entanglements, and welcome new immigrants. Still others grow their own green and blue sustainable economies based on clean energy and smart water solutions. Other community success paths are found by building on unique history, arts and cultural assets, or natural locations on the water or in the mountains, or otherwise developing community amenities that offer a rich quality of life and place.

Perhaps more important is what we have learned about how local and national leaders can best aid this transformation. First by meeting heartland residents with respect, understanding, and seeing things as residents of struggling regions do: the degraded downtowns, the loss of young people, the disappearance of important institutions. By not patronizing residents, talking down to them, or telling them they need to change or what they need to do. Change cannot be “done to” community residents. A new vision for the future and plan to get there must be locally owned and operated.

Supporters of former U.S. President Donald Trump clash with police and security forces as they try to storm the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.

Stop Projecting America’s Democratic Decline Onto the World

Washington’s institutions are faring far worse than those of its peers.

This work is an important priority for the West, but it has mostly to do with the domestic challenge of preserving our own democracy from threats within. We also need a new foreign policy and a more aggressive and effective international development, trade, investment, and engagement agenda to counter authoritarians and strengthen the hand of the democratic alliance.

A robust “ally-shoring” plan is the lead element of this new affirmative foreign policy. One that works to strengthen our Western economies, shore up and expand our alliances, and make a winning offer to “on-the-fence” countries to work and benefit with us versus the corrupting and dependency building development assistance “offers” emanating from China in particular. Ally-shoring also mitigates supply chain dependencies by limiting exposure of critical supply chains, where we do not want to be over-reliant on rogue regimes, open to espionage and piracy, or to have our dependencies used as a tool of political coercion. Today we see clearly how dependencies on Russia’s oil, gas, and grain, and China’s use of everything from personal protective equipment to critical minerals, both threaten consumers and markets.

A new alliance clearly needs to start with democracies around the world that want to work together and strengthen an open and free rules-based world order, as well as our economies, and by extension our political and (when needed) military influence. President Joe Biden has begun to try and jumpstart this type of effort with his series of democracy summits.

While starting with democracies, as Ash Jain and Matthew Kroenig argue in their recent excellent proposal for new trade strategy for democracies, we also need to include near-democracies, such as Vietnam, that are major economic partners, that we want to entice to move more in our direction, and that will agree to certain clear norms for open rules-based economic relations and development. We also need lots of partners in the developing world if we are to keep the collective benefits of highly efficient global supply chains, including those implicating lower cost producers. These countries benefit in turn through economic growth, rising living standards, and movement up the value-added food chain.

These two paths—revitalizing our industrial heartlands and ally-shoring—will not solve all our world’s problems, but they are the right place to start. This is the way that our democratic values and institutions must save the day (again). As Blair rightly says, this is a political and economic crossroads for the world order and perhaps especially for those countries who after the end of the Cold War thought that these moments were behind us. We thought that history—at least in that sense—was at an end. But as real and proxy wars rage on, it is clear it is not.

As Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson remind us, both global and domestic democracies are on a “narrow path” and the future is not guaranteed, neither at home nor throughout the world. Which is why we in the West need a new plan.

Jeffrey Anderson and Andy Westwood contributed to this article.

Foreign Policy · by John Austin, Elaine Dezenski · October 23, 2022

24. Sun Tzu’s advice to Putin

Sun Tzu’s advice to Putin

donga.com

Posted October. 25, 2022 07:46,

Updated October. 25, 2022 07:46

Sun Tzu’s advice to Putin. October. 25, 2022 07:46. .

Russian President Vladimir Putin seems like he made up his mind for a protracted war. This war didn’t have three things from the beginning: the chance of winning, an effective strategy, and an exit. That is why Putin is stalling for time.

Even though the war is protracted, it doesn’t mean it will last a long period. The fate of this war hinges on three pillars: Russia’s defense industry, its army, and how the Russian people think. Even one broken pillar would bring a chain reaction, stopping the economy, which can threaten the power of Putin.

Russia said it would draft 300,000 soldiers, but we are not sure whether the Russian military would be able to feed them and provide weapons and ammunition. They are not trained. The military leadership is poor. Reserve conscripts could fight at the line of defense, but the possibility of losing significant and making captives becomes higher. At the initial stage of the war, Russia promoted patriotism, but the war, economy, and people's condition declined day by day, eventually causing a backlash.

The Art of War’s chapter two, Initiating Battle, says that dragging a war isn’t a solution. Instead, it is like compiling the gunpowder below your feet.

“A protracted war slows the military down, killing soldiers' morale. Attacking a castle uses up your forces’ combat capacity. A long operation of an army depletes the coffer of a nation. A weak army and morale and decreasing soldiers cause bankruptcy. In this situation, feudal lords in the nation or neighboring countries rise to challenge. Not even a wise man can handle what happens in your back.”

This is what exactly is happening to Russia and Putin now. If Putin listens to Sun Tzu’s advice, will he miraculously stop the war? Do you think Putin didn’t know this would happen before waging war? Dictators always destroy themselves. But in the process of self-destruction, the people of that nation and their neighbors suffer. That is why the end of this war depends on the Russian people.

한국어

donga.com

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: d avid.maxwell161@gmail.com

Web Site: www.fdd.org

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Subscribe to FDD’s new podcast, Foreign 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."

Access NSS HERE

Company Name | Website

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 24

Oct 24, 2022 - Press ISW

CDS Daily brief (24.10.22) CDS comments on key events

Occupied territories:

Operational situation

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

Kramatorsk direction

Donetsk direction

Zaporizhzhia direction

Tavriysk direction

Azov-Black Sea Maritime Operational Area:

Russian operational losses from 24.02 to 25.10

Ukraine, general news

International diplomatic aspect

Russia, relevant news

Hospitals, banks, schools, petrol pumps – what happens when the electricity is cut off?

Rishi Sunak: A quick guide to the UK’s next prime minister

He's won after running for the second time this year

He 'predicted' financial problems under Truss

He is the son of immigrants

He's only been an MP for seven years

He was in charge of Covid support cash

He's thought to be one of the richest MPs

He faced controversy over his wife's tax arrangements

He campaigned for Brexit and deregulation

He really wanted to be... a Jedi

More on this story

Related Topics

U.S. charges Chinese nationals with schemes to steal info, punish critics and recruit spies

Russia’s Ukraine Disaster Exposes China’s Military Weakness

Beijing knows its own military has much in common with Moscow's ineffective force.

China Will Fight A Taiwan War On Its Own Terms

3 lessons Taiwan should take from Ukraine’s air war - Breaking Defense

Ukraine’s success against Russia in the skies shows how tactics have changed, in ways Taipei could replicate, write analysts Kelly Grieco and Julia Siegel.

Russia's dirty bomb threat presents new test for US spy agencies

Here's what a 'dirty bomb' is and how it fits into Russia's invasion of Ukraine

The latest on Task & Purpose

Local Opinion: Changes to military are too radical

An Officer Dissents On 'Woke Military' - The American Conservative

USOs Across the Country Are Mysteriously Shutting Down

Xi needs to talk modestly and carry a bigger (reform) stick

U.S.-Saudi Relations Buckle, Driven by Animosity Between Biden and Mohammed bin Salman

Lack of personal trust accelerates a yearslong split driven by geopolitical and economic forces

Mercenary chief vented to Putin over Ukraine war bungling

Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the Russian tycoon behind the mercenary group Wagner, personally told Putin that his military chiefs are mismanaging the war, U.S. officials said

UK’s First Non-white Premier as Onetime Colony’s Offspring Produce New Leaders​

Britain hopes he is the strong ethical and efficient leader it needs​

Three Inquiries, but No Answers to Who Blew Holes in Nord Stream Pipelines

Editors’ Picks

Geez, Even Fargo Has Gone Upscale

How Do I Find My Personal Style?

The Strange Comfort of Jet Lag

Most in US want more action on climate change: AP-NORC poll

Joe Biden

Globalization Isn’t Dead

The World Is More Fragmented, but Interdependence Still Rules

By Ian Bremmer

MORE INTERCONNECTED THAN EVER

DECOUPLED, NOT DIVORCED

LEADERLESS WORLD

Ex-UK pilots recruited by China were actually spies for UK: Report

AI Tops Proposed Tech Amendments for the 2023 NDAA

One bipartisan proposal would create federal AI data libraries; others would further limit tech exchange with China.

Democracy Needs a New Sales Pitch​

Here’s how to get the world excited about it again.

By John Austin, the director of the Michigan Economic Center, and Elaine Dezenski, senior director and head of the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.​

Stop Projecting America’s Democratic Decline Onto the World

Sun Tzu’s advice to Putin

UK’s First Non-white Premier as Onetime Colony’s Offspring Produce New Leaders

Britain hopes he is the strong ethical and efficient leader it needs

Democracy Needs a New Sales Pitch

By John Austin, the director of the Michigan Economic Center, and Elaine Dezenski, senior director and head of the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.